by Flynn, Poppy
Xavier frowned as if he were genuinely perplexed, but at least he seemed to be listening…until his next words lit the fuse on the temper that she had been desperately trying to keep in check, in an effort to avoid flying off the handle and saying something she might regret. The kind of things a couple could never come back from.
"I know you're a human rights lawyer, Grace, but you're intelligent enough to know that a D/s Master/slave relationship is not of the same ilk as those cases you prosecute."
Even his imploring tone didn't calm her ire.
Instead, she planted her feet right in front of his intimidating form and thrust out her hand, palm forward, like she was stopping traffic.
"Stop right there, Xavi!" she shouted bitterly. "Don't you dare patronise me like that. I do know there's a difference, and I do understand what those differences are, but knowing that does not, and never will, mean that I want to be a part of such a lifestyle. And that has nothing to do with my profession and everything to do with my personal ideology and the choices which I want to make for myself." Her voice had risen with every word that fell out of her mouth, and now she was on a roll.
"The bottom line is that I don't want to be a slave. I don't want to be in a full-time M/s relationship. I was open minded enough to give it a try, at your insistence. I did that because I felt that we had enough going for us, enough chemistry and strong enough feelings for each other, to make that compromise and try things your way."
Grace made a vain attempt to explain herself, but the frustration she had been feeling over the past few weeks was rapidly overtaking her good sense, and although she knew she was being slightly unfair, since she'd never had the opportunity to discuss her misgivings with him properly, the spew of venting words wouldn't stop.
"But now that we've given it a go, I'm telling you, without the slightest doubt or hesitation, that it's not for me. I've tried it. I didn't like it. I'm not going to 'grow into it', or 'get used to it'."
She threw his air quotes back at him as she paused from the jerky pacing she had resorted to, to fling the finger motion his way, but never stopped in her tirade.
"In fact, the longer it's gone on, the more it's chafed and the more I've hated it," she hurled at him, no longer bothering to pull her verbal punches.
"Especially since you don't want a slave who lives with you! How can that even work long-term, huh? It's like you want all of the control but only a part of the commitment."
She knew the barb had hit home at his wince, but she carried on regardless.
"Who knows, perhaps it might have worked out if I actually got to spend any time with you, but your ideal is just to dole out orders from the end of a phone or in a text message. Your damn slave doesn't even get the satisfaction of being with you to know that they've pleased you, and you're not on hand to provide punishment if she doesn't."
The words kept coming, blistering and blaming in their intensity.
"How can that kind of relationship ever be successful? What does your slave actually get out of the situation? Have you ever thought of that, Xavi?"
Grace allowed the growl of frustration that had been building in her chest to escape while she paced across the room. Swinging back to where he stood staring at her, open-mouthed, Grace purged the rest of it out of her system.
"Yes, I admit I had reservations even before we started, and I didn't have any first-hand experience of that kind of lifestyle before this, but still, I tried it for you. I compromised for you, but now that the ball is back in your court, that compromise isn't looking like much of a two-way street…"
Xavier tried to get out the words to argue that she hadn't yet suggested any compromises, but Grace was like a steamroller and just kept on going.
"…and if you're not going to bother trying to make any compromises in return and are only interested in having things your own way, then I'm afraid we've come to the end of the road."
"You don't mean that!" Xavier whispered, paling despite his olive skin tone, but he didn't manage to get anything else out.
"Actually, I do," Grace retorted, on a roll now that she had finally built up the courage to say what she really felt. Sometimes a person just had to know when to throw in the towel, regardless of how much they yearned to hold on to something.
And that time had come.
Her eyes burned as tears prickled behind her eyelids, but Grace stood firm, despite the urge to give in to the love she felt for Xavier and capitulate to his desires. She had to, because they weren't her own. They weren't even close, and this was probably the only time she was ever going to put her own needs out there.
Taking a bracing breath and drawing her hands into fists, Grace squared her shoulders and let the truth come tumbling out. "I want children, Xavier. I would like to find a man to give me those children, but I no longer have time on my side," she finally revealed on a sharp exhale of breath.
It felt good to finally get it all out there, and she rushed on, desperate to finish in case he tried to shut her down. "I made the decision, a long time ago, that I would visit the sperm bank and find a donor if I wasn't in a conducive relationship by the time I hit my fortieth birthday. That has always been my deadline, and now that time is here."
She took another, shakier breath and her heart wrenched painfully as she prepared to break the tether which tied them together. "It's not the same for a man, so I don't expect you to understand." She couldn't keep the tremor from finding its way into her voice and was aware that it quavered, but she soldiered on regardless. "You don't have an expiration date like I do. You can wait ten years, even twenty, and still father children of your own, but I don't have that luxury. Even if I wanted to rely on IVF to have children at an older age, I need to be young enough to enjoy them, to keep up with them. I'm already old enough to be a grandmother, Xavier, and as a doctor, you, of all people, must understand the truth of what I'm saying."
