Sweeter Than Honey

by Mary B. Morrison

Genres: African American; African American Women's Fiction; African American Romance

Synopsis

Lace St. Thomas operates Immaculate Perception, a hot Vegas firm that pairs wealthy clients with sexy female escorts. But when one of her most requested girls turns up dead, Lace knows she's in real danger. Renaming herself Honey Thomas, she flees to Atlanta to start a new life. But her past is not so easily left behind, and it will take everything Honey has to flip this bad-news script and fight to save everything she's worked for.

Release date: June 2, 2009

Publisher: Brava

Print pages: 385

Sample

I thank God for the woman that I am and will become. I’m blessed beyond measure. I’m sexy, confident, intelligent, uninhibited, and most important, I love myself first, knowing that through God I will attain the greatness of all my desires. I’m fortunate to possess a passion to write and the determination to succeed.

Thanks and welcome to my new editor, Selena James. I’m looking forward to a long and prosperous relationship. I appreciate all the hard work and dedication of my entire Kensington family. Karen Thomas, my editor for life, I say unto you, “We are family and thanks for everything.”

I absolutely love my author friend and writing partner, Carl Weber, aka the Prince of Drama. I experienced so much growth as a writer while we coauthored She Ain’t the One and I can’t wait to get started on He Ain’t the One. While in New York collaborating on She Ain’t the One, I had the opportunity to have lunch with Carl’s wonderful wife, Martha, some of his staff at Urban Books, and also dined with a number of Carl’s authors while we were on tour and I have no idea how Carl finds time to write his New York Times best sellers. All I can say is, “Carl is a gentleman in the purest form.”

Authors Naleighna Kai, Gloria Mallette, and Marissa Monteilh willingly opened up their hearts when I asked them to share with you very powerful and personal messages in the I Am Worthy section of this book, and I appreciate each of them. I hope their words inspire you to write in your own words why you feel worthy.

My son, Jesse Byrd, Jr., lights up my life. I’m so proud of him. As many of you know, Jesse is on a basketball scholarship and my wonderful godson, Robert “Chew” Owens, also is on a basketball scholarship, so you know I’m smiling from ear to ear.

I’m grateful that my fantastic siblings, Wayne, Andrea, Derrick, Regina Morrison, Margie Rickerson, Debra Noel, and Bryan Turner are so supportive of me, and I love my cousin Edward Allen.

Thanks to each of my fans. I want you to know beginning this new series, The Honey Diaries, wasn’t easy because like you, I too was deeply in love for seven years with Darius and Fancy and Jada and Wellington and all of the characters from the Soul Mates Dissipate series; therefore, my new characters took time to develop.

I must thank my manuscript readers, Mother Bolton, my manager, Eve Lynne Robinson, and my awesome agent, Claudia Menza. Much love to Lou Richie, Bernard Henderson, Jerry Thompson, Michele Lewis, Vera Warren-Williams, Blanche Richardson, Karen Richardson, and Emma Rodgers.

I have the world’s greatest manager and photographer, Eve Lynne Robinson. I thank Eve for enhancing my career, expanding my vision, and taking excellent care of me. Now my graphic Web designer/image brander, Kim Mason, is unequivocally second to none. I cannot thank these women enough.

I know the bad things he does to me are my fault.

He’s really a good man, and maybe if I would’ve shut up and not talked back he wouldn’t have slapped me in my mouth. Maybe if I hadn’t cursed him out or degraded his manhood, he wouldn’t have yelled at me. Maybe if I had changed my dress instead of telling him what I wasn’t going to wear, he would’ve allowed me to go out with my girlfriends. Maybe if I could learn to sex him better, suck his dick a little longer, or stopped telling him “no” more than I said “yes,” he’d stop cheating on me.

What did I do to make him hate me so much when all I’ve done was try to love him? I need some answers. I’m lying in this emergency room: a broken heart this time. Maybe next time I won’t be so lucky. Actually, if God cared about me at all, he’d bring me on home. I’m tired. I’m ready. I’ve been ready for quite some time now. Surely heaven can’t be like this.

