Chapter 12

Thursday 26 May 2022

Larissa was woken up by a body sliding in between her and Julian. Alison. Both of them roused and rolled so they were facing her. Alison was facing Larissa, so Larissa kissed her, while Julian reached his arm around and grabbed Alison’s breasts. Larissa took a breath, and said, “Uh, good morning, what time is it?”

“It’s a bit after five-thirty,” Alison said. “Sorry. I couldn’t wait.”

“It’s ok,” Larissa said, “I guess. Just let me wake up a bit.”

“I can come back if you want.”

“No. I’m awake now.” Julian made a sleeping noise - he’d gone back to sleep, hands where they were. “Are Julian’s hands OK? He’s gone back to sleep.”

“I like them there. If it’s OK with you.”

“Sure. We’ll take them off before he wakes up, and he won’t remember it. Just you. That’ll drive him mad.”

Alison grinned. “I like it here, naked in bed with you two. Very nice. Even if you smell of sex.”

“I’m sorry, I just went straight to sleep after last night. We were tired, but you wound us both up.”

“Sorry!” Though she could hear that Alison wasn’t.

“We enjoyed it. We like kissing other people, but full sex, that’s only for us. So last night was perfect for us.”

Alison pouted. “So I’m not getting laid this morning?”

“‘Fraid not. Did you expect to?”

“Oh no, I’d wouldn’t mind that but I knew better, you don’t work that way. Still, I can tell myself that I’ve been to bed with the sexiest and most awesome couple I know.”

Larissa smiled at her. “You can. And you can tell people you trust. We don’t have anything to hide here. Anyway, how are you really? In your heart. Here, naked in bed with us, you have to tell me the truth, and trust me to love you.”

“I’m OK. Better than when I went to Australia to meet you. I really wasn’t in a happy place then. At least now, I know what I’m going to do.”

“Your family doesn’t approve.”

“I know. But that doesn’t matter. I’ll listen to them, and get on with them as well as I can, but I’m not going to give in and be one of them. You’ve seen them now, you see where it goes.”

“Yeah. Rita.” Alison nodded. “She’s the perfect billionaires granddaughter, huh?”

“Sure. She knows the game, that it’s a game, but she’s happy to play it, and scared of the alternative. What might go wrong. It’s comforting, wrapped up in the blanket of wealth and power.”

“But not for you?”

“No. I just feel the cage. It might be gilded, but it’s a cage I will escape from.”

“Well, good luck. I had my own cage, and there was nothing gilded about it. With lots of help from other people, I smashed my cage. Most of all, Julian, who really has gone on an awesome journey with and for me. I love my man. So I think the most important thing for you is the relationships you build, in but particularly outside the family.”

Alison nodded. “I know. I’m doing what I can, but relationships outside the family are hard at the moment. But I get on better with granddad than any of the other grandkids. I think because he built all this, and he sees that I’m the only one who’s heart is outside the walls it makes.”

“But is it?” Alison looked at her in surprise. “Let’s talk about your Benjamin the Third.”

Sure. Alison told her all the same things she’d said the day before.

“OK. So he ticks all your family’s boxes, Alison. I looked at him, and saw how he’s going to make a pile of money and do everything you said, but I also thought to myself that if you take him to bed after your deb ball, even if you let him put a ring on your finger, he’ll never touch your heart. Layna agreed with me, and her superpower is reading people. He’ll never reach into your inner core, and make you want to give it all up to submit to him. And that’s the most important thing, that you want to submit to him, and you want to care for him enough to treasure and respect his submission to you. Without that ... Alison, you’re just kidding yourself. I mean, maybe you’ll have a successful economic alliance with him, but a happy marriage, with kids?”

She got a long silence from Alison in response to that. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me that you look at that boy and think, ‘this man can stick his dick so far up me it gets right into my heart, and I want him to.’” Alison was thinking hard about that. “Tell me that you’ll look up to him and think, my lord and master, I’m going to give up something really fundamental to me because you need me to.”

“Umm, isn’t this the age of women’s rights? Why do I have to give up something big?”

