That was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard. Americans and their obsession with weight. Our lunches were ten times better than what they eat in American schools. We got an hour for lunch, and none of the girls in my school were heavy.
I shoved my tray at her. “You can have half of mine.”
“Oh, I couldn’t. If my mother found out, she’d be furious.” But she was staring at it like a famine victim. She ran her tongue over her pink lips, and heat flooded my body. I wanted to watch her put a forkful of food in her mouth and swallow.
“You’re actually too skinny, and you’re hungry. Eat it,” I said to her, my voice commanding.
She stared at me, startled, then reached over, grabbed my fork and took a bite. She opened that pink rosebud of a mouth and slid the food in, and closed her eyes, letting out a little moan of pleasure. Fierce arousal shot through my body, and the fabric on the crotch of my pants was suddenly too tight.
She obeyed me.
And I knew right then that I would make her mine. And I would give her orders and do mean things to her, because that was what boys did when they liked a girl—my mother even said so. Or maybe she told me lots of things about how a boy should treat a girl, and I filtered her words through my darkness and shaped them in a way that justified my terrible behavior.
But also, I would do nice things for Camille, because I wanted to do that too.
But I would be the boss of her. I was sure of it.
And she would fight me all the way, but she would like it. I could tell.
We would be boyfriend and girlfriend, and as soon as she was old enough, the very day, I would marry her. We would live together on a big estate like my mother and father did, and I would be her Master, and she would obey me, and most of the time she’d enjoy it. She would live to please me, and she would be my world, my love, my everything.
There was no other possible outcome for us in my mind.
Funny how life turns out.
Chapter Two
Present day
Bastien
I’m reclining in a hospital bed, propped up on pillows. The room smells of antiseptic, and my face aches. I’m woozy from all the painkillers.
The bandages were peeled off a few days ago and the swelling is finally receding. I’m still handsome, if I do say so myself, but my face looks completely different. The shape of my nose, mouth, cheekbones, jaw…they’re less refined. I’m more square-jawed and rugged-looking. My nose is shorter. My lips fuller. I don’t look like myself at all.
I look kind of like an American football player. Brutish. Dangerous. My outside reflects my inside now.
My thick, wavy black hair is gone, buzzed to my scalp. That bothers me. I’m vain about my hair—so sue me. I run my fingers over my scalp. There are no stitches, no bumps or bruises. So why was my hair cut so short?
I still can’t remember a damn thing about the car accident.
We’re at a hospital in Barcelona. I’ve been living in Barcelona for the last year. I move around frequently, since nowhere feels like home anymore.
My company, Cyber-X Security, is based in London, but I can run it from anywhere. Simon and Antoine, my childhood friends, oversee a lot of the day-to-day operations. They’ve both checked in with me, and the company is doing fine.
My parents sit in chairs by my bed, and the mid-morning sun pouring through the window bathes them in golden light. Even in their fifties, they are still a stunning couple. My father, with his short hair and close-clipped beard shot through with gray. My mother with her artfully colored champagne-blonde hair pulled back in a glossy chignon. Her dark roots are showing just a little, which is unusual for her. I assume it’s because of my hospitalization. She’s wearing a pink Chanel dress, and my father’s suit is lightweight gray wool, cut to fit him perfectly.
“It’s okay. You’re still as handsome as ever,” my mother says with a fond smile. She leans forward and lightly strokes my battered face.
I try to smile back, but it feels more like a grimace. Relations between my parents and I have been strained for the last ten years. I know they love me. I just can’t live with the crushing disappointment they feel toward me—and their actual fear.
I left home the day I turned eighteen. My father protested, threatened to cut me off financially. I laughed at him. I’d never planned on taking a cent of their money anyway. I have a strong independent streak. Then he threatened to take me back by force, so I deliberately disappeared and traveled Europe and America for a couple of years. I became a master hacker. I broke into the most secure computer systems in the world and left sarcastic messages, then sold my services to the owners of the companies, telling them how to keep me out. Sometimes I broke into their houses, stole items, and mailed them to them, to prove my point. So I expanded into providing home security as well.
My parents were incredibly relieved when I finally contacted them again. There was no more talk of dragging me back home by force—it was much too late for that—but there was a definite chill between us.
Given what they believed about me, I was surprised they bothered keeping in touch. Maybe this had to do with my sickness, my inability to understand normal human emotions. But why did they still want to spend any time with me at all when they knew about my darkness? Why did they visit me several times a year? Everything else in their life was perfect. They were very close with my four brothers and sisters, all of whom went into the family businesses. My sisters managed the lavender distillery and the vineyards, my brothers did computer security. My parents doted on their grandchildren. I was the mistake, the abomination. It would have been easier for all of us if they’d just quit trying.
Unlike me, though, they’re normal. I guess visiting your son in the hospital, even if you believe he’s a pit of evil with a pretty face, is what normal people do.
Still woozy, I slowly turn my head to look at my father. “Where is my car?” I ask him. It’s an Aston Martin Vanquish, the color of a turquoise sea. I care more about the welfare of that car than I do most people.
