Bitsy's Inhuman Submission Ch. 09

Even though I pen these words years after the last episode, in Bitsy and Stuart time, only moments have passed.

Michael. Bitsy's inner voice and thoughts clung to those two syllables like a talisman. How did things go so wrong? So fast? For the first time since his disappearance twelve years earlier when they were both nineteen, she felt a spark of anger ignite within her soul. Anger at him. For leaving.

Michael, the new Earl of Carpathia since his parents' deaths when Bitsy was just shy of her nineteenth birthday—murders—at the hands of the Bathorys, the same night they dispatched Bitsy's parents and aunt, was her center, her rock.

And, then? He was ripped away from her. Oh, nothing as catastrophic as his death, and nothing as shattering as her infidelity to him. One day he was there, and the next he was gone, ostensibly to broker a treaty with a band of Wiccans, who seemed to be less loyal to the Bathorys than other witches and warlocks.

Weeks passed, and nothing was heard from him. The Wiccans knuckled under—again—to Tracy Bathory's cruel nature. Word came to Bitsy that Michael never made it to that corner of Siberia that housed the Wiccans.

Bitsy realized, as did Chris, Michael's best friend, that if the Bathorys had killed Michael, that if he were dead, the mother-daughter duo of evil would have spared no expense to have the pleasure of parading his broken body before Bitsy.

As time passed, Bitsy, the war strategist and the Vampirans' best hope for victory in a stalemate two-front war, gave up on life. The change was gradual. But, as it became apparent that Michael was not returning, she began to refuse to eat and started singing to herself and wringing her hands at times, often in meetings with her advisors.

It was a last resort that Katya, her baby sister, had her committed to the asylum. By that time, Bitsy was catatonic and unresponsive. Only after signing the paperwork did Katya realize—too late—that the asylum was owned by the Bathorys, that she had actually placed her beloved older sister in a trap expertly crafted by the Bathorys.

For the next year, as the Vampiran defense steadily crumbled without Bitsy's masterful handling, she was offered up to Tracy Bathory's steadily more creative forms of mental torture. At the end of the year, she was pushed out of her tiny cell, scrawled with her incoherent ramblings, into the bright sunlight of a war-torn street in Jasper.

And realized that there was still no Michael.

Now, twelve years later, as she reached for his ever-present 8x10 image, a duplicate of the photograph of the innocently smiling nineteen-year-old who had stolen her teenage heart that graced her desk at her office in Transylvania, that rested on the right side of her desk in Paris, her vision blurred to the point that she could no longer make out her trembling, scarlet-tipped fingers.

She clutched him briefly to her chest, now heaving with silent sobs, before deliberately placing the photograph of her first love face-down in the lower right-hand drawer of her desk.

In doing so, she said goodbye to many things. Her innocence. Her love of Michael. The girl she used to be and was no longer. And Michael himself.

A knock interrupted her nearly melodramatic reverie. Briskly shaking her head, she pulled herself together mentally before barking a "Come in" to Marcos's hesitant knock.

There was a hardness to the steely grayish-green dry-eyed gaze that met Marcos's baby blues. Dispassionately, she catalogued the differences between the two brothers.

They were of the same height and facial features, but that is where the similarities ended. The man who would-have-been king but abdicated in favor of joining the priesthood in the hope of not descending into the same path of lechery and debauchery that had plagued his father's side of the family for centuries and had already, at the ripe old age of eighteen, skewed his brother into being a new convert to the cult of Dionysus, had a...kinder...look to his eyes that Stuart simply didn't have.

A few months earlier, Marcos had returned home defrocked, by his own choosing rather than the Church's. Whispers abounded that maybe he had succumbed to his family's base tendencies, but, from what Bitsy could see, that concept was laughable.

Marcos was an innocent...a babe in the words in terms of the sensuality his two-years-younger brother wallowed in. And that she now wallowed in.

Bitsy, in front of the ten years older Marcos, suddenly felt ancient.

"Erm. Is everything okay, Miss Mason?" A hesitant query to match his knock moments before.

Bitsy glanced around before responding. All evidence of her early cam-play with Stuart had been safely put away. "Of course, Marcos. But, please, as I've said several times, call me Alyssa."

Marcos's kind smile was blinding. Just once, she wished she could inspire that open affection in Stuart. To bask in that much warmth from her Master would surely be her undoing, however.