“It is, but you still do. Because so does he, just the same. Look at you: rich heiress, beautiful woman, olympic candidate, rescue vet wannabe, and at the same time, you’re adventurous enough to hop into bed naked with a couple when you don’t quite know what’s going to happen. Alison, you’re very very far from normal, and the man who captures your heart must be big and strong and hammer the world with his hands and mind, like Julian does. But also, that big strong man must be captured by you so much that he’ll sacrifice things he wants for you, and you have to trust him to do that. Because both of you will be big, your conflict of priorities will be big too, and so your love must be just as big. Tell me that this boy you showed me is that man.”

Alison shook her head. “No, he’s not. I know he’s not that man. So I shouldn’t do the ball with him?”

“Oh, that’s up to you. Take him to the ball, make your family happy. Take him to bed, make your body happy. Or not. Whatever makes you happy. But don’t fool yourself that he’s your man. You’ll need to look far and wide for whoever that is.”

Alison frowned. “My family says whoever it is must have money, so I can be sure that they’re not after me just for money’s sake.”

Larissa shrugged. “I don’t know much about that. But I have a pretty wealthy step-brother, and his primary obsession is getting richer. He’s planning to marry a very beautiful pliant woman who’s happy to fit into his plans. Don’t get me wrong, I like her. A lot. But that’s what she is. And you could be just a bigger step in a plan like that, marrying some guy who does what he has to do to entice you to the altar, to give him control of your fortune. But when the going gets tough, his heart isn’t entranced with the actual you, and then ... it all falls apart.”

Alison was nodding. “That’s my parents, right there.”

“Right. The key question is trust. You have to trust his heart. Julian and I think you have to share everything. We don’t have anything that we don’t both own. He owns my body, and I own his. It’s not his dick, it’s mine. And these are his tits.” She rubbed them against Julian’s arm for fun. “And it happens that I’m getting an allowance from Bob, real money, nothing like what you have, but unimaginable wealth for us, and I’ve said that it’s all ours. He didn’t start going with me for the money, but we had it by the time we got married. So did he marry me for the money?”

“No. Not Julian.” Alison was certain about that.

“Because?”

“I’ve seen how his eyes follow you. Even when I kissed him as hard as I could, the first place he looked when his eyes opened was you. And I saw how Layna’s team thinks about you, because he thinks that way about you. So much respect, wow. That’s what I want.”

Larissa knew that the answer to that question was much deeper and broader, but Alison had done well for a teenager. She told Alison about Julian’s joke about it being her money, and why he said that - his best effort to tell her it would never be about the money, and how she tied him up in response, as ‘punishment’, and how hard it made him come.

“Wow,” Alison said.

“Yep. A real relationship is deep and broad and built on rock solid trust, and blows your heart and mind all the time. And he ties me up too, and sometimes I come so hard it knocks me out. But I think that the key question for you is not money, it’s how a man demonstrates to you that you can trust him, and I think that can only come in adversity. Which your Benjamin the third is probably not going to ever have.”

Alison thought about that. “So what should do I about the deb ball?”

Larissa shrugged. “Well, do you want to have sex with him? Is he good in bed? Do you know?”

“I’m pretty sure he’s still a virgin,” Alison said. “He had a girlfriend, but she’s an ice queen. So I’d be his first, I think. Unless she’s lying through her teeth, and I don’t think she can. He was super surprised when I said yes. I found out that his mother threatened him with a really awful girl for his date if he didn’t at least ask me. So you don’t think I should?”

“His mother pulls the strings, eh?” Alison nodded. “The purse strings, no doubt.” Nodding again. “She’ll be thinking relationship, marriage, family alignment?”

“Yes.”

At this point. Julian shifted in his sleep, and his arm disappeared behind Alison. Alison frowned, so Larissa put her arms around Alison and pulled her in tight, and kissed her for a while. When she stopped, she said, “Your poor boy. So do you want to help him escape his cage, or just let him be? What does he want?”

Alison thought about that and said, “All the evidence is that he doesn’t want to. He’s comfortable like that.”

