And her breath would hitch and her eyes would shine. “If you must. I can take it.”
What she meant was, she loved it.
I’d take her into a private place in the school and make her face the wall, then I’d spank her round little ass so hard that she whimpered with pain every time she sat down for days afterward. She’d orgasm from the spanking, burying her face in her arm and muffling her shamed moans.
Oh God, I miss the way my life was back then.
Our last good day is burned into my memory like the after-image of a dream.
We were on my parents’ estate, lying on the grass, staring up at the clouds. My hand was folded around hers. Her parents and my parents sat on a small pavilion, sipping coffee and eating beignets, watching us but pretending not to, a few hundred yards away.
My dog, Pascale, a big shaggy mutt from the pound, ran by wagging his tail, and an expression of sadness drifted across Camille’s face. She was upset because her dog, Fido, was missing. I’d been investigating on my own time, and it turned out that many other dogs had also gone missing in the neighborhood near where she lived.
To distract her, I started talking about our future.
“When we’re married, I’m going to tie you to our bed every night and do anything I want to you,” I informed her.
She made a scoffing sound. “What makes you think I’ll let you?”
“Because I smelled your fingers just now and they smelled like sweet honeysuckle,” I said, smiling lazily at her. “And because you like doing what I tell you to.”
She blushed furiously, looking away. “I don’t know why I put up with you,” she muttered.
“Because you love me.”
“And do you love me?” She looked at me challengingly.
“What will you do for me if I say it?” I lay back and stared up at the clouds.
“If you can’t say it because you mean it, then don’t bother.” She pulled her hand from mine, and her voice was huffy and held a little hurt. I loved that she didn’t take my crap. It made the dominance so much sweeter. I’d never go too far, never crush her spirit, because her fire and feistiness were what turned me on.
“You know I do,” I said to her. I was never the type to gush, but for Camille, I’d change as much as I was capable, pushing past the instinctive discomfort that came when I acknowledged my feelings. She was the only one who made me feel warm inside. I thought I probably felt love for my parents and siblings, or at least I felt a protectiveness, but the supernova heat of my love for her made the feelings for my family shrink to a sputtering campfire.
“My parents are going out of town this weekend,” she said suddenly. “They’re leaving me with the maid. She drinks a lot and passes out every afternoon when they go away. I could come meet you.” Her eyes widened at her own boldness, and her voice trembled a little, sending a pulsing ache through my loins.
“By the waterfront, Saturday, noon,” I said to her. “You know the place.” It was near enough to where she lived that she could get there quickly.
Her gaze dropped shyly. “We could find a place to be alone for a few hours and…you know.”
“No,” I said decisively.
“No?” Her eyes widened in shock, and tears shimmered. She was offering herself to me. Sweet, innocent, sheltered Camille. I knew how huge this was for her.
“We’re going to wait until we get married. I’m hoping it can be when we turn eighteen, but if we have to wait until I graduate from college, that’s fine too. And then I’ll take your virginity on our wedding night.” I was completely confident she’d save herself for me. After all, I was saving myself for her.
“Oh,” she said, and her hurt look faded and her lips curled up into a secret smile.
“I have your ring picked out,” I told her.
“You do?” she said wonderingly, looking at me with all the love in the world.
“And you can pick your wedding dress, but I’ll pick what you wear underneath it. Or don’t wear. I think I’d like you to walk down the aisle bare under your dress.”
“Bastien!” Scandalized, a blush rose to her cheeks. Her chest rose and fell quickly, the way it always did when she was turned on.
“I haven’t decided yet.” I grinned fiercely at her. My gaze roved over her thin T-shirt. Her nipples were hard.
My heart was so full.
“Bastien. Bastien. Wake up,” a voice says urgently. “We don’t have a lot of time.”
I groan and make a swatting motion.
I don’t want to wake up.
“Bastien. Your parents set you up. There was no car accident. Damn it, Bastien, wake up so you can get out of here!” A man’s voice, sharp and impatient. “Bastien! You’re not safe here!”
The voice is lying, and I must be on some very heavy drugs, because I sink back into blissful sleep.
Except it’s not blissful anymore.
Damn the voice. Damn my life.
Damn Camille.
Because now I’m back on the worst day of my life. I’m dreaming about the day it all ended.
Chapter Four
Bastien
I was in a dirt cellar, standing over the poor, tortured body of Camille’s dog. Fido had died days ago, and his body stank, and splotches of blood stained his pale fur. My heart pounded with rage.
I had tracked the dog killer down to this very cellar, underneath a boarded-up building in a stinking alley. A surly Moroccan sailor who spat curses at me when he saw me. He was holding a whimpering, struggling mutt by the collar, and he’d already cut it once. I stepped closer to him, and the look in my eyes dried up those curses in his mouth. He dropped his bloody knife and ran. The dog ran too, shooting out of the cellar like a rocket.
I grabbed the knife and chased him, caught him, and carved him up very slowly.
That was earlier this morning. Afterward I’d cut him to pieces and stuffed him in a dumpster. I wished I’d had more time, but I was supposed to meet Camille in an hour. I returned to the cellar because I figured I’d just have enough time to take the body of her dog and bury it with some respect. Poor thing.