This time, her breath stuttered as she drew it in, and one of the tears she'd been trying so desperately to blink away escaped and rolled down her cheek, and still, Xavier said nothing. He just looked at her with his brows knotted and an expression something akin to shock on his handsome face.
"My time is running out, from a medical standpoint. I'm sure you understand that better than most."
Grace prepared herself to say the hardest words of all. There was a niggle in the back of her mind that she had overlooked something major, but she still needed to get the rest of the feelings she'd been hoarding unhealthily off of her chest. "The truth is the things that I want just don't gel with the things you want. I'm sorry for that, Xavi," she sobbed, unable to keep the hiccupping breath in any longer.
"Sorrier than you'll ever know, because I've come to love you and I wanted us to have so much more. But I can't be what you want me to be, because there's no room for a child in that relationship. And if I do things your way, I'll just turn into a bitter old lady. I'll end up resenting you for all the things I gave up to keep you happy, and that wouldn't be fair to either of us, so it's best to just end things now, while we can both still pursue the things we want from life."
That last barrage of words came out on a rush, falling over themselves and running together as Grace fought against her better judgement to set him free.
She dragged trembling fingers over her wet cheeks and slowly turned away. Xavi still hadn't said a word and she could tell her revelations had stunned him. Well, he knew now, and even though her heart felt like it was heavy enough to fall out of her chest and shatter on the cold, hard floor, Grace knew she had done the right thing.
"I think you'd better leave now," she whispered brokenly as she made her way to the door to let him out. "Goodbye, Xavi," she choked out, without looking up at him.
She heard the rustle of fabric and felt the displacement of air, felt it pause momentarily as he moved past her, but she couldn't bear to watch him walk out of her home for the last time.
If there was a reply, she didn't hear it before she closed the
door with a decisive click and ran to the comfort and privacy of her bedroom before the dam broke on her emotions.
* * *
Xavier stood, stunned, staring at the door Grace had just shown him out of.
He had paused, not wanting to leave, and desperately wanting to answer some of the diatribe she had spewed at him, a lot of it rather unfairly, but she had just closed it right in his face, without so much as a glance.
Instead, he closed his mouth, which had dropped open in shock and shook his head in disbelief. What the hell had just happened? He felt like he'd just been run over by a Mack truck.
He'd had no idea that Grace felt so strongly about any of those things, and as the shock wore off, he was more than a little annoyed with both her attitude and delivery.
Why the hell hadn't she given him the chance to respond to any of that tirade? She'd set herself up as judge and jury without even offering him the opportunity to defend himself.
Of course, he didn't want a Master/slave relationship with somebody who wasn't into it the same way he was. The relationship had to be symbiotic or else it was pointless, and he got no joy out of discovering that Grace seemed to have just gone along with things in order to keep him happy. But until this spewing eruption of emotion, she had never once indicated that she wasn't completely happy with the situation, and that just plain made him angry.
D/s was a two-way street. No one person's input was more important than the other's. It was all a question of give and take. The sub put her faith in the Dom to give her what she needed, and the Dom did his best to provide that within the framework of whatever agreement they had.
In their case, that had been the remote Master/slave agreement, which Grace had consented to.
But he wasn't a bloody mind reader! It was still up to the sub to make things clear if she wasn't happy with the arrangement. There was an innate and essential trust involved that either party would explain the shortcomings or the inadequacies if they weren't getting what they needed from a scenario.
From the way Grace had just exploded, it was clear she hadn't been close to being happy with the situation. Maybe never had been at all. It had certainly sounded that way from the way she had let rip and not allowed him to get a word in edgeways.
So why had she agreed to it?
Why had she led him to believe it was something she was on board with?
Had she just been humouring him? Leading him on? What? What was the point?
This lifestyle could only be successful if it operated effectively in both directions. He had justifiably expected Grace to know her own mind and tell him if the Master/slave relationship he had proposed was workable for her and something she might find some enjoyment in.
Damn it all, he'd asked and then doubled-checked that it was something she was happy to do, and she had told him it was. More than once!
He had depended on her to safeword if things got too much for her, but clearly, Grace hadn't been happy from the start, and instead of being honest with him and slowing things down, discussing it with him, and telling him she had a problem, she'd just clammed up, gritted her teeth and silently endured everything until it had finally all become too much and she'd exploded.
Xavier was as disappointed in her duplicity as he was that things hadn't worked out the way he would have liked. Was it even possible to salvage what he had believed was a promising beginning from this mess that had evolved and steer it in a different direction? He wasn't so sure that could even be an option if there was no trust between them.
Grace's actions had made it quite clear that she hadn't believed in their relationship enough to lay out her own desires and let him know that they were about as polar opposite as it was possible to be to his own.
