Page 5 of Binding Their Hearts

“Oh?” Henry gave up nothing but neutral dom face, the cagey bastard. “If you had given voice to such thoughts a few months ago, I might have believed you wanted Emma’s attention focused safely elsewhere.”

“Fair.” But her jealousy had burned out, relegated to the slag heap as she mixed an alloy of friendship and growing understanding. “That’s not the reason now, though.”

Flogging Emma had cemented her certainty. Or not the act itself, but Emma’s expression afterward. Bittersweet, because happy memories brought pain when they could never happen again. Life changed so fast, without permission, and outside you became a statue—armored, impervious to harm—but inside you curled into a tiny knot and shivered in the dark. And then you got stuck there, and you slowly forgot life could be anything else. Until a hand appeared in the darkness, and you trusted the giver enough to reach for it.

“Tell me.” Henry combined soft with piercing, the tilt of his head coaxing and commanding.

“You wouldn’t make each other laugh.” Not the way she and Jay complemented Henry with their antics. “She’d be sad, and you’d be pensive, and together you’d be…” The way he’d been in July, on the anniversary of Victor’s death, coming to bed almost hopeless, ghostly, and needing their warm life to revive him. “Nostalgic and melancholy.” Great for the Bronte novel Leah was swooning over. Not so great for finding happiness. “You…”

She couldn’t look at him, not and say what needed saying. Henry had fallen for Jay’s innocent joy and wonder, how he could hold it even after everything he’d been through. He’d fallen for her because of her hunger to learn and do and know everything. Emma wasn’t joyful, and she didn’t need a teacher. Henry needed lovers he could help grow into the confident submissives his love and training encouraged them to become.

“You’re too much like her husband. I think. I know I never met him, but the way she talks about him—” She wouldn’t break any confidences, and Henry for sure knew how Emma felt about him anyway, what she saw when she looked at him. “And I think you try to be. When she’s around. Because you know she needs it, and you give people what they need.”

“I see.” The low growl of Henry’s command tone stirred tingling awareness in her skin. Gooseflesh pebbled her arms under his intense stare. Eyes dark and dangerous, he pinned her in place. “And you tell me this because…”

She shook as if the room had developed an icy draft. In September. “Because Emma’s only ever going to trust a dominant her husband approved. Unless there’s someone you’re not telling me about, that means you or Santa. You both have the…” If she didn’t turn away, she wouldn’t be able to think straight. She rubbed her heels together and stayed where she stood. “The skills, the manners, the right caring mindset. But you’re also…” Describing what she knew so clearly in her head should be easier. Henry and Will were like raw materials that delivered the same properly calibrated results via divergent roads. Both would treat their submissives with dignity and respect. Just not at all in the same way. “You have different ways of showing it. Different personalities.”

Jay tumbled dramatically sideways, arms spread, straight across Henry’s lap. “And you’re taken.”

“Quite taken,” Henry murmured. He curled an arm around Jay’s chest, holding him down in a playfully tight squeeze. Jay sprawled nearly limp in his hold. “Clearly not me, then; you’re entirely right about that. You’ve yet to make the case for Will, however.”

“Emma is never going to stop loving her husband.” The wedding band on the woman’s finger and the pearls around her neck sent out that message clear as day. “But that doesn’t mean she wants to be alone forever. She needs someone who won’t feel threatened by that but respects it. And I know Santa can respect a prior claim. He’s never made me feel uncomfortable when he’s been in our home or with us at the club. Jay?”

“He’s playful with us, but he never forgets we’re Henry’s.” Jay somehow both wriggled deeper into Henry’s lap and stretched out his full length to occupy the entire couch.

“Exactly—he won’t forget Emma was someone else’s first, and he won’t try to make her forget it, either. But he would—he would—” Her fingers closed on empty air, fidgeting with an invisible model of emotions. If she could cram them into a CAD system and render the results, the whole thing would make sense. “He’d teach her to live now instead of then, because he’d make her laugh. And she’d be the trusting, focused, nurturing submissive he needs. You can’t tell me she doesn’t want that, Henry.”

