Camille, Claimed

by Ginger Talbot

  “I’ll slice your pussy off,” he hisses, and the tip of his thickness nudges my entrance. “Put your hands on the balcony. Brace yourself.” I do. And impossibly, I’m wet, and he forces himself inside me an inch or two. He begins kissing my neck with his soft lips and moves his hand down to stroke the tiny pink pearl between my legs.

  I sob out loud, but the people below us can’t see my tears—all they can see is a naked whore being taken from behind on a balcony. Taunts from high school ring in my ears as the people below us laugh and shout up at us. I see people taking out cell phones and pointing them up at us, and I squeeze my eyes shut.

  He strokes and strokes until I can’t help it—I feel my legs parting for him. He moves his hips and thrusts until he’s halfway inside me, and then again, until he’s buried to the hilt.

  “Please, please, don’t,” I beg him as he’s fucking me, but I’m spreading even wider as he pumps into me. I’m sick. I’m disgusting. I’m panting like a dog in heat, and I can hear the shouts of the crowd below us getting louder.

  He knows how to move just right.

  He varies the rhythm, going from slow to fast and then slow again, and pleasure pulses inside me. For the first time in ten years, I’m going to climax. When he picks up the pace and pounds me hard, I realize I’m moaning aloud. Flames lick up between my legs, heating my private parts. Oh God, it feels so good.

  I stare down below, unable to look away from dozens of pairs of hungry eyes staring up at me. Bastien groans, his breath harsh and guttural in my ear. His muscular arm is wrapped around me now, and it feels so good to have him hold me against him that I sob harder, because I’m frightened and hurting and I want his strength to be a comfort, but it’s not. It’s a blunt weapon.

  He shouts loudly as he comes inside me, explosively. His hot seed spilling into me pushes me over the edge and electric jolts of pleasure shoot through me. My sheath spasms, clamping down on him, and I cling to the balcony and whimper. “Oh yes, oh yes…” I didn’t realize how desperately I needed this release until he took me.

  He slides out of me slowly, and his semen spills onto my thighs. Thank God I’m on birth control.

  Then he pulls me back by my hair and whispers into my ear. “Nasty little slut.” A wave of horror washes over me. That’s what the other kids called me in high school. Emilie used to lead their chants. He releases me and I hug myself, weeping. I sway for a moment, my knees weak, then I spin around with my back to the jeering crowd below.

  He’s gone. And when I try to open the balcony door, it’s locked. I am trapped out here, nude, and people are pointing and laughing.

  A dizzy spell sweeps over me and I fall to my knees. The next thing I know, the door opens and two security guards, one old and one young, are standing there. I rush into the room, covering my breasts and private parts with my hands, and one of the guards holds out a hotel robe, his face wrinkled in disgust. I’m sobbing, blubbering.

  “He made me do it,” I plead. “He had a knife.”

  They glance at each other skeptically. “You want us to call the police?” the younger guy asks.

  The police…no. He’ll kill my mother, Landon, Pandora…

  “I can’t. I’m afraid of him,” I say, ashamed.

  They look at me with contempt, and I wilt.

  “You need to pay for this room and get out,” the older guy snaps. I look around and my heart lurches in panic. My clothing and my purse are gone. My car keys, my cell phone.

  I beg and beg them not to call the police.

  “It’s too much paperwork,” the older guard says to the other guy, rolling his eyes. Then he looks at me again, his lip curling. “Just get someone to pick you up and get the hell out. And pick a different hotel to turn your tricks in. Don’t ever come back here.”

  He thinks I’m a prostitute.

  I’m gulping sobs as I call Pandora, using the hotel phone. She shows up half an hour later. I clean myself up in the bathroom while I wait, wiping Bastien from my thighs, sick with shame. The older guard waits outside the door in case I try to bolt without paying.

  Pandora pays them a hundred and fifty dollars for the room. As we leave, she looks worried. “I need that money for rent,” she says. “What the hell happened, anyway?”

  “A lapse of judgment. I’m really sorry. I’ll get you the money first thing tomorrow.”

  “Did you cheat on Landon?”

  “I can’t talk about it.” Yes. I cheated on him and came so hard that I nearly passed out.