“So in that case, don’t play with him. Call him and have coffee with him before the deb, or something, and tell him. You’re happy to go to the ball with him. And if you are, tell him that you’re happy to be his first. I’ve never laid a guy who it’s his first time, but my friends who have tell me it’s cute, and he’s pretty cute, so why not? But also, tell him: he’s really nice, and he’s going to be successful, but he doesn’t touch your heart, and he never will, and that’ll be it. Or maybe you ask him, does he want to escape? And if he does, then tell him you’ll do it with him on their front lawn, but only if he calls his mum to come watch him go down on you and Dee together. Or something, whatever makes him his own man.”

Alison laughed quietly for that idea. “Dee might go for that, I think. Though maybe she should be his first, they’re a match made in heaven.”

“Then you shouldn’t do him at all, if that might happen,” Larissa said. “But whatever happens, it’ll be good for him to be a friend right?” Alison nodded. “So respect him, and let him decide whether to do the deb ball with you. What’s the rules? Can he take Dee?” Yes. “So maybe he should? I don’t know the others well enough, but what I’ve seen is that building relationships the right way doesn’t always pay off in the short term, but in the end, it always pays off overall.”

Julian farted. And oh, it was a smelly one. Really bad. Larissa laughed at the expression on Alison’s face. She lifted her head and checked, Julian was still asleep. “No one told you about that? The biggest sacrifice you have to make when you marry a man is agreeing to put up with it when he farts in his sleep.”

“I had no idea. But you’re right, that’s a real sacrifice. Is it even worth it?”

Larissa laughed for what was obviously a joke question from Alison, but answered her seriously with some stories about the things they’d done for each other, or were doing, the things that really established their relationship. Sex things, but lots of other things too. Alison listened carefully, and passionately. When Larissa stopped, Alison said, “Now I want a man. I want someone who can make my heart move like that. How do I find one?”

Larissa told her about Sal helping her, and Amelia’s process, and then about how promises helped, and what Asha and Amelia had done. At the end, Alison said, “Interesting. Maybe there’s a guy. I’ve been thinking about him while you’ve been talking about this. No way he’s going to the ball with anyone else, or anywhere else, so he could be my date. But he’s at least, umm, interesting. Different. Want to meet him?”

“Sure, if we have time!”

“We do, but if we want to, we have to muck out now, and then go for a horse ride afterwards, and we’ll miss breakfast.”

Larissa would miss breakfast for that, so she went and nudged Layna and asked if she wanted to come too. Then she dressed in her mucky clothes and went and helped Alison clean the stables quickly. When they finished that, Alison picked three horses, and saddled them up ready for a ride. By the time she’d done that, Layna turned up, so Alison gave them a lesson. Layna had ridden several times for her project, but Larissa hadn’t ridden since that trail ride back when she was fifteen, so a refresher didn’t hurt. Then she mounted up, still in their filthy clothes, and off they went. They were going to see some candidate boy dressed like this?

Alison must have notified security, surely, and then Larissa noticed a quad bike getting ready to follow them, and when they got to her front fence, there were two more quad bikes to go with them. They did a pretty good job of keeping out of the way, but there was no hiding their presence with that happening.

While they rode, Alison told Layna about some of what they talked about in the morning, and that she wanted Larissa and Layna’s opinion on the the guy they’d meet. A couple of miles down the road, Alison turned into a farm lane and followed it back behind a house and a barn. Behind the barn, there was a stables. Alison stopped at the stables and said, “Yoo hoo, Landon, come out here for a sec.”

There was some banging and swearing inside the stables, and then a farm boy walked out, just wearing a pair of jeans. “Watchya want, Freckles?” he asked Alison. Then he noticed Larissa and Layna. “Oh, hello, ladies, I didn’t realise you were here. Welcome to our farm, and I’m sorry for the smell.” Right, he wasn’t just wearing jeans, he was also wearing a fair bit of horse shit as well.

Wow, this boy was not like Benjamin the third, he was a totally different kettle of fish altogether. A couple of years older than Alison, maybe, and he had the body of a man who worked hard. “Landon, this is my friends Larissa and Layna. They come to my graduation yesterday, and we were going for a ride, and I realised that Larissa would love to see your farm. She’s a vet from Australia.”

