Set during the opening pages of Chapter 10 of Crossing the Lines, “Silence Broken” features Jay and Alice relishing the newly expanded boundaries of Alice’s contract.
A blur of dizzying floral print sleeves deposited platters on the lunch table, breaking up Jay’s no-you-look-away-first game with Alice. Not a staring contest, exactly, not for winning and bragging. Just ’cause his eyes didn’t want to rest anywhere but her.
“There you have it.” Bonnie, their regular waitress, plunked down two slim glasses of pink stuff beside their sea of plates. “On the house. Pink lemonade’s our ‘welcome to spring’ drink.” She tucked her tray at her side and ducked her head with a gossip-teasing grin. “Missed you two last week. Pair of banker boys took your table. Terrible tippers.”
Her exaggerated wink scored a full-on laugh from Alice, and Jay let the sound fill his chest with warmth. Bonnie squeezed his shoulder as she slipped away.
“So.” Alice’s gaze kept coming back to his face, too. Her mouth settled into a slow rotation of smiles. They must be sharing the same disease. “So.”
“Lunch is only so-so?” He pushed his lower lip into a pout and slumped his shoulders, but his toes played footsie under the table. No more snow boots to contend with; now his sneakers dueled with whatever girls called their loafers. “You haven’t even had a bite.”
“If you don’t stop with the charm, I’ll find something besides food to bite.” Alice dragged her thumb across his upturned palm, digging in at the meaty part. “This could do for an appetizer.”
Cock twanging against his thigh, he captured her fingers in his. In squirming fits, they landed on a comfy clasp that let him stroke her knuckles. So he’d be learning to eat lunch with his left hand today. No problem. Henry’d insisted he learn to jerk off left-handed years ago. He’d find the rhythm.
“You have I’m-laughing-on-the-inside face.” Alice speared her pasta salad side with her fork and raised the bite toward him. “Wanna share?”
Fuck yes. He leaned in, and she danced the fork back.
“Nuh-uh. Words first, tasty bites second.”
Whatever god had put Alice on this Earth, Jay would worship at that altar for the rest of his life. Longer, if afterlife stuff worked that way. And if his compression shorts kept his rapidly growing cock from waving hello to the neighboring tables.
“I was just thinking how you and Henry are sooo much alike.” He darted in and snatched the pasta with his teeth. Yum. The diner made the good kind, with peas and bacon.
Alice’s smile came packaged in her squinty puzzle-solver face. “If you say so. You’d know best.”
“I do know best.” Not to brag, but their happy trio still existed thanks to him and his laundry ambush. Okay, and after-midnight confessions between Henry and Alice. Plus a few hours of contract talk Saturday. But who’d gotten the ball rolling on the truth-telling? This guy.
“Yeah.” She reloaded her fork and offered up another reward bite. “Yeah, you do.”
If he only ate two bites for lunch, and not even one from his own plate, he’d walk out satisfied and stuffed full from Alice’s playful smiles. Besides, he’d explain to Henry at dinner how the growling monster in his belly was entirely her fault, because of the staring and the hand-holding. And the best part would be that she’d be sitting there listening to him the whole time.
“I’m glad you—” Their voices overlapped.
“You first.” Again.
Jay mimed zipping his lips and passing over the key. Alice laid her cupped palm under his and accepted the invisible tool with a grave nod and raised eyebrow.
The serious vibe shattered on her giggle-snort. “So I’m first, huh?”
Always. He waved, glamorous presenter-like. A man couldn’t zip his lips and then open his mouth. He’d have to wait for his mistress—his cock thumped faster with every image his brain flashed of Alice and Henry sending him to his knees. The key. He’d have to wait for the key.
“I’m glad you came to lunch today.” She picked at the toothpicks in her too-tall turkey club, rustling the red crinkle-plastic around the tops. “That our lunch is still a thing, I mean. An us thing. Is that okay?” Stretching across the table, she brushed the corner of his mouth. Crumbs, or sauce, the neighbors might think, but the twist and her trailing finger on his lips unzipped his silence. “Your turn.”
Henry would say a game only worked when all the players followed the rules. When they didn’t forget to make their next move. Alice wouldn’t leave him hanging, keyless, even if she didn’t realize yet how much he loved and needed her ownership. Nobody here’d be complimenting her on her submissive’s behavior, attitude, or attentiveness, but at least one fellow diner had probably tagged him as devoted boyfriend. He was that, too. For Alice and Henry both.
