by Marian Tee
Nothing.
Nothing.
And yet, there were instances when the sixteen-year-old Marcus would feel a vile sense of darkness swelling inside of him.
When he lost his virginity---
When he discovered the pleasure of holding a whip in his hands---
When he realized he was attracted to a certain type of woman, one who thrived on pain---
It was like a stain on his soul, but try as he might, Marcus couldn’t understand where it was coming from. He only knew that more and more of its essence was leaking into his blood, changing and tearing him into so many pieces that there were times he could no longer recognize himself.
He was a stranger to his own body, an unnamed monster under his own skin.
And he didn’t understand why it was so.
Every time he attempted to figure out why he felt so different, his head would hurt so damn hard it was like his skull was about to split open, and all he could remember was his father---
Don’t you see you’re exactly like me?
It terrified him so that he would push the memory away, telling himself that he had only made it up.
Because nothing happened.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Time continued to march on. When Marcia asked her grandson if he was bothered about his parents’ continued lack of interest in his life, Marcus had only said, “No.”
And then they had looked at each other, both of them realizing that Marcus had spoken the truth – even when it wasn’t the answer he should have said. He was sent back to the therapy after that, and it was like walking back into a nightmare.
What do you think about your mother being in a relationship with different men since her divorce from your father?
Do you care about who your mother dates?
What do you think about your father’s current lifestyle?
Do you think it’s vulgar?
Do you aspire for the same thing?
Marcus had answered mechanically, all the while feeling his mind starting to break. Something about being in therapy made him want to remember---
But it also made him want to forget…to keep forgetting.
It was like having his soul torn into two, and it was excruciating, so much so that Marcus found himself lying.
“Yes,” Marcus told his therapist. “It hurts me that my parents don’t care about me.” But this was a lie, and so would be the other things he’d say.
Yes, I want to reconnect with them.
Yes, I miss them.
Yes, I still love them.
He kept lying and lying, and it worked. The therapist promised he no longer needed to come back as long as he answered this one last question correctly.
“Are you attracted to the kind of lifestyle your father leads?”
Marcus didn’t even think about it. “No.” It was the obviously right thing to say, but it was also at that moment he realized he was lying.
And this was the second turning point in his life.
Since then, Marcus began carefully picking his partners, dating only girls whose darkness matched his. In their eyes, he saw their need for pain, and in his eyes, he knew they saw the need to dispense it.
He didn’t know why it was so.
He only knew it was that stain in his soul which was to blame.
More time passed, and Marcus never felt the temptation to stray beyond the lines he had drawn for himself. In his world, only two types of women existed: those he could hurt, and those he couldn’t.
But then Anneke came.
Anneke with her dark hair, blue eyes, and curves that he would die to run his hands over---
The first time he had seen her, he had known two things:
He wanted to fuck her.
But he also couldn’t, because she was clearly the kind of girl he could never hurt.
And this became even more obvious when he heard Jaak mention her name, and he realized that this was the sister the de Konigh brothers had been telling him about every year. Not Fleur the mischief-maker, but Anneke the paragon---
And he had wanted to fuck her even more after that.
That summer with the de Konighs turned out to be Marcus’ greatest challenge, with every second of his day an exercise of self-control and discipline. Everything about Anneke seemed frustratingly designed to conquer his every weakness, an angel who only turned into a temptress when she was with him.
Pain and sex used to be his only criteria for choosing which girls to date, but with Anneke, he discovered he could be attracted to another type.
Like a girl with a sense of humor, and Anneke was certainly that.
He also liked a girl who could be both shy and straightforward at the same time, and she was that, too.
The more days he spent with the de Konigh paragon, the more Marcus realized that she was literally everything he wanted---
But he couldn’t have her.
Even though she was older than him by a year at nineteen, age meant nothing when one considered the type of life he had led, and the kind of person it had shaped him to be.
Anneke was innocent in ways that he could never be – the kind of girl he could never hurt.
When he made himself accept this, Marcus knew the nicest thing he could do was to leave her.
But he couldn’t do that either.
So instead he settled for the next best thing, and that was her friendship. It was enough to be Anneke’s friend, and every time he went to bed, he would repeat this to himself until the pain in his crotch would go numb.
Anneke could only be his friend.
He would jerk himself off in the shower, and he would repeat the words in his mind.
Anneke could only be his friend.
But somehow a part of him remained unconvinced. A part of him remained selfish, wanting more, and Marcus couldn’t be quite sure if it was the stain in his soul telling him this or something else –
Something that he had lost –
But whatever it was, he had been too young when he had lost it, and too young to understand what it was.
If not for Federico Ravelli’s death, Marcus might never have found the strength to leave Anneke behind, her virginity still intact and her innocence untainted. It was quite the irony really, Marcus would later come to think. His father had done nothing for him when he was alive, but his death had become a blessing in disguise, with the way it left Marcus no choice but to part from Anneke’s side.