Filled with sorrow, I crouched down over it and stroked its fur, the bloody knife still clenched in my hand. I wasn’t very careful back in those days.
And then I heard a voice cry out in horror.
“Bastien!” It was Camille. She must have been wandering the neighborhood and spotted me going into the cellar. She stood at the bottom of the cellar stairs with a look on her face that I will never forget. Disgust, rage…fear. Genuine fear.
Her fists were balled and her eyes were on the knife. My heart lurched when I realized she thought I’d killed her dog. Made him suffer.
“Damn you, Bastien!” she shrieked. “Why would you do that? Why?”
“I didn’t kill him! I found him!” I dropped the knife on the ground. Like that would help.
“Did you do it because I loved him so much? I knew you were jealous of other boys, but jealous of my dog?” Her voice was a desperate wail, torn from her throat.
“Camille, I would never hurt a dog!” I protested. “I love dogs, you know that!”
“Do you think I’m stupid?” she screeched. “You’re in a basement, standing over the body of my dog with a knife in your hand! You sick, disgusting pig! You monster! I hate you!”
Every word was a body-blow. I felt myself shattering.
She couldn’t speak to me like that. She was mine. She had to love me. She had to. My existence depended on it—her love was woven into the threads of my very being. I could make her do anything I wanted her to. I could make her love me again.
I dropped the knife, leaped to my feet, and started to run toward her, and she let out the most piercing, shattering scream I’ve ever heard and shot up the stairs, running for her life.
I chased after her. I knew how to bend her and break her. I’d make her listen to me, then I’d make her say sorry for ever thinking I could do such a thing. I’d make her say it again a
nd again; she’d be on her knees begging me for forgiveness.
But as I rounded the corner of the alley, I saw her running toward a blue-uniformed member of the Police Municipale.
She would never snitch on me.
But she did.
She pointed at me, babbling. I stood there, a block away, struck dumb. I couldn’t hear the words, but I saw the look of disgust and anger on the officer’s face.
There was no point in running.
The knife was lying next to the dog’s body.
I wasn’t a criminal mastermind, but I did understand the basics of forensics.
There would be blood from the man I’d just killed mingled with blood from the dog—because I’d used his own knife on him. My fingerprints would be on the knife.
If I was lucky, they wouldn’t do an analysis of the blood on the knife and realize that some of it was human. They would just think I’d killed the dog.
And that was a best-case scenario.
I walked toward the officer, keeping my face calm. Another officer was walking toward us, and Camille ran to him, hiding behind him. I was blank with shock. She peered out from behind his broad back, and I could see from the look on her face that she didn’t love me anymore.
My heart detonated inside my body, spewing shards of agony. My feet kept moving, the world kept turning, and yet the universe had just gone dark.
She hadn’t even given me a chance to explain. If she had, I would have confessed to her. I would have put my life in her hands. I would have told her about the man I’d killed and taken her to where I had hidden his body parts.
But she didn’t deserve the truth now.
I still loved her, but dark tendrils of hate snaked through my heart and squeezed it, turning my love poisonous. I didn’t even speak to the police officer, except to tell him I didn’t kill Camille’s dog. He took me to the station and sat me down, looking at me like a pile of shit he’d just stepped in.
When my parents arrived a little while later, they were somber and quiet.
Surely they would believe me, I thought. They’d known me their entire lives. They knew I loved animals. They knew me.
But they didn’t believe me. As we drove home, as I tried to explain I had been searching for Camille’s dog and smelled something bad coming from that cellar, they cut me off. My mother, her voice shaking, said that Camille had told the police she’d seen me stabbing her dog.
That fucking bitch.
Why? Why would she say that? She’d seen no such thing. I understood her telling on me, sort of, but lying about what she’d seen? She’d just slammed the lid shut on my coffin and nailed it tight.
I was disgusted, heartbroken, full of sorrow and hate and humiliation. I’d already grown up doubting myself, wondering why I had such sick, dark urges. To have everyone look at me like I was a filthy, evil monster was just confirmation of everything I’d ever suspected about myself.
When we entered the house, the servants and my siblings were nowhere in sight. They must have been sent away to one of the other houses on the property. We sat down in the foyer, my parents looking so grim and miserable you’d think I’d been diagnosed with cancer.
I tried to fight back. I pointed out that the dog had been dead for several days now. Why would I have been stabbing it?
I expected that my parents would be delighted I’d presented such a logical argument. Shouldn’t they be looking for reasons to believe me?
But no. My father said that someone who was disturbed enough to torture a dog would likely be disturbed enough to return to the kill site and mutilate the corpse. When I tried to argue about how ridiculous that was, he rattled off the name of several serial killers who’d revisited the corpses of their victims.
“You think I’m a serial killer now?” I snapped, and I saw my mother’s face go waxy-pale. “Mom,” I said furiously. “You know me! Why do you believe her over me?”
“We’re not just taking her word for it,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “It’s the evidence. It’s logic. How could you possibly have known where her dog was, in such an out of the way place, unless you put it there?”
