Crossing the Lines (16 page)

Henry brought his arms around Jay’s knees and ran firm fingers up and down the outside of Jay’s thighs. “All right?”

Jay nodded. His smile became a smirk. “I give it two cocks up so far.”

She stifled a laugh.

Henry shook his head, smiling. “My joyful comedian.”

He pulled back and gave a slow thrust. Jay rocked with the motion, his cock stiff and his breath short.

“Let’s see if I can’t make you too distracted to joke, hmm?”

From the eager tilt of his hips, Jay didn’t seem averse to the idea. Henry thrust again, deep and slow.

“Still…enough…breath…to joke.”

Henry glanced her way. “My dear girl, would you be so kind as to put your lovely tongue in Jay’s mouth? He clearly needs something to suck on.”

She let her laugh out as she lay beside Jay and rolled up on her side. She kissed his shoulder first, a soft touch, and nuzzled his cheek, imitating Henry’s treatment of him. She whispered to him, a tease in her voice. “You want my tongue, Jay?”

“If that’s what I can get,” he quipped. He moaned, his body shifting. Henry must’ve thrust again.

“I’m still hearing jokes, Alice.” Henry’s voice, too, teased. “Perhaps a more thorough application is in order?”

Seeking out Jay’s lips, she sealed hers against them. He opened for her the instant her tongue touched his mouth. She tried to kiss him with the deep gentleness Henry often used. Jay moaned into her mouth, but his body didn’t move. That moan belonged to her.

She kept up the kiss as the mattress swayed. Henry’s arm brushed her breasts. His breath warmed her ear. “Beautifully done, my dear girl.”

Shifting away, she accepted a kiss from Henry before settling in beside them.

He kissed Jay. He smoothed Jay’s hair back, the shaggy black mop that never seemed to get cut but never seemed to grow, either. Their hips rocked. The muscles in Henry’s ass flexed and released. He didn’t lift far, didn’t pull out much. Slow and easy. A nice, lazy fuck.

“I’m so very pleased with you, Jay.” The low, intimate murmur came from Henry as he nuzzled Jay’s ear. “My magnificent boy. Do you know how special you are to me?”

Their mouths met again, briefly. Jay tipped his head back. Henry’s lips came down on the center of Jay’s throat, sucking gently. Jay whimpered.

“Love you, Henry.” His breath hitched. “I love you.”

Jay tilted his head sideways, his face clearly visible. Beautiful. Terrifying.

How could he believe so deeply? Give without holding anything back. As if he didn’t have the slightest fear. As if the feeling encompassed more than body chemistry.

Jay was either the stupidest person she knew or the bravest.

He’s not stupid.

She shivered.

The men’s chests separated as Henry rose over Jay, his arms extended and locked. He captured Jay’s full attention. “As I love you, my boy.”

Relief rushed through her. Jay hadn’t been left without a response. She needed the certainty that Henry wouldn’t do that to him, though she couldn’t say why.

“Unconditionally, sweet boy.” Henry lowered himself by millimeters. “With all that I am.”

Their lips touched, and she almost looked away. The moment seemed so private.

Love.

Henry kissing Jay with slow, patient attention. Jay running his hands along Henry’s sides, cuddling him close. They weren’t mid-climax, throwing out words without hearing them. They weren’t post-coital yet. Chemicals flooding the body failed as a satisfactory explanation.

This was making love. Sex wasn’t just fucking for them. Henry’s slow movements. The way his eyes fixated on Jay’s face. His soft encouragement.

He’d done those things with
her
. She couldn’t get a handle on the idea, couldn’t find the edges and pick it up and examine it and see where it fit.

Did he mean to give her this? Her missing pieces, the way he provided unconditional love and boundaries for Jay. He’d pored over her contract answers. He understood she’d had sexual partners but never like this, never a lover. When he touched her, did he imitate the love he and Jay shared because he thought she needed it? Showing her what love looked like. Felt like.

For his effort, he received only sex he could find with any partner. Any partner who’d accept Jay, too. They rocked together, Henry pumping harder, Jay emitting a series of stuttering groans.

Henry’s reasoning remained an undefined quantity making her heart race and her body tremble. Asking him…no. Too much like caring. She’d always handled her love life clean and neat. Short and sweet.

This arrangement centered on hot sex, not caring. And sometimes the chance to see two guys who happened to love each other also
having hot sex.

Henry flexed his upper back, shoulder blades rippling with every thrust from his hips. Steady. Powerful. Capable of making Jay babble nonsense syllables and urgent whines.

If Henry wanted more from her, he’d order her to provide it on their Friday nights. If he told her to do something, she’d do it. If she couldn’t, she’d use her safeword. What could he possibly need from her that he couldn’t demand?

Nothing.

No reason to ask, then. Her panic lifted, the release of pressure leaving her light-headed. Off-balance and unsteady, she wanted Henry’s touch, and Jay’s, to ground her. To feel, for a minute, what made Jay declare his love and Henry respond in kind.

But they were wrapped up in each other. Jay’s moans and whimpers gained volume as he got close, and Henry urged him on.

“That’s it, Jay. Show me how much you love this.” He thrust in short, rapid bursts. His voice became a low, guttural growl. “Show Alice, my sweet boy.”

Body shuddering, Jay groaned. His surging hips lifted Henry with him.

“You want her to know, don’t you? How you love this feeling?” Dropping his head, Henry buried his face in Jay’s neck. His back arched in a bridge, hips pushing his cock deep. “How you come like a fountain when I’m deep inside you?”

Jay’s cock lay half-hidden in the shadow of his upraised leg. As his groan turned into a tripping chant of
love you love you love you
, he came hard across his stomach and chest and to the edge of his jaw.