"Alyssa. I'm sorry."

"Is there something wrong, Marcos?" Even though he towered over her, his bulk did not intimidate her, unlike her Master's. It was obvious that something was wrong with the Duke.

"Yes. No. I don't know." Clearly indecisive, Marcos began pacing before her desk. Then, with a heavy sigh, he collapsed in one of the chairs in front of her desk. "It's my brother," he let out with a groan of impatience.

Bitsy gulped. "Your brother?"

Marcos nodded. "You're the only person that I've said this to, but I came home because of him." Marcos barked a short laugh. "I could choose to save a million souls. Or I could choose to save my brother's soul."

"And you chose his." A statement. Not a question.

Another nod. "Yes. His behavior in the last couple of years has become more erratic. More women. More debauchery. More dealings with the Bathorys. He's spiraling out of control."

Bitsy cleared her throat before responding with a lie. "I don't know your brother that well," she paused thinking sardonically to herself, only intimately. "But, from what I've seen in the news and in the gossip rags, he seems as if he knows what he's doing." Playing the devil's advocate, she continued, "Are you sure it's not just you being big brother and worrying for no reason about little brother?"

Marcos appeared to deliberate on that for a few moments before steepling his fingers together and tapping his nose. Now, he appeared every second of his age instead of his almost youthful hesitancy and eagerness that usually enrobed him. "I had almost convinced myself of that. But then," he broke off.

"But then," Bitsy prompted when it appeared he wasn't going to finish his tantalizing teaser statement.

"But then, he made a deal with Tracy Bathory concerning Lady Bitsy." He appeared to want to explain.

Bitsy, as Alyssa, held up her hand to stall him. "You mean that...incarceration...that recently made the news?"

Marcos met her gaze, his normally warm gaze resembling blue ice chips. "Yes. I'm caught between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, Tristan is my brother. On the other, Lady Bitsy's fiancé is my best friend and cousin."

In attempting to maintain a neutral appearance, Bitsy glossed over his use of the present tense regarding Michael. She tried to appear understanding. "Of course," she responded, "you are trying to be a help to all involved."

Now, Marcos shook his head in a definite no. "It's not that simple. I know Tristan better than anyone on this planet. I knew, or rather I hoped, that since Lady Bitsy was Michael's fiancé that my brother would consider her off limits. You see," he intimated, his voice dropping to a whisper, "he's been obsessed with her for years. Almost stalker obsessed."

A maelstrom of emotions slammed into Bitsy instantly. "How? What? I'm sorry, but what?"

"I knew you would understand right away," Marcos beamed again while nodding appreciatively. "My brother, called by many the most infamous lecher of his generation, is absolutely infatuated with Lady Bitsy, Ice Queen. Fiancee of our cousin. And, up until Tristan got his claws in her, the ideal image of chastity. But all of that is irrelevant."

"Irrelevant?" Bitsy parroted while her mind reeled. Too much. Too much. Too many thoughts plagued her mind in those moments.

"Well, not irrelevant, but made so by the truly horrific thing he has done." Marcos appeared lost in his own dour musings.

"Which is?"

Marcos buried his face in his hands, then rubbed his fingers over his cheeks and eyes as if to clean his thoughts from his mind. "Even though he has taken her, raped her, enslaved her, been obsessed with her for years, that is not the truly terrifying fact. He doesn't appear to be able to stop."

"Stop?" I've really got to stop this, Bitsy thought. I'm only able to parrot back the last word of his statements. I must focus.

A harsh, bitter laugh ripped from Marcos's mouth. "My brother's attention span concerning women, especially once he gets what he wants, is miniscule. But, in Lady Bitsy's case, after all he has done to corrupt her, he doesn't appear to be ready to move on."

Bitsy decided a slanting glance might be an appropriate reaction. "And that's a bad thing?"

"It is when it involves an interaction that is related in any manner with Tracy Bathory. The sentence is to last a year. I guarantee that if she realizes that her malice has backfired and resulted in happiness for either Tristan or Lady Bitsy that she will do something to destroy them." After a deep, shuddering breath, he addressed the person he knew to be Alyssa Mason. "That's why I don't think you should let her have any involvement in the IPD. She's poison. She's worse than the evil you are trying to fight."

Inwardly, Bitsy couldn't help but agree. After all, she was living the fate worse than death that the Duchess had commanded. And she knew better than most of the festering malevolence that Tracy Bathory was capable of. Outwardly, she snapped, "Well, I haven't contacted her back yet, have I?"

