My stomach quivers at the thought of what he’ll do to me. But he’ll spare Landon from further torment, and he won’t go after my mother or Pandora.
And he won’t kill me. And maybe someday I can figure out a way to outwit him.
“Yes,” I say, “But you have to help Pandora out. She might lose her place in the gallery after what you did.”
He shrugs moodily, looking uninterested. “Whatever. I’ll use one of my shell companies, have the CEO contact him and buy all her paintings from the show and commission half a dozen new ones.”
That would do it. Mr. Sinclair is a prude, but he’s a prude with a cash register where his heart should be.
“And Landon. You hurt him very badly because you were jealous of him.”
“Careful,” he snarls at me, and the air seems to grow chilly.
I meet his gaze. “It’s true. And it was unwarranted. You know, when I think about it, I was never going to marry him. I was dragging my feet more and more, and I kept picking little fights with him. He was a security blanket. I was never in love with him.” As I say it, I realize I’m not just saying that to keep Landon safe from Bastien’s jealous wrath. It’s true. I loved Landon, but I was never in love with him. There’s only ever been room in my heart for one man. And he’s sitting right next to me, savagely handsome and completely insane.
Poor Landon. I’m the worst thing that ever happened to him.
Bastien glares at me, eyes snapping with anger. “Like I care? I should have fucking killed him. He put his hands on you.” His face flushes, and veins I’ve never noticed before stand out in his forehead.
“You and I hadn’t seen each other in nine years when I met him. And I just saw you getting serviced by a prostitute, so you’re one to talk.” I’m sick about him being with that woman, even though it’s crazy for me to feel that way. I know what he was doing; he was using her to try to get at me. She looked at him with big, shining eyes, worshipping him, and he humiliated her. But I still hate any woman who ever touched him.
His ice-blue eyes hold mine in an unblinking stare.
“Landon is up for a promotion. If you want me to agree to stay with you, you will see to it that he gets it. That shell company you mentioned? You’ll use it to hire Landon to manage some of your money. Enough that his boss will be impressed. I’m not asking you to throw your money away here. His company is good, they’re solid, they’ve been around for decades. It’ll be a good investment.”
“I’m never giving a cent to that filthy bastard.”
I hold my ground, even though I’m exhausted and frightened and want to curl up and cry. I hate it when Bastien looks at me the way he is right now. I never could stand having Bastien angry with me; his hatred of me has been one of the worst parts of all this. But Landon deserves this. It’s the very least I can do for him.
“Then I don’t agree to your terms, and your family gets a lot of unwanted scrutiny.”
“You’re pushing your luck.” Bastien’s voice drips with menace, and I shiver. But I meet his gaze, even as I feel the strength drain from my body.
The tension is unbearable. Time stretches on, and on, and I’m lost in the icy lake of his gaze. My head throbs, and I just want to fall asleep and never wake up.
“Fine,” he says finally. “But believe me, Camille, I’m going to make you pay for every dollar I give him.”
Chapter Nineteen
Camille
It’s the middle of the night when we arrive at our destination. We glide into a garage and the door slams shut behind us. I follow Bastien into the house, hugging myself in my thin borrowed T-shirt and trying not to feel as if I’ve just made a horrible mistake agreeing to this.
The house feels like a fortress. The windows are covered with bullet-proof plexiglass. He’s got a security force roaming the house—maybe twenty men, all armed. What is he up against? Does this really have something to do with his family?
The interior is beautifully decorated in what I’d call Crate and Barrel style. Clean, neutral furnishings with colors like “heather” and “wheat” and “slate”. It gives me the chills, though. The air crackles with angry energy and a sense of foreboding.
Bastien takes me to his room, which has an enormous bed with a gray-washed wooden headboard and footboard, and a dove-gray silken comforter. He’s always had exquisite taste, even when I first met him. In high school, he dressed as if he’d stepped off the pages of a men’s fashion magazine.
The first thing I do is hurry to take a shower. I lock the bathroom door, realizing instantly that it’s a futile gesture. If Bastien wants to come in, he will. Then I blast the water on full strength and try to scrub those men off me, the stain of their revolting hands, the feel of their fingers stabbing up inside me.
