Chapter 5 Bastian
Bastian
Melissa Parker has been babbling for seventeen minutes straight.
I know, because I’ve been tracking the time as carefully as the glasses of wine she’s had. Timing is imperative when you’re drugging someone without their knowledge.
“—and that’s when I realized Foucault was basically talking about kids like us. Get hurt when you’re young enough, and you’ll police yourself forever.”
Her giggle makes my molars ache.
“Am I being pretentious?” She snorts softly as she reaches for what’s left of her fourth glass of wine. “Ugh. I’m totally being pretentious.”
“Not at all.” I stand, the empty wine bottle in my hand. “Please continue.”
Christ, please don’t.
Each word out of the girl’s mouth erodes what patience I have left. I only bear it because I must.
Because I have no choice.
I roll my shirtsleeves to the elbow as I head into the kitchen for another bottle of wine—something to pass the time until her drugs kick in. The once-crisp white linen is beginning to wrinkle.
I’ve been tolerating this girl for too long.
“I’m so glad you arranged this study group,” Melissa says close behind me.
Her voice is so bright and eager.
A smart girl would run instead of following me. Then again, a smart girl would never have gotten into the car with me outside the restaurant. Would never have let me drive her to my house when she knew we’d be alone. Would never have accepted a glass of wine she didn’t watch me pour.
However, Miss Parker is not smart, despite desperately trying to appear so.
“Pathetic,” Bad Wolf says. “End this already.”
Good Wolf merely whines. It knows arguing is futile.
Melissa’s fate was sealed the moment she crossed my threshold.
I’m acutely aware of the girl’s presence as I open the wine fridge and scan the labels without really seeing them.
She’s wearing too much perfume. Cloying jasmine and sickly sweet almonds, and she keeps reapplying it every time she visits the bathroom.
Everything about her is trying too hard—the low-cut Chanel dress, the way she leans against the kitchen island, her practiced laugh when she thinks I’ve said something clever.
“Such a beautiful home,” she says, running her fingers along the marble countertop. “It’s very you.”
“How so?” I pull out another Pinot—a better vintage than she deserves, but perhaps it will salvage the evening for one of us.
“Mm,” she hums. “It’s…sophisticated. Intimidating.” Her body warms mine as I reach for the corkscrew. “But also kind of…inviting? Like you. You want people to feel comfortable, but you also love showing them who’s in control.”
She moves into my space as I work the cork free, near enough that her breast brushes against my arm.
Bad Wolf recoils so violently, I fumble the bottle and nearly drop it.
“Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong,” it growls.
“Shit, that was close,” she says through a giggle. “Too much wine, Professor?”
“It’s Bastian, please,” I mutter, forcing a smile. “Do me a favor, girl, and turn on the fireplace?”
Her eyelashes flutter. Not because she’s flirting—although she hasn’t stopped since the first glass—but because she’s struggling to process a simple instruction.
Looks like the drugs are finally kicking in.
Melissa totters off, her bare feet slapping on the kitchen tiles until they hit the rug in the living area.
Didn’t even have to ask her to take off her shoes when she came into my house. Didn’t have to ask if she was okay with wine. Whenever I tried to engage her in philosophical debate, she bent over for me like a textbook histrionic, begging for validation.
No fight.
No friction.
Blow-up dolls are more fun.
I pull a small baggie of pink powder from my slacks, pinch it open, and tap a measure into her wineglass. Glancing up to make sure she’s still fumbling with the fireplace’s control panel, I stir her wine with my finger until the powder dissolves.
I laughed when Corbin offered me a sample of ‘pink cocaine’ a few months ago.
Laughed harder when he produced a baggie of actual pink powder.
He admitted it was the chemical equivalent of fish stew, but swore on his mother’s life he didn’t lace his batches with fentanyl—though he could provide some Fenty for me, if I was into that.
I was bored and reckless that day, so I took both. The pink cocaine was too chaotic for my tastes—hallucinogens, stimulants, and opioids in one ungovernable cocktail—but I understood the appeal.
Agony Hollow thrives on chaos.
Melissa would probably accept a few lines of the stuff if I offered, but I don’t want her to know why she’s suddenly incapacitated.
Where’s the fun in that?
She turns as I’m sucking the wine off my finger, and gives me a double take.
“Like this?” she calls out, as if there’s a fucking football stadium between us.
I nod as I carry our wine glasses back to the living room, setting hers on the coffee table. She’s staring into the flames, swaying. I move to within a foot of her, studying the way her dress clings to a body that offers nothing to study.
No visible underwear lines.
This is the moment I should feel the predatory thrill of having someone young and beautiful trapped in my home. Where the sick anticipation of blood and cum and violence should be rushing through me like cocaine.
But all I feel is…annoyed.
“She’s not her,” Bad Wolf snarls.
Good Wolf, for once, agrees. “Make her go away.”
They make me want to down Melissa’s glass instead of mine, pink cocaine and all.
Parker turns, starting when she sees me so close behind her. I step away, but she’s quick to follow, misreading revulsion for restraint.
