Page 175 of Season of Gifts

Nodding slightly, Henry hummed a pleased note.“Doubts spread and grow in those gaps, tangling our thoughts in uncertainty and fear.I would not again give you cause to doubt me as I have these past weeks.”

“You know, I took this class once.”Alice scooched her chair closer and set her elbow on the table, propping her face on her hand.“Or maybe half a dozen times.Great teacher.”Staring at Henry, she cut her gaze toward Jay.“Taught me a ton about recognizing red flags.And green ones.”

“Riiight.”He picked up her smile for his own.“I think I had that class, too.”Only every month at the club since Henry started it.“About taking responsibility, and apologizing, and creating systems to make sure the mistakes and miscommunications don’t repeat.Big green flags.”

“And I learned this other thing.”Alice blinked at him, her wide eyes all innocent, as if Henry wasn’t studying them both with fond exasperation and maybe the teensiest hint of tears.

“Oh?”Jay called on his abs to stop the laugh rippling in his gut.His angel face wasn’t half so composed as Alice’s.“What’s that?”

Henry honest-to-God snorted at them.So that seemed like a good sign.

“It turns out dominants have feelings and need check-ins, too.Can you imagine?”Alice faked staggering back in her chair, flattening one hand against her chest.The sheer fabric, losing its billowy swirls, clung in an extra-nice distracting sort of way.“The audacity.”

“We do, as it happens.”Henry skirted Jay’s plate and added his hold to Alice and Jay’s clasped hands, covering them in his palm.He squeezed twice, like a thank you, and swallowed hard.He must’ve shaved before waking them this morning; up close, his smooth jawline invited worship.“A good reminder to all of us, and particularly prescient as we contemplate our desires and resolutions for the year ahead.Tomorrow we shall set aside time to discuss and amend our contract terms.”

Alice clicked her tongue behind gritted teeth, nodding as she grimaced.“Like what to do when we act in good faith but create bad outcomes anyway.”

“And aligning action with intention.”As both spouses swiveled toward him, Jay sat straighter.His collar rested against his throat, promising he could say whatever he needed to without risking their love.“Danny says that’s how I can make mental room for the good stuff to float up, if I ask whether what I’m gonna do matches with what I want in my life.”The vision exercise was a favorite now, even though he’d felt ridiculous the first few times.Once he’d decided it was just a different way to think about his wish book, it hadn’t felt so strange.“And what I want is the three of us married for so long that people ask us our secret to being happy.”

Henryhmm-hmmed, his smile the soft one he got when he’d been sketching them napping and Jay woke up all bleary-eyed and dozy.“A worthy ambition.Do we know such a secret, beloved?”

“Not yet.”He’d been working on it, though, putting the pieces together.Why the three of them fit.Why lousy days couldn’t keep them down for long.“But I’m pretty sure partly it’s searching tree lot after tree lot and driving all the way out to a cut-your-own farm to give your husband the holiday feeling he needs, and it’s decorating a bedroom with tons of relationship mementos so your wife can remind herself whenever she needs to that love is real and all around her, and it’s your wife getting up at three in the morning to fly home and booking a last-minute car rental because something’s wrong and she’s damn sure gonna fix it.”More than that—he could’ve rattled off a hundred examples, and that was the real secret to happiness.They didn’t do big-gestures-only love.They did everyday love.“It’s noticing, and it’s caring enough to try.Even when sometimes the chicken lands on the floor.And then we laugh it off and try again.”

Alice flung herself forward, wrapping around his shoulders and burying her face in his neck.“You are so fucking wise, sweetheart.I’m gonna tell you every single day, because it’s a crime if you don’t know that.”

Henry shuffled Jay’s hair back.He kissed him gently, then harder, his lips firm and his hand tightening on Jay’s knee.“Extraordinarily wise.You are a gift, my brilliant boy.”

Like they’d never left the bed at all.Guess they could’ve come down for breakfast sooner if he was gonna get sandwich hugs at the table, too.He breathed it in, the sweetness of the maple syrup and the tickle of Alice’s floor-length nightie-dress and the safety in Henry’s fierce grip.Those were gifts, too.But didn’t they—

“Oh!You have another gift for us.The last calendar gift.Is it—are we opening—” Exhaling slowly, he forced his heart to stop revving his brain.“I mean, does that figure into your plans today, Master Henry?”

Giving Henry the title while wearing the branded collar and cuffs didnothelp with slowing down his heartbeat.But otherwise, A-plus for effort.Their plates were empty, and the dishes could wait, just for today.Whatever present Henry had saved for last on their calendar had to be meaningful and important.

“Ah, yes.I thought we might get to that next.”Henry, glancing over his shoulder, seemed to sum up the same math about breakfast.“Leave these for later.”He pushed off Jay’s leg to his feet and extended an arm to Alice.“Shall we investigate the last of your Christmas gifts, my dears?”

They climbed.Past their bedroom and the playroom.Past the floor where Jay served Mistress Alice once a week and the bare-bones guest room where Nat had left laundered sheets stacked at the foot of the bed.Into the finished attic and the weak winter sunlight stretching across the floor toward Henry’s studio.Everything sat the same as it had a couple of weeks ago when Jay had come through on the scavenger hunt.The night he’d despaired before unwrapping his collar.He fingered the cuffs.Still there, still holding him steady.Alice reached back for him and pulled his arms around her waist, lacing their fingers together.Their cuffs overlapped; his tethers gathered her dress like a belt.

Henry flicked the wall switch.A pair of spotlights beamed down on a thick white drape tossed—okay, arranged neatly—over an easel.He lured them in front of the display with teasing tugs and caresses.Maybe he’d been missing all the touches, too.They’d been more themselves at Mom’s house than in any other vanilla space, but nothing compared to the casual ass pats of being home.

“It has seemed to me”—Henry shook out the bottom edge of the cover and scrunched it in both hands—“that our home has been lacking a key piece.I do so enjoy a matched set.”

Jay sucked in a breath and held it.If Alice had guessed, she’d’ve gone tense, too, waiting to see, but she swayed softly, all boneless curiosity.

The drapewhooshed away and puddled on the floor behind the easel.

She was gorgeous.Light and shadow, straddling a chair backward, her body angled away but her face tipped to the side like she knew they were watching her.Her breast curved behind a shielding arm; her thigh blocked the shadowed vee between.Her tilted chin hinted at challenge, a coy invitation and a warning.

Alice’s portrait wasn’t the submission his showed.She wasn’t him.She brought other kinds of beauty and grace and strength to their bond, and all of it vibrated from the canvas in front of them.

Jay shoved his tongue to the back of his front teeth.It wasn’t his place to say how she oughta feel.But he’d been in that moment, in the—

“That’s me.”Her voice broke on a gasp in the middle.She trembled in his arms.“That’s me.”

The wonder of the moment when Henry presented them with something so stunning wasn’t onlythat’s me.The wonder wasthis is how you see me.He’d fallen to his knees and sobbed the night Henry had unveiled the painting of him.Day after day he’d posed, nude, never seeing the canvas, uncertain why Henry could possibly want to paint him.But then he’d seen the painting, and he’d known.

His submission was beautiful to Henry.Hewas beautiful to Henry.

Astonishment was the only true response to that much love.He’d felt it in his bones the way Alice would be feeling it now, cupping her hands over her mouth and nose, making hitching breaths that set her ribs jerking in the circle of his arms.

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