Hell, Larissa would love to see more of Landon too. He was the farm boy from a girl’s dreams, steaming hot in just his jeans and boots. And his attitude, already she could see a perfect mix of politeness and tough independence. Fuck, there was no way you could bed this guy and not let him into your heart. Wow, he was as far away from the Benjamin the Third as you could get.

“Oh, sure, I’d love to show her around, but I’ve got to finish here first.”

“We’ll help!”

Alison slid off her horse and helped Layna and Larissa down, and they helped him finish his work. Well, Layna watched and ran odd-jobs, but Alison and Larissa got right into it. The stables were well maintained and basically tidy, and the work was done quickly with four of them, and then he saddled his horse - something he obviously did everyday, and then they were back on the horses, exploring his farm as he explained it to Larissa. While he was doing that, Layna asked him about his relationship with Alison, how he could get away with calling her Freckles.

“Well, she did, when she was younger, she had lots of freckles, and we were friends. Then the freckles just disappeared and she turned into the incredible beautiful lady that she is today. I’m just a farm boy, but it was me that got her onto a horse the first place, and I looked after her first few horses. But then dad got sick, and I had to take over the farm, and I’ve been working since, and I only see Freckles when she comes here for a ride, which she does maybe once a fortnight or so.”

Larissa was getting shivers. This guy was straight out of a book, a bodice buster, that’s what they called them. Surely there was something wrong with him? Other than having no money, there must be more.

He asked how they knew Alison, so Larissa started to tell an unflattering story of her coming to Australia, to see what he’d say. He listened for a little while, and said, “Hang on. I watched the videos. Which is right? No, I know Freckles, she’s not like that.” Wow he passed that test, and she gave him a smile, and she could see that he figured out what she was up to. Not subtle, but she had no time. The other test she wanted to give him, she just couldn’t figure out how to: was he a user and dumper of women?

But then he kind of passed that test too, because he brought them to the house, and introduced Layna and Larissa to his parents around their kitchen table. Right away, Larissa knew: his father was crippled by diabetes, and his mother was dying from cancer. That wasn’t quite what he said, but she knew enough to put two and two together, and he’d put his own dreams on hold to care for them. So probably the opposite of a user.

After that, Alison looked at her watch and said they had to go back, bye and thanks for the tour.

Once out on the road, she said, “So what do you think of him?”

“Shit, Alison,” Larissa said, “he’s straight out of a paperback romance. Sizzling, that’s the only word I could think of. There’s no way he wouldn’t touch your heart. Layna what did you think? I mean, there has to be something wrong with him.”

Layna shook her head. “The way you introduced him, he’s single, right? What’s wrong with the girls in this area? Because if there’s anything wrong with him other than having no money due to family circumstances, I didn’t see it. Hell, if I didn’t have Joe, I’d be getting to know that guy really deeply. Though I wouldn’t let him near my bed until I was really sure indeed.”

“All he does is work. He never gets out. I don’t think the other girls know about him, he left school so young to run the farm. He might not even have been sixteen. My family know him, of course, but they very carefully turned him into just a hired hand. His dad was sick for a long time before he gave up and let Landon run the farm, and they got into debt because of it. He’s kind of bitter about how my family treated him, but he didn’t let it show to you.”

“Right,” Larissa said. “He knows how the world works. Unless you decide to change the game, Alison. My obvious thoughts are, if you decided he was the guy for you, how would you convince him that you’re not just playing with him? And I totally agree with Layna, he’s so enticing, much more than just a hot bod, I wouldn’t even kiss him until I was damn sure he was convinced and wanted me. Fuck he’s the real deal. If you take him to the deb, insist that he wears those jeans and boots, and a cowboy shirt, and damn the fancy suit. But don’t take him to bed afterwards, no way. Promises first, with that boy. Take your time.”

“Definitely agree on all counts,” Layna said. “He’d be awesome at the deb dressed like that. Blow everyone else’s mind!”