She hadn't even given him the chance to negotiate her own options—although playing husband and father was about as far from a BDSM scenario as you could get, and perhaps that was just it. There really wasn't any way you could negotiate a real-life baby daddy—so it seemed she'd just spewed her anger, gone on the defensive, jumped to her own conclusions and left him, without ever giving him the chance of any kind of response. And all of those actions pointed to a distinct lack of that all-important trust.
He wasn't just disappointed that things had gone so very wrong when everything had seemed so promising at the start. He was also disappointed because it seemed like they had taken a wrong turn somewhere along this road they'd been following, and instead of trying to work out where they'd gone wrong, Grace had decided to just drive the car over a cliff.
Now, Xavier had to decide whether or not it was worth trying to discover the right route, or whether to just give up and go home—metaphorically speaking.
But right now, he was simply too tired and too disillusioned to even think about making a reasonable choice. And by all accounts, so was Grace.
Even what he felt had been a fairly justifiable anger had fizzled to nothing in face of the overwhelming sadness he was now experiencing at the fact that they'd managed to screw up something that he really thought had so much potential.
What he needed was a clear head, the chance to ponder the things she had said, and the opportunity to find out whether this really was the end. He needed to decide whether the barbs that had been cast while anger had been riding high and colouring judgements, might have remained unsaid if feelings hadn't been strung so high. And whether or not the fact they'd all poured out was actually a good thing or not.
But he couldn't achieve any of that without first getting some much-needed sleep.
There was the tiniest germ of hope and it desperately wanted to make itself known.
She had implied that she loved him. Okay, so it might have been thrown out there without the feelings and regard with which such a declaration should be made, but it gave him a modicum of optimism that the things she'd said in the heat of the moment might not necessarily mean the end, after all.
Xavier took that hope and nurtured it all the way back to his own home.
Once he had rested, he would work out exactly what he should do with it.
Chapter 14
"She's not here," the woman at the front reception insisted, once again, when Xavier tried for the second time to catch Grace at her place of work.
"Believe me, I'd tell you if she was. I don't play those kinds of games."
All Xavier wanted to do was talk to Grace, to let her know that he was okay with trying something…well, pretty damn intrepid if he was honest with himself. And about as far out of his comfort zone as he was able to go. But he knew she was worth it.
Besides, even if he hadn't wanted to admit how much he mourned the loss of their connection, his subconscious had been drilling that message home.
He'd been lethargic and down. He couldn't sleep. Hell, he even longed to have her in his bed…even though he'd never wanted anyone to share it in the past.
Everything he thought he knew about himself had been turned on its head. Just that one short weekend of her being in his personal space had changed things. Okay, so maybe he'd had his head in the sand these past weeks, but now that she was gone, he found himself yearning for that brief presence in his home. If he was honest with himself, he'd been feeling that way for some time, but while she had still been his, he had managed to push those feelings aside and try to convince himself that the relationship they'd had was enough, out of pure stubbornness. Now that she was gone, they all came back full force, and he felt bereft.
He wanted to tell her how he felt. He wanted her to know that he was willing to work at a more traditional relationship. One that united them as partners.
Oh, he wasn't quite sure about the whole baby thing. Not that he was opposed to it at all, he was surprised to find. He simply didn't feel like they'd known each other long enough to jump into something quite so permanently binding and unbreakable. And that had nothing to do with being selfish. Quite the opposite, in fact. It had more to do with his conviction that if he was ever party to bringing another being i
nto this world, then he wanted the absolute clarity of knowing that child was born to a strong and healthy relationship with loving parents who would be there to support each other as well as their child.
He and Grace didn't have that…yet. But he had decided it was possible that they could. And he wasn't opposed to finding out whether there was a chance for them to get there.
He missed her dreadfully. It felt as if an essential part of him had been taken away. He had feelings for her that he'd never developed for any other woman. He wasn't yet sure if it was love, but the sentiment was strong enough that he felt confident enough to at least try a more conventional relationship with her, and that was a pretty big thing, for him.
The emotions felt like they were all but bursting out of him, and he wanted to tell her that and explore it with her. If he ever managed to see her.
In truth, he had truly never been opposed to discussing alternative relationship options with Grace. She had simply never given him the chance. She'd gotten defensive and made assumptions, none of which were accurate. But Xavier was convinced that those were just sensitivities born of anger and frustration and declared when tiredness, antagonism and resentment had reduced both of them to hurling retaliatory hurts which they didn't necessarily mean.
The first time he had come here looking for her, the day after their argument, she had refused to see him.
The wounds had been too fresh, he surmised, so Xavier had chosen to give her some space, a little time to calm down and be ready to listen, so they could talk like the rational adults that they were.
But of course, none of that was ever going to happen if he couldn't find her.
His shoulders slumped and he sighed, turning away.
Taking a few steps, he looked back over his shoulder, his gaze inexplicably drawn to a window near the door.