The Adventures of a Roman Slave

by Lisa Cach

It was a night of adoring touch, played out not two feet from my knees by living actors who seemed to have forgotten we were there. I could barely look away, and if I did so, would be reminded to watch.

  Sygarius’s eyes, however, rarely strayed to the actors on the couch: his attention was always on me, watching my reactions. Enjoying my shock. Savoring the blush of desire—or embarrassment—that painted my neck and cheeks. After that first lesson, he’d demanded that I sit with my gown down to my waist, so he could better watch my nipples, my breathing, and the flushing of my skin.

  The second lesson had taught me that mouths could do more than kiss lips and nipples. They could provide sex themselves: a man in a woman’s mouth, thrusting at her as if her lips were a cunny. A man at a woman’s petals, licking and sucking at her, with first his tongue and then his fingers thrusting inside her.

  My face had burned in embarrassment. I’d heard of such things, slyly, from Terix, but my imagination had proved only a faint echo of the reality. As the woman writhed on the couch, her back arching, mewling cries of pleasure torn from her throat, I’d wanted nothing more than to be her, with that man at my loins, my hands gripping his hair as he licked me.

  The third lesson taught me, in slow detail, how a man entered a woman. How she might raise her legs to his hips, his waist, his chest, his shoulders; how she was to move, meeting thrust for thrust, to better increase her lover’s pleasure. How she contracted her inner muscles to bring on his climax.

  Sygarius had made me practice that. He’d coached me through it, his eyes locked with mine, as he told me what I should be feeling in my body, and how to control it.

  My face had burned.

  And yet that night, the dreams I’d had . . .

  The fourth lesson had been an acrobatic series of sexual positions. Man taking woman from behind while lying down; while the woman is on all fours; over the arm of the couch. Woman astride man as he lies flat. Man and woman sitting on the couch, facing each other. Man in chair, woman sitting on him with her back to him, his thighs between hers, forcing them wide. Man and woman standing, face-to-face, and then from behind.

  The array had been more than I could take in, and there were positions I doubted I had either the strength or flexibility to undertake. At a certain point, the lesson seemed to be more about contortions than pleasure . . . and Sygarius had read that in my expression.

  A twitch of his eyebrow, and somewhere in the shadows Linnaeus signaled to the actors, and a fresh scene was enacted. Slower. Less dramatic. But no less intense for that: the brunette lay on her back, drew up her knees with her thighs together, and planted her feet on the darker man’s chest. He entered her, slowly, with an expression of pain on his face as if each inch were pulling something vital from his soul. When he at last rested the hilt of his sword against her scabbard, they began to rock together, a gentle motion, their gazes locked. It went on for what felt like both hours and only a moment, until he reached down and thumbed the top of her folds, and together they shuddered their release.

  The sound of movement broke me from the memory of lessons past, and reminded me that Lesson Five was about to begin. What more could there possibly be to learn?

  A well-muscled, loinclothed, masked man carried in a small table and placed it in the empty space between the couch and the arched gallery that opened onto a small garden courtyard—a courtyard obscured now by dark red curtains. Linnaeus followed, masked but recognizable by his shape and short tunic. He carried a closed basket roughly woven from leafless grape vines, and placed it on the table.

  I had never seen the basket before. It looked out of place, and strangely earthy amid the spare, polished luxury of Sygarius’s quarters.

  I caught Linnaeus looking at me, a tight, anticipatory smile on his thin lips.

  A prick of alarm shot through me, and my eyes flicked back to the basket. What was in it? If Linnaeus was looking forward to seeing me experience whatever was in there, then it had to be something disturbing. Something that would scare me.

  Though I told myself it was my choice to throw myself into my role as the eager-reluctant student in these lessons, part of me knew that it was no choice at all. I didn’t have the choice to shy away, whatever shocks the lessons might hold. I resented being forced to be here, yet at the same time I was grateful I didn’t have to choose. I didn’t have to admit that part of me wanted to experience whatever was in that basket, however outrageous and frightening it might be.

