The Adventures of a Roman Slave

by Lisa Cach

  He’d seen this while I played the cithara. I’d sent him this image; I’d created it in his mind. I didn’t know how; had not guessed I could do such a thing.

  But that was for later. Right now, those fingers were sliding deeper, and I felt the thickness of his knuckles pushing through my narrow gates. The buzzing of my golden swarm began.

  Alaric thrusted with his hand, gently in and out. I pushed my hips upward, toward his touch. More, I wanted more. I would take his entire hand if I could. My stamen throbbed, sensitive and ignored, yearning for touch.

  The swarm surrounded me, and I pictured what I wanted most: his mouth on my stamen.

  Hot moistness descended on the peak of my folds, Alaric’s lips surrounding my stamen. His rough, wet tongue flicked out, stroking my sensitive, swollen bud. I cried out, and the sound encouraged him. His mouth clamped down harder and he suckled at me, stroking with his tongue, swirling, flicking. Inside me, his four strong fingers spread out, and then curled upward to that sensitive place. He thrummed his finger pads against it as he sucked at me, and the combination was too much.

  With a cry, I tumbled into my release, my cunny tightening on his hand in a series of contractions. I had reached my peak, but it had come too soon, leaving me agitated and unsatisfied. More. I wanted more.

  I growled and scrambled away from him, forcing him to withdraw his hand. He could only grunt a protest before I was on him, shoving him onto his back, straddling his face while I brushed my breasts against his belly, and then grasped his rod in my hand and brought it to my mouth.

  I sucked with the greed of a woman too long denied. I laved his apricot-sized head, wishing I could swallow it, wanting to take all of him inside me. I cupped his balls, stroked them, gently squeezed them, while my other hand formed a tight ring around his mentula, rising up and down it with my lips. His hands gripped my buttocks, kneading and spreading them. For a moment he forced my hips lower until he could lick my cunny, but my mouth on his rod soon took all his attention. He was helpless beneath me, jerking and thrusting.

  “Nimia,” he groaned. “Nimia.” He tried to move me, shift me.

  I knew what he wanted. I spun around to face him, and lowered my cunny down onto his pike, guiding its way inside me with one hand. I watched his face as he felt my tight passage embrace him: eyes lost in wonder, jaw tense in pleasure. I arched my back and savored the feel of him entering me, stretching me. I felt as if he was all mine; as if this huge, hot rod had been created for my pleasure alone. And perhaps it had been: I knew he’d never before given it the free rein it deserved. No other woman had enjoyed the thrusting of such a cock inside her.

  I slid down until he was fully inside me and my folds were spread and pressed against the thicket of hair at his groin. Slowly, I began to move. Not so much to rise and fall as to grind, in slow circles, against him, so that my stamen was caressed by those springy hairs and firm flesh. I grabbed his hands and brought them to my breasts, encouraging him to squeeze.

  He gripped my breasts with a strength bordering on pain, his eyes glazed as he stared at them, watching his own hands play with my flesh. I changed my grinding motion to a rocking, drawing his mentula in and out, and his eyelids fluttered. His hands dropped to my hips and he took hold. The power of those broad shoulders and strong arms was released as he held me captive to the rhythm that he wanted, slamming me onto him as he thrust into me, out of control.

  My golden swarm alit upon my skin, surrounding me in humming gold. I saw a bejeweled crown upon the ground. Two swords came from above, and stabbed into the ground at the center of it. The ground turned red, spreading from the crown outward, saturating the soil in blood. . . .

  Alaric opened his eyes and stared at me. I grasped my breasts and massaged them, my nipples peeking through my spread fingers. He groaned and thrust once more, fingers bruising me as he held me, and his whole body tensed.

  A moment later I felt the pulse as he expelled his seed within me. I watched the shadows of emotion pass over his face; the changes in the muscles of his body; the breath held and then released. When he’d come to the end of it, I lay down atop him, my face tucked into his neck, his rod still deliciously deep inside me. His arms came around my back, holding me without strength.

