Playing the Game (24 page)

He lowered her right arm and raised her left, soaping and rinsing her skin with gentle, thorough attention.

“Bathing is an opportunity to raise one’s awareness of one’s partner. It need not be expressly sexual.” He lowered her left arm.

The washcloth trailed across the top of her breasts, and she breathed deeply, intensifying the contact.

“But the potential for arousal is implicit.”

His attentions turned to her legs, the cloth starting at her left foot and winding up the leg until it ended at her sex. He massaged her through the cotton, a brief tease before he repeated the process on the right. But this time his hand stayed between her thighs. The wet cloth molded to her sex, tugging at her lips, and his strong fingers parted them as he stroked her.

She let her legs drop open, knees falling against the sides of the bathtub. Her mouth, too, fell open, her nose unable to meet her body’s increased demand for oxygen. Her exhalations became soft sighs.

Fingers circled her clitoris through wet cloth. Her hips rocked, and the bathwater moved over her body in tiny waves. Pain no longer figured in her thoughts. Now she measured only the pleasure from Henry’s expert fingers…
so good
.

“You feel that arousal expanding, don’t you, Alice? Pushing outward, racing along your every nerve, eager to converge on a single point.” His fingers pinched, rolling her clitoris between them. The washcloth drifted away, and she gasped at the brush of his skin on hers. “Your body is a wonder, dearest. There’s nothing shameful or wrong in sharing it with me.”

His fingers slipped inside. He thrust slow and shallow. She tilted her hips to deepen the contact, moaning as the heel of his hand pressed hard against her clit.

“My beautiful, responsive girl. You’ll come for me, won’t you, Alice?” His fingers pumped faster, the curve of his hand bumping against her with each stroke. “So sweetly flushed with heat and desire.”

His mouth covered hers, swallowing her moans. He moved to her neck, biting and sucking as the pleasure spiraled up and reached a tipping point.

Her moan became a strangled whimper. Her back arched, sending her breasts into the cooler air above the heat of the water. With no room to move, her legs flexed hard against the sides of the tub as her hips shook and his fingers thrust deep and stayed.

His kisses turned softer, gentler, and his voice murmured to her in between. “That’s it…sweet Alice…your body offers its own solutions for pain, hmm?”

Warm and safe and buzzing with the rush, she nodded and hummed her agreement. Not that she couldn’t have done it herself. But that he was willing. That he
wanted
to.

“Thank you, Henry,” she mumbled.

He kissed her mouth and forehead. “You are always welcome, my dear girl.”

His fingers left her, and she bit down on an unhappy sigh. A metallic
thunk
made her flinch. The water level dropped.

“Open your eyes, Alice.”

She blinked at the sudden brightness and allowed him to help her to her feet. Draping a towel around her shoulders, he began drying her with a second. She let her chin drop to her chest. He made no attempt to do anything about the erection he sported as he dried her from head to toe with tender swipes of the towel.

If he wasn’t interested in intercourse, maybe he’d allow her to taste him instead. She’d seen him ask it of Jay. Would he grant her that, at least? In three months, it was the only time she’d seen him orgasm.

He hung the towels over the shower rod and stroked her cheek. “Is your pain gone for now?”

“Yes, Henry.” The physical pain, anyway.

“I’m pleased.”

Maybe his responsibility had ended for the night. Maybe he’d fetch her clothes and send her home so Jay could come back and Henry could get laid. Because the transparent truth was that he only wanted to have sex with Jay.

Even his erection might have nothing to do with her. He might be thinking about Jay right now. A hard cock was a physiological response to stimuli. Meaningless, especially if he didn’t want her to do anything about it. He’d tell her if he did. She was bound to obey him. He could ask–demand–anything of her, and he hadn’t so much as asked for a handjob.

He scooped her up in his arms, bridal-style, and she squealed in surprise. Such a Jay move from Henry was unprecedented. He carried her sideways through the door and across to his bedroom, where the covers had been pulled back, and laid her on the bed.

She wanted to scramble to her feet, to eliminate any chance of bleeding onto his wonderfully soft, undoubtedly expensive bedding. “But, your sheets–”

“Are neither your concern nor your responsibility, Alice,” he chided. “You have two responsibilities tonight. Name them for me.”

“To obey you,” she responded promptly. “And to enjoy myself.”

“Good girl.” His forceful kiss, a stroking of tongue and pressing of lips, left her wanting more. “Obey and enjoy. Everything else is to be set aside.”

Her body retained the warmth of the bathwater, but the cooler air in the bedroom raised her nipples to hardness. Henry swooped down and breathed heat across them, and she shuddered.

“Too tender, sweet girl?” His mouth hovered above her right breast, lips moving almost against her nipple. She took a deeper breath, lifting her chest, and his tongue flicked out teasingly.

“No…just a bit more sensitive tonight, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Henry.” She’d never had the pain some of her girlfriends had suffered through. She enjoyed the extra sensitivity. The heavy, full feeling in her breasts. But the pain low in her back and belly would return all too quickly. She’d worked herself to orgasm trying to alleviate cramps often enough to name it a stopgap measure.
Got another one for me, Henry?

“Swollen,” he murmured. “Aching. Beautiful.”

He cupped her left breast as if he meant to take the weight of it from her even while she lay on her back. His mouth descended on the other.

Henry took his time. Not that there weren’t a hundred small differences between the way he touched her and the way Jay did–it was impossible not to compare–but stripped to the base components, the bare wires exposed, the fundamental divide was in their approach. Jay’s was eager, sometimes frantic, hopping to and fro. Henry’s was patient. Confident. Steady.

