Or maybe it was just my imagination. My mind went there every time we hit a lull in a conversation, or Will’s mind was someplace else, or he didn’t want to have sex. For the last few months, and especially the last few weeks, it had been my default when things felt even the slightest bit quiet or awkward or—
“Hey.” He reached across the table and put his hand over my forearm, the contact making me jump. “You’re someplace else. Talk to me.”
I avoided his eyes as heat rushed into my cheeks and that pre-courtroom nervous feeling intensified. “Just, um…preoccupied. I guess.”
“I can see that. You’ve been that way a lot lately.” With a cautious grin, he said, “Don’t you remember I’m supposed to be the perpetually distracted one?”
I laughed nervously. “I guess we all have our moments, right?”
“We do.” He sipped his drink. “What’s on your mind?”
He didn’t need to ask. We both knew it. Couldn’t we just not go there right now? Our lunch would be here in a few minutes. We could eat, ignore the things we didn’t want to talk about, and then go back to work. And we could talk about it… I don’t know. Later? Just not now. Not today. Not until—
“Aaron.” His voice edged toward his Dom voice, which usually relaxed me. “Look at me.”
I swallowed hard and lifted my gaze.
His eyebrows rose. “What’s on your mind?”
Damn it. I knew that look and I knew that voice: tell me what’s going on so we can do something about it. As if he didn’t know. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe he didn’t realize just how much this was bothering me.
“I just…” I rubbed the back of my neck, my finger grazing the edge of the leather collar hidden beneath my shirt. “To be blunt, these lunch dates are usually the most relaxing part of my week. But lately…”
“They’re stressing you out.” It wasn’t a question, and he didn’t sound surprised.
“They’re…” I closed my eyes and exhaled. “I’m just so wound up I can barely concentrate on work, and I…” As much as I hated to think it, I kept circling back to it, so why keep fighting it? Nervous as hell and more than a little resigned, I finally managed to meet his gaze. “I really think we need to talk about this and look it in the eye and figure out what to do, because I can’t deal with the uncertainty anymore.” Fuck. The words were out, and now I was queasy. I was afraid of the solution to our problems, which was why I’d avoided the subject for so damn long.
And of course that was the exact moment the barista appeared by our table, plates in hand, and chirped, “One ham sandwich, and one chicken pesto panini.”
“Thanks,” we both said, and plastered on congenial expressions while she arranged the plates in front of us, and we kept those smiles in place until she’d left.
Alone again, we dropped the facades. I looked down at my food but didn’t touch it. I’d probably be taking it to go and eating it at my desk later.
Will took a couple of bites from his. There was a part of me that wanted to have a knee jerk response and resent him for still having an appetite, but I tamped it down. Odds were, he’d forgotten to eat breakfast again, and if he didn’t have something more substantial than coffee or iced tea before much longer, he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on this conversation, driving home, or—when he got there—his job. One of the many reasons we had these lunch dates was to get him away from his office and make sure he actually ate.
I managed to take a few bites of my own lunch just so he wouldn’t feel conspicuous eating while I turned green at the thought.
When he’d finished half his sandwich, he took a drink of his iced tea and studied me across the table, his features still calm. “Are you sure you’re ready to talk about it?”
I swallowed the bite I’d been chewing, which suddenly didn’t want to go down. After a sip of coffee, I said, “No, but it’s killing me. Because I’m really afraid of what we’re going to have to do to fix it.”
Will’s eyebrows rose slowly, the first signs of alarm creeping into his expression. “What do you think we’re going to have to do?”
I held his gaze. He held mine.
Then he took my hand and clasped it firmly. “Aaron. I’m not going anywhere unless you want me to.”
“No!” I returned his tight grip. “That’s the last thing I want.”
“Me too.” The soothing tone of his voice should have calmed me down, but it just made me that much more aware of how much I stood to lose. Still holding my hand and my gaze, he quietly said, “Nobody’s leaving, okay? I love you. You’re my partner, my best friend, and my submissive. I’m not going anywhere.” He squeezed my hand. “All we need to do is find a solution that means we’re both getting what we need.”
“That sounds easier said than done.”
“I know,” he said with a hint of resignation. “And I’m not sure what we can do. But splitting up isn’t on the table as far as I’m concerned.” He tilted his head. “Answer me this—if we can’t find a solution, and I can’t give you the pain you need to be satisfied, would you still want to stay married to me?”
“Yes!” No hesitation. No question. “Of course.”
“Then we’re on the same page.” He smiled uneasily. “I don’t know what the answer is, but I know it’s not one of us leaving.”
I closed my eyes and pushed out a breath. I knew deep down that it didn’t always work that way. It was easy to say we were in it no matter what, that it wasn’t a deal-breaker if things in the bedroom weren’t a hundred percent perfect, but the truth was, it had been stressing both of us out for a long time. Ever since that night a few months ago when we’d experimented with going farther than usual, and in doing so, we’d made two game-changing discoveries:
One, that there was an absolute hard limit to how much pain he was willing to inflict on a submissive.
Two, how much I craved—how much I needed—pain that went well beyond that limit.
We’d tried to compromise, but there was no putting the lid back on Pandora’s box. We’d both had a taste, and we couldn’t pretend we hadn’t. I’d always been a masochist. He wasn’t much of a sadist, but he was for me because he was every inch a service top. The more I’d realized how much pain I really needed, and the more we’d realized how far my needs went beyond Will’s limits, the more stressed we’d both been.
We’d had more vanilla sex in the past few months than we’d had in years because we just could not get back on the same wavelength where kink was concerned. That stress had bled into the rest of our marriage, and if it was as easy as saying we’d stick it out no matter what, we wouldn’t have worked so hard to avoid the subject for so long.
But when he told me today that leaving wasn’t on the table, I grabbed on to his words like they were a life preserver, and I hoped like hell they floated.
Opening my eyes, I said, “So, we’re in it for the long haul no matter what. But what do we do?”
“I don’t want to just throw up my hands and say we’ll work around it, since it’s obviously making you unhappy.” He seemed to think about it for a moment, then took a deep breath. “I can try to give you more of what you need.”