  “Are you still going to be in the gallery show?” She sounds as if she wishes I wouldn’t. She was the one who introduced me to the gallery owner. He’s a prim, prissy man who wouldn’t tolerate a single whiff of scandal. He’d be a perfect match for my mother, if only he wasn’t gay. Pandora is working really hard to launch her career as a full-time artist, and I would hate to taint her by association. But I really need the money from any sales I might get at the show. I might need to go on the run sometime soon. I might need a lawyer. God knows what Bastien will throw at me next.

  “This was a one-time thing, I swear. I’m completely fine,” I tell her with confidence I don’t feel.

  She drives me home, and I grab my spare keys then go back to the hotel to fetch my car. When I get back to my house, there’s a bouquet of fresh lavender sitting on the kitchen table, in a ceramic milk jug with French lettering on it.

  Bastien.

  He got past my deadbolt locks.

  I pick up the jug and throw it against the wall with a scream of frustration, and I don’t even bother to sweep it up afterward.

  I barely sleep all night and wake up feeling drugged with exhaustion. Fortunately, the next day is Saturday, so I don’t have to work.

  The bank is only open until noon, so I have to hurry. With my driver’s license gone along with my purse, I get a copy of my passport and go to the bank to take out the money I owe Pandora—and they tell me that I’m a thousand dollars overdrawn.

  Bastien.

  He’s everywhere.

  He drained my checking and savings account. But if I tell the police… His threat still rings in my ears. Acid churns in my stomach as I head to a pawn shop and pawn the diamond tennis bracelet that Landon gave me. It’s worth ten thousand and I get seven hundred for it.

  I meet Pandora at the coffee shop and give her a hundred and fifty dollars for the hotel room. And then, hopelessly, I head back home and try to figure out what to do next. I am not safe in my house, but I can’t spare what little money I have for another hotel room, and apparently Bastien can find me anywhere I go.

  I could go to the police and report this, and tell my mother and Landon and Pandora. But what would they do, even if they believed me? Go into hiding for the rest of their lives? Bastien would find them. He has an incredibly wealthy family, and either they’re still funding him, or he’s making a lot of money on his own, based on the suit and shoes and watch he was wearing. And he’s obsessive and brilliant. He was a computer whiz in high school—he’s probably even better now.

  And at the very least he’s got Emilie backing him up, and heaven knows who else. He has a way of making people follow him fanatically. I was one of his followers once. I’d have died for him.

  Despair threatens to choke me. What am I going to do?

  He loved me once. And I ruined him.

  Maybe I can make him love me again. It’s my only hope. Trying to fight against a man like him—I don’t stand a chance.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Camille

  I use some of my cash to buy a cheap new cell phone, and text Landon the number. I tell him I lost my phone. I also sleep in my car in the garage. That way, if Bastien breaks in to slash my tires again, I’ll catch him in the act. I have a can of bear mace clenched in my hands as I curl up on the back seat, but he never shows.

  Monday morning, I show up half an hour early to work and kill time by drinking coffee for a while. I can’t risk being late. But when I walk in the door, the r
eceptionist has a grim look on her face and she tells me to go to human resources.

  My heart drops to the soles of my feet with a dull thud. What could possibly be wrong now?

  I hurry in, thick-headed from lack of sleep. My manager is there, sitting next to the head of the human resources department. The two of them have the look of a firing squad watching the condemned man walk up to the wall.

  My mouth dries up, but I force a carefree smile. “About the hotel,” I say. “I can explain.” I’ll lie, tell them it was my fiancé and me, we were just fooling around, there was a misunderstanding.

  “What hotel?” My manager is staring at me.

  I freeze where I stand. Crud. I just gave him more ammunition. “Why did you call me in here?” I ask him.

  He looks at my forehead. “What did you say happened to your head, again?”

  I hadn’t. “I tripped and banged it on the wall.” Great. That makes it sound as if I was drunk or high or in a fight.

  He frowns at me skeptically. “There’s been another complaint,” he says. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to suspend you immediately, without pay this time. It would be best if you sought employment elsewhere.”

