“You know better than anyone that my life is anything but worry-free, Kim. But, apparently, you don’t understand why I’m able to make certain problems disappear: the money can solve a lot of problems. Money’s not everything, but it’s damn inconvenient to live without. I have enough money to buy out your mother’s liquor store, enough money to send her to rehab, enough money to set her up in a nicer house than this one, in a better neighborhood. I can make her life easy, as easily as I could make yours easy too. You talk about how I have too much, but damn it, don’t you know I already know that? Don’t you understand that I can make things more even, level out the playing field, if you just let me in? Why won’t you take my help?”
“Because I don’t want your pity, Lawrence! This isn’t your problem! It’s between my mom and I, not between you and me or you and her or anyone else. Can’t you understand that for me, what you’re offering is a handout and that you’re taking my pride in turn? Maybe it’s selfish of me, but I don’t care! I don’t have much else left other than my pride: you know I don’t have my dignity left either, but yet, you insist on taking that away. Can’t there be one problem I solve? Can’t there be something I handle, that you don’t just magically make disappear with money? What is left for me to do, Lawrence? Where is my agency? Where is my autonomy? I’m finally free of Pearl, but now, I have you orchestrating my life. I’ve exchanged one cage for another, and although yours might be more plush, I’d rather be free and fending for myself than trapped and kept like a song bird.”
“Accepting help doesn’t make you weak, Kim, it makes you strong. I can go and donate to a charity that helps alcoholics, but that wouldn’t help your mom. This isn’t about money or power, and I’m sorry if anything I’ve done has given you that impression. I’m sorry that I’ve been blind to the fact that you need your freedom, that you need space from me, that you need to live your life the way you want, not the way I want for you. But this, here? This problem, with your mom? I can’t just let her waste away this way, Kim. You need to get her help, and I can’t see you go into poverty in order to care for her. Please, just help me help you help your mom get her life back on track, so your life can continue. You shouldn’t have to be your mom’s caretaker, not yet, not this way, and I can help you undo the damage that’s been done to her, if you just let me help. The greatest gift I can give you is your mom. Please, Kim. Please. Do it for her. Do it for you.”
“It’s not going to change anything!”
“If it doesn’t, at least we tried.”
“And if nothing changes?”
“Then we’ll figure out a way to make it work. We’ll figure out something for your mom, even if it’s just maid service so you don’t have to clean.”
“It’s not about the cleaning!”
“Damn it, I know that, Kim! I’m not stupid, just too damn rich for my own good, and I don’t know what to do! Things like this are usually hushed up, which is unhealthy because now, I have no idea what to do! And around you, that seems to be the norm: I’m faced with situations I’ve never had to face before, with no clue what to do to solve them. I want to help you clean up any messes in your life, past, present, and future. I want you, the bad with the good, because you’re worth it, Kim, but sometimes, it’s hard for me to figure out what you want me to do for you!”
I’d never heard Lawrence say something so passionate but also personal to me, and it calmed me, instantly, and I had a chance to think before I replied, far more calmly. “So why don’t you just ask me, Lawrence? Why don’t you just ask me what I want, or what I think?”
He took his head in his hands for a second before throwing his shoulders and head back and placing his hands behind his head, looking up at the dirty popcorn ceiling. “Because I’m supposed to be this perfect man for you, Kim, and it’s stupid. You’ve never told me that you expect that of me, and that’s what drew me to you to begin with: the fact you had no idea who I was, or about the money, or about anything, and that you never treated me differently after. The fact that you find my worth not in my net worth, but in my intrinsic value, is terrifying, because it means I have to figure out how to make sure I don’t lose you.”
“Well, you’re going to lose me if you don’t give me some goddamn freedom,” I said with a laugh but there was some truth in the sentiment.
‘Is there anything else you’d like?” he asked, sarcastically, truth in the sarcasm as well.
“Are you actually asking me what I’d like?” I asked, pretending I sounded surprise, although the fact my heart was fluttering showed that yes, I was.