I shot a man in the crotch. I heard him squeal. His blood and flesh splattered all over me. I start to heave, and vomit on the floor of the shower, then cry as the water swirls it away down the drain. I mortally wounded a man. I am sure that Bastien finished the job. How do I feel about that? Numb and empty and frightened.
When I’m done, I see a bathrobe hanging on the back of the door, so I put it on. I leave my crumpled T-shirt on the floor in an utterly petty gesture, since Bastien hates disorder.
Bastien is sitting at a desk looking at something on a large laptop. He’s stripped down to boxer shorts. His body is magnificent. There’s not an ounce of fat on him, his biceps beautifully curved. His broad chest tapers down to a narrow waist and flat stomach. He’s got just enough of a six-pack to look sexy, but not like an over-exaggerated bodybuilder.
He shuts the laptop and gestures at me. “Get into bed,” he snaps.
“I want to sleep in my own room.”
“All the more reason for you to sleep here. And take that bathrobe off.”
“No!” I hug it around me.
He’s on me in an instant, stripping me so fast I barely have time to breathe. He hauls me over to his bed and, with one hand on my throat, holds me down. He shucks his boxer shorts, freeing his enormous length. I hear him pulling something from the nightstand and I struggle, then I hear something buzzing.
He holds up a large, studded vibrator.
“No, I won’t!” I’ve never used one. But when he releases my throat and moves down between my legs, I part my thighs for him and whimper in pleasure as he forces it inside me. It’s so big I can barely accommodate it, and the nubs rub against my tight inner sheath, but the vibrating sensation is heaven.
Then he fists my hair and hauls me up so I’m kneeling in front of him, vibrator still inside me. “Take me in your mouth. Now.” His manhood is inches from my face. A white pearl glistens on the tip. “We can stay here all night with that big thing vibrating in your pussy, or you can take me in your mouth and suck down every last drop.”
I should fight him, but instead I fall into that trance that I always do when he issues a command.
I let him force himself into my mouth, brutally, making me gag. Landon hated the idea of oral sex, which was an enormous relief to me. I’ve always shied away from it, but now the memory of Bastien getting serviced by that horrible brunette dances in front of me, and I begin sucking hard and swirling my tongue.
The vibrator is distracting me, and I squirm, struggling to concentrate. I have to be better than that brunette bitch. I have to. I suck and release, suck and release, pulsing and drawing him in deeper until he’s sliding right down my throat. I grab his shaft, a shockingly bold move, and I grip tightly, moving up and down as he fucks my mouth.
“Oh, yes,” he groans. “Baby. Like that. Suck me like a dirty little whore, suck me so good…”
When he says it like that, shockingly, I don’t feel the sting of the insult. I’m his dirty little whore. He didn’t make those noises for the brunette. I watched his expression while she was sucking him off, and his face was twisted with disgust. It still stabbed me right through the heart, though, seeing him with another woman.
“God, yes. You…
Ohhh…” He strokes my hair gently, the way he used to back in Lyon, his fingers sliding through the strands.
But the sensations from the vibrator threaten to overwhelm me. Ribbons of ecstasy are pulsing through my core and I can’t concentrate on both his shaft inside my mouth and what the vibrator is doing for me. I start to cry from frustration. I have to be better than her. Oh God, oh God, oh God…
I let out a muffled scream as my climax crashes over me. I try to rear back, but he holds me in place as my whole body shudders with pleasure so intense it’s painful. I’m screaming around his shaft. A white-hot tornado of sensation consumes me, and all of a sudden there’s a thick, salty-sweet liquid filling my mouth and pouring down my throat.
“Camille! Yes, yes, yes!”
Fierce triumph swells up inside me. I did that. I made him come.
I whimper with gratitude and relief as his hips jerk, and finally he slides out of my mouth. I reach back to pull out the vibrator, but he grabs my wrists and pins them.
“What did you just do, you dirty little whore? I want you to describe it.” He flashes me an evil grin.