Alison laughed. “So you don’t think it matters that he doesn’t have money, doesn’t come from the right circles?”

“Nah, not for me,” Larissa said. “If he didn’t because he gambled, or whatever, sure. But he doesn’t because he’s a good faithful family boy, right?” Alison agreed. “Then isn’t that good, your ideal thing?”

“Right,” Layna said, “completely. And as for social circles, you know Larissa was as poor as that. I saw that he changed his language to be polite for us, different to how he spoke to you, who he really likes. So no reason he can’t learn all that stuff, it’s just being polite, and I don’t see why that should be a problem any different to any other guy. Anyway, you have our opinion, for what it’s worth.”

“It’s worth a very great deal,” Alison told them. “Much more than anyone else’s. Layna, Larissa told me about promises. Did you do promises with Joe?”

To Larissa’s surprise, Layna told her exactly what happened. All of it. “Obviously that’s confidential,” Layna said. “Only Larissa’s family fully knows what happened, not even mine or Joe’s. And now you know what I mean when I said in that video that Larissa carried me across the line with Joe.”

“Wow. I really do. That’s awesome, and thank you for trusting me. You both trusted me a lot today, and I have a lot to think about.”

By the time they got back, and sorted out the horses, it was time to get ready for the morning’s schedule. They found Julian and Joe playing basketball with the boys, all hot and sweaty, so she got in the shower with Julian, and told him about Landon. And about Alison’s tits, much to her amusement. Julian shrugged, and grabbed her tits and said that they were the ones he wanted, and one thing led to another, and she nearly collapsed in the shower with he finished with her. They had to get ready quickly after that.

Layna was waiting in their common room, and laughed when she saw Larissa. “Do you ever miss an opportunity?”

“Nah, not us,” Larissa said. “Why would we ever want to?”

They were back in their business attire today, jeans and polos, or her work shirt for Larissa. The first order of business was a meeting with some people from the local county and a state government representative to discuss how the vet rescue service worked. Then they were going straight from that to the local high school for Larissa and Layna to talk at their graduation ceremony. After that, back to Alison’s home to pick up their stuff, and then they were off to Chicago to speak to a gathering of Niall’s business leaders, before jumping on a plane there to head to LAX and from there, home to Melbourne.

Everyone who was going for the morning meetings was waiting for them impatiently. Alison was obviously trying to contain her laughter, no doubt she figured out what took them so long. In addition, Niall, Alison’s father Todd and Madeline were coming. Along with security, of course.

They met at a meeting room in the county offices. There was about twenty people in the room - a mix of local politicians, employees, a couple of union officials, and some animal medicine people. One of them was the vet she’d introduced to Niall the day before; she pretty much expected him to be present; some kind of deal would have been done.

The local county mayor started the meeting officially and introduced Niall and asked him to explain the meeting. He thanked everyone for attending, and then explained that Alison had connected him to Larissa, who worked for a government run vet rescue service that handled both wildlife rescue/management, and emergency veterinary services for domestic and farm animals. Alison had her heart set on joining a service like that, and that’d made him wonder, was it a good idea to have one locally? He’d talked to mayor about it, who wondered the same, and here was Larissa, who worked for the service, she was going to explain about the service, and answer any questions anyone had.

With that, Larissa stood up and got started while Madeline got her computer projecting. Then she spoke to the group. Her presentation was divided up into three parts. The first part was a general description of the service, what her job was, what some of the other roles were, and how her van was set up. The second part was a few of the funnier and more interesting stories of things that had happened to her. The third was aimed at the questions they were likely to have - how did the budget work, how did they interact with other vet services, and other emergency services. Mark had helped her with the last part a couple of weeks earlier before her life went nuts. When she was done, she said it was time for questions, but if they wanted, she could spend ten minutes of the thirty left running through her rescue that started the whole ball rolling. Many of them did, so she showed that, with her usual commentary. When she finished, it was time for questions. Most of them were the kind she could expect, about budgets, danger, the load of wildlife issues around Melbourne vs their own locality, the scope of the service coverage area and how that interacted with the budget, would different gun laws change the viability of the service, what about snakes, and how it interacted with the vet services. Would the number of homeless in the area mean that they’d overuse the service? Also, the way the service interacted with other government agencies such as animal welfare and agricultural infection control. Some of the services were already performed by the county, or by local vets. Sometimes poorly or unreliably. Some of them were performed by volunteers, simply because no one else was, and it had to be done. And animals had died because no one was doing them. Some people had died too.