  The usual three women and three men came in, masked, lightly clothed, their oiled skin softly gleaming in the lamplight. They took their positions at the edge of the shadows, as Linnaeus took his somewhere behind me. I knew better than to turn and look, or ask a question. Someone started playing the lyre—Kina, most likely—thrumming softly from the courtyard.

  I heard the muffled sound of Sygarius’s deep voice in the adjoining room, and my breathing quickened. I straightened my back, putting my breasts on display. In a dim corner of my mind I saw myself as a dog, sitting up and panting at the sound of her master’s arrival; but I could no more help it than the dog could. He was my living god, my source of all pleasure and pain, food and shelter, kindness and the threat of rejection. How could I not sit up and hope that the sight of me pleased him?

  Does he know Clovis came to see me? My eagerness was suddenly chilled by the razor’s edge of fear. Maybe someone had seen Clovis leave my quarters; maybe they’d heard him in there with me, or heard me talking to Terix. There were no secrets in a villa, only agreed-upon silences. And even those were precious few.

  Meeting Clovis in private . . . impossible. Impossible.

  And then Sygarius was there.

  Sygarius’s toga and trappings of position had been removed, his hair was slightly mussed, and his shoulders relaxed as he came into the room and saw me. His eyes, warm and deep, met mine. “Nimia,” he said, and in the word was a sigh, a relief. I felt as if I were his escape from the world.

  He never showed this side of himself outside this room, and even here, that softening lasted only in the brief space of time that he transitioned between the public world and this private, erotic one.

  He needs me. He needs this. And it matters that it’s me, Nimia, and not anyone else, who sits in this chair with my breasts exposed, waiting for his attention; waiting to be taught whatever he wishes me to learn.

  And my body was not immune to his appeal. Everything about him was a contrast to Clovis, from his heavier, darker body and the threads of silver at his temples, to his controlled, weary air. He had been harnessed by the responsibility of ruling the last province of the Western Roman Empire, while Clovis ran free, like a wild, unbroken horse. In Sygarius’s strong, battle-scarred body was the promise of experience. Knowledge. I trusted him to know what he was doing, and know how to lead me to where he wished me to go.

  With Clovis, it was distrust and danger. A stepping off the cliff into the void, not knowing if I would be caught. Not knowing if I would fall to my destruction, broken upon the rocks below.

  Maybe that danger was half the excitement.

  Sygarius went to the table and laid his hand on top of the basket, then looked at me. “I’m told you’re fully grown, which means the time of waiting is almost finished.” His eyes crinkled. “I’m almost sorry. It’s been . . . a deep pleasure, this waiting. Remember that, Nimia: the greatest part of any pleasure is found in the anticipation of it. That which is easily taken, is easily discarded.”

  I nodded.

  “You’re wondering what this basket holds. I won’t tell you that; you’ll see yourself what lies within, at your initiation. It holds the essential truth of humanity.” He ran a fingertip of over a woven vine. “It’s fitting that we’re at the country estate for this, surrounded by vineyards. And that the summer solstice is near. The stars have aligned for your initiation: it’s going to be something we’ll both remember for the rest of our lives.�
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  “Can’t I open it now?” I was allowed to ask Sygarius questions during these lessons. He seemed to enjoy both my curiosity and the satisfaction of it.

  He shook his head, a brief, sharp negation. “I had it brought in here for you to think about. To wonder, and guess at. To fill your thoughts with imaginings as you lie in bed, drifting off to sleep.”

  “Anticipation,” I said, and stared at the basket as if by doing so I could see into its dark depths. Was there something living in there, like a snake? Maybe it was wine. A mirror? I’d heard whispers of rites where the initiate gazed upon their own reflection in a pitcher, only to see a monster reflected back.

  “Good girl. Anticipation. I do love what a quick learner you are.”

  “Is that tonight’s lesson?”