Her tone seemed to snap him out of his rueful funk. "No. You haven't." His boyish eagerness was back. "But enough about her and Tristan and Lady Bitsy. I really came to ask you something."

"Hmm," she voiced, lost in her own turbulent imaginings.

Marcos took that for acquiescence. "Would you consider having dinner with me tonight?"

Bitsy snapped to attention again. "Are you asking me out?" The concept was almost laughable, but not for the reasons that his ego would be hurt by.

"Um, yeah."

Hoping to let him down gently, she demurred. "It really isn't a great idea. I mean, we work together. I'm technically your boss."

For the first time, in either guise—Bitsy or Alyssa, she recognized his family's rakishness in Marcos. If there had been no Stuart, and no Michael, she could easily have felt herself giving in. The heated glances from someone as gentle as Marcos would someday be a woman's undoing.

He walked over to her, knelt until his eyes were level with his. Even though her mind was occupied with thoughts of her Master, she could feel herself responding to his brother's own hypnotic gaze. Drawn in, compelled, she almost missed his reply. "I will quit my position, then. You are worth it." He was so close that his breath beat a caressing tattoo on her lips. Her tongue darted out, and his lips swooped the final millimeters to claim hers.

Masterful...but in a completely different way from Stuart. Whereas Stuart's brand of control was that of a warlord, a hearkening back to his forebears, a take-no-prisoners, scorched earth brand of mastery, Marcos's was seductive, steely yes, but encased by steel. Equally sinful.

Bitsy's lips trembled against his. For one...two...three seconds longer than she should have allowed. The buzz of a text message on her "Bitsy" cell phone gave her the reminder to separate. And breathe.

Marcos was equally shaken. More hesitant than usual as he scraped his hair back, the dark auburn a painful reminder that he was her Master's brother. He struggled for words and finally came out with, "So, what do you say?"

Bitsy closed her eyes to shut out his gaze, but she couldn't shut out her shame. First she cheats on Michael with Stuart and now Stuart with Marcos?

"Alyssa?" Marcos prompted.

She touched her lips, still able to feel the warmth there. "I...can't," she said, her voice breaking on the second word.

Marcos's eyes appeared almost purple with injury. "Can't?"

"I'm sorry." She darted out to lick her lips again, a nervous gesture that she thought she had eradicated from herself when she was thirteen, otherwise known as the year of Chapstick. "If I were to post my relationship status on Facebook right now, I would have to choose 'It's complicated,' and that wouldn't even tell a tenth of the complications. I know this is going to sound like a major kiss off, but it truly isn't you, it's me."

Marcos appeared to regroup a bit and become the friendly guy-next-door again, rather than a very tantalizing Mr. February. "If you ever change your mind, or if things become uncomplicated," he broke off, letting the unspoken question hang between them.

"You'll be the first to know," Bitsy promised.

As he turned to leave her office, she called him back. "By the way, Marcos, I do not accept your resignation."

He smiled, a bit sadly, and shut the door.

Bitsy let out a long exhalation that did little to relieve the torment within. Then, the enormity of what had transpired in the past ten minutes hit her, and she sternly put a lock on her emotions.

Her phone's text message function buzzed again, imperiously, if such an inanimate object could be imperious. She glanced down and bit back an unladylike string of curses. Even if the phone could not be imperious, the sender most certainly was.

The most recent message read, "Call me now, slut." She winced when she realized she was one in truth.

The first message read, "Come home immediately." When did the Romanian royal palace become home? But it had.

Bitsy dialed Tristan's phone. After half a ring he answered with, "Where the hell have you been?"

Part of her own anger—at herself—forced her to respond in kind. "I have been in the same office ever that I cammed you from earlier."

The silence on the other end made her wonder for a minute if the call had been disconnected, either from a lousy connection or by her Master's own hand. Then, "You need to return home immediately."

"Yes, Your Highness," was her waspish response.

Click. Stuart had disconnected the call.

***

How could anyone have ever considered her the least bit icy? Stuart wondered as he pocketed his phone. In her sexual passion, she is a blazing inferno. In anger, she is a fiery virago. He looked up, smiling a rare crooked grin, as his older brother strode into the room.

Wait? Marcos? Strode? His quiet, bookish, saintly brother? "Waiting for your...what is it you call her anyway, brother?"