“Yes, Kim, I am,” he said quietly and seriously.
I looked down and bit my lower lip before looking back at him. “I...I do want my mom to get better. At the same time, I don’t want help or aide or handouts.”
Lawrence leaned on the kitchen counter and put a hand in his pocket, just to leave it there, not to pull anything out. “I’m not trying to tell you how to feel, but...I’ve gone through similar feelings. I’ve had to accept help sometimes, and even if nobody’s tried to make me feel bad about it, I have before, and it’s sucked. But, the reason I want to help you is because I love you. And if you don’t want it, I understand.”
I nodded: I did understand what he was trying to say, the way he understood me better than he let on. “No, I do, but I want it like this, with a dialogue, not thrust upon me. Can you make me a promise, Lawrence?”
“Anything,” he said, his icy blue eyes meeting my dark brown irises.
I closed my eyes. “Can you...just ask me sometimes? Just ask me what I want or how I feel or just, what I need? Instead of just orchestrating everything for me?” I opened my eyes, wondering what waited on the other side: something that would maybe be okay? Or nothing at all?
“Would you like that, Kim?” he asked, and looking into his eyes, I knew he wasn’t joking: I knew he was being serious, and that he was asking because he knew that I wanted him to ask me more questions, to just fucking ask, and he was.
“Yes, Lawrence, I would,” I replied, and as I finished, he took my hands in his, not caring I was wearing a vomit stained apron and jeans, with my hair a mess, and pressed his lips against mine, sealing his promise with a kiss, the way he’d sealed my love before, and would have it always, from now on, because I knew that Lawrence and I had a shot at a real future.
Epilogue:
LAWRENCE WAS RIGHT: he had the ability to get my mom the best treatment possible. He went over brochures with me and we visited different facilities until we found the perfect rehab center for my mom. I sat down with her, by myself, and went over the options with her and she agreed to get treatment. Lawrence footed the bill for me, and, for the next hard three months, made time to be with me and support me while I supported my mom in treatment, visiting her as often as I could. She became healthier, more normal, more like the mom I had before dad died.
It was September; about six months after I’d first met Lawrence. It’d been such a long, weird trip: if I’d been told at this time, the year before, that I’d fall in love with a billionaire, I would have told the person they were crazy, but it was true: I was in love with Lawrence, and I let him know it as often as I could. I was no longer as cold and distant as I’d been when I first met him. I was able to take help from him, I was able to trust him with everything, and I was able to finally start living a life where I didn’t have to always feel like I was pretending to be something or somebody that I wasn’t. I was finally just able to be myself.
Lawrence sold Club Grit: neither he nor I wanted to go back there, and the clubbing thing wasn’t my scene any more. Lawrence took me on his business trips to foreign countries like France and Japan, where I’d explore the city by day, while he hashed out business deals with other men like him who just spoke different languages and lived in different places. It was during our trip to Ireland, in September, that everything changed again.
After work, he picked me up at the small café where I’d been doing reading, whis
king me away not to a fancy restaurant, but to the bed and breakfast we’d been staying at while he did his business in the city proper. The Doting Dubliner was run by a young couple, who maintained the cozy aura of the b & b but also knew that many couples came to Ireland for romantic getaways, so guests were given a keycard to enter the inn on their own terms and at their own schedule. When we got there, nobody was around, not that it mattered: Lawrence took me by the hand up to our room, swiping the keycard again, before pushing me down on the sheepskin-covered bed.
“I missed you all day, babe,” he said, running his fingers over the olive green parka with a fur lined hood that he’d bought me at Nordstrom’s before we left, because he wanted to make sure I didn’t get cold. He pressed a hand to my cheek and smiled, before moving the hand to my neck and then, as I started to turn, to the zipper, unzipping the jacket and gently folding it and placing it on a chair. Then, he had me sit up so he could take off the warm gray knit sweater, leaving me in just a thin black burnout shirt and dark indigo jeans, my shoes already on the floor. “You have no idea how gorgeous you are.”