“Because I was looking everywhere to find him,” I said. “And you could smell it from the alley! I already told you that!”
But I saw the look in their eyes, hopeless and despairing, and knew I was screwed.
Sure, I could tell them the truth about the man who really was killing the dogs, but that would mean confessing to murder. Being thought of as a boy who would kill a dog was horrible, but confessing to murder would mean a lengthy stint in a juvenile treatment facility and a black mark on my record for the rest of my life. And my parents would be even more horrified and revolted at the thought of me killing a human.
For that matter, if I took them to the body of the man I’d cut up into pieces, that wouldn’t prove I hadn’t killed Camille’s dog. I could easily have killed both him and the dog.
So I pressed my lips together and stared at my father without saying a word.
“There have been other indicators that worried us before this,” my father said, rubbing at his eyes with his hand in a gesture of great weariness. “You’ve always seemed to be interested in violence and killing. We know about some searches you made on your school computers. I know you thought you were anonymous, but you weren’t. And the books you choose from our library, and the way you get when you’re doing your martial arts training. You like to inflict pain.”
I went very still. They had been watching me without my realizing it, because they knew there was something wrong with me. I hadn’t fooled them after all. They’d always known.
The sorrow and self-hatred that poured through me were almost too much to bear, so I banished them. I wrapped a wall of stone around my heart to protect it. “Camille is a liar,” I said coldly. “And I’m not going to keep arguing my case. Believe me or don’t. I have no plans to beg for forgiveness for something I didn’t do.”
“Why would she lie about something like this?” My father’s tone was calm and reasonable, but I could see the enormous strain on his face.
“Because I was seeing another girl at school and she found out.” The falsehood slipped easily from my tongue.
My father’s cool gaze never wavered. “Well, that would make you another kind of liar, wouldn’t it?”
I was watching their love for me wither and die. I couldn’t bear to breathe the air in that room, so poisoned with despair and disappointment.
“I would like to go to my room now.”
They made me give them my cell phone and let me go back to my room.
I had another phone hidden behind a loose plank in the floor of my room, a phone I’d bought with money extorted from students at school. I used that phone to search for internet sites that would satisfy my perverse urges. If my parents ever saw what I’d searched for, they’d flip their shit.
I called up my friend Simon, the leader of my little pack of sycophants, and gave him my version of what had happened. I pointed out the ridiculousness of the notion that I’d be in a cellar stabbing the rotting corpse of a dog, and unlike my parents, Simon believed me and was furious with Camille on my behalf.
I told him terrible things about her. I said that Camille was a filthy nympho who loved to suck cock. I told him she liked it up the ass. I described other things she’d done with me, and with other boys, and I told him that she’d made up lies about me and got me arrested because she’d found out that I was having sex with her best friend.
Word would be out all over school tomorrow. She’d ruined me, so I was ruining her right back.
Then I methodically destroyed my phone and returned the pieces to their hiding place.
Shortly after that, my father came in with a dinner tray for me and told me I was confined to my room.
“Will someone walk Pascale for me?” I asked.
My father shook his head. “We’ve sent him to live with friends.”
They’ve sent away
my dog because they think I’d hurt him. My stony heart ached. I’d got Pascale as a puppy. I loved that dog. I’d had him for six years.
I didn’t beg or cry. I just looked at my father with pure hatred and didn’t say a word.
The next morning, I was sent away to a psychiatric institute. Doctors and counselors questioned me all day long, putting little electrodes on my skull and a blood pressure cuff on my arm. They showed me Rorschach blots and tried to figure out if I was a psychopath or a sociopath, eager to label my particular brand of madness. I’d already read about the tests for psychopathy online, and they were stupidly easy to fake, so I did.
They showed me pictures of gruesome torture while monitoring my pulse. I knew how to control my heartbeat. I knew it would be bad if I looked at pictures of mutilated bodies and remained calm, so I made my heart speed up and manufactured grimaces of distaste.
The doctors knew I was lying to them, but they couldn’t prove a thing.
After a month, my parents sent a limo driver and a bodyguard to fetch me. When I got home and settled in my room, which no longer had a lock on the door, my father came to speak to me. I put down the book I was reading and looked at him.
“We’ve spoken to Camille’s parents.” He leaned on the wall and anger and disapproval dripped from his voice.
“And why would that interest me?” I’d never spoken to my father like that before, but the only way I could survive this was walling away my feelings for my parents forever.
He let his temper show. Once upon a time, the look in his eyes would have frightened me. It didn’t anymore. For me to be frightened, I’d have to have something to lose, and I cared about nothing now. Not my life, not anybody else’s.
“You will fucking take this seriously, and you will change your tone, or I’ll take my belt to you,” he said.
“Go ahead.”
My mother had been lingering in the hallway. She rushed in. “No!” she said furiously. “It won’t change a thing. I forbid it.”
My father stalked out into the hallway, and she followed him, and I heard the two of them yelling at each other. They’d never fought before, not like this. I’d never heard them raise their voices to each other.
Camille, Claimed Page 3