Getting my ass kicked on the regular is no way to live. Yep, I’m convinced that heaven has got to be a better place. Hell, hell has got to be a better place than living with him. All I ask is that my mother take care of my kids. I know she’s tired too. Done, done her part and then some, but I ain’t got nobody else to look after my babies.

Why didn’t somebody see him hitting me? Kicking me? Biting me? Spitting on me? Raping me? Using my body for a punching bag? A doormat. My hair for a dishrag. If I hadn’t made enough money to pay all the bills, I’m sure he would’ve bashed my face in again by now. Why was he cursing me? Shouting at me? Calling me bitch! Bitch! Bitch! So much that when anybody else calls me by my name, I don’t even answer. Why is it that I can’t do anything right to please him? No matter how hard I try.

I hope somebody cares because I sure don’t. Not anymore. I’m ashamed to go around my family. I’m too embarrassed to confide in my friends. Outside of work I don’t have a life. Haven’t seen my folks in a minute. Lord, what happened to him to make him this way? Was it his mama? Was it me? He used to be nice to me. He used to say, “I love you.” Actually he still does tell me he loves me, but I know he doesn’t mean it. Does he? He can’t possibly love me and treat me this way. Can he? I’m numb. I’m scared. In a world filled with people, some happy, others just like me, I feel so all alone.

Lord, I love You but if You don’t save me this time, I’m going to have to repent in advance if that’s possible, because I swear, if he hits me one, I swear, just one more time…I’ma kill him dead…or die trying.

The choice is yours, Lord.

 

I’ve never abandoned you. All I have to say unto you is…the choice to stay or leave is yours. Always has been. Always will be. How can you claim you love Me and at the same time not love yourself? I am you and you, my child, are Me. I’ve already set you free. It’s already been done.

Freedom is a choice.

If you don’t want My blessings, you won’t receive My glory. I’ll simply give your blessings to someone who’s willing and ready to receive. You can’t get My blessings if you continue relying upon him instead of Me. It’s like winning the lottery but not knowing your numbers hit. My blessings unto you are useless if you don’t acknowledge the fact that they are yours.

Knowing is not enough. You must accept My blessings in order to attain a better life. You must embrace a higher level of consciousness. Every time you walk out of your front door, you decide to return, unlock the door, and enter the house. Knowing he’s there, knowing you haven’t put him out, knowing he’s going to continuously abuse you, yet you leave and then return day after day. Again and again you pray to Me, frantically begging that he’ll change. Your prayers have been answered because each time he becomes more and more violent.

Oh yes, he has to answer to Me. But when are you going to see that you, My child, are the one who must change? Your willingness to transition into a greater consciousness will determine your happiness, your goodness, your blessings, your glory…all you have to do is flip on the light switch and stop living in darkness. The electricity is already there. Use it.

Trust in Me. Your ability to connect to Me is there. Focus your attention on yourself, not him. The time has come for you to stop believing that your relationship with him is the only one you are worthy of.

Stop hiding behind your contrived smile. Stop crying yourself to sleep at night. Stop acting like everything is all right. Stop putting him before your children. My child, let not your heart be troubled. When you come out of your conscious coma, awaken to truth, take responsibility for your life, or next time, honestly, there won’t be a next time.

If you keep going back to him, I’ll see you soon…real soon.

She’s successful now. Money. Diamonds. Cars. Furs. To whom much was given, much was required. Let her tell it, and if anyone could’ve looked over her shoulder, I’m sure they would’ve agreed, not much was given unto her except grief and pain. She wasn’t different from most folks. Everybody had a story to tell. Practically rearing herself, how did she ever survive? Her entire childhood, no matter how hard she tried to please her mother, she was never good enough to measure up to her baby sister.

