by A R McKinnon
"Is my son good to you?" Susan's voice cracked as she asked the question, but before Lucy could answer Tessa jumped in.
"Mom, how can you even ask such a question? I bet she's just as bruised up as Julia was. You can even see the rope burn on her wrists. Grayson's a pervert. He was with Julia and he still is with this one!" Tessa sneered and the venom dripping from her words made Lucy's blood boil.
"Hey! This one has a name and I've had just about enough. You don't know me, and you've been nothing but rude since the minute I stepped through the door! You have no right to judge me -"
"Prove it then, just prove it. If you aren't all banged up show us and I'll never say another word about what kind of deviant my brother has obviously become.”
GRAYSON ACCEPTED THE scotch his father passed handed him, taking a small sip before setting it on the embossed leather coaster on the table next to him. He waited, knowing it was coming. He'd seen the way his father had looked at her wrist, and he had no doubt that he'd caught sight of the bruise under the cuff of blouse as well as the abrasion at her neckline. Though that was more likely from stubble than anything else, Grayson was sure his father viewed them as signs of abuse.
"So, Julia wasn't a one-time thing I take it?" His father turned to stare at him and Grayson felt like he was fifteen years old again, and his father had just caught him feeling up his first girlfriend. "I just don't understand this violence towards women, Son. Didn't we teach you better? You're a man for Christ sakes!"
"Come on Dad, you can't be totally in the dark about things like this." Grayson could feel the heat creeping up his neck.
"Well of course, but that sort of thing is so - seedy. It's wrong."
"Says who?" Grayson fought to keep the anger from his voice. This was the first conversation that his father had been willing to have since Julia stormed into his parent’s house spouting her garbage about him beating her.
"It just is!" Color was flushing John's skin now, and Grayson wasn't sure if it was anger or embarrassment that caused the extra hue to flare.
Grayson let out a heavy sigh realizing that he might not be able to make his father understand and his heart ached for what Julia had stolen with her cold calculation.
"I never wanted to have a conversation about my dad's sexual preferences. I never wanted to think of you that way, and I sure as hell can live without the visual image haunting me." Grayson reached for his drink and took a big gulp swallowing down more than half the contents of the glass before he continued. "Don't you have anything that turns you on? That flat out does it for you? Big breasts? Long legs? Pretty feet?" he asked as John held up his hand to halt further questions.
"That's just about enough. I get your point?"
"Do you Dad? I don't think you do because it's the same thing."
"I don't understand how it can be. It breaks my heart to know that my son gets his sexual thrills from hurting women."
"It isn't even remotely the same. I would never do something to truly harm the woman I'm with. Every single one has agreed to what we do together. Every. Single. One. Julia included. She only came running to you when I wouldn't do what she wanted in other areas of our relationship. It was a cold and calculated move on her part, showing how vindictive she truly is. My preferences do seem a bit extreme to people who don't get it, but I assure you I don't take my responsibility lightly. I exercise control and discipline.
"But why? Where did we go wrong?" John asked pacing towards the chair and wringing his hands together.
"You didn't 'go wrong.' There is no right or wrong, there is no deep-seated trauma. I like it, that's all. It's no different than liking blondes over redheads, or a woman with curves versus one who's not so curvy." Grayson threw up his hands in defeat. "Either you can move past this or you can't, but I'm done explaining it to you, or feeling guilty about it because Mom and Tessa are ashamed. The bottom line is I'm a grown man, and what goes on in my bedroom is my business. Not yours and not anyone else’s. Don't sell your land to the developer out of some misguided sense of duty for something that was completely consensual. If you're going to sell let me buy you out. I'll pay double what the resort people are asking."
John gasped his eyes going wide. "That's a hell of a lot of money. You can't possibly be able to afford that, even if you sold your best studs this year."
"No, you're right Dad but here's the thing about kinky sex, lots of people like do to do it. They just aren't all forced to talk about it, and when it comes right down to it my club is one of the best in the country." There was pride seeping into his voice, and Grayson didn't bother to try to hide it. He was proud of his club and if he was honest with his father, he could have quit breeding horses and been fine. Hell, he would have been more than fine, but he loved the animals and the sense of peace that working the land gave him.
Grayson stood, feeling the need to get back to Lucy, he crossed the room to where his father stood and placed his hand on his fathers’ shoulder. "There isn't anything more I can say to convince you, just promise me you'll think about it." Grayson said.
When he opened the door, he heard raised voices and recognizing anger and indignation in Lucy's tone he quickened his steps.
"I will not! This is ridiculous. Just because you don't understand something doesn't make it wrong."
"Funny, I just got through saying almost the exact same thing. Come on Lucy I think we're done here." Grayson took Lucy's hand and turned to leave. "I really do hope you'll think about what I asked," he said. Grayson kissed his mother’s cheek and thanked her for dinner.
"So that's it then? You waltz in for supper and back out again without any explanations?"
Grayson turned to his sister. "Tess, I'm sorry that what you know about me now has changed your perception. I really am, but it's who I've always been, you just never knew it before."
