“There’s a burglar in my house! Please call the police, please!” I shriek. The man nods, and to my incredible relief, I see him pull out his phone and make a call—but he never rolls the window down, and after he makes the call, he drives away.
Cars are passing by. It’s evening in the suburbs, and people are staring at me. I hate that. I’m incredibly self-conscious by nature. I was always a little shy, but after what happened with Bastien, and then what happened in school—people pointing and staring and laughing, drawing obscene cartoons on my locker, chanting “slut” when the teachers left the room, and then my parents dragging me to that doctor… I fight panic attacks every time I think people are looking at me. I’ve spent the last ten years feeling gross and freakish and ashamed.
I start running again, and a police car pulls up, and I wave them down. An officer gets out, and I cry with relief.
Oh, thank God, thank God. I’m not going to die today.
I stammer out what happened, and an ambulance is there within minutes, and I’m taken to the hospital. Five stitches on my forehead, eight on my left arm. I’m so freaked out that I call Landon, and he rushes to the emergency room to be with me. I’m not so glad that he’s there when the police show up, though, because just when I think things can’t get worse—they do.
The police officer tells me that there was nobody in the house, and the smashed glass downstairs came from a vase falling off a shelf.
Landon gets angry on my behalf and suggests we use his laptop to log into my security system, to review the video footage from outside the house. And we do.
And there was nobody there.
I was the only one who entered or left my house in the last twenty-four hours. The house was empty when the police arrived, and they searched every single room. Every closet. There was no intruder fleeing the scene.
That is not possible. I know what I heard.
“There were footsteps,” I protest. “Somebody banged on my bedroom door.” The officer is looking at me in a way I don’t like. A “let’s not upset the crazy lady” way. Landon is shifting his weight from one foot to the other, flushed with embarrassment and avoiding my eyes.
“Sometimes older houses make weird noises,” the officer says, but my house was built five years ago. He shrugs and tells me I can contact the station to get a copy of the incident report, then he leaves.
Landon insists on going back to my house with me. When I try to argue and say I want to spend the night in a hotel, by myself, he gets a worried look on his face and says, “Maybe I should call your mother after all.”
I can’t stand her sharp words right now—not when I’m terrified and angry and confused. So I give in and let him take me home. It’s midnight and I’m exhausted. My blouse is splattered with blood, and my heart squeezes in my chest when we walk through the door.
Landon shuts and locks the door, then checks the whole house for me. He checks the garage. I’m grateful for that. He’s doing the “man protecting his woman” thing. It flashes through my mind that he wouldn’t be able to physically defend himself, or me, if he did actually find a burglar. He’s toned and fit, but only from racquetball and yoga.
The only thing that looks amiss is the shattered vase on the floor, which I quickly sweep up.
“Did you take my phone charger, the one I keep on my nightstand?” I ask him.
“No, but I have one in my briefcase you can use. It’s an extra.” He gives it to me, and I plug my phone in as he turns the alarm on.
We settle in on the couch together, and I have to admit it feels good to sink into his big, strong arms. When he leans in to kiss me, though, I tense up. “I’ve had a really bad night. I’m still stressed out,” I tell him.
He bites his lip, starts to say something, then stops and mutters, “Nothing.” He does that a lot, and it’s a habit that drives me crazy. It’s a petty little power trip. He’s angry about something. Part of my punishment is him hinting about it and then refusing to tell me what’s upsetting him.
“No, finish that sentence,” I insist.
“It’s nothing.” He has a mildly martyred look on his face as he looks off into the distance.
Begging him doesn’t work. The only thing that works with Landon is threatening to withdraw. I’ve learned things like that from being a therapist—how to manipulate people. It’s not a healthy thing to do in a relationship, but it’s a technique I find myself falling back on all too often.
I stand up. “I’m going to sleep in the guest bedroom.” And I start to walk away without looking back.
“Wait!” he calls out.
I come back and sit down, looking at him expectantly.
“After the wedding, will you consider marriage counseling?” he asks.
I look at him in confusion. “After the wedding?”
“Or a sex therapist. To deal with…” He lets the sentence trail off. I look at him expectantly. “The problem we have in the bedroom. You know.”
My eyes widen. Does he know?
“What problem is that?” I try to bluff.
“The fact that I’ve never been able to give you an orgasm. And the fact that you feel obligated to fake it.” Hell. He knows. How could he not? I insist we have sex with the lights off. I undress in the dark with my back to him. And my acting skills aren’t that great.
My stomach turns to water. “That’s an exaggeration,” I say, but I can’t meet his eyes.
“Is it?” he asks gently. Too gently. He’s too good to me.
I avoid having to reply by answering the question with a question. “If you think that, why do you want to marry me?” If one of my patients had tried that, I would have totally busted them for it.
“Because I love you.”
“Why?” I say despairingly.
He looks me in the eye. “You’re strong and smart and pretty. I love how kind and generous you are. I love that you do volunteer work with people who nobody else wants to deal with. I…I just love being with you.”
“I haven’t been much fun lately,” I say, my voice shaking. For months now, a dark cloud of bad luck has been following me around, and I feel brittle and defensive all the time.