He grimaces sympathetically. “Totaled.” Ouch. “I’ve ordered another one for you.”
“That wasn’t necessary,” I say, with perhaps a little too much harshness, because I see my mother’s wince and there’s an answering clench of dismay in my gut. I soften my voice. “But thank you. It was thoughtful of you.”
I pick up the mirror that’s lying on my nightstand and stare at it again. “I don’t even recognize myself,” I say, running my fingers over my altered jawline.
“You’re as handsome as a movie star,” my mother says brightly.
I bend my lips into a pained smile, setting the mirror back down. “Yes, but you’re my mother. You’d say that if I looked like the love child of Quasimodo and a horse’s ass.”
“True. Thank heavens you don’t.” She winks at me.
Then I look at my father. “Well, I never looked like you, and I still don’t look like you. But at least they were able to put me back together enough that I look human.”
My brothers and sisters don’t look that much like him, or my mother either, for that matter. We all look like each other, but not like our parents. Honestly, I used to wonder if we were all somehow adopted, but I’d seen my mother pregnant with Odette and Jules, so we couldn’t be.
“And you’re alive,” my mother points out. She smiles with sympathy. “I’m sorry you weren’t able to go to America.”
I feel a sting of annoyance. “No you’re not.”
We traveled a lot to other places when I was growing up, but she has this odd notion of America being a terrifying, lawless land, and she’s always begged me not to go there. She once told me she had a terrible premonition about it, and she gets so upset at the mere idea of me visiting the States that whenever I’ve gone, I’ve lied to her about where I was going and traveled under a false name. As far as she knows, I’ve never set foot in the U.S. of A.
In fact, I’ve been many times, and I’ve purchased a house there
and am planning to open up another branch of my company there too. In Pennsylvania. Near Camille. Why? I guess I like torturing myself the same way I like torturing others.
I’ve been messing with Camille a little bit, from a distance. She’s about to get married, and the thought of her having a happy life with another man, after what she did to me, is like a splinter in my soul. I haven’t given in to my darkest impulses—I fight against them every day—but I make sure that she’s always unsettled and on edge.
“I’m sure you’re not calling your mother a liar.” My father’s voice drips with ice, and I see a flash of anger in his eyes. He’s so protective of her.
“D’arcy. He’s not.” My mother lays her hand on his arm.
The only time they disagree is when I’m there.
A dull sickness settles inside me. They shouldn’t have come.
But here they are. They’ve made the effort, so I will make an effort too, for a few more minutes. Then I’ll tell them I’m tired and need to rest.
I look at my father. “Come on, Father. We all know she has those premonitions about America. It’s understandable she’d be relieved my trip was delayed.”
He relaxes just a little. “Yes. She does seem to be strangely fond of you,” he says, going for the joking tone, the easy banter that comes so naturally to him and my siblings. Francois calls him “old man” and offers to buy him a cane; my father playfully cuffs his head, ha ha ha. He mocks my sister Odette for having terrible taste in bands and has made up a name for the music style she likes. He calls it Cats in Heat Being Fed Through a Lawnmower, so she gets a T-shirt with that printed on it, complete with graphics, and gives it to him as a birthday present, ho ho ho.
My mother frowns, leaning back in her chair. “Delayed? You shouldn’t travel for quite some time, having been through an accident like this. Maybe it’s a sign.”
A ghost of suspicion whispers through me. I have excellent instincts. I know when people are lying to me. Something’s going on here—something so insane, so foreign to everything I believe, that I don’t even want to acknowledge it.
“I’ll go in a month or two,” I tell her, and her forehead pinches in dismay. She glances at my father, and he frowns.
“I was hoping you would consider coming back home and helping me with my company. We’re running into some problems, and I could really use your assistance.” His words ring in my ears, false and tinny. My father never asks for help. And my brothers are every bit as skilled in the field of computer security as I am. He doesn’t need me.
Why are they lying to me?
“Did you ask them to shave my hair?” I blurt out to my mother.
“Excuse me?” Her answer is just a microsecond too slow, and I see the flare of panic in her eyes, and now my father is looking angry, but it’s a manufactured, put-on anger. I can tell.
“There are no stitches or staples or bumps on my head. There would be no reason for them to cut my hair.”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know anything about that,” she says.
That’s bullshit. The way she said it. Giving me a non-answer that sounds like an answer.
And I’m tired of my parents micromanaging my life to an insane level. Taking advantage of me being in a week-long coma from a car accident to cut my fucking hair the way my mother prefers?
My mother’s got a thing about long hair on men. She hates it. My father always keeps his hair cut very short, and my brothers give in to it on her insistence. She also has this thing about beards and goatees—every man in our family, except me, wears one. Oddly, she doesn’t really care what we wear as long as it’s clean, pressed, and stylish, but she obsesses about our hair.
“I’ll look over my medical records and find out why my hair was cut,” I say to her, meeting her gaze, and her eyes drop. My father leaps to his feet, his fists clenched, and instantly my mother’s on her feet too.