  I struggle for breath, but someone’s sucked all the oxygen from the room. “What kind of complaint?”

  “Another complaint of a sexual nature. One of your clients says you sexually propositioned him.”

  I need this job. “Mr. Robards! I’ve worked here for years!” I cry out in protest. “And the other person who made a claim about me has a history of making false claims and is a diagnosed schizophrenic.”

  But he’s staring at me, and I know what he sees. A wild-eyed, frazzled woman with circles under her eyes and a bandaged forehead. A woman who just said something about a hotel but won’t explain herself. A woman who’s started coming in late and taking half a day off, with crazy-sounding explanations.

  A woman who can’t be trusted with the mental and emotional wellbeing of others.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, shaking his head.

  I leave the office without a word, because I don’t want to make things worse by crying or begging or screaming.

  I’m filled with rage as I head home. And I’m so tired that I crawl into bed and pass out.

  I’m deep in sleep when I’m yanked out of bed and wake up with a crash on the floor, flailing in panic.

  I gape up at Bastien. He’s towering over me, his handsome face demonic in the dim light from the streetlamp outside my house.

  “Your fiancé masturbates to tentacle porn,” he sneers at me.

  Shock rolls over me. Landon? Sweet, gentle, Landon who only likes sex in the missionary position? Why would Landon keep something like that from me?

  “You’re lying,” I gasp.

  He reaches down and pulls me to my feet by my wrist. I cry out and try to pull away, but his fingers are steel manacles clamping down on me and grinding my bones together.

  “I don’t lie to you,” he snarls. “You were the one person I could be myself with. I never lied to you. I never will lie to you. I’m going to fucking destroy you, and that’s the truth.”

  I burst into tears. “Please,” I beg. “Please stop doing this to me! Please forgive me, Bastien—I am so sorry about what happened.”

  His blue eyes glow with a mad light. “Oh, you don’t know the meaning of the word sorry. But you will.”

  Rage and misery explode inside me. “I was fifteen!” I scream at him. “I thought you stabbed my dog to death! What would you have done if you thought I’d done such a horrible thing to your dog?”

  He bends my hand back until I shriek with pain. “I would have asked you what had really happened, because I would have known you weren’t capable of such a thing.” His voice is thick with hate. He releases my hand.

  He’s right. That’s what he would have done.

  So I’m back to pleading. This can’t be happening to me. I’m not a terrible person. I don’t deserve this. “You can’t ruin my life because I made one stupid mistake.”

  “Watch me.” He spins me around and kicks my legs apart. Then he bends my arm up and forces me face down onto the bed.

  “Don’t!” I scream. “You don’t have to do this!” He’s fumbling with my pants, unbuttoning them as I squirm.

  “But you love it so much,” he taunts me. “You come so hard for me, baby. Isn’t it nice to finally have a real orgasm?”

  How does he know that about me?

  Bastien slides his fingers between my legs. I stop fighting and let my body go limp, because I’m not going to be able to overcome him by fighting.

  And because I’m a filthy little whore, and my body knows it and is eager to be violated by him.

  His hand moves, and my body detaches from my mind. Every slow stroke sends a pulse of pleasure through me, layer building upon layer until my legs quiver. I can’t make myself hate this, no matter how hard I try. Lust swells up inside me and pushes aside all rational thought.

  He plays me like an instrument, applying just the right amount of pressure, moving just fast enough. He feels my response, and when my breath speeds up, he slows down, drawing it out. His thumb pad moves back and forth on the tiny pink button he first introduced me to so long ago.

  I’m floating away on a cloud of sensation. I hear myself moan.

  I’ve utterly betrayed Landon. I want Bastien inside me. I want him to make me come so hard I see stars. I hate myself for it, but I can’t stop my traitorous body from throbbing with pleasure. From far away, I hear myself moan. I’m urging him on. “Yes, yes…!” Is that really my voice?

  I am a horrible person.

  Suddenly, he slides his fingers out of me and spanks my right butt cheek so hard I scream. This isn’t a sensual smack. This is a handprint of fire that I can feel perfectly outlined on my stinging skin.