What good was having a parent who constantly put her down? A mother who shattered her self-esteem, never believed in her dreams, always leaving her to pick herself up every time she fell. Why was each of her lessons learned the hard way? Unfamiliar family made her feel like a stranger in her own home. Nah, growing up she never had a home. It was more like a halfway house. No amount of bricks and mortar could encapsulate a loving environment.

Maybe her father could’ve showered her with the love that her mother didn’t or simply wouldn’t, but she doubted her father knew she was alive. They could’ve exchanged breaths or broken bread at the same restaurant table at separate times. Her on Wednesday. Him on Thursday. Her life was full of unknowns. And even as a woman, she had no idea where to find her daddy. Perhaps one day she’d really try.

Flagstaff, Arizona, a town with a population of less than sixty thousand, somebody had to know…what she didn’t. His whereabouts. Without question the man who provided the seed to fertilize her mother’s egg had to be better than the henpecked man her mother had anxiously agreed to marry. Her stepfather-to-be was a virtual vagabond who’d violated her not-so-sweet sixteen innocence and changed her life forever. Inevitable change left unforgettable scars on her soul. Many cold days and sleepless nights she wished she was either dead or never born.

Oh well, by every means necessary, she did survive. The worst, she prayed, was all behind her now, specifically the two men who wanted her dead: her ex-man and her ex-boss. Because she’d never had a positive male role model, all of her exes added to the long list of reasons why she didn’t trust men. All the men in her life were satisfied as long as she gave them what they wanted. Did whatever they desired.

The johns who abused her were long gone too. Today, she was surrounded with good women she regretfully at times treated worse than…hm, let’s not dwell on the negativity that learned behavior begets. For once, everything in her life was perfect, including her new man.

For once in her life she was happy more than she was sad.

“You’re never going to be more than a trifflin’, lyin’ lil’ slut! You make me sick! My God, I wish I woulda followed my first mind and aborted your ass instead of listening to that deadbeat lying-ass motherfuckin’ daddy of yours. I can’t believe you up in here under my nose tryna fuck my man! Why can’t you be more like your sister? Get out of my house and this time stay the hell out!” were the last words I’d heard my mother say before she slammed the door in my face.

Was she referring to my baby sister? The golden can-do-no-wrong child?

What had I done this time?

It wasn’t my fault that on my sixteenth birthday, my mother’s fiancé saw in me what most men saw: a young, cute, innocent face, a firm, cellulite-free ass, perfect, plump, perky tits, and long legs stacked with a virgin cherry that they desperately wanted to burst. Well, he wasn’t positive about the virgin part until his hard calluses, dirty hands, and jagged fingernails slipped inside my pink panties. His stale morning hadn’t-brushed-his-yellowish-brown-teeth breath exhaled in my face as he squatted in front of my pussy. He poked, probed, gazed up at me, smiled, and then said, “Aw, man. You really are a preemie,” kissing my virgin lips while checking twice for confirmation.

“Ow, you’re hurting me,” I said, shoving his forehead. As I crossed my legs, the scratches on my kitty stung worse than paper cuts.

That incident happened over thirteen years ago, but psychologically it hurts like he violated me yesterday. To this day I can’t stand men with dirty or rough hands or bad breath or yellow teeth.

“I’ma tell Mama,” my sister had said, standing in the doorway, covering her big mouth.

I snapped, “Stch. Go tell Mama ’cause I ain’t do nothing wrong!”

Truth was I was very afraid, fearing Mama would side with Don and Honey. The only reason I’d let him find out I was untouched was that my mama constantly accused me of being a whore and a slut, so I wanted to prove her wrong. My sister was the fast one, sneaking boys into her room after Mama went to sleep, going to jail for petty theft, and staying out all night on the weekends smoking weed.

With any reason not to feed us or to have the house to herself with Don, Mama didn’t care where we went or how long we stayed. I guess my being the opposite of my sister hanging around the house reading books or listening to music most of the time invaded Mama’s privacy.