  He dozed. I lay awake, my thighs aching from my crouched posture, but I was unwilling to move from my nest upon his chest. As he relaxed, the thickness of his tool waned inside me; but still I kept it, not willing to let it go. Around us the garden had darkened in the twilight, and among the grasses and herbs glowed the light of fireflies. Crickets played their reeds, our heartbeats serving as a drumbeat to their primitive melody. A cool night air touched my back, making more delicious the warmth between our pressed-together chests.

  After a time I felt him stir, and I raised my head to meet his gaze. I was half afraid of what I might see: would he be filled with remorse? Would he feel guilt for what he had done? Shame?

  As I met his eyes in the growing dusk, I felt his rod within me thicken.

  “Take me from behind this time,” I said. “Like a stallion on a mare.”

  His teeth gleamed white in the darkness.

  You want me to do what?”

  “Shh! Terix, he’s in the next room.”

  Terix lowered his voice. “With his cock in his hand, waiting? What in Hades gave you this idea?”

  “It wasn’t my idea. It was his.”

  Terix’s eyes bugged. “You’ve got to be joking.”

  I shook my head. “He’s like that storm that hit us at sea. So much energy, tossing us about, and when we thought it was surely wearing itself out, up came another burst of energy and the storm began all over again.”

  Terix’s face darkened. “He’s not hurting you, is he?”

  “Not at all. My cunny should be chafed raw by now and my legs too bowed to close, but I seem to be recovering between the onslaughts.”

  I was recovering strangely well, now that I thought about it. It had been three days since I lured Alaric into our own Garden of Eden, and he hadn’t shown any signs of ever wanting to leave. Metaphorically speaking, that is: we had moved indoors to his suite of rooms.

  His duties were set aside, and all advisors, priests, and courtiers were denied admittance under the thin excuse that he was enjoying a “retreat for mental and spiritual refreshment.” Terix had confirmed for me, however, that everyone knew what Alaric was really doing: taking Lady Nimia to his bed.

  Depending on the class of person, they may have phrased it a little less politely.

  Alaric had led a semi-celibate life, but his imagination had thrived as a result. He had lived off the thin soup of sexual fantasies since a boy, and now that a rich banquet of willing female flesh had been laid before him, he was gorging as if terrified that someone would take it away from him the moment he stopped.

  Maybe someone would. I suspected he feared himself more than any of his priests or advisors. If for one moment he let up, and allowed his sexual drunkenness to fade, his sense of morality might rear up and force him to step away from the table.

  The result was that I had been taken more times in the past few days than in all my previous life together. His mentula showed staggering endurance, springing back to life after the briefest rest. I was bewildered that my cunny showed the same resilience: I knew from past experience that there were limits to how much it could take before the delicious slide of a rod within me turned to the grate of a pestle in a mortar.

  An image arose in my mind: the chalice, filled with wine, honey, and blood, being lifted to my parched lips. The healing that the chalice had performed on me: was its power still flowing in my blood, repairing what small injuries came from these athletic joinings?

  A shiver passed over my skin. This new power I had to influence Alaric sexually, had that come with the potion, as well?

  Alaric’s ongoing devouring of me might be as
much of my own making as his. I feared the return of his morality as much as I sensed that he did. I had had no visions since the first one, of the crown and swords: when my golden swarm came, perhaps I was using it to feed our passion, not to seek threads leading into the future. I may have used it to lock us in a mutual spell.

  If so, it was time to break it.

  . . . after this one last indulgence.

  “What are you thinking?” Terix asked, his head tilted to the side. “You disappeared somewhere.”

  I flashed an uncertain smile. “Impossible thoughts, not worth sharing.” I rolled my eyes toward the doorway behind me, letting him know they were thoughts I couldn’t risk having overheard. I didn’t need the gift of prophecy to know that if any Visigoth heard me admit that I was using sexual sorcery to enchant their king, my life wouldn’t be worth the dregs in an empty cup of soured wine.