***
LUCY LEANED BACK against the stall door shivering; the cold sweat made her skin feel clammy. She flushed the toilet using her foot and tried not to inhale the putrid smell of her own vomit. If she did, she'd start gagging again and she'd never get out of the washroom.
She unlatched the door, sagged weakly against the metal frame and was still hanging there when Caroline from accounting asked her if she was alright. Lucy nodded cautiously, afraid any vigorous movement would restart the horrible retching.
"Are you sure hon? You look white as a sheet, and if it weren't for being green around the gills, you'd have no color at all."
At the mention of gills Lucy spun and vomited again remembering the tuna fish smell that had driven her running for the bathroom in the first place. Between the tuna and the wet dog food she was sure someone was eating, her lunch break had been a horror show. Lucy desperately wanted to believe she had a bad bout of the flu, but as the weeks passed, she was quickly coming to grips with her situation. She was late. At first Lucy tried not to panic. She really hadn't been that concerned about the broken condom, but now her period was more than a week late and she was in full panic mode.
She flushed again, and with a sigh took the pregnancy test out of her purse. Her hands shook so badly that she nearly dropped the box in the toilet. She took a deep breath and tore into the box.
"Do you want me to get someone from health and safety?" Caroline asked from the other side of the stall door, and Lucy wished she'd had the nerve to do the test this morning when she'd gotten sick with the smell of her brewing coffee, but courage had deserted her then and now she couldn't stand the thought of putting the test off a minute longer.
"I'm fine. I just ate some bad fish or something." Lucy waited until she heard the door to the main bathroom close before she pulled out the directions and started reading. Lucy flipped the lock on the door and started going to the washroom. Hysterical laughter bubbled up in her throat. It was ironic that the most life altering moment of her life would be decided by peeing on a stick.
Lucy set the test on the edge of the toilet paper dispenser and waited, for what felt like the long
est two minutes of her life. She held her breath, afraid to look. In that moment denial could still exist. Once she looked, she'd know for sure and there would only be before this moment, and after this moment.
She would have said a prayer, but she didn't know what she would ask for. She was after all, thirty-two and she did want children, well eventually at least. Lucy gave herself a mental shake telling herself to put on her big girl panties and suck it up. She looked and her heart stuttered at the sight of the two lines staring back at her. She was pregnant.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
She wrapped the test in a wad of toilet paper and stuffed it in her purse. Pregnant. She was going to be a mother. She couldn't wrap her head around how this had happened. Of course, she knew how it happened, but she felt dumbfounded that it had happened.
Collecting her things from her desk she sent a quick email to her supervisor explaining that she was going home with the flu and left the office.
She drove on auto pilot not sure where she was headed and found herself outside of her doctor’s office. It was unlikely that she'd be able to see her doctor without an appointment, but she parked and walked into the office on legs that felt wooden.
"I need to see Doctor Melbourne." Her voice sounded hollow, even to her own ears and Lucy wondered if this was what shock felt like. She must have looked as bad as she felt because the receptionist didn't give her a hard time instead, she showed her to an empty exam room shooting the few people in the waiting room an apologetic smile.
"But I don't understand. I'm on birth control, and that was the only time we've ever had a problem. How did this happen?"
"Lucy I'm sorry it caught you so unaware, but it is quite possible. You had just finished a very aggressive round of antibiotics and the timing was very well aligned with your ovulation cycle."
Lucy swore under her breath having forgotten all about the antibiotics she'd taken to wipe out her infection. She shuddered imagining what Grayson would think when she told him. She clearly remembered how worried he'd been and how opposed he'd been to an unplanned pregnancy. She also vividly recalled how she'd easily brushed his concerns off.
There was a car she didn't recognize in his driveway and Lucy cursed. She hadn't expected Grayson to have company in the middle of the workday. She'd left the doctors office in a rush, needing to tell him before she lost her nerve, but she'd never considered he wouldn't be available to see her when she needed him.
The wooden door was open leaving only the screen door closed, which meant he was in the house and not in the barn or out around the property. Lucy got out of the car and made her way up to the porch, dreading interrupting him and having to tell him that their lives were about to change, so she dragged her feet.
When she got to the door and raised her hand to knock, her heart felt like it stopped, and her chest squeezed painfully. Grayson stood in the hallway one hip against the banister and in his arms was the most stunning redhead she'd ever seen. Their lips were pressed together and from Lucy's vantage point it appeared to be a very intimate kiss.
"Am I interrupting something?" She asked when she found her voice again, and she nearly shivered with the cold tone. Lucy watched as Grayson pushed the woman away from him flinching a look of guilt and something else fluttering in his gaze before it was gone.
"No. Julia was just leaving." His tone was hard, his words abrupt and the woman - Julia with her sexy curves and luscious full lips, lips that were curved in a gentle mocking smile turned to go.
Lucy tried not to stare, as Julia whispered something to Grayson and then breezed past Lucy as though she hadn't just rocked Lucy's entire world on its axis.
"You've certainly made a bad habit of kissing other women when you don't think I'm around." Lucy's hand dropped to her stomach and she wasn't sure if it was to keep from being sick or to protect the new life growing inside her. Hot tears stung her eyes and one slipped out and down her cheek before she could stop it.
