10. Camille
Camille
It has been two weeks since Ryan informed me, with an impressive degree of seriousness for a man dripping with arousal, that we could have sex as often as we liked so long as neither of us developed the unfortunate habit of assigning meaning to it.
So far, we have been remarkably dedicated to honoring the first half of that agreement.
The second has proven somewhat more complicated.
Not that Ryan would agree.
According to him, nothing has changed.
We are neighbors who occasionally fuck.
Frequently fuck, if one wishes to be pedantic.
There was the night he appeared at my door shortly before midnight and did not leave until nearly three.
The afternoon he came over supposedly to return the shirt he had borrowed, only for us to make considerably worse use of it before he ever managed to hand it back.
Last Tuesday, we somehow ended up together three separate times, an excess Ryan blamed entirely on the heat, boredom, and my apparently intolerable habit of walking around my own property without enough clothing.
I informed him that none of those explanations accounted for his participation.
He told me to go fuck myself.
Then assisted.
There have been beds.
Sofas.
My kitchen island once.
And, on one particularly unwise afternoon, the broken stone wall dividing our properties.
That had been Ryan’s idea.
Or, more accurately, Ryan had been attempting yet another repair when I wandered over, made one observation too many about his technique, and found myself shoved against the remaining section of wall with his mouth on mine.
The irony of Ryan using the very boundary between our properties as a place to violate several other boundaries was not lost on me.
I did not mention it.
I enjoy possessing all of my teeth.
Only once has it happened inside his cottage.
That particular invitation surprised me enough that I nearly asked whether he was certain, which would have immediately guaranteed that he changed his mind out of spite.
Instead, I followed him through the kitchen and upstairs.
Ryan allowed me into his bed. He did not allow me to remain in it.
Afterward, while I was still recovering sufficiently to remember that human beings are expected to breathe at regular intervals, he rolled onto his side, looked at me with heavy-lidded eyes, and said, “Okay. You should probably go.”
I stared at him.
He stared back for a few seconds before adding, “Not because that was bad.”
“How reassuring.”
“It was actually really fucking good.”
“Your praise overwhelms me.”
“Don’t be weird. I just don’t want you sleeping over.”
He had sounded defensive before I had even objected. So I did not. I dressed, I kissed him once at the door because I wanted to and because the surprise on his face pleased me, then returned home.
That was five nights ago.
Ryan has not invited me inside the cottage again.
I have not asked.
This is how our arrangement functions.
He decides which pieces of himself I am permitted to have, and I behave as though I do not notice that the pieces have slowly become larger.
At first, he came over only when he wanted sex.
Now he sometimes stays afterward.
Ten minutes became twenty.
Twenty became an hour.
Once, he remained sprawled across my library sofa until nearly two in the morning, complaining about the French language while eating half the strawberries from my refrigerator and periodically remembering that Raja existed on the other side of the room and glaring suspiciously into his enclosure.
I have also spent the last two weeks watching the road.
At first, every unfamiliar engine drew me toward a window.
Every set of headlights passing after dark made something tighten beneath my ribs.
The sedan I saw that first night had returned often enough in my thoughts over the next few days that I eventually downloaded the footage of it from my security cameras and spent hours combing through it for any detail or clue I’d possibly missed.
I didn’t find anything, and ever since, no one has approached Ryan’s cottage, no unfamiliar vehicles have lingered near the property, no lights have appeared in the fields after dark, no gates have been disturbed, and there has been no indication that anyone other than me has taken unusual interest in Alberte Legrand’s grandson.
I have begun to suspect I was wrong.
Perhaps the driver really had been lost. Perhaps a tourist took the wrong turn and discovered too late that the road narrowed into nowhere.
Perhaps twenty-three years of searching for threats connected to Henri Voclain have trained me to find intention in coincidence.
I dislike that possibility.
Still, after fourteen quiet days, the tension has begun to loosen. Not disappear—I am not foolish.
But loosen.
Ryan remains oblivious to all of it.
He walks into the village alone, curses at his collapsing house, leaves his windows open when the evening air becomes too warm, and continues behaving as though the greatest threat to his continued existence is an elderly shopkeeper charging him five euros too much for screws.
Perhaps, for once, he is right.
Perhaps nothing is coming.
The thought should bring relief.
Instead, I find myself wondering what Ryan is doing. This is irritating. It has been nearly forty-eight hours since I last had him.