“Please let me take it out! I’m too sensitive now…please.” The pleasure is painful, and I writhe on the bed.
“Say the words. Say the dirty, filthy words. I want to hear them coming out of your filthy little mouth.” He’s ruthless, his eyes gleaming with dark pleasure. I have no choice.
I can almost taste the soap that Daddy used to wash my mouth out with when I said “damn” that one time. Their disapproving faces swim in front of me. I start to panic. I don’t want to say bad words—it makes me feel filthy and wrong—but he won’t let go of me, and the pleasure inside me is turning into agony as the vibrator rubs against my raw, sensitive nerve endings.
“I…I sucked your…your cock,” I choke out, shamefaced. I never say those words.
“And what else? Did you swallow something?”
“Your cum!” I cry out, trying to wrench my hands free.
“Very good, little slut. And where did I put the vibrator?”
“Inside me!” I won’t say it, I won’t. He starts squeezing my wrists so hard they hurt. “In my pussy!” I whimper. “You put the vibrator in my pussy!”
He lets go of my wrists. I cry out with relief and pull the vibrator out.
He takes it from me, grinning in triumph. “There you go. Was that so hard?”
Furious, I flop down on the bed and turn my back to him.
“Your mouth is heaven, dirty little slut. You were born to suck cock,” he says as he walks away from the bed with the vibrator that’s soaked in my juices.
I don’t know if he means for the words to hurt me, but they don’t. They send a strange, forbidden thrill shivering through my inner core. I don’t have to be a good girl when I’m with him. I don’t have to be ashamed of my filthy fantasies, because by taking control, he’s also taken the blame.
When he returns, he lies down with his back to me. Amazingly, I fall asleep pretty fast. I’ve barely slept in weeks because of Bastien’s campaign of terror, but now that I’m here in bed with him, I feel safer than I have in ages.
When I wake up a while later, Bastien has wrapped his arms around me in his sleep. I’m pressed up against his steel-hard body, and I feel the thud, thud, thud of his heart against my back. One of his legs is thrown over both of mine. My hand rests on his brawny arm. We’re entwined like lovers, not like a spider cocooning a fly in its web, not like two sparring animals who snarl and snap and search for a weak spot to rip open.
I lie that way for hours, not moving a muscle. I never want to get up. When I was young, this is what I imagined my life would be, up until that horrible day in the basement—I’d fall asleep every night wrapped up in Bastien’s loving arms, feeling warm and safe and cherished. Hypnotized by the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed so peacefully, I’d close my eyes and memorize the music of his heartbeat.
But the heartbreaking thing about dreams is that you always wake up, and they burn away like mist in the harsh light of day.
Bastien half wakes up, and strokes my arm with infinite tenderness, then all of a sudden he wakes up and jerks away from me, violently. He’s on his feet in a heartbeat, leaping away from me like I’m poison. I don’t dare say a word. Through the curtain of my hair, I see him cast one violent glower at me, then he stalks off to the bathroom.
For once, he was the one whose body betrayed him. In his sleep, he was soft and vulnerable and loving. I listen to the shower blasting him and blink back tears. I know he’s going to punish me for piercing his armor and exposing his tender heart.
When he comes out of the shower, he just growls, “Don’t leave the house,” and stalks off.
“I don’t have any clothing!” I yell after him. He ignores me, so I’m forced to rifle through the drawers in his dresser and borrow a T-shirt and a pair of gym shorts which I cinch tightly around my waist. Then I head out to explore the house. The security guards ignore me completely; when I try to talk to them, they won’t even say hello.
I find the kitchen and make myself a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and coffee. My appetite seems to be back. The worst of my terror is over; I can eat, I can sleep. I gorge myself until I’m full to bursting.
By lunchtime, I’m bored, and settle for reading a thriller from the bookshelf in the living room. There’s no rhyme or reason to what types of books are on the shelves. I get the impression that someone just walked into a bookstore and bought every current best-seller, but that’s fine by me. I enjoy reading just about everything.