During his father’s funeral, Marcia and Marcus were both stunned when his mother also came to pay her respects. As far as they knew, there had been no communication between Marcus’ parents ever since their divorce, and there certainly had been no love lost between them.
And when he finally saw her up close---
She hadn’t aged well at all, Marcus had found himself thinking. The woman in his memories had been a slim, vivacious beauty, one who was always elegant and smiling, one who used to heap praises for every little thing Marcus did.
But the woman in front of him now was nothing like that – her hair was dyed a rather cheap shade of blonde, her makeup too thick, and her overweight body forced into a dress at least two sizes smaller than her current frame.
What the hell had happened to her?
“Le mie condoglianze.” Raquel spoke bitterly, her gaze not meeting either Marcia or Marcus’ eyes.
The wiser half of his brain told Marcus to let it be. She had not given a damn about him for a decade. Why think it would be any different now?
But the foolish half of his brain had won, and Marcus had found himself slowly following his mother when she left the chapel.
And as he continued to follow her, Marcus’ heart started pounding in a familiar way, and cold sweat began to envelop his skin. He could feel something inside of him splitting---
His soul tearing into two.
Just as he could feel his mind breaking---
Dwelling on the past did no one good.
; Marcus caught his mother just as she was about to step inside her car, and as soon as his fingers wrapped around her arm---
Marcus whitened.
And he remembered.
His mother was naked, her arms chained over her head, and his equally naked father was flogging her ass.
His mother shuddering and moaning---
Marcus at eight years old, taking his dick out, just as Federico had ordered him to---
Raquel Ravelli turned around to face him, and Marcus demanded in a violent whisper, “Why?”
His mother only stared at him.
“Why,” he demanded savagely, “did you let him do it?”
Raquel shook her head, asking irritably, “Must we really do this?”
Marcus was furious and disbelieving. The woman was acting like he was making her late for her salon appointment. “Just say why---”
She cut him off, snapping, “I don’t want to.” Wrenching her arm away from his hold, she got inside her car, leaving him devastated. He knew he should let her go now, but the memories ate at him and he found himself following Raquel inside her car.
He slid into the passenger seat next to her and as he pulled the door shut, he heard Raquel mutter an expletive under her breath.
Dio. His fists clenched in impotent rage. How could a mother be so damn callous to her only son?
“I just want to know the truth,” he said stonily.
“What for?” Raquel’s tone was defensive, and it was as if she had decided to take harbor in cruelty as she went on to spit, “Isn’t it enough that I got you safely to your grandmother? Your father was thinking of killing you because he didn’t want risking you talking to another person about what happened. And I saved you from that. I saved you, and this is how---”
“It’s not enough!” Marcus knew he was losing it, but he could no longer hold everything in. His emotions were on a rampage, and he was drowning in them. “You could have---” He broke off as more memories rushed in, threatening to overwhelm his sanity.
It was as if the years that passed had disappeared, and he was an eight-year-old boy again, his dick out, his cum wetting his pajama bottoms, and he didn’t fucking understand why.
Why?
Why?
Why?
He looked at his mother, and she was the only one he could ask---
The only one who knew what the stain in his soul was.
“Why?” he whispered hoarsely. “It didn’t have to happen in the first place. So why, damn you? Why did you let it happen?”
They stared at each other, the monstrous silence between them becoming more vicious with every second that passed. And the longer he stared at her, this mother of his who was both familiar and unfamiliar---
The more he remembered.
His mother hugging him and giving him good night kisses---
His mother reading him bedtime stories---
Marcus squeezed his eyes shut.
If only those were the only memories he could remember---
But they were not.
His mother naked in chains, his father holding his veined dick---
He remembered those, too.
And now, there was no forgetting them.
“You weren’t like him,” Marcus heard himself mutter unevenly. “You started out good---”
“Basta!” Her hand slammed against the wheel, and Marcus was ashamed to feel his body jerk at the sound of her car honking.
Dio.
It really was as if he was an eight-year-old boy again, and he so badly wanted to throw up, purge everything out of his system in hopes of getting rid of the stain in his soul.
“What do you want me to say?” his mother demanded coldly. “That he held me at gunpoint? That he threatened me and that’s why I allowed that night to happen?”
Yes, Marcus thought, and his stomach turned upside down at the realization that it was indeed what he wanted to hear. He was so goddamn weak he wanted her to lie because anything was better than---
“Do you want to know the truth?” his mother hissed.
No. He didn’t want to. Not when she was looking at him like no other woman should be looking at her son.
“I let him do it,” Raquel cooed, “because I’m dirty. I allowed it because Federico was right about me---”
“You let him be right,” Marcus snarled.