And in a mood, as well. "I call her my slut, my slave." My ladylove, Stuart added to himself.

"I'm sorry. I cannot and will not refer to a lady that way."

"Well, then, how do you plan to refer to her?"

Marcos considered this, his knowing gaze spearing his younger brother. "I think, companion."

"Why are you here, Marcos?" His brother, who had his entire life served as Stuart's part-time grudging conscience, had made the part-time full-time as of late.

Happiness glinted in his brother's cerulean gaze. "I met someone. And, I made the first move."

Marcos's glee was contagious. "I'm happy for you, bro. When do I get to meet her?"

"You may have already. Alyssa Mason."

Stuart blinked. Leave it to his brother to pick someone unappetizing. "The Commandant General of the IPD?" he asked with a disgusted set to his features. In his mind, he conjured up the image of a blonde with dishwater blonde hair pulled back in a too-tight bun with dull-colored eyes and an unappetizing figure.

At this, Bitsy walked in, disrobing as she slunk in. She stopped, inches from him, almost angelic in a sheer white babydoll gown. Avoiding his gaze, she slid down into a submissive kneeling position that she knew he favored. Only then did she raise her glance to meet his approving eyes. Though outwardly she played the innocent coquette, dipping her tongue out to slick over her lips, inwardly she seethed.

That's what he thinks of me? The real me?

Marcos's sharply indrawn breath broke the spell of Master and slave. Bitsy realized immediately what she had done.

Her gaze collided with Marcos's wounded one. Confusion, hurt, and betrayal were visible on his face, and Bitsy's heart ached for what could never be between them. She shut her eyes, cursing herself for being a coward, unable to face the realizations that Marcos was having.

Stuart, too, had noticed. "What's wrong, brother? I would think that true love would have stopped you from being a prude."

"No," Marcos croaked, with a definitive shake of his head, "not a prude. Not in love, even. Infatuated briefly, as you are with Lady Bitsy."

The king appeared relieved. But his eyes soon darkened. "The hour grows late, brother. I worry that, having faced your first infatuation, as you call it, tonight may be fairly difficult for you."

Bitsy, puzzled, looked from one brother to the other and back again. Marcos, clearly pained, seemed to comprehend exactly what his brother was saying. "What do you mean, Master?"

"My brother, up till now almost a eunuch, has had his first taste of sexual desire. Sexual desire awakens the wolfish beast within. To now, he's avoided the 'family curse.' But now, tonight, he will transform. He will have to spend tonight with us in the dungeon. For everyone's protection."

"Will he be...like last night?" Bitsy's voice faltered.

Stuart's reply was grim. "Probably even more so."

Bitsy's stomach roiled. The change was already starting to take place for the evening.

"With us?" Mild-mannered Marcos was all but nonexistent. "Do you mean, you risked her life because you were too selfish to be apart from her for a night?"

Please don't tell him, Bitsy silently begged. Stuart opened his mouth to respond. "With us. Brother, I have something to tell you that's going to involve you keeping quiet about a violation of a law."

Horror masked Marcos's features, contorted them. "Please tell me you didn't."

"The first evening Bitsy was here, I bit her. And it's happened since then. It's too late. Last night proved that."

Marcos's horror gave way to despair. "A hybrid?" he breathed.

"Yes." The answer that neither Bitsy nor Stuart had spoken aloud until now...now both whispered it, as if to make it less true. The answer that sealed her fate.

"What do you mean, for everyone's protection?" Bitsy was worried about the answer.

"It means," Marcos ground out, speaking directly to Bitsy for the first time since her arrival, "that if the object of my 'sexual desire,' as my brother calls it, were to be within reaching distance to me, my 'sexual desire' and acting on it would probably kill her. Tristan has had years to hone his behavior and can sort of pretend a measure of control. As someone new to this, I will know none."

"There's not even a guarantee that you will be safe tonight, slave," Stuart was quick to mention, unknowing of the full implication behind Marcos's words.

Bitsy again looked from one to the other with a dawning horror of understanding that mirrored the same emotion on Marcos's face only minutes before. "And that means?"

"It means that I may have to stand aside while my older brother takes you, as is his right. I'm alpha only because he chose not to be. Well, chose by not feeling any desire. Now, even though he desires another, he will have to have a stand-in for her to take her place." Stuart didn't appear to like the idea at all.