Ever since the wedding announcement. That was the first day things started going bad. That very afternoon, a virus got into my laptop and blasted out emails with confidential client information out to everyone else on the client list. It was a nightmare; numerous people threatened lawsuits, and the practice’s insurance company had to make some quiet settlements.
The IT department went over my laptop with a fine-tooth comb, but in the end, they saw that I only used my work laptop for work, that I had not been on any questionable sites that would have made me vulnerable to a virus, so I didn’t get in trouble.
But I’m starting to wonder if this wedding is cursed.
I mean, logically, I know it’s not. I’ve just suffered a run of bad luck lately; there’s no such thing as curses. I’m a rational woman. I’m a therapist. I deal with observable phenomena with clear-cut causes and effects.
“I’m just thinking that with what happened to you as a teenager…seeing a therapist couldn’t hurt, could it?”
“I am a therapist,” I say automatically, which is another BS answer. Plenty of therapists see therapists. Some therapists see me.
Then what he just said hits me like a wall of concrete slamming into me at a hundred miles an hour.
I sit bolt upright and stare at him, sliding back so he’s not touching me anymore. “What happened to me as a teenager? What specifically are you talking about?”
His face goes wary. He realizes he’s made a mistake.
“Nothing.”
“My mother told you something.” Fury bubbles up inside me. How could she talk about that horrible, humiliating time in my life?
“It’s nothing,” he insists, standing up. “Let’s go to bed.”
I rarely yell—my parents drummed into me that a lady never raises her voice—but I’m ready to explo
de right now, and the words ring from my mouth and echo off the walls. “Do you see how damn toxic my mother is being?” I shout. “She is sabotaging this relationship with everything she’s got, and then she’ll blame me when it fails. Yes, something happened to me when I was a teenager. It was incredibly inappropriate for her to tell you, and furthermore, everything she tells you is her version, which is full of half-truths and paints me in a terrible light.”
His eyes widen, and he holds up his hands defensively. “She didn’t paint you in a bad light! She said for three years, you were the victim of an abusive, mentally ill manipulator who made you do perverted things to yourself, and it’s messed you up ever since. She said I’d probably need to be patient with you when we were intimate.”
The thought of them talking about my sex life and what happened to me when I was fifteen makes me nauseous. Does he know about the visit to the doctor, about how my parents forced me to spread my legs for a strange middle-aged man I’d never met before? About me writing Bastien’s name right above my private parts?
I suck in air, light-headed. “You need to leave,” I tell him.
“You’re not safe. You shouldn’t be alone right now,” he says as I storm over to the front door and turn the alarm off.
“Get. Out.” I grit the words out, my voice shaking.
He stands up but he doesn’t move. I feel powerless and angry, and tears fill my eyes.
“Get out, now! Or I’ll get in my car and leave you here alone!” I shout.
He folds his arm across his chest, stubbornly. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. If I can’t stay, I should call someone right now to who can deal with whatever issues you’re having. You need professional help. I don’t think it will be safe for you to be alone.”
I freeze and stare at him. Is he threatening to have me committed?
I resist the urge to scream at him again. I won’t give him any ammunition. “Do you realize that you’re being every bit as manipulative as my mother?” I bite out each word as I clench my fists, rigid with anger.
His jaw drops, and he starts to argue, but then a look of misery twists his face.
“Yes,” he says. “You’re right. I am. I just feel like you’re slipping away from me, and when that happens, I do whatever I can to make you stay. I’m sorry. You have every right to be angry at me.”
Some of my fury drains from me. Unlike my mother, he’ll admit when he’s wrong, rather than immediately making everything my fault.
“Ever since we announced the wedding, it feels as if you’re pulling away from me.” So he sensed the timing too. “Was it too soon? We can postpone it. I’ll announce it tomorrow.” He looks at me wistfully, and I know he’s hoping I’ll say no.
“Yes. Do that.” I bite the words out brutally, and I feel a mean satisfaction when his face falls. “And you also have to promise me you won’t speak to my mother again. At all. You don’t answer her calls, texts, or emails. Or we’re through.” I shake my head in disgust. “You two talked about… I can’t even say it. Jesus, Landon, I can’t believe you thought that was okay.”
He wilts, his broad shoulders drooping. “Can I please sleep in the guest bedroom?”
I don’t want him to, but I’m also terrified to be alone in the house. “Fine. Keep your phone right next to you,” I tell him. “In case he comes back.”
Exhausted, I grab my phone and Landon’s charger, and go upstairs and spend a few minutes sweeping up the glass from the window I shattered.
I plug the phone in right next to my bed. Then I change into my pajamas and crawl under the covers, burning with resentment at what my mother told him.
It didn’t feel like what Bastien did to me was wrong, at the time. Over the years, though, it was drilled into my head, by my mother and the therapists she forced me to see, that what he’d done was abusive and manipulative. Then again, she would only let me see faith-based therapists, and they held a very narrow view of what kind of sexuality was acceptable. Thinking about that time in my life makes me nauseous and dizzy. I curl up in a ball and hug my legs.
