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“Not likely.”
Simon gets up, swaying where he stands. “Sorry,” he bites out, just barely maintaining his ire with Bastien. His neck is splotchy from where he was strangled. There will be some hellish bruises tomorrow. He’s not begging forgiveness from the man who almost killed him, but he’s also not defending himself. My contempt for him is tinged with pity. Bastien’s always treated Simon like garbage. Back in school, he would alternate between humiliating him and building him up, and it just made him worship Bastien more.
Pathetic.
Bastien doesn’t even acknowledge him, so Simon stumbles from the room.
We eat for several more minutes, and then I set down my fork. “So,” I say to Bastien, “you actually think you can tell other men not to put their hands on me when you go to your club for perverts and have sex with random whores?”
Bastien’s whole body goes rigid, and I see the tension in his jawline. “You want to have sex with Simon?”
I can tell from the steel in his voice that if I say yes, he will kill Simon. Right now. Given how vile Simon was to me back in high school, I’m tempted to say yes, but I’m trying to be as honest with Bastien as I can. I don’t know why, but it feels important not to lie to him.
“I have never wanted to have sex with any man besides you,” I tell him truthfully.
Okay, so maybe I shouldn’t have beenthathonest.
He relaxes a little. “I won’t be using the women at the club anymore. I’ll never have sex with another woman besides you as long as I live.”
I stare at him in wonder, trying to understand this mercurial man. He’s promised me a life of torture. So why not have your cake and eat it too?
“Why? You hate me.”
He grunts, stabbing at a piece of meat on his plate. “Because apparently you’ve put some kind of spell on my dick that makes me sick when I let anyone other than you near it. If I don’t picture your face, I can’t even come. It’s always been that way.” He starts in on his salad with a bitter expression twisting his face.
I sit here for a moment, speechless. Perhaps I should find his words insulting, but for Bastien, that’s almost a declaration of love. Maybe there’s a chance I can convince him not to hurt me, after all.
I pull a bowl of bread rolls over to me and tear it open, stuffing one of them in my mouth, thinking up all the ways I can go about this.
If there’s a chance I can spare myself torture, I’ll take it. Even if I do lose myself in the process.
CHAPTER22
Camille
Several days drag by.Bastien seems preoccupied by something, and I can tell it’s important, but he won’t tell me what. I imagine it has to do with whatever attack is coming our way. He banishes me to another room and doesn’t try to have sex with me again. It rattled him, how much he reveals of himself in his sleep. He’s not a man who likes to feel vulnerable, and I’m still waiting for the hammer to fall because of that little slipup of his.
When he thought I was asleep, I’d feel his hands brush down my hair. His arm would wrap around me, pulling me into his chest. When I was flush against him, he’d sigh as if our touch gave him some sort of relief. He’d brush his hand against mine when we walked to and from various rooms.
More than anything, it’s the way he would look at me when he thought I wasn’t paying attention. Almost longingly. Reverently. Lovingly.
I spend my days watching television and reading. He doesn’t want me to even step out the front door. I wish I knew what he was so afraid of, but he’s keeping a lid on it.
He refuses to let me have his cell phone to call my mother. One day, I see one of the guards talking on a cell phone, and I snatch it from his hand. He shouts angrily, but I ignore him and run into a bedroom and slam the door shut. I dial my mother’s number as he clomps down the hallway, probably going to find Bastien to tell on me.
What just happened proves a theory of mine—Bastien told all the guards not to lay a finger on me. He doesn’t want any other man touching me. Not Simon, not Landon, no one but him. That knowledge lights a spark of happiness inside me.
But the happiness is snuffed out the minute my mother answers the phone.
“Who is this?” she demands suspiciously, not recognizing the number.
“Mother, it’s me.”
There’s silence on the other end for a moment, and I question if she’s hung up.
“You call me up like this, after everything that you’ve put me through, with your shameless behavior?” There’s the bitch I was expecting. “Landon told me what you did to him!” Of course he did. Why doesn’t she just adopt him, or marry him herself? “You are dead to me!” she spits out. Then she proceeds to rant about how I’ve humiliated her and what an ungrateful, vile, evil, disgusting—
I’m dead to her, but she wants to verbally rip me to shreds? Not today. Not ever again.
