This chapter begins immediately after Chapter 14. Thanks to my super special collaborator. You know who you are! And thanks for several amuse bouches that made this so much easier to write. To my readers, sorry for the delay. Real life sometimes happens when you are planning to write instead.
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Bitsy looked at Stuart. "What is the forfeit?" she asked, fearing something heinous.
"Well," he said, clearing his throat, "my masquerade ball is coming up. You will, of course, be my date and de facto hostess of the event—and the after party." His eyes were set, his voice arctic.
The royal masquerade ball was an annual event dating back for centuries. Various royals and nobles—both within Romania and beyond its borders—vied for the coveted scarlet gilt-edged invitations.
Lavish decorations competed with a lush and lavish buffet of sweets and meats, wine, and less innocent libations. Lords and ladies wore costumes of sumptuous fabrics in every hue, colorful tropical birds bedecked with an equally elaborate mask.
As with most masquerade balls, risqué was the name of the evening. Under a barely concealing cloak of anonymity, friends and enemies became lovers. At midnight, the revelers would unmask and pantomime shock at their chosen partner.
Bitsy had, of course, attended the masque in years' past, alongside Michael in the beginning and with her brother-in-law Chris ever after. She had NEVER attended the after party.
The after party of the masque, dubbed "Bacchus's Delight," was thought to be little more than an all-out orgy. Members of the demimonde cavorted and frolicked with dissipated and debauched aristocrats. Any nods to restraint that the masque made to the Count and his supporters were banished from Bacchus's Delight. The castle converted from a hedonist's paradise to hell by way of hedonism until the first rays of the sun painted the walls the following morning.
In Bitsy's lifetime, and for at least several lifetimes, there were no hostesses for the party—either the ball or the after party. She was a bit unsure as to what her duties would entail at the masque. As to the after party—her brain shut down refusing to allow her to contemplate further.
She realized that Stuart was awaiting her response. Nodding almost mechanically, she came out of her reverie.
Bitsy had already determined her dress for the masquerade ball. Having been at the palace for a few weeks now, she had often glanced at the full-length portrait of Queen Christiana, Stuart's mother, in her coronation gown. She had photographed the beautiful work of art—for surely it was—and had employed Madame Anastasia, one of the most sought-after couture designers for the nobility and royalty of Eastern Europe, to painstakingly reproduce the dress in minute detail.
Her plan was to wear a much less extravagant dress during the reception line and guest presentation. Then, when the final guest arrived, she planned to have Maria quickly help her change into the more elaborate gown. Paramount in her mind was the desire for the king to approve.
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In the two weeks since their fencing match, Stuart had turned instructor, tutoring her in the more stylistic maneuvers and flourishes in the art of fencing. He no longer thrusted and parried with a virtual him as antagonist; now, he enjoyed the challenge of a tango with foils with his concubine.
He had underestimated her prowess. In remembering conversations with Michael—in hindsight—from a decade and a half ago, he vaguely recalled Michael waxing poetic about Bitsy's skill with a sword. As with most conversations with his cousin involving Lady Bitsy, he found it best not to dwell on what was being said but instead focused on the lasciviousness. To the best of his knowledge, each conversation had ended with Michael walking away in self-righteous disgust after the king made a sexually charged pun about women and a man's sword.
She was truly a remarkable fencing master, he mused. Graceful and quick. They were using blunted sticks today with no padding. Dangerous for many reasons, not the least of which was the physical injury they could sustain.
But he couldn't resist watching the droplets of sweat slide down her neck to rest in the cleavage beneath her leotard, the delicate clench of muscles of her thighs as she parried his thrusts. The flip side was that his lack of focus during those moments made him particularly vulnerable to her offensive maneuvers.
It was one such maneuver that allowed her to press the end of the wooden "sword" to his chest, "killing him." They faced each other, panting.
"A direct hit," he congratulated. "Brava, slave."
Her concern showed through. She had never bested him at fencing, although it had been close a few times in the last week. "Is everything okay, Master?" she whispered.
Still his ingénue, he relished, enjoying her innocence. Then, his eyes focused on the mark he had given her at the last full moon visible still beneath her public collar. Even though the next full moon was still some time away, the raw, primal part of him came to the fore.