Raquel let out a humorless laugh. “No, tesoro. Stop fooling yourself.” She reached to pat his cheek, and Marcus couldn’t help flinching, the prospect of his mother’s touch somehow abhorrent and terrifying---
Something flickered in his mother’s eyes just before a look of cruel satisfaction fell over her face. “Oh, tesoro, don’t say you find my touch repugnant?” She tried cupping his face and laughed when he couldn’t help rearing back. “What a little hypocrite you are. I seem to recall how you masturbated at the sight of my---”
Marcus blanched. “Shut up.”
“Does hearing the truth hurt?” Raquel taunted. “You should just accept it like I did, tesoro. Federico was right about you, too. You’re exactly like him---”
The words slashed at Marcus’ memory.
Don’t you see you’re exactly like me?
Marcus shook his head. “No.” He reached for the door handle, saying tightly, “You’re wrong about me---”
His mother’s gaze bored through him. “And yet that happened.”
He didn’t say a word.
“How can I be wrong when you actually came, watching your own parents fuck---”
Marcus’ hand was up before he realized what he was doing, but then his mother stiffened, fear flashing in her eyes---
Dio.
He had almost struck his own mother, and for what?
For saying what could only be the shameful, undeniable truth about himself?
He tried to keep it together, but it was no use. On the night before his father’s burial, he went out on a run to keep the nightmares at bay.
And he found himself unable to stop.
His heart hammered in a furious, erratic rhythm that far surpassed the heavy pounding of his footsteps on the dirt road, but Marcus knew it wasn’t exhaustion making him struggle to breathe.
If only it were that simple.
He wasn’t running. Instead, he was running away.
Anneke.
He was running away from the truth. From what he must give up---
Anneke.
The pounding became too much, and he found himself skidding to a stop as he struck his chest repeatedly and willed his heart to stop goddamn beating like it was on its last dying moments.
He could still make it. He would still make it.
Anneke.
He clumsily reached for the phone inside his pocket. Anneke’s text message still remained unanswered. May I attend your father’s funeral?
Marcus fell to his knees.
Anneke.
The one girl that he could never hurt, and now more so than ever---
If he thought he didn’t deserve her before, now he knew that he could never do anything to change that. He would never deserve her.
His sweet, beautiful paragon didn’t deserve someone like him---
Marcus forced his fingers to type the end to his dreams.
No.
The first few months following the loss of Anneke were hell, and when he found himself seriously thinking about losing himself in drugs Marcus knew he was in too bad a shape to do things on his own.
He signed himself up for rehab, asked a trusted friend to recommend a therapist who actually knew what she was doing, and it was through this that Marcus met a young woman named Jaike Hepburn.
Both of them were being treated for childhood trauma, both of them having BDSM parents who had cared more about their sexual gratification than their children’s sanity. Most of all, both of them were terrified of following in their parents’ footsteps, and it was this bond that became the root of their friendship.
Jaike was the only Sub Marcus had
come to like and respect, and unlike with Anneke, she was one he genuinely wished to be friends with. When they met years after and an opportunity to marry Jaike had come up, Marcus had seized it without hesitation. With Jaike, he would have a shot at normalcy. With Jaike, he could put an end to all of his foolish hopes about one day getting back together with Anneke. He might never forget his summer temptress, but if Jaike was his wife, he also knew that he respected his friend too much to be unfaithful to her.
It was a good plan, and Marcus had genuinely looked forward to the possibility of spending the rest of his life in peace---until Jaike realized that she still loved her ex-fiancé. And so she had left Marcus, and he had understood. In Derek Christopoulos, Jaike had found someone who made the darkness inside of her beautiful. It was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and while Marcus could easily find it in himself to be happy for his friend---
He had also known that his one chance of escaping his personal abyss was lost to him forever.
Or so he had thought---
Until Anneke had come back into his life.
It had been his grandmother’s funeral this time, and watching her walk past the doors had made Marcus think that his life had come to full circle. Death had torn them apart once, and now death was bringing them back together.
Did it mean that he would have to die, Marcus had wondered grimly, before she left him?
If so, he intended to live forever.
Nine years had passed since they had last seen each other, and he found her even more beautiful now, achingly so. With her blue eyes firmly trained on the floor, Marcus had all the luxury in the world to study her, albeit surreptitiously. Her curves were even more voluptuous now, and Marcus found himself remembering things that he had no business remembering---
The delicious taste of her mouth---
The silky feel of her skin under his fingers---
The arousing sound of her moan---
When Anneke finally reached the end of the line and she was standing right in front of him, it was all Marcus could do not to haul her into his arms and kiss her.
Nine damn years.
How the hell had he survived that long apart from his temptress?
“I offer my deepest condolences,” Anneke had mumbled then, her gaze focused on his silver tie.
It made him want to laugh and groan at the same time. Could she really not have changed all these years? Could she still be as sweet and innocent?