Sociopath?

by Vicki Williams

  “No.”

  “Okay, here’s the way it works. When a girl reaches puberty, which you’re probably almost there, she has what are called periods. That means, every month she has a few days when she bleeds from between her legs. It’s going to happen one of these days so don’t be scared when it does. It’s just a natural thing. I snuck into Annecy’s room and got some Kotex.” He brought one out. “See, you just put them down in your panties. They’ve got these adhesive strips that make them stick on. They soak up the blood. I put a package in the bathroom under the sink. Some girls have bad stomach cramps when they have their period. I also snagged you some pills called Midols. They’re in the medicine cabinet. If you start your period and have a stomach ache, take one of them. They say it helps to put a hot water bottle on your belly too if it’s really bad. Do you have any questions about any of this, Lane?”

  “It sounds yucky. I don’t think I’m going to like it.”

  “Probably not, but you’ll have to get used to it because you’ll be putting up with it for a long time.”

  She was glad it was Rafe who told her about periods. She probably would have been embarrassed to talk to her mother or one of her sisters about such personal stuff but there was nothing she couldn’t talk to Rafe about.

  * *

  No parent had ever attended any of their parent-teacher conferences.

  “God,” said Mr Leslie, “if I had a son like Rafe Vincennes, I’d want to go to his conferences just to collect all the kudos. He’s never gotten anything other than an A in his whole school career. He’s going to graduate next year with an A plus average and take all advanced courses in what would normally be his senior year and the kid’s only 14. He got the highest SAT scores any Benedict student ever received. He’s got the most yards per carry of anyone on the football team; the most home runs on the baseball team and the highest point per game average on the basketball team. They’ve got what seems to be a dream child and it’s like they don’t even notice!”

  “Well, you know, he’s got eight brothers and sisters. Maybe they just got tired of being parents.”

  “It’s turned him into a self-sufficient little shit, I’ll say that for him. It doesn’t seem to bother him any. He appears to be totally self-reliant.”

  “I was teaching elementary when Linda Dee had him in her class. She told me she thought he was a sociopath.”

  “What the hell was she talking about? I’ve never seen anyone more well-adjusted than Rafe Vincennes.”

  *

  Rafe had learned a lot about smiling by then. He still didn’t do it frequently but he knew when it would do him the most good. He spent a great deal of time studying people when they weren’t aware of it. He sensed that he wasn’t quite normal (although he’d read up on sociopathy by then and he was far from convinced that he fit the classic definition). Because he mistrusted people, he ignored what they said but watched to see what they actually did instead, which usually wasn’t the same thing at all. Humility, for instance. It was supposed to be an admirable quality, but that was just lip service. Humility was more often viewed as arrogance in disguise.

  The reality was that it was easy to mold the opinion most people had of you because, unlike him, they would usually buy right into whatever you presented to them. You couldn’t take credit for things you couldn’t achieve, of course, or you’d be looked down on as a braggart but someone had told him once that it wasn’t bragging if you could back it up and Rafe could always back it up. He hadn’t found anything yet he couldn’t excel at if he set his mind to it. Like chess. One of his teachers asked him if he’d be interested in learning how to play chess and within a month, Rafe was winning every game. Mr. Dean hadn’t seemed upset about it though. He told Rafe he only wanted to see if that’s what would happen like he expected it would and it did, so Rafe guessed it was sort of a test to check a theory Mr Dean had about him.

  He felt like what he was doing was building a library of emotional reactions so that he could call on the most effective one depending on the occasion. He knew when he should be a little cocky (making the winning touchdown in football, for example) because that’s what people wanted and expected and when he needed to lend a sympathetic ear. He knew how much it pleased people when he flattered them (“we would never have won if the defensive line hadn’t been so awesome). He grinned a little to himself. He’d become a whiz at faking sincerity and the smile was part of that. He had checked its effect many times since Miss Dee’s class and found it could change enemies into friends and suspicion into trust and that when he turned it on full-bore, the happy recipient could almost always be convinced to see things his way. He’d also learned that it worked equally as well with males as females.