“You’re not half bad yourself,” I teased, taking the scarf from his neck and placing it on top of my jacket, and then, moving my hands straight to his collar, where I started to unbutton his shirt carefully, exposing his chest before pulling him into an embrace, so I could feel his body heat against mine.
“You cold, babe? You need me to warm you up?” he teased, knowing very well the sight of him alone was enough to make me warm while paradoxically sending shivers up my spine.
“No, I’m fine,” I teased back, rolling over onto my stomach and taking a pillow beneath my chin, but Lawrence straddled me from behind, our legs separated only by our denim jeans, and placed his digits on my sides.
“That’s too bad. You’ve got such a nice torso...would be a shame if somebody...tickled it!” he said, and he moved his fingers along my body like spiders. I let out shrieks of laughter, so glad that we had the place to ourselves, and turned over.
“Stop!” I said, looking up at him and biting my lip.
“If you want me to stop, you’re going to have to pay me,” he teased, tickling even harder.
“W-what...w-what can I get a billionaire?” I asked, once he let me have a chance to say the words.
“A kiss would suffice,” he said, but before he could ask for anything else, I propped myself up and looked deeply into his eyes. We touched foreheads, then noses, then eyelashes, before finally pressing our lips together.
This was what I loved: the fact he could be my escape and my release, that he was the thing that took me places but also grounded me, the fact that he and I could share these secret, private, intimate moments together, the ones that weren’t flashy or gaudy, but that were just...memories that were meant to be made, the way we were meant to be with each other.
“What if...I want more than a kiss?” I asked, looking back into his eyes.
“I guess it’s your lucky day, darling, because I do too,” he said, but at the time, I didn’t know there was more to that than he was letting on, as he pulled both of our pants off, so that he was in his loose black silk boxers and I was in my lingerie, all black and made of the finest, breathable cotton. However, my black underwear didn’t have something large and firm poking out of the top.
I pressed my hands to my hips and he pushed my hands up, towards the pillow. “Allow me,” he insisted, and he took the sides of the low cut underwear gently, in his fingers, and shimmied them down, leaving a trail of kisses down my legs as he removed them, ending at my ankles and then tracing a path back up my calves and thighs until he reached my clit, which he pressed on delicately with his fingers, tracing small circles down from my clit to my entrance over and over, back and forth, like the path of a pendulum.
“You’re already so wet for me, Kim,” he said, as if it was still a surprise that I wanted him, that I yearned for him.
“And you’re already so hard for me,” I said back.
“I’d be crazy not to be. I have to make sure I don’t think about you during meetings, the last thing I need is for someone to think I have a boner for anyone,” he said. “Lawrence Lamont is not a sexual harasser.”
“No? Not even for me?” I said sarcastically, with a pout.
“No, you’re the one that harasses me.”
“The hand down my panties is evidence to the contrary.”
“Good thing my hand’s not down your panties,” he teased. He was right, but it didn’t make the joke less stupid.
“Shut up and fuck me already,” I said, taking his hand from my sex and placing his fingers in my mouth so I could taste my own sweetness. He didn’t need to be told twice: he took his boxers off and exposed himself to me for a brief second before entering me. We didn’t need protection now that he’d paid for me to get depo shots every three months, because I was too young for an IUD, and the feeling of him inside of me, skin on skin, was amazing as usual. He was so hot, rock hard and velvet soft at the same time, and we fit together like a hot knife through warm butter.
“You’re so wet, Kim,” he groaned.
“You’ve already said that,” I said using a sarcastic tone so he knew I wasn’t really being critical, just being difficult for him. By now, he knew all the little games I played, and he knew how to counter them too. He could keep up with me, in and out of the bedroom, and our relationship had stayed fresh and spicy.
“Shut up and kiss me already,” he said, and I reached up to do so, but he pressed my shoulders down and only teased me with the possibility of a kiss, not with a proper kiss at all, making me work to get to his lips, making me squirm and struggle while he held me down fast, and kept thrusting into me like a machine, his thighs under mine, my legs pressed up against his torso, even as his hands kept me pinned.
