The day after Marcos's farewell to Bitsy...
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Thrust, parry, riposte! Thrust! Parry! Riposte! Stuart wiped away the sweat as he put himself through another punishing workout.
He had not slept last night and had instead practiced honing his other blade's skills. At swordplay, the king was a master—all Tsepesh males were. The bawdy joke was that they finessed ALL of their swords with equal cunning.
To him, fencing was a carefully choreographed dance, a tango between two—hopefully—matched opponents. Only two people came close to his skill—Michael and Marcos. He shoved thoughts of both of them away. Regardless of how much he dominated Bitsy's supple, soft, curvy flesh, his cousin still dominated her emotions, her heart.
And his brother? Even now, Marcos was probably seducing Bitsy further under his alpha's spell during his grand farewell gesture. And whose fault is that? an insidiously serpentine voice slyly queried. The voice sounded like Tracy Bathory's. He pushed the suggestion down. He knew that he was the only culpable party.
For the next several minutes, his mind slashed air, though with his virtual reality goggles. In his mind, he battled a fierce opponent. He himself had programmed the simulation; his opponent was an amalgamation of himself and all of his previous practices and competitions.
Then, his olfactory and psychic senses tingled. Bitsy, his Elizabeth, was home. To avoid seeming the eager puppy brought to heel, he resisted the urge to bound to her, press her into the plush carpets of the foyer, until she rested, panting and prone, beneath him. Only then would he feast with due carnality on her bounty.
With a frown, he locked down his desires with ironclad manacles of self-control.
Another fencing competitor teased the edges of his eyesight. Funny, he mused, drunk on Bitsy's intoxicating scent so close, yet so elusive, I don't remember adding another combatant.
Dressed in the white padded suit and mask, the new opponent nonetheless crept closer to him with foil raised and blunted. Slight, barely five-and-a-half feet tall, he figured he could easily crush this VR projection. He could have sworn he had the program defaulted to Expert.
As the image appeared to be a spunky stickler for form—as was he—he saluted the digital apparition with a whispered, menacing "En garde."
He thrust—and solid metal swooshed through the air—but clanged the solid metal of his opponent's foil.
**********
Bitsy was furious! Positive her eyes burned lime green from beneath the mask, she felt an intense satisfaction in seeing his hauteur slip, if only briefly.
His expression hardened, and she realized that he still didn't know it was she who parried his thrust. "A tiny assassin?" he ground out.
She didn't respond; she couldn't through her self-righteous fury and indignation over his treatment of Marcos, his own older brother and ALPHA—and her. Let him think she was some murderous sprite.
"Well, someone should have warned you not to attack me here, with a foil, in my domain."
Pushing off against the force of his foil, Bitsy danced away, twirling as she did, keeping sight of him. Yes, she knew he was renowned as the fencing champion of his generation, but Michael had taught her everything she knew about the foils. In their final days together, their matches often ended in a draw.
Focus! Concentrate! She knew he had to be exhausted and soon growing sluggish; his body was already drenched with the sweat of hours' long workouts. Breathing in his scent, she felt herself weakening, softening.
But then she thought of all Marcos had—and hadn't—told her. After having observed Stuart for several moments before she turned off the simulation, she spotted a flaw in his technique. Acting on that, she lunged heedlessly.
Clang! He wasn't taken aback this time! And whatever distractions she had noted watching him earlier had disappeared. His passionate lips set in a thin line, and he became the warrior of his ancestry.
"See?" he gloated. "I'm not so easy to kill!"
Through gritted teeth, she howled, "I'm not trying to kill you!"
This time, he danced back as if to gather his defenses. When he lunged this time, she saw a cocksure sneer. "What then, pet? Did you think yourself able to hold your own against me?"
She tried again for the weakness and almost scratched him. "Why?" she panted. "Why did you do that to Marcos? To me? To us?"
Breathless minutes followed as their swords clanged and clashed over and over. The two dancers, trapped in their own seductive tango, learning the strengths and weaknesses of their opponent.
When Bitsy stopped a particularly fiendish thrust of his with an underhand maneuver, he asked the obvious—to him—question, "What are you talking about?"
Both sucked in deep breaths in the moments after he voiced the question. That was the only sound in the large gymnasium.
"You told him to give me up, that he could only have one more night with me," Bitsy started to explain, striking once more with a repelled upper thrust.
In retaliation, Stuart launched a stopped thrust of his own. "I did."
Bitsy seemed to shrink. "You did? Why? I had only just begun to figure out my place, and you rip the ground out from beneath me. And all I get is an 'I did'?"
Stuart let his blade go slack. His other blade remained at attention. "I did. I explained to him the brevity of our connection—yours and mine—and prevailed upon him to remember that he could have you afterwards." Too late, he saw her interpret his words in the worst way possible.
Not even if she were nude before him and he had thrust the blade in her heart to the hilt could he have done as much damage, hurt her as much, as he had with those words. "When you are through with me, you mean? When I bore you? Your brother can then have your sloppy seconds?" she blurted, nearly in tears but refusing to let him see her cry.
"Pick it up," he commanded, gesturing to the metal shaft on the floor. He couldn't bear to see the Ice Bitch come into her eyes again.
"Why?" she asked, a gesture of defiance. His fingers itched to grab her and slam her over his knee and paddle the insolence out of her tone, her posture, and her gaze.
A deep intake of breath to calm the wolf within, challenged by his mate. Then, "Because you never start what you can't finish. You wanted to have it out with me, best me at my own game; have at it. But, beware, if I win, I will extract a price you will be unwilling to pay."
"And if I win?" He saw—and heard—Bitsy's squaring her shoulders for the battle ahead.
He tapped his chin. "If you win, you name your forfeit," he gritted out.
Amazingly, she seemed to consider it. Her pink tongue darted out to slide over her smooth lips, and Stuart bit back a groan. "I want things to stay the way they are."
Stuart realized then exactly two things: 1) He may have lost her forever—forget ten months from now, and 2) She was not going to play fair. As to the first, he hoped his peculiar brand of domination would be enough to melt the ice she had already begun to shore up around her. As to the second, he chuckled, in matters of lust, he never played fair, either.
This was the real fight for his life.
Eyes locked, Bitsy and Stuart raised their foils in salute. "En garde," softly spoken, both with malicious intent.