Not that I count.
I merely happen to know that he left my bed shortly after midnight on Thursday, kissed me at the bottom of the stairs without being prompted—a development I have chosen not to analyze—and has not appeared since.
Forty-seven hours, approximately.
An entirely ordinary observation requiring no particular investment on my part.
The knock comes while I am mid-snake hook in the air, preparing to extract venom from my blue insularis, Estelle.
I close my eyes.
Of course.
For nearly two days, Ryan has apparently possessed the patience of a monk, and now he chooses the exact moment I am working.
The knock sounds again. Three brisk taps, then a pause, then two more.
“Estelle,” I murmur, watching her vivid blue body draped along the branch beneath the laboratory lighting, “I must apologize. My neighbor has developed appalling timing.”
Her reddish eyes follow the small movement of the hook with considerably more patience than the man currently harassing my door.
I return her temporarily to the secured section of her habitat rather than leave anything unfinished, close the enclosure, and strip off my gloves before heading toward the front entrance.
Ryan knocks for a third time just as I open the door, his fist stopping mere inches from my face.
“Oh.”
“Bonsoir.”
He lowers his hand and smiles. Not the wary, uncertain expression he wore the first few times he appeared here, but something more comfortable, familiar.
He expects me to let him in.
I find that I like that far too much.
He lowers his hand, looking very pretty tonight—although I believe he may try to harm me if I tell him that.
His hair falls loose around his shoulders, straighter than usual and glossy beneath the exterior light.
He’s in black shorts that show most of his thighs and a thin cropped shirt beneath an open overshirt, the hem riding high enough to reveal a strip of his stomach.
No bag. No supplies. No plausible reason for being here.
I size him up as he shifts awkwardly.
“Hi,” he says. “You busy?
“Yes.”
Not the answer he wanted. “Oh.” I lean against the door frame. He looks past me, then back to my face. “Like… busy busy?”
“I am in the middle of something.”
His disappointment—and the satisfaction it brings me—is close to instantaneous. “Right.” He shrugs, failing at casual. “No worries. I can just—”
“You can wait,” I tell him.
He stops, his eyes flicking up. “What?”
“I said you can wait.”
“For how long?”
“It’s hard to say. Twenty minutes, possibly.”
His gaze drifts down the front of my body. “Twenty minutes is kind of a long time.”
“You survived forty-seven hours.”
His eyes snap back to mine, and a slow smile spreads across his face. I realize my mistake a fraction of a second too late. “You counted.”
“No.”
“You absolutely fucking counted.”
“I did not. I just so happened to notice.”
“Uh-huh.” His smile widens.
I step aside. “Come in.”
He sweeps past me, satisfaction written all over him. “You counted.”
“Mention it again, and you can return home.”
“You’d miss me,” he teases.
“Terribly,” I answer coolly.
“You would.”
I close the door. He expects me to lead him to the library—I know because he already starts in that direction, shrugging his overshirt from one shoulder.
“This way,” I redirect him, guiding him down the corridor leading to my lab.
“Oh, okay. Where are we going?”
“My laboratory.”
His steps slow. “Your laboratory? As in… the venom stuff?”
“Yes, ‘the venom stuff.’”
His voice wavers. “Does that mean there are snakes in there? Because the other day you said Raja doesn’t like being around the others, so…
are they… You’re not leading me to a room full of deadly snakes, right?
Because that wouldn’t be a very cool thing to do.
And I’m just here for sex, so, maybe we can go to a bedroom or—”
“We can retire to my bedroom after I finish what I need to do.”
He says my name softly, “Camille.”
I glance back. “Yes?”
“How many snakes are we talking about? You didn’t answer, so I assume that I’m right, and the snakes are in the room—”
“There are sixteen at present,” I answer, considering whether it’d be easier just to fuck him quickly against the wall here, then finish my work after.
I walk a few steps, then turn to find him rooted in place.
“Sixteen?” he gasps.
“At present.”
“At present?”
“The collection changes.”
“You said you research venom. I thought that meant, like, six.”
“Why six?”
“Don’t know. Six seems reasonable. Six is a normal number of deadly snakes.”
I frown at him. “I do not understand what goes on inside your brain.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “You don’t have to be rude about it.”
I turn and keep walking. “You are more than welcome to either leave or wait patiently in one of my other rooms.”