  “No.” He moved away from the basket, and sat in the chair across the couch from me. He slouched back, his legs spread; he wore only his under-tunic, which ended at his knees. I could see the dark hairs on his legs, and down his bare forearms; I was fascinated by those forearms, strung with muscles that moved beneath his skin with every gesture of his thick wrist. His hands were blunt and wide, the fingers twice as thick as my own. I had wicked thoughts of what those fingers could do to me; the folds and hollows they might invade. Sometimes I imagined him coming up behind me, holding me around the waist with one arm while with his other hand he drew up my skirts, slid his hand between my thighs, and then slowly inserted one of those thick fingers deep inside my core.

  I’d dreamt such scenes, his finger slowly stroking in and out, my folds tingling at the scrape of his palm against them. I’d wake shaken by some unknown paroxysm of my body, a delicious shuddering of my flesh that left me lethargic and oddly yearning. My cunny felt strangely empty after such dreams, as if it had been cheated of what was naturally its right to take in.

  “Your lesson tonight is that, as a woman, you can be aroused by anything. Men aren’t like this; men are aroused by sex in its purest form: a man and a woman. But females, like you . . . you must come to understand your animal nature. As a woman, you are aroused by the least hint of sex, whether it be natural or unnatural, animal or human, by want or by coercion.”

  I made a noise of disbelief.

  Sygarius arched an eyebrow, looking faintly amused. “I promise you, Nimia: even when your mind tells you that you are disgusted, your cunny will grow slick with wanting.”

  “It won’t. Disgust and wanting do not go together.”

  “Not in a man. But in a woman . . . if there’s a prick or a cunny, even if it be a stallion mounting a mare, or you spy a boy bringing himself to pleasure with his own hand, the suggestion of sex is enough to dampen your thighs.”

  I shook my head.

  “You don’t even need to see it. My mentioning such scenes is enough, isn’t it? Tell me what you’re feeling in your petals, in your passage. Are they swollen?”

  I started to shake my head again, but honesty stopped me. Were they? I tried to focus on those tender folds held ever so slightly open by my position in the chair. Maybe they were swelling at the imagined image of a stallion mounting a mare, his hard penis finding its entrance to her, his teeth nipping at her neck.

  But then I imagined Terix holding his rod in his hand, jerking at it, sending a white stream spurting from its head. I’d had the misfortune to witness such a scene—a hard thing to avoid, given the frequency with which he relieved himself. He was too much a friend, too much a brother to me, for me to find it arousing.

  “I don’t think so.”

  A slow smile spread his lips. “I was hoping you would say that.”

  Uh-oh. I squirmed a little on the chair, which only made me aware of the sensitivity of my loins; I had to stop myself from squirming again, just to feel the seat of the chair rub against my sex.

  “A man won’t watch two men having sex,” Sygarius said. “His mentula goes limp. Such a sight does not arouse him—unless he’s one of those whose tastes run in that direction. But a woman will watch women. Even if all she dreams about are men spreading her thighs and impaling her on their rods, she will still grow warm and ready at the sight of one woman touching another. Stroking her. Licking the petals of her cunny.”

  “No,” I whispered. “I won’t.”

  “You need to know this about yourself, Nimia. You need to recognize how vulnerable you are to temptation . . . and how willing to fulfill whatever I might wish of you, no matter how your mind might protest.”

  At some unseen signal from Linnaeus, two of the waiting masked women came to the couch; one of them, in a brunette wig, began to kiss the other, a reluctant blonde. The blonde tried to turn her head aside, but the brunette grasped her chin and held her mouth in place, while her other hand slid down the blonde’s chest, pulling down the loose neckline to expose and fondle a breast. She pinched the light brown nipple, pulled at it, and released it. The blonde’s breast tightened, growing rounder as her nipple hardened.

  The brunette pulled the other shoulder of the gown down, trapping the blonde’s arms in the neckline and exposing both of her breasts. The brunette lowered her mouth to a nipple and took it into her mouth, sucking at it, and then pulling back until only her tongue touched it, licking and swirling over the darkened peak. The blonde turned her face aside as if ashamed to see what was being done to her.

  I told myself that I felt nothing, but could feel a pooling of warmth in my loins. My hands tightened their grip on the arms of the chair.