She’d been suspicious of Emma from the start, thinking the woman meant to steal her place with Henry. But the more they spoke, the more she knew down to the very last atom in her that more than anything else, Emma wanted to belong again. Before you’d had that peace and comfort and security, you could only imagine what it would feel like. And once you’d had it, losing it would be crushing. Gut-wrenching. Like safewording and realizing a split-second later that you’d made an awful mistake. Only death didn’t give you do-overs.

“I would not make that argument, no.” Henry finger-combed Jay’s hair, his strokes slow and steady. “The need to belong is a powerful motivator. To be claimed and have others recognize and respect that claim.”

She might actually be winning this discussion. Or performing up to Henry’s considerable expectations, at least. “She’d obey you in a heartbeat, but I’ve never seen her defer to anyone at the club, dominant or not. She had so many happy years with her husband—I think she’s not willing to start over with someone she doesn’t know. With someone who doesn’t know her.” She shouldn’t have to, not when the perfect partner was working side by side on the club’s board with her. “Will’s been waiting years to be free to be himself, right? To give his love to a submissive who isn’t going to move on in a few weeks or months. Emma knows who he is; she doesn’t need him to be someone else. They just need a little push. To make them see it.”

Henry hummed. His fingers danced down the front of Jay’s throat and traced idle lines on his chest. “Will would have to see that Em’s not the image of perfection who still belongs to someone else. And Em would have to see that he’s no longer an overenthusiastic boy who needs her subtle guidance.”

Holy shit. Her feet might be leaving the rug and floating on air. That was a yes, wasn’t it? Henry had basically agreed that his oldest friends needed setting up in the worst way. She pranced over to the couch with barely restrained hip-wiggling happy dancing. Careful maneuvering sent her sliding belly to belly up Jay’s body, him in his delicious nudity and her in her work clothes. “It’s sooo terrible that we don’t know anyone, not one single person, who’s good at making people see things about themselves and the people they love, right, Jay?”

“Tragic.” Jay’s attempt at a solemn expression meant wide, faux-innocent eyes and a smirk begging to become a laugh. “I can’t think of anyone we know who does that.” He batted eyelashes up at Henry. “Not one. At all.”

She smothered her giggles between them, dropping her head in the hollow left by Jay’s shoulder and Henry’s stomach. A hand came down in a teasing smack on her bottom, rocking her against Jay. His breathy whimper tickled her ear.

“The two of you have entirely too much free time if you’re concocting such plans.”

More smacking against the tender creases below her ass. Dress pants muted the sting but not the sound or her shivering excitement, the feeling she transmuted to Jay as she nibbled his neck and purred against his skin.

“A bit of discipline might be in order.” The words suggested a threat, but Henry’s warm, greedy tone pooled like syrup on a waffle. “A reward for being so perceptive—and so sweetly concerned for our good friends.”

“Yes, Henry.” Her eager response overlapped Jay’s.

“On your feet, Alice.” Henry moved his arm, allowing her to rise. “Jay, fetch me the suede, please. We’ll play out here this evening.”

Her favorite toy. Henry really did show his love in the best ways.

She waited beside the couch, rocking up on the balls of her feet as Jay jogged for the bedroom. Giddy anticipation conjured the thwap of the falls against her body, the thudding pleasure-pain that sent her mind to the peaceful place.

“And a dress shirt,” Henry called after him, his voice raised to carry as he stood and pierced Alice with hooded eyes, their green dark as the depths of an ancient forest. “My blue shirt from this morning.”

Henry stalked closer, each step sending her heart rate higher. She resisted the perverse desire to run, to make him give chase though she had no intention of getting away. His hands landed at her waist, and she hissed as he slipped fingers under her light sweater. Playing with fire, only the burn spread love and acceptance everywhere he touched.

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