The Rose

by Tiffany Reisz

  Thunder.

  Lia gasped and sat up in bed. Was there a storm? She reached out to wake her husband, but then she saw something.

  A woman stood by the window, the large square stone window, and stared out at the ocean. She was tall and extraordinarily beautiful. Her bearing was noble, imperious, almost military in her white gown overlaid with a thick leather breastplate and a sword sheathed on her hip. Whoever she was, she was no servant. Whoever she was, Lia must greet her. All strangers in this kingdom must be greeted as if they were gods traveling in disguise.

  Lia slipped from the bed and wrapped a sheet around her naked body as she approached the waiting woman.

  “My lady,” she said. “Who are you and what brings you to my chamber? Tell me so that I might make you most welcome.”

  “You carry a son inside you,” the woman said, not meeting Lia’s eyes.

  “A son?” she repeated. So soon? She’d been married only a few hours.

  “Are you not pleased?”

  “Too pleased for words,” Lia said. “But how do you know?”

  “It is my place to know and tell and yours to hear and believe.”

  “I do hear. I do believe. But...who are you?”

  The woman at last turned her face from the ocean to look upon Lia. Her eyes were the gray of dove’s wings.

  “Pallas Athena,” the woman whispered.

  Lia gasped and sank to her knees.

  The woman stepped close and Lia rested her head against a thigh as strong as marble.

  “Your piety is pleasing to me,” Athena said, and she touched her fingertips to Lia’s hair. “I will bless the child you carry.”

  “Thank you, great lady,” Lia said.

  “Your son was conceived within a stone’s throw of the ocean. He should be a great seafarer. Salt water shall flow in his veins. His name will rise like the tide but never retreat.”

  Lia looked up at the goddess.

  “Bless you, my lady.”

  “Go,” Athena said. “Go now to the temple if you wish to claim this blessing for your child. Go now and offer a sacrifice, and your son’s name will be remembered for eons as the greatest of all the heroes of Athens.”

  Then Athena was gone.

  Lia did not hesitate to obey. She rose from her knees and found her discarded gown on the floor by the bed where her new husband had tossed it.

  She dressed quickly. Barefoot—she had no time to lace her sandals—she slipped from her bridal chamber. Her naked feet made no sound on the stone floors as she ran down the long dark hallways. She found the door that led to the stable yard and slipped out of it. She could not be stopped. Even if her father or her husband found her now, she would run away from them. Not even a king’s command could outrank a god’s.

  Once free of the palace grounds, she had only to take the cobblestone path to the temple. She saw it a mere half mile away, white as a dove in the moonlight. Lia felt Athena’s protection around her as she made her way down the path. Her feet struck no rocks. She encountered no bandits or brigands. And though it was clear a storm was brewing, the rising winds pushed her on like a ship at full sail. She reached the temple so swiftly she wondered if she’d been carried part of the way by the winged feet of Hermes.

  Like every temple in the known world, the entrance faced the rising sun, but it was hours until dawn. Surrounded by a shroud of night, Lia climbed the cool marble stairs. She found a brazier left to smolder by night and lit a torch with the remnants of the fire. By her small fire she found her way to the altar. Warm air rose from between the tiles of the temple floor, tickling her feet and setting her skin to shiver.

  She lit a fire at the feet of the statue of Athena and knelt before it to pray.

  At your command, Athena, I have come to your temple. Bless my son with your good blessings.

  Even as she thought those prayers, Lia wondered why... Why was she here? Why was she praying? Why was this happening?

  She wasn’t married. She wasn’t pregnant. She was Lia Godwick, and she shouldn’t be here. She went and stood at the western-most end of the temple.

  Water.

  Not down below the cliffs where the water belonged. No. The water had risen ten...twenty...fifty feet high.

  The tide was rising higher than she’d ever seen it rise before, and if it kept rising, soon it would make an island of the temple and then wash it away.

  In terror she sank to her knees, offered a thousand wordless prayers to Athena and any god who would hear her. In the black sky, Zeus made himself known with bolt after bolt of jagged lightning. The temple slowly began to shake as if Hades, deep below the earth, were holding tight to the pillars that held the world steady and shaking them.