Don’s eyes widened. He swiftly sucked air into his mouth, snapping his head toward Honey. When he pushed me, I fell to the floor screaming, “Mama!”

My mother, Rita, raced into the family room, bypassing Honey. Rita stared down at me. Hatred narrowed her eyes that never blinked. I spread my legs, hoping she could see what Don had done to me. This was my chance to have him confess he was wrong and confirm I was pure. But he didn’t. I lay there trying to figure out why a grown man would take advantage of a minor and why my mother would let him.

Sinking into the gray carpet, I felt my ignorance giving me away to the streets when my mother deemed me competition as opposed to her little girl. True, most times I was guilty of something, but not trying to have sex with my mother’s man or the boys I went to Flagstaff High School with.

My heart exploded like a bomb when Mama believed her husband-to-be’s words, “Rita, get rid of her…your tramp of a daughter just offered me her pussy,” over mine. “Mama, I swear I didn’t, he’s lying. He stuck his finger between my legs. Go on, tell ’em I’m a virgin. Honey, you saw him. Tell Mama what he did,” I cried, spreading my legs wider this time. Instantly I’d become a casualty of compassion.

Before my sister answered, the strands of my ponytail wrapped around my mother’s fist. Content that he was out of the spotlight, Don sat on the sofa with his lint-filled Afro and sagging gut gargling beer like mouthwash while fingering the remote, flipping through channels like nothing was happening. Instead of helping me, Honey bent toward the floor, grabbing my white ankle socks. The tip of my brand-new tennis shoe slammed against her chin, knocking Honey on her ass.

It was an accident. I’d never done anything to hurt my sister. Honey was the only sibling I had.

Angrily, Mama dragged me faster. The rug beneath my butt felt like a flaming match frying through my skin. Frantically kicking the air, I yelled all the way to the door, “Bitch! Let me go! Grab his fuckin’ ass!” I peeled my fingers from the door hinge, barely escaping the slam!

That wasn’t my first time getting thrown out of the house, but it was my last time calling my mother what I’d wanted to call her for a long time. She was a bitch. Why I’d gotten kicked out every other month since I’d grown unusually large breasts twice the cup-size of my mother’s and sister’s put together, I didn’t know. How could my mother carry me for nine months, birth me, then despise me for being molested by her man?

Dressed in pink shorts, and a white shirt with a pink cat on the front, I stood outside the door for fifteen minutes praying my mother would open it. When she didn’t, I knew better than to bang on Rita’s door. The smell of Mama frying Sunday morning bacon and baking homemade buttermilk biscuits made me hungry. Surely Rita would slide me a plate or a slice of my birthday cake so I wouldn’t have to walk down the street to the Sunshine Rescue Mission.

I waited in vain, drifting off into thoughts about attending my first day of school tomorrow, celebrating with all the seniors, and getting my driver’s license in the mail. Within seconds all of my hopes of becoming the youngest valedictorian had become dismal. I sat on the steps watching the heat waves float through the hot air in Flagstaff, Arizona. Our small town was a short drive from the Grand Canyon, where lots of tourists came to see one of the seven natural wonders of the world. As a homeless child, I felt like the eighth wonder that no one cared about. People drove by me waving but all of them kept going.

Sitting alone on the steps gave me lots of time to daydream about the big city with bright lights. I’d heard lots of neighbors and students rave about Las Vegas, but I’d never been there. I heard that pretty girls made lots of money simply because they were cute like me. Vegas was over a hundred miles away from my house, too far for me to travel alone with no money.

The orange sunrays traded places with the blue moonlight. Gazing up at the stars, I questioned why I’d fallen into a bottomless pit so young, so innocent, and so afraid. Cursed for being beautiful, I slept on the ugly concrete porch until the break of dawn. The crackling of the front door startled me as I sadly looked up into my mother’s piercing brown eyes.

“Mama, please, I’m sorry. If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll stay in my room after school whenever he’s here, I promise.”