Two tiny streaks of fluid landed below Jay’s right ear. Temptation skewered her, even when Henry in her peripheral vision closed the gap between himself and Jay. When his hips gave a final pump and he growled low and long with his own release. She zipped forward and licked Jay’s face clean.

Eyes wide, he turned toward her, just missing her nose. She froze. She’d acted without analyzing. Without questioning.

Jay laughed and kissed her cheek. Henry raised his head, his gaze falling on them both.

She didn’t want to steal Jay’s experience, but she wanted to borrow it for a little while. To feel things and express them as easily as Jay seemed to. Unfiltered. Shut off the part of her never satisfied without determining how
and why.

Jay didn’t need those things. He didn’t ask for them. He accepted. Felt. Laughed. Loved.

She closed her eyes. Maybe she could imitate the way Henry imitated with her. She could be
Jay. Easy as pie. Jay. Free of worries, because Henry took care of him. At home in Henry’s bed every night.
He tells me he loves me whenever I want to hear it. I love him back. It’s a real thing. I believe in it. I feel it.

She opened her eyes and pierced Henry with every scrap of Jay-feeling she could muster. Trust. Adoration. Love.

His eyes widened. Disbelief, maybe? He didn’t want to play along?

Stop thinking. Be Jay. Feel.

She tried to deepen her belief, to allow herself to hope she’d gotten this right.

Henry groaned like a dam breaking. His lunge pushed her flat to the bed, her right shoulder clamped in his left hand. He pulled her in until she lay pinned so tightly beside Jay his ribs compressed hers when he breathed.

“My brave girl.” Henry’s low growl made her quake. “My Alice.”

He devoured her, his mouth hard and hungry, and she let him control the kiss because she could hardly keep up. She whimpered, breathless, a needy, submissive sound. He lifted his mouth long enough for a harsh, guttural command:
“Breathe.”

She took a frenzied breath.

He refastened his lips to hers. Splayed across Jay’s body, he half-covered her chest with his own. He pressed her deep into the mattress, keeping a fierce grip on her shoulder.

She trembled on the verge of something like a climax, but sex seemed somehow secondary.

Henry gentled the kiss and rubbed her shoulder as she shivered and moaned. He gave her one last kiss, an almost chaste brush of his lips on hers.

“It’s all right, Alice,” he murmured. “You’re all right, my sweet girl.”

She lay dazed as he kissed Jay’s forehead and raised himself to his knees. His cock slipped free with Jay’s sighing accompaniment.

Henry studied their bodies and made a wry declaration. “This requires much more than a washcloth.”

No kidding. Drying ejaculate liberally coated his chest and Jay’s, and he’d smeared some on her. Share and share alike.

Jay squirmed beside her, wriggling his arm free. Pushing it behind her back, he rolled her into a hug and squeezed. Words tumbled, rapid-fire, from his mouth. “That just makes it an extra-fantastic Valentine’s Day, right, Alice? Making love with people who love us? It’s worth the mess. I vote it the best ever. But next year—”

“Jay.” Henry’s quiet call halted the flow in an instant.

“Yes, Henry?”

Giddy, babbling Jay. Sweet Jay, who didn’t have the slightest idea of the panic he’d inspired in her. She hadn’t been in a relationship with anyone for Valentine’s Day since college, and Adam had made a fucking production of it with that goddamn ring. They strangled the relationship between them in the months until he graduated. The day he’d gone for good had been a relief. She didn’t want that memory in this bed, but her mind stormed along regardless,
no-no-no
as Adam produced that fucking velvet box.

“It’s time for cleanup, Jay. Take the towel, please, and Alice and I will join you in a moment.” Henry rubbed Jay’s leg with short, quick motions. “Go on, sweet boy.”

She sat up, freeing Jay to move, and curled her arms around her knees. The weight of his uncertain gaze pulled at her as he rose in her peripheral vision. She plucked at the sheet with her toes. Clench. Lift. Release. The image of the hurt on Adam’s face when she’d told him marriage didn’t interest her was enough. She didn’t need Jay’s, too. She’d had fun with Adam, but even after almost two years, that’s all it had been to her.

Saying those things to him had been uncomfortable but true. Saying them to Jay would be heart-wrenching and maybe a lie. Being here had become a little more than fun. But love? And next year?

This arrangement functioned as a month-to-month lease. If she said so, she’d still hurt Jay and she’d make Henry the bad guy.

“Just a moment?” Jay, uncertainty written across his face, resembled a child in need of a hug.

Fuck.

“I promise, Jay.” Henry cupped his cheek and kissed his forehead. “Do as I ask, my boy.”

Jay left the bedroom faster than he wanted to, she suspected.

Henry sighed. “The day is simply a day, Alice. Different from other days in name only.”

He touched her ankles, fingers trailing over the top of her feet. “Do we become different people on this day? Or are we the same people we always are, enjoying the same things we often enjoy? Is it the day that gives these acts meaning, or is it ourselves?”

Every second she spent untangling her nerves was one Jay spent alone and missing them. Ruining his night because she couldn’t keep her shit together wasn’t fair to him.

“What we do…” wouldn’t end with a ring on her finger or even an offer of one.

Valentine’s Day wasn’t the problem. She hadn’t been in love with Adam. If he hadn’t proposed, she’d have found another way to end things. But that wouldn’t happen here.

Henry wasn’t Adam. Jay wasn’t Adam. They wouldn’t demand over-the-top commitments she couldn’t meet, even if Jay sometimes seemed adorably confused on that point. She didn’t have to avoid the entire day because she’d had a bad one once. And Jay had been right about one thing—best ever.