  And still the water rose.

  She ran to the northern edge of the temple.

  Water.

  She ran to the southern side.

  Water.

  She ran to flee from the eastern entrance where surely the water hadn’t risen yet.

  Water.

  Water.

  Water.

  Athena, she prayed silently. Is this the blessing you offered me? The blessing of death? Speak to Poseidon, beseech him on my behalf to be merciful. Tell him I carry a child who I will dedicate to his service if he will spare us death this night at his hands.

  She spun in a circle, in a panic, helpless and desperate.

  The temple trembled again.

  Before warm air had escaped through the cracks and tickled her like the gentle hot breath of August’s kisses.

  Now the cracks between the tiles steamed.

  And there in the archway next to the altar of Athena where Lia had knelt to pray...stood a man.

  But not a man, for no man she had ever seen looked like this man.

  Lia’s eyes widened at the sight of him, looming in the arch, filling both its width and its height, though that meant the man had to be seven feet tall at least.

  He stepped into the temple.

  Water surged and steamed around his feet.

  Lia saw it steam, saw the steam rise, watched it rise from his ankles to his mighty thighs, past his massive muscled stomach, huge broad chest and all the way to his head. Iron-colored hair down to his shoulders. A thick gray beard.

  Eyes like the fathomless sea...

  She stood rooted into place, frozen, unable to scream or speak or move. She could not blink. Her lips trembled. She could faint any moment.

  He stepped toward her, rivulets of water running down his naked body from chest to stomach, down impossibly long thighs.

  He towered over her, gazed down upon her.

  “You called me by name,” he said, his voice the low rumble of ocean waves.

  “Poseidon,” she whispered.

  He stretched out his hand, his enormous mighty hand, and touched her cheek.

  He was so large it seemed impossible he could be anything but a statue come to life, but when he touched her cheek he was warm, made of flesh, if not human then more than human.

  Her skin burned where he touched her. All around her the temple floor steamed and breathed with wet heat. Lia knew she should run away, run anywhere, run nowhere, but run. Yet her feet remained rooted in place. Distantly she recalled she had a husband in her bed and that she must return to him. But she couldn’t move. She was Poseidon’s slave. But not from fear or force, but desire.

  He was magnificent.

  So she stayed.

  And he touched her more.

  Both hands came up to her face, his fingertips stroking her from her neck under her ears to her lips and again. His touch tingled with lightning. She shivered, and the hairs on her arms rose. She felt so insignificant standing before him, so small in comparison to his enormity that she might as well have been a child. But she didn’t feel the fear of a child, a child’
s horror of seeing a naked male form in front of her, but a woman’s hunger.

  As he touched her face, she told herself this was simply another dance in a dreamworld so she had no reason to be afraid. Might as well enjoy it while it lasted, until she woke up from this impossible dream.

  The thick long fingers of his enormous hands lightly stroked her parted lips. He pressed a fingertip, only one, into her mouth and touched the tip of her tongue. She allowed it. She would allow him everything. A drop of water slid from his earlobe and dropped to his chest. She watched it run over the hulking pectoral muscles and into the ridges of his stomach. Everything, yes. She would allow him everything. How could she not?

  She a mortal and he a god?

  Lia looked up and met his eyes. He studied her face like a jeweler examined a diamond, seeking out the flaws, but finding none. He ran his fingers through her hair, grasped it gently and pulled it to bare her throat to him. She was a rag doll in his hands, small and helpless and limp. Even his lightest touch overwhelmed her. He could have lifted her with one hand.

  With her throat bared, he bent down low and pressed his nose against her skin, inhaling her scent. In the steaming heat of the temple, in her terror and desire, she had begun to sweat. Salt water glistened on her skin. The scent seemed to please him like a perfume. He pressed in closer to her, inhaled her scent again. But it was not all he did to her. Before she knew it had happened, he’d found the knotted belt around her waist and untied it. He didn’t bother with the ties at her shoulders. He simply pulled, and the gown came off her body, puddling at her ankles.