  The truth was that his old school counselor had been right. He didn’t much care what people thought of him, not really. It was more like an intellectual challenge. He approached it like he would about learning any subject. Pleasing People or Physics. You could get an A+ in either one if you put the time and effort into learning the relevant formulas.

  If there was one thing he couldn’t do anything about, it was his eyes. If he stared at some people too long, he could sense them getting nervous so he’d taught himself to only look at them directly for a few seconds before turning his gaze. He used the smile to deflect attention from the eyes. When he looked away, they only saw curly black lashes, as long as any girl’s.

  ~ ~ ~

  CHAPTER 2

  By the time Rafe was 13, he was sexually active. What he did with Lane didn’t count. That was a special thing that was self-contained in a whole different compartment in his life. That would always exist no matter what else happened. He owned Lane and always would.

  He was still as lean and lithe as he had been as a child but his body was harder now and stronger. He still made people think of a feral cat. His movements appeared so sinuous and languid that it was always surprising how quickly he was suddenly somewhere else. The eyes of school girls, and sometimes teachers, followed him down the hall, drawn to those narrow hips clad in tight jeans. His face had become more refined too with nothing left of the little boy. Now he was all high cheekbones and chiseled features. He still wore his black hair a little too long so that he was always having to brush it out of his eyes. He had no idea, or maybe he did, how many females had the urge to reach out and brush it back for him. Sometimes, they were so much older, they flushed thinking about having such thoughts about a 13-year-old. The black eyes that made some anxious drew others, although they didn’t make even those people feel comfortable, more like they were turned on by the possibility of living dangerously. He was tan as a gypsy, all over, because when he sunbathed on the boat, he preferred being naked.

  So, if anything, when it came to females, his biggest challenge was narrowing down his choices. He gravitated toward the older girls because they had cars and a car meant being able to get to the cabin on Mount Vincennes where they could have sex in private. There was never any competition for the cabin now because all the others were grown and gone. Even Annecy was 19 and in college. So it was his own little sexual kingdom and he took full advantage of it.

  Sometimes, when he heard a girl moaning beneath him as she reached her climax, he silently tipped his hat to Lane. She’d been his little sexual guinea pig. Because she trusted him so much, she was completely open and unself-conscious about telling him what felt the best and he transferred those revelations to the other females in his life.

  It worked out very well because so many girls, he’d learned, weren’t like Lane. They were shy and backward about letting you know what pleased them. They just left it up to him to guess, but he didn’t have to guess. He knew exactly what to do. It was one of his claims to fame, although only expressed inwardly, that no female ever left the cabin without having been brought to orgasm. He didn’t see them as notches on his belt exactly but he placed a mental checkmark beside each name as she sighed in satisfaction.

  “My God, how did you get so g
ood at this at 13?” they would ask, “I’ve slept with college men who haven’t a clue how to satisfy a girl like you do.”

  And that was a good time, he’d discovered, to flash his smile and then lean down to kiss them so they didn’t want to talk anymore.

  *

  His worst problem with girls turned out to be how to gently get rid of them when he was ready to move on. He never fell in love with any of them. Actually, he thought of them as being more or less interchangeable. He’d learned to call them all Sweetheart. That way he’d never hurt their feelings by saying the wrong name if he forgot just which one was giving him a blow job at the time. He liked a lot of them just fine but he always looked forward to seeing what the next one would be like.

  *

  After some trial and error, he found that it was best just to be blunt.

  “I’ve really enjoyed being with you,” he would say to cushion the blow, “but I’m not a one-girl kind of guy. Let’s just remember the fun we had and let it go at that. Now, c’mon, Sweetheart, and give me a kiss good-bye”.