Around six o’clock, he comes into the bedroom and throws a plastic bag of clothing onto the bed. “Yours. When I choose to let you wear clothing, anyway,” he says.
I snort. “I’m not going to walk around this house naked.”
His smile is nasty and his eyes harsh and cold. “You’ll do whatever the hell I tell you to, when I tell you to. Right now, you’re going to put on a dress and join me for dinner.”
I obey him, picking a black-and-green tropical-print rayon dress with a plunging neckline and asymmetrical hemline. I tried to find something more modest, but every single dress in the bag shows off a lot of boob and leg. I’m just grateful he included underwear and bras, even if the panties are much skimpier and more see-through than the boy-cut cotton shorts I prefer.
As we head down the hallway to the dining room, I say, “I’d like to call my mother.”
“Why? She hates you.”
I wince. It’s true, but it still hurts to hear it. “I at least need to make an effort.” I know my mother has broken our relationship beyond repair, and I need to detach myself from her if I’m ever going to start healing from my past, but I at least want to say goodbye. For my sake, not hers.
“I may let you use a burner phone tomorrow, if I’m in a good mood. Spoiler alert, I won’t be.”
“How long is this childishness going to last?” I snap. As we walk into the dining room, I see Simon sitting at the table, and my heart sinks.
Simon smirks at me as I serve myself from a platter of sliced roast beef. “If it isn’t the Queen of Head.” That was one of the names that Emilie thought up for me in high school. Lovely. I don’t even bother glancing at Bastien, who’s ladling new red potatoes onto his plate. It hurts that he would sit there and let Simon attack me.
I reach deep inside myself for the well of strength that Bastien forced me to discover. If I could defeat Bastien at his own game, I can certainly handle his little toady.
“If it isn’t Sycophant Simon,” I reply with a pleasant smile. “Oh, right, she dumped you because you’re a pervert and you tried to get her to make out with the maid.” I’m pleased to see the startled look on his face.
“What was that? I’m not used to hearing you talk without a dick in your mouth,” he snarls, and pours himself Cognac from a bottle in the middle of the table.
“First of all, Bastien lied about me in high school,” I say. “And I suspect you kne
w it all along, because if Bastien Durand’s girlfriend had been running around doing every boy in school, you damn sure would have heard about it before the dog incident. And secondly, I don’t plan on sitting here and being insulted while I eat dinner.”
“What are you going to do about it, Black Hole?” he sneers as I dip a bite of roast beef into a bowl of au jus. That was another thing they used to call me. It was supposed to be a nickname for my…privates.
Yes, high school was a lot of fun for me.
“Right now, you have unsupervised visitation with your children from your first wife. Yes, I’ve looked up your divorce files; they’re public record. If your wife found out about your ownership of a chain of sex clubs, that would change.” I jab the forkful of roast beef at him for emphasis. “So shut the hell up and be civil, or say goodbye to your kids.” I shove the roast beef into my mouth and chew. “Mmm, tender.”
Simon flashes a startled look at Bastien.
Bastien shrugs. I think I see a flash of admiration in his ice-blue eyes. “What, you want me to spank her because she just handed you your balls?” he asks. “Don’t wrestle a she-wolf if you don’t want to get bitten.”
“Maybe I should be the one to spank her,” Simon sneers.
Bastien shoots to his feet so fast his chair falls over with a bang. He grabs Simon by the neck and squeezes. I sit there chewing my roast beef and watch as Simon flails madly, knocking his plate onto the floor.
“If you ever lay a hand on her, I will cut out your tongue and stuff it down your throat.” Bastien grates out the words as Simon’s face turns purple. When he finally lets go of Simon, Simon slumps onto the table, half conscious. Desperate wheezes rattle from his throat.
Bastien sits down and looks at me appraisingly. “I thought you’d try to stop me,” he says.
“Then maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do.” I smile and attack my roast beef with gusto.
That seems to anger him. “Bullshit,” he snaps. “I’ve watched you sleep. I’ve hacked into every account you own. I’ve read your therapy records. Your thesis. I know you inside out.”
Camille, Claimed Page 16