Page 61 of Binding Their Hearts

The unsettled nature of moving soured his stomach. Assorted piles of items that didn’t quite fit with their usual partners awaited overflow boxes. The clutter disrupted the restful harmony in every room and would do so until they found a proper place for each item in their new home. Slowing his breathing, he pushed back against the headache threatening to erupt. Dinner preparations would need to begin amid the current mess. “You’ve been doing exceptional work, my dears. A break may be in order.”

“A break, huh?” Alice, wrapping fragile dishware as he stepped around her and set his teacup in the sink, issued a skeptical snort. Jay’s stepstool blocked the dishwasher; they’d made significant progress from the outer wall since he’d answered his mother’s call. “That’s not what you were just on?”

Laughing, Jay passed down a serving platter sized for a roast with vegetable medley. “Management perks, Alice. You don’t sit on your butt and do nothing at work all day now?”

Jay emphasized his rear and wiggled, his smile fading as Alice focused entirely on the job before her. Perhaps their teamwork today hadn’t been quite as successful as it had seemed at a distance.

“Turns out no, not so much.” Her thin smile rolled across a seething undertow. “Still hard at it alongside the team. All day. Every day. But, you know.” She started a new box with the platter, then began adding a series of already wrapped smaller pieces she’d stacked atop the counter. “Nothing like spending all weekend doing more work.”

“Moving is a challenging endeavor.” Perfection would be a kitchen free of boxes, a new recipe whetting his appetite, and his beloved pets well rested and idly entertaining each other for his enjoyment. Alas, fraying tempers and justifiable indignation were the tools he possessed. “The sacrifices we make now will be repaid threefold in the rewards of our new home.”

“Yeah, what he said.” Leaning forward, Jay peered deep in the upper recesses of the cabinet before triumphantly hoisting a crystal butter dish. “Another empty cupboard, courtesy of yours truly. Just think”—he backed down the two steps to the floor and presented the dish to Alice with a flourish—“on Saturday we get to do it all in reverse at the new house—”

Alice’s gritted teeth warred with Jay’s enthusiastic delivery.

“—and by this time next Sunday, we’ll be officially mister and missus and mister, and partying at the reception if Henry hasn’t ordered us home to break in the new playroom.” Sagging with his back against the counter, Jay nudged the stepstool toward the next cabinet with his hip. “Or we could take it for a test drive Friday night. Our first Friday in the new house. Old family homestead? Kinda hard not to overhear some of your talk with your mom. I bet she’d love to be our first houseguest. But not right away. When we don’t have boxes everywhere.”

“We’re still going to have boxes here if we don’t keep working.” Alice wrestled with the flaps and the tape gun, growling as Jay held the carton in place for her. “We should finish these upper cabinets before we break for dinner.”

“The cabinets can wait.” As Henry rested a hand between her shoulder blades, she flinched. He swallowed his own distress, the recognition that his distraction had allowed his submissives to push themselves too far. Jay’s genuine cheerfulness carried a manic quality; his most fervent wish was to be on the far side of the move and the ceremony both, where he imagined lay a security not found in their current arrangement. Alice’s short temper covered her distaste for failure, her urgent need to complete a task once begun and her willingness to drive herself to exhaustion if necessary to accomplish it. His lovers had grown in the last year, but they hadn’t yet outgrown their need for his guidance. “We are done for the day. Put everything down, please, and leave it as it lies.”

“There’s just two more.” Alice stepped past Jay and heaved open the next set of doors. “We can at least—”

“Recognize our limits and acknowledge that we all have a need to rest, yes.” His patience had limits, too.

Alice rolled her eyes and began unloading the bottom shelf onto the counter. “Not you; you’d never break under the stress. You’re Mr. Chill. Not Jay; he sees Challenge Level: Move and raises you Expert Mode: Wedding Ceremony. Because we might as well make life exponentially harder—”

“Don’t you want to get married?”

The crack in Jay’s voice might as well have been a dish shattering on the tile.

Curling forward, Alice buried her face in her hands. “Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.” With a blind reach, she snagged Jay in a sidelong hug. “I’m sorry, stud. Yes. Yes, I want to get married and promise my life to you and to Henry.” She burrowed closer, and Jay closed his arms around her. “I’m doing it again. The avoidant thing. I’m scared we won’t finish on time because my brain feels like mush every night, and it’ll be my fault.”

Cheek resting atop Alice’s head, Jay silently implored him to fix her. Liquid-brown eyes apologized and pleaded. Rich dark hair swept across Jay’s forehead in the enticing curve that begged to be pushed back again and again.

A realization struck, landing with the swift, deep whump of a buffalo flogger. He could have averted the entire crisis had he only thought to provide more information to his lovers. Instead, they’d gotten distracted by the trees and neglected to appreciate the forest. “My sweet girl. What do you imagine will happen if the moving crew arrives Friday and finds the apartment in its current state of disarray?”

She shrugged, suddenly small against Jay’s sturdy chest, her well-loved T-shirt smudged and stained, a piece of tape clinging to the hem below the columns of names from her high school graduating class. “They’ll leave our stuff here and we’ll have to rent a truck and move it ourselves before we get locked out of the apartment and the building owner starts tearing out walls?”

“Oh dear.” Skirting a box, he maneuvered closer. Jay attempted to unwind his embrace and make room, but Henry pressed his arms firmly back around Alice’s shoulders. “Would it help you to know that nothing of the sort will occur?”

“It won’t?” Unexpected unison greeted him.

Giving in to temptation, he tidied the hair across Jay’s eyes. Jay rewarded him with a flutter of lashes and a relaxed smile.

“Neither of you has hired movers before.” So obvious he ought to have addressed the issue the instant he began distributing boxes and rolls of tape.

“No, I hauled my own—”

“—put together my place with stuff off the curb—”

“—never needed help—”

“—left behind what I didn’t—”

“—and then I moved here.” Alice lifted her head and lightly kissed Jay on the lips. “And this amazing stud carried almost everything up the stairs for me.” She rubbed his chest in a slow circle. “He was shirtless then, too.” Tipping back, clearly trusting Jay to hold her up, she eyed Henry from her inverted posture. “Wait, so what happens if we aren’t packed by Friday morning?”

Looming over, he delighted in her widening pupils before he kissed the bridge of her nose. “Then our moving crew will finish the packing for us. The job may require more time, but nothing will be left behind, and no one will be upset with you or blame you for a thing.”

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