  Sometimes they were pretty unhappy. He’d had criers and he’d had screamers, but usually all he had to do was stare them down with those unsettling black eyes and they subsided quickly enough. They probably knew anyway what to expect because he had definitely developed a reputation for lovin’em and leavin’em and even though some of them might have hoped to change his nature, most likely they guessed shortly into it that it wasn’t going to happen.

  * *

  At fourteen, he became involved with the bored housewife on the next estate over from Heron Point. They met when they were out on their respective boats. Sun-worshipper that he was, he’d been lying on the deck, baking, enjoying the rocking of the waves, listening to the seagulls cry, breathing in the fishy fragrance of the bay. He heard her call over, “hey, neighbor!” She’d recognized the name of the cigarette boat, Hard Charger, from having seen it tied up to the Heron Point dock.

  He stood, naked. “Hey, neighbor, yourself.”

  He enjoyed hearing her catch her breath a little seeing him but he made no move to put on his trunks. She herself wore a turquoise bikini. He thought she was probably in her middle 30’s, a very beautiful middle 30’s. She was sleekly golden from head to toe - a lovely gold body, long gold hair, gold-flecked hazel eyes.

  “I’m Alexis. I live next door to you.”

  “Are you the people who bought Bay Front?”

  “Yes, we just moved in about a month ago.”

  “You’ll like it here - we’re a friendly bunch.”

  Flirtatiously, “how friendly?”

  “Most of us are very friendly and a few of us are extremely friendly.”

  “And which one are you?”

  “Depends on how friendly you want me to be.” His cock was getting hard. He looked down at it and grinned that quick grin. “In fact, I think I’m feeling friendlier by the minute.”

  “My husband’s in Hong Kong. It’s been pretty lonesome being where you don’t know anyone. Would you like to come over for lunch?”

  “No,” he said, “I’m not hungry but I’m open to a better offer. I’m not much of a game player, Alexis, (chuckling inwardly as he said it, thinking if he had been Pinocchio, his nose would have just grown about a foot), just tell me what you want.” It was a setup on his part, of course.

  “I want you to fuck me, does that answer meet with your approval, Sir?”

  Bingo! With that response, he knew exactly what role he’d need to play. He thought most females gave you clues about their innermost sexual desires right away if you could read them and he had an innate ability to interpret those signals. He knew with this one, he’d have to be the master, whether she realized it about herself yet or not.

  “That’s the answer I was looking for.” (And, in a way that was true). “I’ll meet you there.”

  “Oh, by the way, what’s your name?”

  “Rafe.”

  *

  It was his first time with a mature woman and he had to admit it was one hell of a learning experience. The first time, he fucked her in the hot tub and she went down on him on the deck. Then they did it all again on her big brass bed. In the morning, she woke him sucking his nipples and fondling his balls and when he was stiff, she got on top and rode him hard until they lay beside one another, panting and replete.

  *

  “Where were you, Rafe,” Lane asked him when he came whistling down the hall. “You’ve stayed out late before but never all night.”

  “I slept over with a friend, Laney.”

  “I never knew you had a friend, Rafe.”

  And that was true. He was friendly to everyone but friends with no one. He’d never invited another guy home with him to go riding or boating, didn’t hang out after school. He felt no need to confide in anyone about anything.

  “Well,” he said, “I expect this will be a short-term relationship.”

  *

  When he walked into her waterfront mansion the next time, she was spread-eagled on her kitchen table with dollops of whipped cream covering her nipples and her box.

  “Dessert first, Baby,” she told him. “Come and eat me.”

  He slipped out of his shorts which was all he was wearing.

  Under the whipped cream was raspberry sauce and under that was hot fudge. He licked it off until he came to her bare skin and he kept licking until she was murmuring in anticipation. Then he moved away and simply waited. She opened her eyes.

  “Why are you stopping, Rafe? Keep going. I’m so close!”

  “I think I’ll stop unless you can convince me how bad you need it.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Her golden eyes were sloe-eyed with lust.