In a tone that welled up from the depths of his being, he quickly shed the idea that it was his soul, a voice burst forth full of insidious, devilish, indecent intent. It was as if it came spewing out from the tarry pits of hell, tinged with brimstone. A demonic voice. His Master VOICE. Quiet, unbelievably growly, dark, take-no-prisoners.
"Tomorrow, slave, you will serve as my hostess. You will do your best to make others feel welcome, giving them anything and everything they desire. Is that understood?"
Bitsy quaked internally. At times Master had been hypnotic and insistent, in turns, but this was the vocal embodiment of evil-masochistic-sadistic-power-struggle-submit-because-you-need-to-so-you-can-hear-the-voice-again Mastery.
"Anything, Master?" she asked and was shocked to discover that her voice came out as an almost childish whine.
Stuart nodded. "And everything, pet. Especially at the after party. You will enter the after party wearing your new working collar over a new public collar. The new public collar will be less able to pretend that it isn't a slave's collar but still acceptable for public wear and use. You will receive both tomorrow night during the masque during a collaring ceremony. And, to signal that you are mine and that the party is at an end and the after party is to begin, I will take you where you kneel in front of everyone."
His voice ended raspy, and Bitsy felt the rasp as if it were his tongue rasping roughly at her clit. He saw her tip over into the same mad, wild desire that had overtaken him, and he pounced.
The wooden swords skittered to the floor. Grasping the neckline of the red unitard, he yanked, and the stretchy spandex rent in two as if it were tissue.
Stuart looked his fill. Her pale breasts were capped each with a hard dark pink nub that ached for his tongue, his teeth, and something else. "Tomorrow, slave," he continued in that same diabolical tone, maddeningly quiet as it described the torments to come, "you will enter the after party nude, save your collars and the leash that will be attached to the top ring of your working collar. You will wear clamps attached to these nipples," he said, cruelly pinching and twisting each as she lay, lost in his sadistic spell beneath him. "Those clamps," he breathed into her ear, "will be connected to your collar on the bottom ring. I think you will find the sensations that will happen to be quite...maddening."
Just to make sure she didn't catapult into subspace quite yet, he clawed from the nipple down the undersides of her breasts to her ribcage. A warning. A promise. A delicious torment.
At her soft mewling whimper, he took her mouth voraciously, needing to claim her as his pet, his slave, yet again. When he paused for breath, he was shocked to hear her voice, thready with need, beg, "Please, Master, mark me again. Make sure they all know that I am yours to trifle with. Your slave."
Riding this sadistic high, he could no more deny her plea than he could make the world stop turning. With a low snarling growl, he ripped open her throat, lapping, tonguing, tasting the lime green liquid that spurted then flowed down her neck.
He saw her thoughts a scattered collage of her desire to submit to him, so different from the first time he bit her. One thought rose to tease him with its impossibility, that she loved him. He scoffed even as his heart warmed with the love that burned in his veins for her.
It was infatuation, he discounted the emotion that shone from her mind, not love. With what Tracy Bathory had planned, they could not afford to love. Love meant death for Bitsy. And he would do anything he could to prevent that from happening.
Pulling back, he ripped away the tatters of the leotard and shredded the tights that she wore over her legs. Her surprised sigh followed by a low liquid moan spurred him on further. He pinned her wrists with one hand high above her head and plunged into her with one thrusting stroke. This sword was velvet encased iron, not the wooden splinters that scattered around them.
She writhed, lifting her hips, an active participant as he had tutored her. While most of their tutoring sessions ended in a round of sex, this time it was different. This was not a perfunctory releasing of endorphins. This was a return to the primal nature of the beasts within them both.
When he felt her quicken beneath him, her clear soprano starting the slow ascent to her orgasm in his ear, he offered her his neck. "Bite," he commanded in that quiet, liquidly evil voice.
Under his spell, she bit and pulled, coming apart, screaming her orgasm into his neck. The milking of his cock by her pussy walls, the taste of her still on his tongue, and the ravaging bite that she made on his command all served to make his thrusts more masterful, more purposeful.
He tried to allow her a glimpse of his mind, having cordoned off the more interesting parts of his mind while lapping up her blood. Letting her see herself as he saw her beneath him, the enticingly quicksilver pet of his, beautiful and mercurial.