After Bastien killed my dog and the rumors started flying around school, my teachers heard about it and contacted my parents. My parents demanded to know what else he’d done to me.
I wasn’t good at lying to my parents. Avoiding them, dodging them, yes, but not outright lying.
But I couldn’t tell them about my secret life with Bastien. These were my parents. They slept in separate beds. They’d washed my mouth out with soap for saying “damn” when I was five years old. When I was twelve and my mother had given me “the talk” about the birds and the bees, she’d looked so horrified that I’d cried and said I never wanted to get married. And that had made her even angrier, and she’d told me that I was selfish, and that I was disrespectful to God. She’d told me that “marital duties”—that was what she called sex—were God’s punishment against Eve and all her daughters for the Original Sin.
When I wouldn’t tell my parents what Bastien and I did together, my father locked me in my room and only gave me a glass of water every day. I held out for three days. Then he locked me in my closet. I’ve had crippling, terrible claustrophobia ever since. I don’t take elevators; I only take the stairs.
After a day of being locked up in that little dark, stuffy coffin, I puked water on myself and screamed and pounded on the door. I swore I’d tell them everything. I howled my surrender to the heavens.
It was all for my own good. That’s what my father told me, anyway, and I believed him for years. It wasn’t until I started taking classes at college and spending time with more normal people that I realized how abusive my parents were.
I sobbed and dribbled and told my parents everything. I told them about touching myself in my private place, about kneeling in front of Bastien and kissing him through his pants. The disgust in their eyes… I wanted to die. And they refused to believe I wasn’t having sex with Bastien. When they made me let the male doctor examine me down there, I felt as if I were being raped. They needed three nurses to hold me down and pry my legs open while I screamed. The doctor saw where I’d written Bastien’s name above my pubic hair, because I hadn’t been able to scrub the permanent marker off, and he told my parents.
The worst part of it? Even after all that, I couldn’t stop thinking about Bastien and the feelings he’d awakened in me.
I hated Bastien for what he’d done to my dog. I hated him for the lies he’d spread about me at school. But the things he’d made me do to myself? I couldn’t hate that. I’d never played with myself before—but when I touched myself and thought about him, I’d finally learned why God made vaginas.
I’d never felt such pleasure before—or since. How could that intense ecstasy be wrong? Why did God give us that pleasure bud if we weren’t supposed to use it?
Was it really perverted, what he’d made me do? How could anything that felt so right be evil?
I’ve never really recovered from Bastien. I tried dating in college. I had sex with a couple of guys. It never worked out. Even picturing Bastien as I had sex with those guys didn’t help.
I felt nothing. I was numb between the legs. I lay there fake-groaning and making sex faces and wanting it to end. Just like I do now, with Landon.
When I’m really desperate for release, I lock myself in my bedroom with the lights off and touch myself between the legs the way that Bastien made me, and I say his name again and again and make myself climax. It’s the only thing that works.
Chapter Ten
Bastien
I’m staying in a hotel in Philadelphia because it’s close to Cyber-X headquarters and Dark Desires. And Camille, if we’re being honest. Being in the same city as her fills me with a weird energy. I’m breathing the same air as Camille. I’m driving the same streets. I’m walking under the same blue, cloudy skies. This nearness is an itch just underneath my skin, a distraction and a hunger. I’ll have to act on it soon.
I run every day. I could use the hotel
’s gym, but I’ve always preferred to be out in the world. I vary my times and routes—security consultants are nothing if not paranoid—but apparently I don’t vary them enough, because this morning someone tried to kill me on my morning run.
I’m only alive because I have a weird sixth sense for danger. I was jogging by a narrow strip of urban park when the hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I suddenly turned and changed direction. Seconds later, bullets whizzed through the spot where I’d just been standing. I dove into the underbrush and crawled, scanning the tops of the buildings facing the park, and saw a dark figure on the roof of an apartment building, just before he vanished.
I’m done with this crap. I thought that when Robert sicced that dumbass on me, he was just playing stupid games, but this was a genuine assassination attempt. It’s a shame. There are so many questions I wanted to ask him, so much I hoped to learn. But if Robert wants to pull this half-assed bullshit, I’m more than willing to play. It’ll be fun.
So now I’m crouched in a wooded area near his house, peering through night vision binoculars. I’m dressed in black head to toe, with my face obscured by a ski mask. My M24 sniper rifle is set up on its stand, in case Robert somehow detects my presence here.
I haven’t been able to find out his identity yet, but I will. I’ve got all the time in the world, and plenty of patience.
After all, I’ve been tormenting Camille in little ways for years, and so far I’ve resisted the urge to murder her. Even when I saw that she was doing volunteer work with sexual deviants, which seemed like a slap in the face to me. Like she picked that career with me in mind. Even when she announced that she was getting married, which felt like someone driving a spear through my chest, I stayed away.
I force myself to stay focused on the house in front of me.
When I went to remotely disable Robert’s alarm systems, I found that somebody had beaten me to the punch. I don’t know if it’s Robert’s way of trying to trick me into lowering my guard, but for now I’ll sit and wait.
Camille, Claimed Page 7
