Port-au-Prince, June 3, 1770
"I came to the islands to help my father manage his plantations. My mother was heartbroken, as you might imagine, but it is my duty as the eldest son to care for the property that will one day be mine."
This is a lie, of course.
To begin with, I am the second son, destined to inherit nothing. Then there is the fact that the reason I came to Saint-Domingue has nothing to do with land. My father owns no plantations. I was sent here by my uncle who was infuriated by my habit of consorting with his milkmaids. He banished me from his estate near Briouze. The very estate I had been sent to just a few months earlier by my father who had tired of the same behavior in Paris. I don't know why they put up such a fuss. So a few domestics get a doll in the drawer so to speak; it's not as if anyone really got hurt. And who would want to have servants with such loose morals? I was really doing them a favor. Pity they couldn't see it my way.
Ah, well, it's not as if the lovely bit of lace in front of me will ever know the difference. I'm certainly not planning on hanging around long enough for her to find out the truth. And she seems to want the lie anyway. Don't we all? The truth can be so ugly; sometimes a pretty little lie is so much better.
I let my hand caress her cheek which is oddly cool despite the oppressive summer heat. She's an exceptional beauty: dark ebony hair framing the palest ivory face I had ever seen. A pair of jet black eyes are set like jewels above her perfectly, pert nose. Madam Collette's very best new girl, she assured me. Then again, Madam Collette is no stranger to lies herself. But Vivian certainly is the most beautiful girl in the room and her rapt attention is more than gratifying.
"So tell me, Monsieur Laurent," she coos, running a pleasantly scented hand over my arm, "what's the sweetest thing you've ever tasted…on your father's plantation." She quirks an eye at me and I can feel it all the way down my body. Ah, how I love a good flirt.
"Well," I hesitate, leaning in to close the space between us, "there are a great many delights on my father's estate." I pause just a moment before adding, "But I'm willing to bet that none of them are as sweet as you, ma chérie." Before she can respond, I stand and hold out my hand for her.
"Let's go and explore just how delectable you are," I murmur in her ear. Her responding laugh tinkles like tiny bells. She shoots me a sly smile as we leave the main salon of Madam Collette's bordello and head into the lush, dark hallway that leads to the private rooms. I spend the short walk watching the seductive sway of her hips and before I know it, she opens the door to a lavishly appointed boudoir. Coyly, she flits to the bed, stroking one of the four posts with her hand suggestively before sitting down on the chaise by the window. I make a soft, remonstrative tutting sound as I take her hand in mine again and lead her back to the bed.
"My sweet Vivian," I sigh as I push her down onto the bed. "Don't you know I need far more space to work in than that little couch will afford us?"
"As you wish," she whispers back as I lick the cool flesh of her neck. I can feel myself hardening as I lave the skin just behind her ear, tugging the lobe with my teeth. The chill of her skin is in sharp contrast to the heat of my own, just like her pale skin is the perfect complement to my olive toned flesh. We are a sumptuous pair: dark and light, hot and cold, man and woman. Even though I certainly don't have to coax her, I enjoy the preliminaries of love making and I take my time with sweet Vivian.
I tease her as I gently pull at her clothes; nipping her with my teeth and being rewarded with her melodic laugh. Her gown is easily dispensed and I move on to loosen her stays, tickling her lightly and delighting in her soft giggles. Her scent continues to enthrall me; she really is the most delicious thing I have ever come across.
Now that I have her clothing loosened, I am able to cup her breasts, holding that perfect flesh up to lick the pale, pink nipples and pull on them ever so slightly with my hardened lips. She's panting and as my hand drifts up her skirts to the top of her thighs, I can feel her wetness. I slip a single finger inside of her to test how tight she is and I'm rewarded by the press of her firm muscles. She's heavenly and I can barely restrain myself as I make quick work of the buttons at the front of my breeches and hurriedly push the rest of her skirts up.
In one slick motion, I sheath myself in her and the pleasure of being encompassed in such tight wetness is divine. I can't feel anything but bliss as I move within her and the earlier coolness of her flesh is now burned away with the heat from my own. I am lost in the ecstasy and rational thought has fled. She begins to move with me, increasing the delicious friction, and together we push toward our mutual release. I'm very close when suddenly I feel a sharp pain at my neck.
Did she just bite me?
I am struggling to back away from her, to tell her she's hurting me but I can't because I'm somehow trapped against her. I let out a small grunt as I wrench my head back, but the noise is lost in a much louder one. There's a distant pounding, the sort of sound one hears when standing at the base of an enormous waterfall, and the room shakes with a small tremor. The rumble ends as suddenly as it began and now it is my pained screams that fill the room.
With a jerk, I am flung from Vivian's body and she bolts toward the window as if her dress were on fire. In an instant she is gone. I don't know what happened but I do know that it isn't her clothes that are aflame, it's my body that is. Agony, spreading out from my neck in a torrent, flows through me in burning waves. I can feel the ground beneath me quaking, I can hear the building around me collapsing but none of it has any meaning, none of it makes sense in the face of the overwhelming torture I'm in.
My entire body is ablaze. I know I am in darkness but I don't understand how I can be in so much pain and not be dead. I howl like the wounded animal I am, but no one comes to either quench the fire or end my torment with the blissful release of death. I simply continue to burn, on and on, far beyond reason. An eternity later, I become aware. Despite the agony, I am able to hear the faint sounds of people wailing and stones being shifted. As the pain begins to draw out of my limbs and in toward my swiftly beating heart, I can smell blood nearby and it fills me with a hunger the likes of which I have never known.
With a pounding crescendo, my heart races to its final beat and then stops with a thud. The flames are gone and somehow, miraculously, I have survived. I open my eyes and I am covered in rubble. I am still lying on the bed I had shared with Vivian what may have been days or years ago, but it is crushed and broken beneath me. I begin to panic when I see that I am surrounded in debris, but as soon as I claw at it, it shifts effortlessly aside, as if it were made of no more than custard. In a matter of seconds, I am free and standing amid unfathomable destruction. Something cataclysmic has happened here, but I have no idea what has wrecked such devastation. Before I can give it more than a passing thought, though, the smell that drew me forth from my pain wafts back and my throat lights up in flames.
Blood.
Whirling around, I race toward the thick, pulsing heartbeat. I am led by my nose and my ears and my focus is complete. There is nothing so important, so wanted, so needed as the liquid I can hear pulsing through the body I have come upon.
It is a girl, no more than thirteen and she is weeping over the corpse of what could be her mother. Her dress is in tatters and her hair is lank and unwashed against her tiny face but it's not pity I feel. It's hunger. She looks up at me, tears streaking her dust covered face.
"Can you fix it?" Her question is simple and sad and I know precisely what I must do.
"Yes, ma petite chérie," I reply as I kneel down next to her. "Yes. I can fix this."
Again, this is a lie, but as her life flows into me, I think how sometimes lies and truth can be indistinguishable. How sometimes, when the world is turned upside down, lies are all we have.
A/N: A few things of note.
First, Haiti was known as Saint-Domingue back in 1770 when they experienced their last major earthquake.
Second, I in NO WAY am trying to lessen the tragedy of what happened in Haiti by setting my story during their previous earthquake, this is just what came to me when I was thinking of what to write. Laurent wouldn't let it go.
Third, I decided to use the French idiom, a doll in the pocket, instead of the English one, a bun in the oven, because Laurent is a native French speaker. I hope that made sense.
Fourth (saving the best for last), thank you so very much uhyesplease for betaing this on extremely short notice. I [heart] you so much, it's like crazy. The. End.