  “And here I thought you’d reconsidered.”

  I bit my lip. “Would you mind doing it, horribly?”

  He pressed his fingertips to the space between his brows and closed his eyes, sighing. “No, I wouldn’t mind fucking you, Nimia.”

  “Even with Alaric watching?”

  “Even with.” His voiced sounded strained and unhappy.

  “I know your thoughts are all for Audofleda, no matter how you joke about the women here at court. . . .”

  He dropped his hand and stared at me, his lips parted as if about to say something. He shook his head, as if stopping himself. “Why me? Any man would be happy to lodge himself between your thighs.”

  “There’s no one else who can be trusted never to speak a word of it. No matter what Alaric might do in private, he cannot have such an act spoken about in public. His people would be upset.”

  “I still can’t believe he can admit to wanting this.”

  “Admit to? That’s the part that surprises you?”

  Terix chuckled. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know that men like to imagine their women being taken by others.”

  “B-but . . . why?” I didn’t get any joy out of imagining Clovis or Alaric with another woman.

  “Jupiter’s balls, Nimia, I don’t know. It just is. Imagining it gives a man an axe in his breeches he could cut down an oak tree with. He can barely wait until the other man is done chopping, to get in there and start throwing his own wood chips.”

  “I feel sorry for the tree.”

  Terix slanted a leering look at me. “Are you sure?”

  I laughed, but my cunny tingled. Truth was, ever since that unexpected afternoon with both Clovis and Ragnachar, I had fantasized about being with more than one man at a time, and of having one after another pump his passion and his seed into my passage until I was slick with their spent desires.

  I had never guessed that there was an answering fantasy in men, wanting to see it happen.

  Nor had I ever guessed I would act it out with Terix, of all people. I quirked my mouth. “Are you going be all right with this? I mean, we’re friends, not lovers. It’s going to be . . . strange.”

  His jaw tensed, and he was silent for a few moments. Then he assumed a look of mischief and grinned, though the shadows in his eyes made me wonder if it was entirely sincere. “We’ve played such parts before—like when we did Priapus and Lotus—and this only takes the performance a little further. How does he want us to play it? Am I to ravish you? Are you to be a captive barbarian and me your new master?”

  The reminder of our years playing parts together comforted me, and I relaxed a little. Surely we could do this without harming our friendship. It was a part to play, nothing more. “Nothing so exotic. He wants us both to look like we’re enjoying ourselves. That’s all.”

  “Lots of moaning?”

  “That should help.”

  “I should probably cry out to his god a few times when I come.”

  “He might like that. But about the coming . . .”

  “Don’t tell me I can’t.”

  “Oh no, you’re expected to. But he doesn’t want it to happen . . . behind the curtains, as it were.”

  Understanding raised his brows. “So I’m supposed to pull out and spew on the sheets.”

  “Er. On me.”

  “Ass? Breasts? Face?”

  “Whatever seems right to you at the moment. Just keep it out of my hair, if you could.”

  “Right. So when do we do this?”

  “If you’re up for it . . . now.”

  Terix put his hands on his hips and frowned down at his crotch. “What say you, Augustus?”

  “Augustus?”

  “It’s his new name. Now shh, I’m listening.” He cocked his head. “What’s that? Only if Nimia sucks you first?”

  I snorted, grabbed Terix’s wrist, and pulled him toward the doorway to the other room.

  Awkward barely began to describe how I felt as Terix and I stood beside the bed with its bare sheets, the soft feather mattress waiting for us to rumple it with our bodies. I giggled nervously as Terix unfastened his belt. I should be helping him; I should be undressing myself. Instead, I was tense as a virgin, my skin prickling with the double knowledge of Alaric watching from a curtained alcove, and that this was Terix, my friend, the boy I’d grown up with.

  About to put his mentula in me.