Desperately seeking my mother’s forgiveness, I apologized for Don’s faults. I had no place else to go. Not permanently. With her silver spiked heels, my mother stepped on me like a doormat and kept walking as if I were invisible: incapable of being seen.

Years later, at times I still felt I wasn’t perceptive to the human eye. Funny how back then I thought I was grown until I had to make it on my own. Over the past decade, I’d learned a lot about being a woman, not necessarily the easy way.

In my opinion, ninety-five percent of all women were abused at some point during their lifetime by their mothers, their fathers, their husbands, their boyfriends, strangers on the prowl seeking a rape victim or in my case all of the above. Living on the streets convinced me that the five percent who weren’t abused died at birth. If only I could’ve been so lucky.

My sister to this day still lives at home with our mother. An old high school acquaintance said Honey was dying of some rare form of cancer and that I was Honey’s closest possible match for a donor. Was that God’s way of paying my mother back? They didn’t need me then and I don’t need them now.

After my mother kicked me out I would’ve gone to live with my dad, but we never knew our father. And the way I saw it, any man who’d abandon his children was the worst type of abuser. Forget that lame bullshit about the mother keeping him away. I swore I was never having kids. My daddy had a choice! He could’ve fought for joint custody, weekends, supervised visitation, something. Anything was better than nothing. The one time we asked about our father, our mom cursed us out.

“Jean St. Thomas’s green-eyed, slick-haired red ass ain’t shit! Never was shit! Ain’t never gon’ be shit! Sorry-ass son of a bitch ain’t never paid one damn dime to help me take care of y’all and if you ask me about him again I’ma beat y’all’s ass! Now, get out of my face!” Then she mumbled, “That good-for-nothing-but-a-wet-dream bastard better not ever call me again asking to see y’all.”

Daddy wanted to see us?

My green eyes filled with tears at the thought that my mother hated me but wouldn’t let my daddy love me. I guess I was light-skinned with straight hair like my father, because my mom and sister had skin like dark brown sugar and hair equally coarse.

Whatever, I didn’t need any of them. I was fine. Honestly I was. But it still hurts that after all these years Mama never inquired about where I was until Honey got sick. Mama didn’t care if I never came back. If she could suction my marrow through a straw over the phone, she would do so, then hang up in my face without saying thanks. Maybe one day I’d go back to her in my white-on-white or my black-on-black Jaguar and show her how successful I’d become.

I still blamed and will never forgive my mother for the life I was forced to live after being kicked out. As an involuntary high school dropout, I’d hitchhiked and moved in with my instant twenty-three-year-old boyfriend who brutally stole my virginity, then yelled at my ass every other day like he was bipolar. He had me so screwed up in the head I jumped every time he spoke. I’d leave the house and forget to put on my shoes. I’d pour orange juice on his cereal instead of milk because I was so afraid he’d beat me if I didn’t get him what he wanted fast enough. After six months together, I slept in the doghouse that was inside the garage just to stay out of the way of his fists.

At seventeen I ran away and married only what I could describe as Charles Manson’s offspring. Brutally he stomped my ass daily, I think either for his amusement or for his daily thirty-minute workout. The reason I stayed was, once again, I didn’t have any place to go, nor did I have any money. That was another lesson learned.

Men controlled women by making women dependent upon them for everything from food and clothes to shelter. So for an entire year, if my husband had a bad day, I had a worse night. But what I did have was enough sense to realize if I didn’t find the courage to escape, one day a coroner would carry me out in a body bag and deliver me to Rita’s, only for her to write return to sender on my toe tag.

Before leaving his ass I stole a blowup doll, inflated it, then doused his bed and the doll with six gallons of ketchup mixed with two gallons of gasoline, praying his ass would light one last cigarette.