Her giggle interrupted the series of soft moans building as he massaged her breasts with tongue and fingers. He lifted his head and then his torso, leaning over her until his mouth brushed her ear.

“Share with me, Alice. Share the thought that makes you laugh so enticingly.” He set off on a wandering journey down her body, fingers traveling between her breasts and over her ribs and lower still, past the curve of her stomach. She rocked her hips. “Soon. But you’ll share your thought with me first.”

“I was thinking…about art.” She blushed. If there was a god, Henry would leave it at that.

“A particular piece?”

She squeezed her eyes shut. Of course he wouldn’t leave it at that. He was an artist, for chrissake.

“Copley Square,” she choked out. “The tortoise and the hare.”

He’d nuzzled so close his blink grazed her cheek. Silence, into which her heart pounded. And then he laughed. Henry chuckled beside her ear, and her body relaxed. Until his fingers moving across her clitoris made her gasp.

“My delightful girl. I presume I am your tortoise?”

She nodded, cautiously.

“Are you missing your hare tonight?”

“I don’t want him to feel lonely. Pushed aside.”

“A sentiment I share, dearest.” The pressure from Henry’s fingers stopped, and her hips strained in an effort to call it back. “But it doesn’t answer the question.”

“I guess. In theory. So I’d know he’s not upset.”

“But in practice, you’re happy to have a gentler hand? A steadier one? One with less exuberance hopping about?” His voice teased her before it grew deeper. “A hand that understands how heightened your senses are just now, Alice?”

His fingers parted her lips with slow strokes. “How your body is swollen and aching? How the pain serves to make you more aware of those places? Of even the slightest touch?”

A single finger slipped inside her. Not deep, no. Barely there. Circling her entrance. Thrusting and sliding back before she could pull him deeper. But she wanted to. Tried to. Her hips chased his hand until she rocked steadily and he added a second finger, pressing deep. His thumb rolled across her clitoris.

He lay alongside her, curved over her right shoulder, his mouth at her neck.

“Do you feel it, Alice? The slickness? The rush of relief waiting for you? The way arousal banishes your pain? Do you want that, sweet girl?”

“Yes. Yes, I want it.” God, did she want it again.

She whimpered when his fingers pushed deep and stayed. Her body contracted around them repeatedly, mimicking his motions.

He kissed her throat, hard, tugging at her skin. His thumb cut the last string of tension holding her back. Firm pressure and rapid movement on her clit had her hips bucking off the bed and her legs trembling as she gave a long, shuddering groan.

Enjoying the almost tickle of his nose sliding up her neck, she labored to catch her breath.

He rumbled low, no louder than a whisper, yet it sounded like thunder in her ear. “You’ve been waiting for me to fuck you again, haven’t you, Alice? Wondering why I haven’t?”

She nodded, sharply aware of his erection against her right hip despite the laxity in her muscles, the blissful aftermath of the pleasure he’d given her with his fingers.

“And what did you conclude?”

“That you…that you didn’t want to.” Shame made her stumble, fearing truth and falsity alike. She’d felt him hard for her on every one of their nights together, though he’d done nothing about it.

“I think you know that’s untrue.” His right arm stretched across her to clutch her left hip, preventing her from sliding away from his forceful thrust against her right side. “You can feel what I have for you, what I want to drive into you with abandon whenever I have you naked in my arms.”

“But you haven’t,” she whispered. Was he going to tonight? Her mouth was dry.
Yes, please.

“No,” he agreed. “I haven’t. Because I am able to control myself. Control my urges. Do you believe that, Alice? Do you trust I am able to deny myself and still fulfill your needs?”

He caressed her left side, deceptively lazy, tweaking her nipple when he reached it. She gasped.

“Yes. I trust you. You can control yourself.” He could control her, too.

“Good.” He kissed her, his tongue coaxing her lips open, sliding along her own in an erotic mimicry of penetration. His hand moved in slow circles over her breast, soothing the pinch of his fingers.

She whimpered when his mouth left hers.

“Then I have properly atoned for taking you so impulsively that first night.”

Holy shit. Was that why he hadn’t fucked her again? For almost three months? That was some serious self-denial.

“You were punishing yourself?”

“The rules I apply to my own conduct are as rigorous as the ones you and Jay must follow, Alice, if not more so. There is no one to enforce them if I do not.”

He rolled away. The zipping rip had to be a condom wrapper opening. Her mind shrieked in silent joy. He grunted. Returned to her, shifting his weight, centering himself atop her.

She shuddered in expectation.

He lowered his mouth to her left ear. “I’m going to fuck you now, Alice. Thoroughly. For the rest of the night. And what are you going to do, my dear?”

“Obey. And enjoy.” And come like a fucking river, she mentally added, as the head of his cock slipped over her clitoris. He dropped lower and pressed forward, nudging inside.

He rose on his arms above her, his eyes intent on hers as he pushed. Her body gave way to his, eagerly opening for him. The utter relief and pleasure on his face mesmerized her as he sank until his body rested flush against hers.

Once joined, he seemed in no hurry to move. Was he waiting for her body to adjust? Too close to the edge himself? He’d been right about the sensation. Either that or his words had primed her to feel everything more intensely.

She gave an experimental buck of her hips. Her breath stuttered as the rolling motion, trapped beneath his weight, pressed her clit hard against him.