  I spread my hands over my face and peered at him from between my fingers. The belt dropped, the tunic came off. His chest—had it been that broad a few weeks ago? And where had those muscles come from? He shoved down his short breeches, releasing his upward-curving rod, with a head like a plum. “Oh gods,” I whispered.

  Terix met my eyes and I saw a familiar sparkle in his. “Augustus is pleased to meet you.”

  I laughed in my throat and closed my eyes. I still couldn’t move to undress myself. I held my arms over my breasts, my hands over my face as if they could shield me from the overwhelming embarrassment.

  I felt a shift in the air, and the warmth of a body close by. Terix put his hands on my shoulders and bent his head to my ear, his breath warm and moist. “No worries, Nimia,” he whispered. “You needn’t do a thing.”

  I lowered my hands and turned my cheek against his. “I have to look like I’m enjoying it, but this feels so strange.”

  He stroked my shoulder. “I know you better than any other man does; better than you know yourself. I’ll give you what you crave.”

  “What do I crave?”

  He shook his head, not telling me. “Try to relax. I’ll do everything.”

  I forced my arms to fall to my sides. “You won’t tease me about this later?”

  “Of course I’ll tease you about it. But you won’t mind, because it will only remind you how much fun you had.”

  I rested my forehead against his shoulder, laughing softly at his cockiness. “Do it, then. Have your way with me. Give Augustus everything he wants.”

  “This isn’t about Augustus,” I thought I heard him murmur, but couldn’t be sure, and my attention was diverted by Terix’s nimble fingers unfastening my clothes and then guiding me to lie down on the bed, on my stomach.

  With my head turned to one side, I gazed into the shadows of the alcove. The curtains had been parted, and I thought I could make out the shape of Alaric hidden in the darkness. Was this proving to be as exciting as he’d hoped? Or maybe he was regretting it, and wishing it would stop.

  Whichever it was, it was his choice whether to let it proceed. After all I’d said to him, I couldn’t stop this now and claim that his was an unnatural desire, or that I shied away from a joining that had only affection in it, not cruelty.

  I was expecting Terix’s touch on my cunny; I had no doubt that he knew how to arouse a woman. His touch surprised me when it came: on my calf. With a light touch he petted the smooth skin, his strokes growing longer until they traveled down from the back of my knee to my ankle, th
en started again at the back of my knee. Again, and again. He kept at it until I twitched with impatience.

  “Shh,” he said. “I told you I know what you crave.”

  I began to doubt him. A calf massage wasn’t high on that list.

  His fingers resumed their petting, his other hand joining in on my other calf. Bit by bit he increased the pressure, always stroking downward, moving from his fingertips to the whole of his hand. His warm, broad palm covered the whole of the back of my lower leg with each downward stroke.

  Something started to happen inside me. An arousal, tingling through my chest and spreading outward.

  His attention moved to my feet, his thumbs pressing against the underside of my arches; his fingertips surrounding each toe in turn, swirling round them like a tongue on a nipple. I felt warmth slowly swelling my loins.

  My forearms were next, receiving the same treatment as my calves. My hands. My upper arms. My scalp, my neck, the length of my back—stopping short of my buttocks. My thighs . . . but not my folds, though I could feel the dampness of them. I moaned into the mattress, my eyes closed. It felt too good for thought, and I drifted away on his touch. Each stroke was slow, unhurried; he seemed happy to go on all day, or until I had passed out from the pleasure of it.

  He did know what I craved above all else: touch. He knew it, as no one else did.

  He nudged me to roll onto my back, and set about repeating the assault on my front. Though he had not touched me anywhere sexual, my breasts and sex had swollen with arousal. A hunger was building in my passage; an ache of emptiness that begged for the deepest stroke of all.

  Yet still he worked on me, slowly, confidently. It became a torture, as his fingertips skimmed by the sides of my breasts and massaged the flat valley between, but never touched the mounds themselves. His hands smoothed down over my belly, then parted ways at my mound, traveling down my thighs and ignoring the swollen flower of my sex.