Suited

Thirty Four

Lucas Alberici's Point of View

I had to force feed that boy a bottle of water and I believe a solid two sips worth were lost on the carpeted floor of Frenzy's suspension room. Lawrence had done beautifully and was so beautifully spent, but he was simply out of it. What goes up comes back down, as they say. I managed to get him out of his pants and into  more comfortable clothes at least. Shoes were a challenge for some reason. He just didn't want them but the parking lot wouldn't be easy to traverse barefoot. A mix of reason and a stern attitude got him to obey.

I had Lawrence put his arm around my shoulders and mine around his waist to help him walk. The time it took for me to clean up after our work, no matter how diligent I was, wasn't enough for him to regain sentience . He was exhausted but I checked in with Bill a final time, and said our goodbyes before we headed to the door. Lawrence hadn't gotten to see Dom Bailey's gaggle of submissives tonight which was a shame given how excited he'd been, but I'd promised to take him to the social next week and considering that was Bailey's department, I figured they'd be there. I wasn't looking forward to seeing them. Kendrick specifically.

And they were, with a new addition I hadn't anticipated. Four subs instead of three in similar jeans and T-shirts. The ones I recognized, Malikai, Juniper, and Carina, wore white tops, while the fourth—a rather plain looking boy—wore black, no day collar—matching Carina—and was practically glued to Bailey's side. Why he didn't just get another girl to even things out was beyond me, but from looking a little closer at their dynamic, he must have been the supposed home wrecker. I let Lawrence go be social while I scoped out a table for the two of us as far away from Bailey as possible, but that didn't stop him from coming up to me, which was the only time he let that boy out of his sight.

"Lucas," he greeted, flat and not quite personable. "How are you?"

"I'm well. You?"

"Busy, good. I understand that you have a contract with Lawrence."

As always, straight to the point. "That is correct."

He glanced back to his table where Lawrence and Juni were discussing something that had to have tickled them from how much they were giggling. "He looks a lot better," Bailey said.

"I agree."

"You know if you hurt him, he'll decline again, right?"

Where had that come from? "I'm not going to."

"I want you to know anyway. Regardless of what you think you are capable of, you can't beat an addiction out of someone."

I was going to say that I didn't beat him but that wouldn't have been true on a technical level. "Well I've never had to discipline him for using. He follows my rules."

"You don't even follow your own rules."

"I'm not a drunk, and that was months ago." He looked at Lawrence again and I sighed. "I understand you're concerned but while the rest of his care team is responsible for his improvement, I'm not exactly a detriment."

"You will be if you leave him."

"When have I said anything about me leaving him?"

"You left Haydn."

I had, yes. "I wasn't happy with Haydn."

"Yes you were."

I realized that I had become a slightly less vindictive person in knowing Lawrence at that moment. My knee jerk reaction would have been to throw Haydn under the proverbial bus and talk about how awful he'd been but I simply shrugged. "You're right, I was for a while, but feelings change."