  “Lift your legs as high as you can and spread them as far apart as you can. Hold yourself open. Show me how eager you are. Beg me, Lexie.”

  She did as he said, lifting her long, honey gold legs as high as she could get them and moving them apart until she was almost doing the splits lying down, holding herself apart. “Please, Rafe, please, finish me. Please, Baby!”

  “Are you begging?”

  “Yes!”

  “Say it then.”

  “I’m begging, Rafe. I’m begging you to make me come!” Her voice was hoarse.

  He leaned down into her, licking and sucking and tracing magic figure eights on her clit with his tongue until she called out to him - “Oh, God, oh, God, oh God, oh Rafe!”

  Rafe didn’t get off on power trips, necessarily, he just like doing whatever it took to light her fire.

  “Now get up. It’s my turn.”

  She rose and he took her place on the table.

  “Give me the whole treatment - the fudge, the raspberry sauce, the whipped cream.”

  Carefully, she bedecked his nipples and his cock with all the ingredients, then began licking and sucking.

  When he was hard and ready, she said, “now you beg me, Rafe.”

  “Come here for a minute,” he told her.

  When she came close, he took a handful of her long, blonde hair and pulled her face close to his.

  “No, Sweetheart, that’s not the way it will ever be. You will always be the beggar. Now, let me hear you plead to be allowed to make me come.”

  For a moment, it seemed as if she was going to resist until that gleaming smile flashed across his face.

  “Please, Rafe, please let me suck you. I want to feel your cock in my mouth. I’m pleading with you, Rafe.”

  “Good girl, do it, Lexie.”

  *

  That time set the tone for their future relationship. She discovered that his dominance and her submission turned her inside out with desire, and he was happy to oblige. He knew it made her hot when he pinched her nipples just enough to hurt or slapped her face hard enough to sting. She liked him to plunge his cock into her ass and pump her so hard that she cried from the pain even as she was having an orgasm. She liked being given orders to wait on him, washing him in the bathtub,
then drying him off, before giving him a massage - or bringing him breakfast in bed, having to wait until he was done before she was allowed to eat herself. Sometimes, he made her crawl to him on her hands and knees and then stay on all fours in front of him while he finished watching the ballgame, ignoring her, until finally he gave her permission to take his cock in her mouth.

  He stopped at the pet store and bought a gold lame dog collar. The next time, he went to her house, he fastened it around her lovely neck.

  “I don’t want you to take it off. As long as you have it on, it means you’re my property.”

  “Oh, Rafe,” she told him, “I’d do anything for you, anything at all.”

  “I know, Lexie. What I want you to do right now is lick me all over. Make sure you’re careful because if you miss a spot, I’ll have to make you begin again. You can start in the back. When you’re done, Sweetheart, I’ll screw you for your reward.”

  She began with his toes and worked her way up, being very, very careful to cover every single inch of him.

  *

  Three weeks it lasted. Lane was getting really upset with him because she was feeling so neglected. He’d barely had anything to do with her since this all started with Alexis. He came home late and when he did, he was fucking tired. He thought it was getting about time to rehearse the old “sorry” speech when she told him her husband was going to be back that night from Hong Kong and they’d have to stop until he left again. But she assured him that he travelled a lot and it wouldn’t be long until he went on another trip. She told him that she loved him more than she’d ever loved anyone in her life and she could hardly bear the thought of being apart from him.

  And he was thinking, “oh, oh, I don’t even want to be hearing this.”

  He fingered the gold collar. “You might want to take this off, Sweetheart, before your husband gets home.”

  She didn’t know he had absolutely no intention of ever seeing her again. He’d been there and done that and he was ready to travel on. As he moved along the path back over to Heron Point, he was wondering about who would be next. A sexual shape-shifter, he could be whatever they needed him to be. If they wanted a swashbuckling pirate who would take them by force, he could be that. If they wanted a romantic poet who would seduce them with sensitivity, he could be that too. It all came out the same in the end. In the meantime, there was always Lane.