Would it happen? Larissa couldn’t tell. The questions weren’t political posturing. They were the kind of questions people asked when they were really trying to decide what to do. The last few minutes were a general debate over whether a service like this was something the county or state should do. At the end, the state politician moved a motion that passed that said that the county fund a formal investigation of the idea with the state, splitting the costs evenly to find out if it was a good idea and what scope it should have. Julian pointed out privately that, of course, that didn’t mean the state would fund it, but the informal comments she got after the meeting was closed were favourable, and everyone said that they were really glad she came to present to them.

Well, time for their next adventure. They were off to the local high school, where most of the kids of Alison’s staff attended. Setting this up had been ... tricky. Alison asked one of the girls who came to her house after school while her mum worked, and that girl was second cousin to the captain of the school, and he’d talked to them on zoom, sceptical of the idea. Larissa understood his thinking, since they were doing the graduation at a very exclusive private school a few miles down the road; how could they relate to the students of a very rundown high school, on the wrong side of the tracks in a town on the wrong side of history, beset by unemployment, alcohol, and opiates? It’d taken a zoom call and a follow up before he’d decided to talk to the principal, and then it’d taken another zoom call and follow up with her. Both of them had been sceptical about why the discussion was even happening, or that Niall would let them have the time. But Joe had dug in and pushed on this one, and made sure that it happened.

Niall wasn’t attending this one - he was off doing business, but Alison, Todd and Madeline were accompanying them. And security, of course, Jayla the team lead, and two big guys, and they all looked super jumpy about it. This time they actually did a briefing with their principals in the van when they arrived - the high school was in a run-down part of town, the students were rather diverse, and security with so many kids around was really difficult. If security told them to do something, they needed to do it immediately. Diverse? Larissa assumed that meant racially diverse but Jayla, the very organised and efficient black woman leading the briefing said no, she was thinking of gangs and petty crime and drugs. And the principals very definitely included Larissa and her friends on this one. No, they had no hint of any trouble, and it was quite unlikely, but the security team existed for the unlikely. Then she added that several of her nieces and nephews would be in the audience and she was thrilled that this was happening, and that was why she volunteered to lead this one.

As soon as Larissa saw the school, she agreed about its challenges. There was a strip mall outside the school, dingy and rundown, and homeless people hanging around just around the corner from the school. The school itself had a high barbed wire fence, and security officers on the gate who were alert and inspecting everyone. Their unmarked plain white work van pulled up a little down the road from the entry gate, where all the parking was, and then they were whisked to the front of the queue of parents and family by school security, and after a cursory inspection, they were welcomed enthusiastically by the school captain, and escorted to the ceremony.

The ceremony was set up on the school football grounds. No indoor ceremony in a school hall at this school; all they had was classrooms and fields. But Larissa could see that the grounds were spotless, the kids were smiling, and there were lots of family present. They were introduced to the principal, who welcomed them, and said how happy she was to see them, and how much she appreciated that they wanted to do this, and here was their place to sit, and did they mind if she came back to them. Of course not, so they stood near their assigned seating. Almost immediately, a small group of girls approached, and said, “Hello, Alison.”

Alison said hello to two of them by name, and then apologised that she couldn’t remember the third, and then they were introduced to Layna, and Larissa, leaving the school captain to talk to Joe and Julian - about sport, of course. These girls were fans. Of Alison as well as Layna and Larissa, and they started by getting both Layna and Larissa to sign their workbooks. Larissa’s standing policy was that she didn’t sign anything without first asking about the person asking for a signature, and by the time she’d done that there were more, and rolling through that group as it slowly grew kept them busy until the principal came back. Larissa had expected the principal to talk to them, but she just stood in the background and listened.