Page 170 of Season of Gifts

All motion ceased.But thecrackrolling through the bedchamber wasn’t thunder.Henry held one hand above her thigh, his fingers pinched post-snap.Jay touched nothing but her wrists, his fingers in loose circles.Henry breathed out across her clit; her body twitched, but the sparks had gone, and she was hurtling back to earth.

His smile spread slowly.His mouth and cheeks and chin were wet with her, with the proof that she’d been so close, right there on the freaking edge.

Her panting breaths filled her own ears and maybe his, too.“Why did you stop?”

Henry settled his hand back beneath her, taking his time, squeezing the fullness of her ass and sighing with pleasure.“If you yet have the capacity to ask the question, you know the answer.”

Her face drained of heat, a chill slipping down through her collar and toward her chest.“Because I’m still thinking.”

He wouldn’t allow that in this game.He could bring her to the edge as often as he wanted, until she was a frenzied, incoherent mess of need.

His raised eyebrows credited her with the right answer.“If you’ll excuse me, I have more apologies to make.”

He teased her with his flicking tongue against her clit.Too quick, too short, too lacking pressure to bring relief.Green eyes watched her, challenged her—dared her to ask for more.To beg.

Rebellion fired through her, grappling for control, refusing to submit.

No.Refusing to be so easily won.Not opposed to being his.Only wanting to know she was worth the effort.That he wouldn’t toss up his hands and be done with her if she needed the same lesson repeated a thousand times.

The lightning current returned, running to fingers and toes, causing tiny jerks of her hips and knees that yanked at the tethers holding her down.This time.This time the storm would strike.Henry swept his tongue across her clit impossibly fast.Jay laced his fingers over hers, and she curled their hands into tight fists.Her back arched high to meet the lightning.

Nothing.

She shrieked her frustration.Dug her heels into the bed and tried to drag herself to the lost friction, tried to close her legs and build the pressure, but Henry was everywhere, hands keeping her spread wide, gaze hard and implacable.

“My timetable, Alice.”So calm, his voice, as if her defiance bothered him not at all.“You may come when I wish it and not before.”

His cock twitched against his stomach, veins dark with need.He caught her looking and stroked himself, squeezing a shining bead of ready-to-fuck glaze from the tip and letting it run down the side, onto his knuckles.Her empty thighs clenched.

Henry’s laugh rested on a bed of gravel.“We aren’t nearly there, sweet girl.We’ve all day yet.”

He bent back to his purpose.Sandy brown hair filled the wedge between her legs; he inhaled deeply, drawing cool air over the clit he held exposed, elevated, above two clamped fingers.Her heart, barely settled from the last close call, surged ahead of her.

Henry tugged her clit between his lips and pulsed his tongue against her.

Closing her eyes, she let go of the rest.Of the sun barely slanting through the windows, of a passing car in serious need of a new muffler, of the tug from the cuffs as she flexed her feet and the press of Jay’s fingers against her wrists.She pulled all of her focus to the point where Henry touched live wires together, hotwiring her body to follow his commands.

She rose and fell on flicks of his tongue.On the thrust of his fingers, moving now to the same rhythm, sending shivers through her.Inevitability crackled in the clouds, blue fire behind her eyelids.Her breasts ached with the pounding of her heart.Her skin burned against the air above and the bed below.Henry held the only answer.

Her hips jerked.He pinned her flat with the hand not thrusting inside her, his palm a broad weight atop her abdomen.She could almost close her fingers around the lightning.Please.

The pressure from Henry’s tongue faded.

“No, please.”A garbled croak.“Pleeease.”Better.Better.Henry brought back the heat and pressure, and she sobbed with relief.“Want this.”All of it, the sensations buzzing inside her, too big to control.The currents only he could control.“Want what you give.”

Henry kept on, every motion the same, endless, steady and constant and forever hers.

“Want…” She’d lost her breath.“Be…” Every muscle locked.“Yours.”

She caught the lightning.Heat crashed through her, jagged and sharp, burning her with blue and golden fingers of fire.

And still Henry kept on.

She would die in this blaze.She couldn’t possibly—a shout wrenched itself from her throat, maybe words, maybe not.The ringing in her ears covered all else.Henry delivered shock after shock at the tip of his tongue.Her body shook for hours.Days.

She swam in a sea of storms, lightning flashing even when the storm moved on.

“Echoes.”Giggling, she floated, dragging her hands through the clouds, the electricity arcing in her fingertips.Something moved the other ends.Toes?The toes.Fingers stroked the bottoms of her feet and around her ankles.“Tryna tickle me.”

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