“I said kiss me already,” he teased again, whispering it into my ear like it was a secret and not a demand, before brushing his lips over mine and pulling away, mere quarters of inches away, bobbing back and forth and not letting me have any relief.
“I’m trying, you’re making it awfully damn hard,” I said with a frown as I strained against his arms to join our lips.
“Am I?” he asked, as if in some weird parallel universe, pressing my shoulders down was supposed to make it easier for me to kiss him and not harder.
“Yes, you are!”
“I’ll trade you. Let me take off your bra, and you’ll get a kiss,” he said with a boyish lilt.
“Are you serious?”
“Dead serious.”
“Okay,” I said, and rolled my eyes. He gave my ass a small spank, releasing my shoulders, and then letting me sit up a little as he kept his dick hard and inside of me, while he unhooked my bra and I let him take it off me.
“Thanks,” he said, but when I went to kiss his lips, he instead pushed me back down and kissed my breasts instead, first one, then the other, then my cleavage.
“Are you fucking serious?” I shouted, but he clasped a hand over my mouth. I frowned and he took it off and kissed me on the lips, properly this time.
“I’m sorry! I thought it would be funny,” he said.
“Well, it was,” I said, with a smile. “But you can’t give me an orgasm with your sense of humor.”
“Oh, babe, I know,” he promised, and he took his right hand and pressed my clit again, pressing in the shape of the letter V, over and over, around the underside of the clitoris, the way he knew I couldn’t resist, and my tone changed, becoming high pitched as he kept repeating the motion over and over, the same way each time as he kept thrusting in and out of me.
“You like that?” he asked, knowing damn well what he could do with my body and the way that he could make me feel things, physically, that no other man had made me feel before. His body, firm and toned, even for a man no longer in his mid twenties, was able of doing things to me I had never dreamed possible, his hands skilled and both willing and able to give me pure delight by force.
“Y-yes,” I stammered, my voice breathy as I started to feel my body moving on its own, inside and out.
“Good, I’m glad,” he said, and although our words changed, what he was doing to me didn’t, even as my body did. He kept doing what was working, knowing how to get me off because he actually gave a damn about my pleasure.
“Did you miss me today?” I asked, knowing the answer.
Or at least, I thought I did. “I missed this ass,” he growled, taking my ass with his free hand and giving it a squeeze. “And these tits,” he continued, grabbing my breasts hard. I squirmed and arched my back but he didn’t slip out of me, continuing to thrust in and out while tracing the shapes on my clit he knew I liked best. “You’re so wet, Kim, I know you missed this dick.”
“I missed you too, honey,” I said, rolling my eyes, and, with my arms now free, pulling him close to me, deeper inside of me as our chests met and his body warmed mine. To think, Lawrence and I had gotten so far in our relationship that we were traveling the world together, with these miniature romantic getaways, was surreal. I’d been wrong about him and how he felt about me, and although sometimes, Lawrence and I didn’t like to talk about that, about our feelings, it was evident to anyone that saw us together that we cared about each other deeply and that we were truly and forever in love.
The feeling of Lawrence inside of me, his thick shaft filling me from my G spot to my entrance, over and over, like the crashing waves against the shore almost outside our window, was so steady that it was hypnotic, putting both mind and body under a trance, as if he was whispering to me, over and over, to relax, to relax. With Lawrence both inside of me and playing with the outside of me, my mind was blank, the only feelings flowing through me being those of pure ecstasy. “Faster,” I asked, not begged, although it must have sounded that way. “Harder.”
He did both, and perfectly, reaching up a hand to take mine, to feel my grip tighten as I exploded around him at the same time he let loose his cum inside of me, and we became one, the way that we did every night (and many afternoons like this...and mornings, and nooners) together. I lay there, nuzzling with Lawrence, until I broke the silence when I realized something. “Lawrence?”
Shatter (Club Grit Trilogy) Page 14