“I’m glad you used your key.” Shit, that hadn’t been—and her widening eyes said she thought he’d meant the apartment key too, which she’d started using last night to let herself in for dinner after he’d teased her about knocking on Sunday. “I mean, that wasn’t my thing. To say. I had another thing. And it doesn’t answer your question—I’ll start over.”
She stroked his palm with her captured fingers. Her skin had warmed, or his had cooled, like how milk and tea balanced out when they mixed. Equalized, Henry’s voice in his head whispered. They matched perfectly, the way they did during sex, part of one flowing river of touch and taste and scent—but not, for fuck’s sake, in the middle of the diner. Where old people spooned up their vegetable soup and little kids nibbled PB&J with the crusts cut off.
His stray fantasies took off down the trail a hell of a lot faster and more often now that Alice was coming over every night for flirty-friends time. Hadn’t thought of that beforehand. Should’ve. Didn’t. He’d have to mention it to Henry tonight after walking her home and not grinding his hips into hers at her door. Maybe earlier. Before dinner. Could they fit in a quickie without cutting into their Alice-time tonight?
“Jay?” Alice tipped her head, her hair swinging forward as she leaned in. “You still here?”
“Home.” The word flying out gave his lips something to do besides kiss her, the way she sat with the tilt of her face just right to avoid bumping noses. He would kiss her tonight. “I was thinking about dinner at home. How I’m glad you’re coming to dinner every night now. Three whole days in a row. I hope you don’t get tired of Chef Henry’s menus.”
He covered the check-in with a teasing tone. If the new relationship perks bored her, he wanted to know way early so he could call a contract meeting and make her and Henry talk. He had a responsibility to them both that didn’t show up in any contract: help them stop thinking and start acting.
Pink tinted Alice’s cheeks, and she rolled her head in a slow shake. “The menu at Chef Henry’s is my favorite.”
The chef would be happy to hear it. Their grocery shopping trip with Alice on Saturday afternoon had been damn close to a Henry-gasm. Something about her trusting him to nurture and care for her needs. A monumental breakthrough, he’d called the new arrangement. Jay used shorter words in his wish book Sunday, writing an assigned essay on his feelings about the changes. Alice loves us. We aren’t losing who we are. We’re becoming something new. “Mine too.”
“Besides”—she slipped him another bite of her pasta salad—“we’ve been eating here at Oscar’s for almost eight whole months of lunches, and I’m not tired of this place yet. Must be the conversation.”
“’Cause I’m so chatty.” He stuffed his tuna melt in his mouth and tried to talk without moving his lips. “Oo’d mish me”—chew—“f’we ’idn’t”—chew—“oo lunch.”
“I would miss you if we didn’t do lunch. Last week—” Alice lost her smile. Her clasp on his hand went limp. “I know I’ll see you tonight at dinner, with Henry, but lunch is…” Her awkward shrug made her shrink in the seat. “It’s…”
“Special.” He swallowed in a hurry. No more clown time. Alice needed her co-sub. The voice of experience, Henry called it, not that Jay’d ever had a co-sub before, but he’d been a sub for years. “Lunch is just-us time. It’s good to have time alone together.”
He and Henry still had theirs, in the mornings at breakfast, in the early evening before Alice came over, in the time afterward when Henry gave him the extra dominance he craved. Henry’d been telling him for months how becoming the three of them wouldn’t mean they wouldn’t be the two of them sometimes, too. All the twos—Jay and Henry, Henry and Alice, and Alice and Jay.
“Right, but you—” Alice sighed so hard her whole body shifted. “I’m not trying—is Henry—you’re sure it’s okay?” She flapped her hand across the table, nearly toppling her lemonade before he steadied the glass. “Damn. Thanks. This? Just us?”
“You’re worried.” The three of them had talked for hours Saturday, Henry making contract-formal the perks Alice had asked for late at night in their bed. Her importance in their life together, her rights, her responsibilities—all laid out in neat lines of Henry’s flowing script. No better guarantee in the world. The universe, maybe. “But this weekend—we’re good now, aren’t we? You know we’re yours?”
“I just…” Alice tightened her hold, her fingertips biting into his palm. “I want this to work, Jay. More than I wanted anything in my life to work. More than my tenth-grade science fair project on efficient distribution of tractor-trailer loads so I could shove it in Billy Carlson’s face ’cause he thought his dad being a trucking bigwig made him hot shit.”
