Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
X avier stood, stunned, staring at the door Grace had just shown him out of.
He 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’d 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 her 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 Grace had just gone along with things in order to keep him happy. But until this spewing eruption of emotion, she had never once indicated she wasn't completely happy with the situation, and that just 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 wasn't close to being happy with the situation. Maybe never had been at all. It had certainly sounded that way from the way she’d 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 it was something she was happy to do, and she had told him it was. More than once!
He’d 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 by 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 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 she hadn't believed in their relationship enough to lay out her own desires and let him know 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 things had gone so very wrong when everything had seemed so promising at the start. He was also disappointed because it seemed like they’d 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.
Right now though, 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’d 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, and had cleared the air.
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.