  “I was going to save myself until our wedding night. Instead, I fucked a whore when I was eighteen years old,” he snarls. “I imagined she was you, and I beat the shit out of her. I made her bleed.”

  A blade of poisonous green jealousy knifes me through the heart, and I scream into the comforter. It’s not rational, it’s not right, but the thought of him losing his virginity to a prostitute makes me sick with fury. He was mine! I want to track this poor, abused woman down and murder her.

  He smacks my other cheek with vicious force, and I scream again, my leg kicking up at the pain. “And you,” he sneers. “You were supposed to save yourself for me, and you gave your cherry to your asshole college boyfriend. The one who asked you to marry him—until I sent him some emails telling him what you were really like. I attached some very creatively photoshopped pictures. I called you Orgy Girl. I wonder whatever happened to Barry.”

  I gasp in shock and rear back, and he applies pressure to my arm, forcing me down again.

  Oh my God. I gave my virginity to Barry, then he disappeared. Completely stopped talking to me. I was devastated. I was already horribly insecure about sex, after everything that happened when I was in France, and his abandonment made me feel filthy and unlovable. I didn’t even look at another man for two years.

  How long has Bastien been stalking me?

  He’s moving behind me, and when I twist my head, I see him pulling something out of his pocket. A small bottle.

  Then he’s dripping something on my butt crack. It runs down between my cheeks, and he presses a finger into my rectum. I clench up, but he forces his lubed finger right inside me, shoving it up my rear tunnel. I’ve never had anal sex. I’m terrified. He’s huge. He’ll tear me in two. He pumps his finger into me a few times, then presses a second finger in. I wiggle my butt, trying to dislodge him, but that just draws out laughter laced with cruelty.

  “Don’t!” I cry, panicking. “Not that!”

  “Relax,” he taunts. “Or it’ll just hurt more.”

  He spreads his fingers open, and sharp pain lances up my tunnel. I force myself to relax my muscles. “Please,” I pant. “Bastien,
please.”

  “Please what? You want me to fuck you? You want me to make you come?”

  I try to say no, but the words that come out of my mouth shock me. They’re words swimming up from the depths of my lust-drenched soul. “Yes,” I pant. “Yes, please make me come.”

  Oh God. I’m talking like a prostitute.

  I’m begging for it.

  He pulls his finger out, and the head of his manhood nudges between my cheeks. I lie perfectly still, willing myself not to clench again as he breaches the tight ring. The pain is shocking. It burns all the way up inside me, but somehow it’s the most pleasurable pain I’ve ever felt.

  “Oh yeah, baby,” he breathes. “I’m the first man to take you there. I’m going to make you love it. You’ll love it like the dirty little whore you are, won’t you?”

  “Yes.” The word slides out on a moan of surrender.

  His hand moves, and as he begins pumping into me, he strokes my clit with his thumb, in perfect rhythm. His thickness is punishing and painful, and my rear tunnel is on fire, squeezing him desperately, but I push back against him, eager for more. Why does pain feel so good?

  The bed jumps with each thrust. I clutch the comforter so tightly my knuckles whiten and my fingers go numb, and I never want it to stop. His harsh breath echoes in my ears, and my pleasure swirls inside me, and I’m about to climax when he stops moving.

  “You come when I say,” he snarls. “I own your fucking orgasm. Beg for it.”

  “Please,” I whimper. “Please let me come. Oh God, please…” He starts moving again, happy with my degradation, and then he’s moving faster and faster, so fast I shriek with pain, and suddenly I’m coming. My body convulses and wave after wave of forced pleasure crashes down on me, dizzying, frightening. I’m crying and climaxing, and I dimly realize he’s pulled out and he’s spraying his hot seed across my buttocks. Marking me as his. I’m limp and spent, as weak as a kitten. I couldn’t move to save my life.

  He lets go of my arm and grabs one of my cheeks, sore from where he smacked me, and squeezes brutally hard, wrenching a shriek from me. “Does that hurt?” he yells. “It hurt me a million times worse when you looked at me like a fucking monster! Like I was filth!” Then he walks over to my purse, which is sitting on the nightstand. Panic flares through me. I struggle to my feet, legs jellied, as he pulls out my wallet. That’s all the money I have in the world!