"Fuck!" Grayson's loud curse made her startle like one of his horses and he swore again.
"I SWEAR IT isn't what it looks like, and I know that's what everyone says when they're in situations like this, but I swear darlin' it isn't." He watched another tear slip over her cheek and he felt his heart shatter. Lucy looked so pale and fragile standing on the other side of the door. She hadn't even bothered to step inside when Julia sauntered out.
He wanted to wrap his hands around Julia's throat and shake some sense into her. She'd shown up today after more than a year apart with some half-baked idea about the two of them rekindling their relationship.
Grayson had seen it for what it was. A desperate attempt by a desperate woman. It was her last-ditch effort to get him to cooperate and sell his property. She thought he was still hung up on her. Julia had really believed that he was wrapped around her little finger and would come to heel when she called, but she had underestimated the power of the petite blonde standing in front of him now, weeping silent tears and looking like she was going to fall over in a stiff breeze.
"Are you alright?" he asked, opening the screen door, unable to bear being apart from her any longer. Then he shook his head realizing how stupid the question sounded. There was no way she was alright. She'd just caught him kissing another woman. Though to be fair, he hadn't really been kissing her back. Julia had launched herself at him, and he had been trying to keep her claws out of his skin and her hands out of his pants, so he hadn't paid much attention to what her mouth had been doing. It had seemed like the lesser of two evils to let her kiss him, but now seeing the look in Lucy's eyes he wished he'd reacted quicker even if it meant knocking Julia off her ridiculous, likely expensive, high heels and on to her butt.
He stepped forward to close the distance between him and Lucy only to have her step away, holding up her hand to halt his progress.
"Please don't."
"Come on darlin’ come inside. Is everything alright? I wasn't expecting you until tonight at the earliest."
"That is abundantly clear."
Grayson hated the tone in her voice; it was the same one she'd used months ago when trying to keep him at a distance. He could almost see all the shields he'd spent months tearing down slam back into place. It made him feel like a wild animal was tearing at his insides.
Grayson reacted without thought clasping her wrist in his hand as he'd once done when he met her. Only this time he didn't use his grip to restrain her; he used it to pull her to him, ignoring when she went rigid in his arms.
"Let me go, damn it!" She pounded on his chest with a tiny fist thumping against him once, twice and a third time before sagging in defeat. "You smell like her! Let me go." Grayson released her, but only long enough to tear the shirt from his back.
Buttons popped and scattered across the wooden porch. He threw the ruined shirt in a heap at their feet and pulled her back into his embrace before she could protest.
"Please come in so we can talk. Please." He shouldered open the screen door and led them into the living room. He tried to explain about Julia, but Lucy sat stock still staring at him with a glazed expression.
"Can I have some water?"
It was the first thing she'd said since they came inside. Grayson had to fight not to scurry to the kitchen to do her bidding. When he came back and handed her the glass of water her hands shook so badly, she nearly dropped it.
Grayson decided he needed to do something drastic to snap her out of the nearly catatonic state she was in. It had taken weeks for her bruising to heal and he'd promised himself not to play that hard with her again. He knew she wouldn't let him seduce her; she got worse when he tried to comfort her or kiss her. Grayson suspected he wouldn't be kissing her again until he'd burned his clothes, showered and washed his mouth out with soap.
It would've been amusing if he didn't know how raw her feelings really were. He hadn't realized how insecure she felt about Julia, but he had to admit he couldn't blame her. If he'd seen another man kissing her, if one of her exes had so much
as held her hand, he didn't think he could be held responsible for the wrath he'd unleash.
The smart thing to do would have been to leave her alone and let her come around so that they could have a rational conversation, but he felt like she was slipping further and further from him, and it was making him irrational.
He hauled her over his shoulder without another word and took her down to his playroom. She thumped him on the back, her legs flailing, but she never safe worded. Grayson swept a long black velvet cover off the cage he kept in the far corner and tossed her in, locking the door behind her.
He didn't use the cage often for play and they had never used it together, but it wasn't something she had listed as a hard limit and he couldn't think of anything else to get her attention It seemed to work too.
At first her expression was still blank and then her eyes went wide and her nostrils flared. She fidgeted inside the cage.
Grayson heaved a sigh of relief that she'd finally seemed more aware of her surroundings.
"What are you doing?"
"You can stay there until I think you're ready to listen."
"Grayson, I'm ready now."
"No, I'll be back and then we can have a rational discussion."
HE'D LOCKED HER in a cage. In a fucking cage. It took awhile for her normal reaction to assert itself. Lucy didn't know if it was because she'd felt so numb at first or if it was because of all the years of therapy she'd had but the bars slamming closed hadn't caused her to panic at first.
Now the panic was creeping in and she suddenly felt like she was fourteen again, cold and hungry and locked in the awful cage in her aunt’s basement, while she hurled ugly accusations about Lucy being a slut and a whore at her.
Ok, it's not real. I can handle this. She told herself. Only it had been real, very real and a part of her life almost daily when she'd lived with her aunt. Grayson will be back any moment. He never went far when they were in a scene and logically Lucy knew he hadn't been gone that long. It only felt longer because this was her own brand of hell.