“D’arcy!” she says sharply to him, sliding between him and me. She bites her lip and avoids my gaze. “Yes. I did. I didn’t think it would be a big deal. I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t think it would be a big deal to get my head shaved without my permission?” I yell, sitting upright. My father’s face is flushed with anger, but I keep going. “After we’ve argued about this dozens of times and you know how I feel about you trying to tell me how to cut my hair like I’m still five? Are you insane?”
My mother’s face is pale and her eyes big with sorrow.
“You’ve upset your mother!” my father barks at me. “Apologize. Now.”
I rip the IV from my arm, and my mother cries out in dismay. I swing my legs to the edge of the bed. Fury lends me strength.
“You shouldn’t have come,” I say to them. “Get out. You can try to kick my ass first if you want, Father.”
As woozy as I am, he probably could kick my ass. That’s fine—I’ve always had an insanely high pain tolerance.
A nurse rushes into the room. The leads on my chest are connected to the monitors being watched by a tech, and my blood pressure must be spiking.
“We love you, Bastien. Always,” my mother says, tears in her eyes, and she and my father head for the door. My father has his hand on the small of her back, the way he does whenever she’s upset. They pause in the doorway. My father glances back at me, and he has murder in his eyes, and I actually catch a brief chill for a moment. For a civilized man, sometimes my father can look like the very devil.
I wait until they’re gone before I let the nurse put the IV back in my arm, and I lie back down and fall asleep.
I drift back in time, to that golden summer when I was fifteen. To my last good day.
Chapter Three
Bastien
Celeste was unofficially my girlfriend. It had to be unofficial, because her parents were very strict Catholics who dished out shame for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Her father was a professor of religious studies. Her mother was a prim housewife who would have been perfectly at home in a 1950s ad for kitchen appliances. They approved of me, though, because they were social climbing snobs who were awed by my parents’ wealth, and because I’d dropped hints that I wanted to ask for Camille’s hand in marriage as soon as I graduated from college. Since they thought my intentions were honorable, they let us spend time together—but they were almost always at a safe distance, watching us.
I never tried to get Camille’s clothes off, but they didn’t know that what I did with her mind was much more perverse than if I’d just fucked her.
Camille had very specific orders that she had to follow if she wanted to be with me. Little things like having to wear her underwear inside out, and drawing my name in permanent marker right above her pubic hair.
I had a special hand gesture that I would make on the rare occasions when we were alone, and she had to sink to her knees and kiss me through my jeans.
And bigger things. When she came to my house, she had to go into the bathroom and touch herself between her legs. She had to say my name and stroke herself until she came. The first time I told her to do that, she spluttered with fury and said she would never, and I told her if she didn’t, she would be dead to me.
She refused at first, my stubborn little sweetheart, and I didn’t speak to her for a month. It was as hard on me as it was on her, but of course I hid it. Camille wore her heart on her sleeve. She cried when she saw me flirting with other girls in front of her. She clumsily tried to get revenge by flirting with other boys, but all I had to do was look at the boys, and they’d turn and run for their lives. After a couple of weeks, she begged me to take her back, just please, please don’t make her touch herself down there—it was a sin, and she’d go to hell for it.
I stayed strong.
And finally she broke down. It was the most glorious triumph of my life, and she was in tears when she came out of the bathroom, flushed with humiliation. I made her tell me all about how it felt. She had her first orgasm with my name on her lips.
And every weekend when she came
to visit me, she did it—with a mixture of shame and eagerness that ensured I spent a lot of time in the shower with my cock in my hand, thinking of her.
Her parents wouldn’t let me kiss her on the lips, of course, but they allowed me to kiss her hand. They didn’t know I did that so I could smell the heavenly scent on her fingers. The look in her eyes, the way she drew in her breath, panting for me, made me so hard I ached.
I didn’t just bully her, though. I also loved to make her smile. I would save up my allowance and buy her presents all the time—a necklace with a heart, hair bands, bracelets. She had to keep most of it at school in her locker because her parents would have taken it away from her. I learned what she liked to eat and cooked it for her myself, even though we had a chef, and brought it to school for her so she’d have something to eat besides those stupid salads. I held open every door for her, I pulled the seat out for her in class, and I demanded that everyone treat her with reverence.
Her parents were nasty, miserable people, always chewing away at her self-esteem as if it would nourish their own shriveled souls. I did everything I could to let her know how smart and beautiful she was, and how wrong they were.
Everyone envied us. We were the prettiest couple in school.
I adored everything about her. Her looks, her smell, the way she moved. She was a natural submissive—I knew what that term meant, even then—but she had a core of steel, and she stood up for herself with quiet dignity and grace. I loved her smile and the way she looked at me, that special look she had just for me.
And she made me more human. She knew about my darkness, to an extent, but she never put me down for it. When I was being exceptionally cruel to someone, she’d come over and distract me; she’d stroke my arm and ask me some silly question. Now I know that’s called “re-directing”. It was instinctive with her. Not surprising that she became a therapist.
Sometimes she’d just lean against me and say, “Bastien. Enough now,” but in an affectionate, mildly reproving tone that never put me on the defensive.
Camille, Claimed (Blue-eyed Monsters Book 3) Page 2