When I take another step, she looks briefly confused, and then picks up her glass as if she had meant to all along. But the suggestion I planted hours ago has taken root, and the chemicals are doing the rest. She’s on a trajectory now. And I have no interest in redirecting it.
“May I ask you something personal, Professor Rooke?” She takes a sip of wine as she waits for me to respond. The second dose of pink cocaine was double the first, but she doesn’t seem to register the extra bitterness.
Christ, what now?
“Of course, Melissa.” I switched to using her first name moments after we arrived.
She hasn’t noticed.
There are so many things the silly girl hasn’t noticed.
She glances away, playing coy. When she looks back, her pupils are blown wide. The drugs are in her bloodstream now.
I do love this part.
Watching them unravel.
Watching them fight for control as their mind and body split apart. The confusion when they register what’s in my eyes but can’t make their legs cooperate.
This is where the real fun begins.
Usually.
But I want this over. I want the sharp bite of peroxide to replace her infernal perfume.
I should suggest we take a shower together.
Or I could drag her into the yard and hose her down.
“Do you ever…” She bites her lip. “Do you ever think about your students? Like, really think about them?”
“In what context?” I lean back on one foot, watching her with a clinical detachment she completely fails to detect.
“You know.” She sways as she glances away, sways as she looks back at me. Pauses for a big, loopy sigh and a slow, fluttery blink. “Like…think about them.”
Iceberg ahead.
“That’s it.” I set down my glass and reach for hers. “I’m cutting you off.”
“I’m fine.” She moves closer, a lopsided smile pulling at her mouth. “I’m totally fine. I just—I think you’re really interesting. And maybe…maybe you think I’m interesting too?”
Her hand lands on my chest.
My wolves fall silent.
Not in anticipation.
In disgust.
My body registers her touch with all the enthusiasm of a corpse. No quickening pulse. No surge of heat. Nothing but a visceral wrongness that makes my skin crawl.
“I think,” Melissa whispers, rising on her toes, wine-stained lips parting, “Maybe…”
She tries to kiss me.
I’ve expected it all night. But in this moment, I can’t imagine anything worse.
I turn my head at the last second, and her mouth catches my jaw instead.
Bad Wolf growls. Long, low, hard. “Get it away from us.”
She reeks of wine and breath mints.
Her lips are wet and clumsy.
And the giggle she lets out is so desperate and fake, it makes me want to snap her neck.
Even when I slide a hand around her hip and close my eyes and try to fucking pretend that this is what I want, what I need—what I fucking deserve after those two foolish children ran from me with their tails between their legs—even then, I feel nothing but disgust.
It’s no surprise I shove her away from me hard enough to send her sprawling to the floor.
“Yes,” Bad Wolf snaps. “Away, away!”
Good Wolf has fallen silent.
Melissa rolls onto her back, staring at me with a deep frown.
“Wh-why did you…?” She brings a hand to her head, touching the spot of blood welling up where her temple grazed the side of the fireplace.
A few inches to the right, I’d already be fetching the peroxide from under the sink.
“You fell, Melissa.” My voice sounds disembodied, floating somewhere behind me as I walk up to her. “That’s what happens when you guzzle wine like a greedy little cunt.”
“Wh—but—” Her lips are trembling, eyes filling with scared, confused tears.
I love it when they cry.
Love it when pleasure mingles with pain until there’s nothing left but horror and fear.
Loved it.
Past tense.
I flick her hair from her face with my finger. “Get up.”
Her confusion deepens, but somewhere inside her head, alarm bells are clanging. She groans with effort as she tips herself onto her stomach and tries to crawl away from me. Either the ketamine or the liquid ecstasy has her reeling.
I draw in a long, slow breath. Watching her escape is like watching my windshield wipers smear a bug across the glass.
“That’s it,” I say as she gets her elbows under her. “You can do it, girl. I believe in you.”
She giggles, chokes, sobs. If she’s feeling the same now as I did when I tried pink cocaine, she’s inside a washing machine right now. Up, down, drowning, giddy, frothing.
Utter. Fucking. Chaos.
For the first time in my fucking life, the thought of what comes next turns my stomach.
Maybe I should finish her wine. At least that way I’d be enjoying myself.
But even the thought of chemical oblivion does nothing for me.
Binding Parker? Fucking her? Killing her?
Nothing.
Because this isn’t about her anymore.
I suppose it never was.
She was meant to be a substitute.
I’m ruined.
Utterly fucking ruined for anyone but them.
All I want is Haven.
All I want is Kai.
Both. Together.
Because it’s messy and wrong and so fucking perfect my hands are shaking.
I grab Melissa’s hair, and I haul her to her feet, and I drag her down the hall to my study, and I shove her down the set of narrow stairs no one knows about.
Because the alternative is doing nothing.
And I’ve never been able to do nothing.
Agony Hollow should’ve been a fresh start. I kept my head down for three years, getting by on scraps.
Until Haven.
Until Kai.
And now I don’t have a choice but to seek emotional release.
I’ve never had a fucking choice.
Since the first time I drew blood at sixteen, I’ve only ever craved one thing in life.
More.