  The brunette grasped her lover’s hips and forced her onto the couch; the blonde fell back, her arms still trapped at her sides, her hands clenching at the smooth fabric of the couch. Her feet were on the floor, her knees bent. The brunette knelt between her legs and urged the blonde’s hips forward, until her sex was near the edge of the couch.

  The brunette flattened her palms over the girl’s mound, and then pressed upward, toward her belly. The blonde’s sex opened, blooming like a flower at the first rays of the morning light. The petals parted, and her shy stamen showed itself, small and pink.

  The brunette slowly lowered her face, her red tongue darting out its pointed tip to land, in one exquisite point, upon that delicate stamen.

  The blonde flinched and cried out.

  I felt moisture seep from my cunny.

  “Your eyes,” Sygarius said.

  I looked at him.

  He was smiling slightly, with a knowing satisfaction. “They’re turning copper.”

  I looked down, embarrassed. “It means nothing.”

  “I do so love it when you challenge me to prove you wrong.”

  The two women got up from the couch and went back to the shadows. In their place came a woman in a red wig carrying a small bowl, and two men carrying a marble statue of a swan, its neck extended forward and beak slightly raised. They placed it at the foot of the couch and returned to the shadows while the redhead dipped her fingers into the bowl. They came up covered in oil, the scent of it both richly floral and musky; the perfume seemed to invade my senses, flooding through me and bringing to wakefulness parts of me long left sleeping. I breathed more deeply, opening my mouth to take more in.

  “I’ve always thought the story of Leda and the swan to be a strange one,” Sygarius said, the vibrations of his voice sinking into me along with the perfume. “Turning into a large bird seems a strange way for Zeus to court a mortal woman. Why should she find such an animal appealing? Its prick is hidden away . . . although its head and neck are . . . suggestive.”

  The redhead smeared the oil over the beak and head of the statue.

  My eyes widened. She wouldn’t . . . No, I was not going to see that.

  “No normal man would find the thought of shoving his prick into a bird arousing. It doesn’t speak to us. The mentula shrinks and hides. But women . . . You do not even need the figure of a man to arouse you. Leda didn’t know it was the greate
st of the gods who approached her in the honking, flapping form of a swan. So why did she let him do it—however he did do it? Have you seen a swan’s prick, Nimia? It’s twisted in a spiral. Perhaps, when it emerged, she couldn’t help herself. She wanted such a strange, ribbed thing thrust inside her; she was female, after all.”

  “More likely she wasn’t given a choice,” I said.

  He tilted his head in a half nod of acknowledgment. “Or maybe it was the sight of that blunt swan’s head that was more than she could resist.”

  The redhead bent over and put her hands on the end of the couch, her hindquarters pointed toward the swan.

  “Maybe all Zeus needed to do was nuzzle her once, twice.”

  The redhead moved backward, the oiled swan head sliding between her thighs. She arched her back and sighed, sliding still, until the head emerged from the front of her thighs. Then she reversed.

  I could almost feel the cool, slick marble on my own sex. Feel my lower lips parting, the smooth column easing along my length.

  “It wouldn’t have taken Leda long to consider the possibilities. If the swan was willing . . .”

  The redhead shifted, until the end of the rounded beak was pressed against her gateway. She rocked her hips, and the beak pressed inward; the redhead’s whole body clenched and shivered. Her back arched, and she rocked her hips more firmly against the statue. The entire beak disappeared within her. She paused, the thickest part of the swan head poised at her gate. She reached between her legs to finger her stamen and then, as I watched, she eased back against the swan head, emitting little mewling cries of pleasure. The head stretched her, her flesh tight and shiny around it; it was as big as my fist. It moved tiny bit by tiny bit while her fingertips rubbed and thrummed on her stamen; the eyes on the head sank into her crimson flesh; the broadest point of the head seemed ready to split her in two when she gave a cry and her body shuddered, her thighs clamping tight around the swan’s head.

  I was panting, staring at where the white marble swan’s head sank within the girl’s cunny. I could feel my pulse in my sex, throbbing.