I went to a pleasure store and stole four dildos that looked exactly like his dick, hiding them under my skirt. The first dick I chopped off the head with a butcher’s knife, then sliced the shaft into tiny confettisized pieces and left the plastic floating in his toilet. The second one I set on fire on top of his gas-burning stove and left it there with a tent card that read last meal. The third one I ground in his blender on PUREE until the motor shot bluish red sparks into the smoky air. And the fourth one I poured fire-red fingernail polish over the head, watched it bleed down the sides, then drilled an ice pick into the piss hole and left it on his doorstep with a note, Fuck and beat this, you piece of shit! If you come after me, your motherfuckin’ dick is next! I guarantee it!

Needless to say I never heard from him again. Hopefully because he’d flicked that lighter and burned to death. If by some misfortune he was alive, his cruel abusive ass probably thought I was the crazy one.

On my eighteenth birthday, I moved into the Pussyland Ranch and didn’t move out until I was twenty-nine and went to work for Valentino James as a madam. Eleven grueling years on my back with my legs spread open was no easy feat, but where could I earn decent money with no diploma? After fucking a different john every day during my first three years at Pussyland, I became the top-requested girl. The high demand allowed me to establish a regular clientele, granting myself two days on and two days off. On holidays my nonnegotiable rate of three hundred dollars an hour tripled.

Working for Valentino helped me maintain my sanity and gave my body a much-needed rest. Instantly my twelve female escorts depended on me, and in return I relied upon them for my five-figure monthly paycheck. I especially counted on my personal favorite, Sunny Day.

There was something special about Sunny. Something beyond her striking beauty. Something deeper than her almond-shaped eyes that beamed rays of light. Sunny was unique. She was young, vibrant, and enthusiastic about life. Sunny possessed the passion I lacked, and although she didn’t know it, in many ways she’d helped me. I wasn’t there yet, but occasionally I felt the desire to genuinely care about her and the other girls I’d hired. Kinda like how I wished my mother would’ve loved me. Sunny didn’t have an old soul; she had a wise spirit beyond her years. Always happy, motivating the other girls, and willing to work extra hard to please her clients. Sunny’s invincible, indispensable take-charge leadership personality reminded me of myself when I first started prostituting.

For me, prostitution provided a much-needed clean and safe place to live off of the hot, sweltering, or freezing snow-covered streets of Nevada. I wasn’t always cold and callous. My God, I hoped Sunny didn’t end up like me. She wouldn’t. Tonight I’d decided Valentino could take Onyx or Starlet off the circuit for himself, but at the end of the month, three days from now, I was firing Sunny for her own good. Sunny needed to do what I couldn’t…go home to a mother and father who loved her.

It was too late for me. I’d been in the game so long I didn’t know how to get out. Didn’t know what else I’d do. I’d been mentally, physically, sexually, spiritually, financially, you name it, taken advantage of. The only thing left for someone to take was my life and that’s what was not going to happen without a fight. Whether I’d win or lose didn’t matter to me as long as I never again voluntarily allowed anyone to beat me. I’d paid my dues. In some ways I was stronger. In many ways, wiser. Now it was my turn to take control of my life.

Abuse damaged me. Abuse was not cute and it took me a while to learn that abuse was not love. The next man who laid hands on Lace St. Thomas was one dead motherfucka.

Day one of the seventy-two-hour countdown to Sunny’s freedom, I envisioned Mommy sitting on the front row before a naughty professor raising her hand instead of spreading her legs to make a good impression. Sunny had the prettiest pussy of all my girls. The first time I peeled open her outer lips, I saw her slim pinkish shaft extending down to a mocharidged flap exposing a succulent pierced clitoris.

“Did this hurt?” I recalled asking while I teased the silver bar with pea-sized balls on both ends.

“Yes, Madam. Hell yes.” Her wide smile flashed perfectly aligned teeth. “But it feels nice now, Madam. I like it. I have my own set of balls and they sure do drive men crazy.”

Sunny started playing with her own pussy and she never flinched when I French-kissed her.

“Tell me why I should hire you?” I’d asked her, applying a drop of gel to my fingertip. Teasing her clit in a slow circular motion, I dripped another drop onto the b. . .