Page 89 of Binding Their Hearts

Henry

The tap-tap-tap of knuckles on the door brought clarity as Henry drew his energy inward and coiled it into a tightly compressed, blazing star of desire. Alice’s birthday celebration would deliver a number of firsts—beginning with the christening of this new space as their formal home playroom.

“Enter.” He loaded the word with a bassy weight and a crisp notch of command.

The room had been a proper study once. Now it merely looked the part, its true purpose pleasures of another sort. Doors of cherry wood and frosted glass swung wide. His spouses stood framed in the opening, eyes alight with speculation, clothing the casual cotton they’d been wearing at breakfast before he shut himself away to prepare.

His own pants had come directly from the dry cleaner’s bag, the creases down the legs sharp and unforgiving. But the top button of his blue herringbone dress shirt lay open, and the sleeves sat roughly rolled and cuffed below his elbows. He meant to work this day. A frisson of excitement slipped through his teeth, a barely audible inhale. The exquisite perversity of indulging oneself in carnal delights during the brunch hour tickled.

Jay’s gaze landed squarely on him—he’d not risen from his chair, projecting an untroubled lassitude, as though he might as easily nap against its leather back as issue orders to a pair of keyed-up submissives. Two floor pillows lay before him. Classical music floated in gentle waves, a playlist he’d curated to mask stray sounds without intruding.

Alice pitched her gaze farther, to the dresser before the shaded front windows, where he’d laid a handful of familiar toys on display and a selection of others beneath thin, dark fabric that undoubtedly piqued her curiosity. She had an inkling of what was to come, owing to their meticulous planning surrounding her birthday wishes. Though she’d yet to even contemplate the coffee table at the center of the rug. No matter. She would soon enough.

He gestured casually toward the pillows, his hand upturned in invitation. “Would you care to join me?”

They stepped as one, in strides devouring the broad wood planks that had served the home for nearly two centuries, the padding of bare feet diminishing as they reached the rug.

“Eager, are we?” He hummed his pleasure even as he held up a single finger to give them pause. Timing could mark the difference between a passable experience and an extraordinary one. In this place, he must control not only what and how but also when. “Do you freely submit to the rules of my domain?”

Alice tilted her head, the question clear in the quirk of her lips and the narrowing of her eyes. Hazel depths projected calculation and a wariness he silently applauded. Yet she held her tongue, her gaze straying sideways to her companion though her body remained still.

Yes, she understood. This test was for their beautiful service submissive. Boundaries would be brushed, teased, caressed—and perhaps joyfully reset. But not until the initial mindset was established.

Jay, despite his casual tee and sweatpants, stood straight, his shoulders back, his chin level. His eyes, such sweet brown pools of adoration and anticipation, firmed into sense. “What are the rules of your domain, Master Henry?”

His cock twitched, from not the honorific but the wit behind the question. A Jay trusted to say no was a Jay ready for more of the wishes he penned so innocently in his journal. An auspicious beginning, to be certain.

“What a delightful query. I see before me submissives who know their worth. Who grant dominion only when they are confident and secure in their choice.” He settled lower in the chair, rocking his hips forward as he allowed his knees to drape wider. Gratifying, to catch Jay transfixed and tugging at his lower lip and Alice flashing a slight smirk and raised brow. “For today, my rules are thus: This room is for your pleasure as well as my own. When you cross the threshold, you will obey me in all things, including alerting me if an experience is no longer pleasurable. You will each have a safeword for this purpose.”

He folded his hands across his stomach, and the waiting inferno warmed them from within.

“Alice.” As he called her name, she too came to attention, a serious cast falling over her features, veiling the eagerness exposed in the tapping of her fingertips against her thighs. “If you freely submit to the rules of my domain, tell me your safeword now.”

“Pistachio.” She dragged the word across her tongue in four syllables, her mouth forming sinuous shapes to deliver her submission. The curling energy rolled down her body, a shiver of anticipation. “Master Henry.”

He smiled slowly, pouring crocodilian hunger through his stare, and reveled in her quiver as he clicked his teeth. “Excellent.” He swung his attention to Jay, leaving the hunger visible. “And for you, Jay? What word will be your protection as you submit to my desires?”

“Ti—” Expressions passed over Jay with the speed of a summer storm, his gaze both far away and inward, his mouth frozen in midspeech. “No…” Clouds cleared as Jay nodded and an eager gleam returned to his face. “Potholes. My safeword is potholes.”

“Potholes?” He kept his inquiry light, as though Jay’s pause hadn’t nearly precipitated a cardiac event. His galloping heart rate would calm. Eventually.

“They try to damage my junk.” Jay gazed downward with an exaggerated tilt to his head and thrust his hips slightly forward. “Seems like a good fit.” His laugh held an edge of self-consciousness before he sighed. “And the old one…” He glanced at Alice, then Henry, and wet his lips. “I don’t have to cling so tight to that hurt anymore. It wasn’t what I thought it was. I can let it go.”

Henry lunged from his seat, palms on the armrests launching him upward. Passion burned for this magnificent man before him, the Jay who stared down his past and rescinded its permission to haunt him. Wrapping his hands roughly, Henry gripped Jay’s neck and stroked beneath his ears with his thumbs. At Jay’s excited breath, he molded their mouths together. Crown to sole, he leaned into Jay, planting one foot between Jay’s and cementing their bodies. The welcome jump of Jay’s cock drummed against his thigh as Henry claimed his husband.

When he’d fed the blaze as much oxygen as he dared—Jay’s soft, eager cries and hungry trembling a recipe for combustion—he forced passion to give way to decorum, banking the coals for later. His consuming kiss tapered into smaller nibbles, until finally he had the breath and wit to speak. “Your wisdom and maturity have earned you a reward, Jay.”

“Was it that kiss?” Jay’s chest rose and fell against his own, his heated breaths a bellows re-fanning the flames.

“Merely a beginning.” His step back gave Jay room to carry out his next order. More importantly, it allowed space to calm himself. “Undress Alice for me, please.”

He stared unabashedly as Jay divested their wife of her clothes. She stared in kind, the pale pink of her blush painting her neck and collarbones as she refused to drop her gaze. Even with her arms raised and Jay lifting her shirt over her head, she kept her attention fixed.

He would give her no hints about the implementation of her birthday wishes before the time came. Until then, her pleasure lay in his hands. When she stood utterly bare, he circled her slowly, close enough to bring the sharp sweetness of her shampoo to his nose but only incidentally touching her—the brush of his shirtsleeves as he seemingly erred and passed too close, all calculated to heighten her awareness, to bring her focus to her own skin.

He praised Jay’s thoroughness and care as he undressed him, then sent him to close the doors. A pleasing hint of swagger swam in Jay’s confident steps, his tight ass bouncing. “To the dresser next, my boy. Fetch me Alice’s suede, please. The birthday girl is owed her count of years.”

Alice squirmed on tiptoe, twining her fingers behind her back. She ducked her head, but the strength of her smile couldn’t be denied. As if he would have forgotten such an important tradition when she’d enjoyed her spanking to the utmost last year. Her gaze strayed to the leather chair he’d vacated—one that had spent months on loan in her apartment before being relegated to storage once more, now given pride of place as the lone seat in their playroom.

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