Page 35 of Season of Gifts

Chapter nineteen

Jay

Jayheldontightas Alice’s eyes narrowed and her lip curled.

“No.I.Don’t.”She bit off the words and spat them like nails popping a tire.

What he wouldn’t give to have the patch for that.The dominance she needed, he couldn’t give her.Ducking his head, he softened his tone.“Yes, you do.”

After a terrifying frozen second, she pushed her head back and took a sharp breath.Half nodding, half shaking her head, she clamped her lips and squeezed her eyes shut.“Yeah.”Hazel blinked into focus, naked and wounded.“I do.”

Thank fuck his therapist had been right about how to interrupt a negative thought pattern.Sometimes a wild swing really was enough to refocus attention.The advice had been for dealing with his own angry head-voices, the ones that tried to heap guilt and shame and criticism where it didn’t belong.But Alice probably had head-voices of her own.

“Forget about dinner, okay?And the zoo.”Tugging her gently forward, out of the chicken juice splash zone, he slipped behind her and wrapped her in his arms.Survivors clinging to an overturned canoe, waiting for the strongest swimmer to bring back help.Tonight was his turn to keep her head above water.Danny called their rituals emotional regulation.Jay couldn’t help her the way Henry would, with spanking or flogging or snug ropes.But he could help.“We’ll do something else.”

She clasped her arms over his, tucking her fingers in his palms.“I promised him I’d take care of you.Make everything just like he’d do it.”As she dropped her head, her hair draped to either side of her neck.A perfect patch of bare skin waited for him above her shirt collar.“I hate fucking failing.”

“You aren’t failing.”He pressed his lips to temptation.“Besides, I promised I’d take care of you, too.”Warm, soft Alice.Honey and lemon in her hair, hiding under the kitchen’s onion aroma.“It’s seven o’clock on a Wednesday night, and you’re having a breakdown over chicken.So who’s failing?”

She shook her head, slow, not dislodging him from his piece of heaven.“You’ve been an angel, and you know it.”

He soaked up her approval like a dried-out mud flat in a daylong downpour.“And you’re running yourself ragged to keep me on an even keel.”Finally, an actually fixable problem instead of one where the answer was to wait and wait some more.“I’ll order us takeout.Good as dinner would’ve been.You won’t even notice the difference.”

She sagged back against him, nestling into his shoulder.“He’d still be disappointed in me.”

“Nah.You’d be disappointed in you.”She could be so hard on herself without Henry around to knock some sense into her ass with the flat of his hand.Without Henry, she needed proof.Proof that a day could go sideways and Henry would understand.Like— Yes!Perfect.“Did I ever tell you…” He dragged out the silence the way Henry would, waiting for her shifting weight to tell him she was listening.“About the first time I had dinner with Henry?”

“No.”She swiveled in his arms, and he pulled her hair behind her ear.The quirk of her lips rewarded him.“Did you create a hazmat situation?”

“Worse.”He exaggerated his glance in either direction and stage-whispered, “I didn’t follow instructions.”

“You?”A skeptical brow greeted him.“I don’t believe it.What did you do?”

He had her now.Hooked on the promise of new facts to add to her datasets or whatever.Like tossing peanuts to a blue jay, or catnip to a cat, or her pussy to his mouth.Hmm.That would make his night better, especially if it made hers better.

“Yup, me.”He tugged her along by the hand to get his phone from the hall table.He could mop the whole floor naked after they placed an order.“We had dinner at the club.”Scrolling, scrolling—there.The name on the card in the bag Henry had handed him all those years ago.He held up the screen.“Takeout.”

“The club serves dinner?Was that a regular thing in the salon?”She waved her hand, gears spinning in her eyes.“No, wait, Henry brought you takeout?”

“Sure did.I interrupted him because I couldn’t follow instructions.Hang on, I’m getting ahead of myself.”He pulled up the menu and stuffed the phone in her hand.“See?Let’s pick something, and I’ll run get it, and then I’ll tell you all about my first dinner with him.”

Alice buried herself in menu reading.He tried not to preen too obviously, but he was on a roll.Might as well go for the second phase while he had the momentum.“And after…”

She popped to attention, fingers paused over the phone, her gaze lifting.“After?”

“Mm-hmm.After dinner, we’ll put on one of the audios he made for us.”That should still count as a Christmas calendar night—they’d be putting one of Henry’s earlier gifts to use.“And we can listen to him read while I eat dessert.”

She took firm hold of his chin, her thumb and index finger a welcome claim.“You think you deserve dessert, do you?”

“I do.”He egged her on with the smirkiest of smirks.“But I’ll let you choose the book, since I’ll be wearing earmuffs.”

She tried on a stern teacher face.“My thighs are not earmuffs.”But she smiled and bumped his hip.

“They are to me.”When he was a lucky, lucky man.

Either his smirk or his shrug earned him a real kiss, deep and possessive and grateful all at once.By the time she let him go, his cock waved hello with a cheery twitch and pride warmed his belly.She pulled back all teary-eyed, though, and pushed on the back of his neck.He bent his head for her lingering kiss on his forehead.

“When Henry calls to check in tonight,” she whispered, “I’m going to tell him what a wonderful husband I have here with me.”

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