High school. Same everywhere. “You trounced him, right?”
The gleam in her eyes beat out the sun. “Yeah, but—”
“No buts.” He sat up straight, as still and steady as he stood for Henry during post-shower inspections, pre-play inspections, the formality some kind of calming confidence. “We’re gonna work, Alice. I bet you put lots of effort into that project, the same way you do now, working late and getting the job done.” Not enough—he needed more to show her. Evidence. Science things. “Henry says we’re points on a triangle with equal sides, right? So lunch is you and me putting in the effort to keep our side strong. And the rituals we have with him, that’s us keeping our other sides strong.” He slid forward and bumped her knees with his. “We could ask him at dinner, and he’d say it better.”
God that felt good. A few hours from now, Alice would be sitting in her seat alongside him and Henry. Stronger sides than they’d had last week, when their triangle seemed about to collapse into a…two-sided thingy.
Alice twisted her lips in a sexy pucker, one she probably didn’t even notice with her far-away eyes. “He’d use bigger words. I’m not sure he’d say it better, though. You’ve got a lot of smarts when you do that talking-from-the-heart thing.”
“Heart-smarts.” He grinned at her. Maybe they’d watch a movie after dinner. With pants, because his own contract revisions required after-work pants now that Alice would be over. Just until they steered through the adjustment phase, Henry said. Then Jay could have his no-pants, yes-Alice paradise. “It’s all about listening to your gut. Mine says I should finish your pasta salad for you.”
“Oh, does it?” She fended off his fork foray, but she kept feeding him bites as they cleaned their plates. That worked better anyway. He’d take what he was given, at her pace.
Eventually Bonnie dropped off the check, and he and Alice fumbled and giggled as they dug for wallets one-handed. Alice lifted their joined hands. “Guess we oughta give this up. Practically speaking, you’ll have trouble steering your bike with one hand, and I’d have a hard time explaining you to my co-workers.”
“I’m an emotional support cyclist.” Aha! The pocket zipper on his windbreaker gave way to his lefty tugs, and he yanked out a wad of tip cash. “I got lunch today. You can get next week.”
They’d gone halfsies for months, because she’d never let him get away with always picking up the check the way Henry would want to. She’d insisted Saturday that Henry at least give her the option to pitch in cash for dinner groceries, which led to one of Jay’s favorite contract-clause write-arounds: “Alice is allowed to contribute to the food budget but discouraged from doing so, as providing for her needs is within the purview of dominance under this contract. Overly generous contributions will be construed as disobedience and dealt with under the disciplinary standards set out in section three.”
So Jay would let her pay for lunch. Next week. Because she’d be here next week, sitting across from him, loving him in her not-calling-this-love way.
“No takebacks, buster.” Chin raised, she gave him a fierce stare that would go straight into his wish book later under please please please, yes, please. “I’m paying next week.”
“I got no objections.” Ideas, requests, and fantasies, but no objections. He jiggled their linked fingers. “Pinkie swear.”
“That’s one way to seal a deal.” She let go slowly, her fingertips leaving tingling trails on his palm. “Not the one I’m thinking of just now.” Her tongue flicked out, pink and pointed, before she pulled her lips in tight. “I really do have to get back to work, though.”
“Seal it with a kiss?” He jumped to his feet as she got up and shrugged into her jacket, his Henry-manners kicking in. “I kinda-sorta dated a girl in sixth grade who told me her secrets at recess, and she always kissed me on the cheek after. I couldn’t say a word to anyone because she’d sealed my promise with a kiss, she said. At least until she started dating a townie boy. No more kisses then.”
Alice slung her purse across her shoulder. “That girl was an idiot.” In two steps, she strode sultry-smooth to his chest and hooked her fingers in the collar of his long-sleeved tee, pulling him down. “And we’re not in sixth grade.”
Her kiss landed smack on his lips, no tongue but a sharp nip that amped his heartbeat before she released him.
Then she smoothed out his shirtfront, turned on her heel, and walked out. The bell above the door chimed behind her. Laughter and clapping sounded from some of the regulars’ tables.
Bonnie scooped up the check and his mess of cash. “About time. You gonna run after her or not, boy?”
He hoisted windbreaker and backpack in one hand and dashed out the door.