  She wished he would speak to her and was grateful when he didn’t. What could he say to calm her hammering heart? What could she hear that would make this encounter any less strange or terrifying?

  Nothing.

  He placed his hands on her shoulders and pushed her to her knees.

  Of course she should kneel before him, he a god and she a mortal.

  And of course he should push the head of his enormous organ into her mouth. The head was all her mouth could take. She wrapped both hands around the shaft—solid as marble—and held and squeezed it. She was well aware of his huge solemn eyes watching her as she sucked him. Did she even please him with what she did? Was this about pleasure for him? Or did he want her obedience?

  Or did he want her worship?

  Or her love?

  The immense tip of his cock strained her mouth. Her jaw ached around it, but she had no desire to stop her work. To simply kneel and stroke the great length and breadth of his cock was divine. He towered over her. She understood prayer now, the desire to kneel before immensity and to please the great being with her kneeling.

  Without so much as a shudder or a sigh, he released into her mouth and she swallowed what he released, tasting the salt and finding it sweet to her tongue. A god’s semen would be sweet, wouldn’t it? And when it was done, she already craved more.

  It was nothing for him to reach down to her, to cup her head and caress her face. Her hands were still around his cock, and he took both of them into one of his and lifted her off her feet, lifted her easily until she stood with her back arched and breasts thrusting forward. She hung from his great left hand as if from a hook while his mighty right hand made a survey of her body.

  Poseidon took each breast in his palm and held it a moment, squeezed it and released it. He swept his large palm over her quivering stomach, up and down her arching back and bottom, down her thighs and up again. Then the moment came she’d known would happen. His long thick fingers, large as a normal mortal man’s cock, spread the lips of her vulva and pushed into her vagina. She didn’t cry out but she whimpered. His touch was probing, searching. She wondered if he was measuring her inside, to see if he could take her and she him. On the fulcrum of his fingers, he pivoted her this way and that as he explored the wet inner chamber of her body. He turned his hand to force her hips to tilt forward and her vagina contracted around his fingers and she cried out from the sudden shock of pleasure.

  She thought she saw him smile, but just the once and then it was gone before she could be sure she’d seen it. But she must have pleased him. He withdrew his fingers from her vagina and took her around the waist with both hands. His hand span was as wide as her waist and he again lifted her effortlessly off her feet. At once, she put her hands on his shoulders and her legs around his waist as he brought her down onto his cock.

  She cried out, a sound that the whole kingdom must have heard as he pressed the enormous head of the granite organ into her body—the tip alone, for it was all she could take at first. But he was no more content with that than she. He lifted and lowered her, lifted and lowered her, as she pushed and pulsed her hips until she opened enough to take the length of it inside her.

  His huge hands slid up her back—one hand cradled her head and neck, the other arm and hand supported her back.

  She released her desperate hold on his shoulders and hung limp in his arms, impaled on the massive organ that speared her. When he lowered his great head to her breasts, she dug her fingers into his wet hair. His vast mouth encircled her breast, enveloped it, sucked it into the hot slick cavern, and his rough tongue sought her nipple and lapped at it endlessly as she hung in his grasp, split open on his cock.

  It was bliss, the purest mindless bliss, to be held in his enormous arms, sucked and penetrated to the deepest parts of her. It seemed hours passed while she was suspended off the ground, in his grasp, as the organ inside her made slow and deep inroads until it had filled her as completely as her body could be filled without bursting at the seams.

  Lia could do nothing but pant, and pant she did, as wave after wave of pleasure rolled over and through her. It would take nothing to make her come, almost nothing. What it did take, finally, was one thrust. One sharp thrust of his cock into her, and the gratified grunt of the god who coupled with her. Her body exploded with deep delicious spasms, and as she came, the god released his seed into her—thick, scalding waves of fluid that he poured into her so hard she could feel each fresh rush against her shuddering cervix.

  After her climax, she lay still as a corpse in his mighty hands. Her breasts throbbed, swollen as they were from the intense suckling of his mouth, and her vagina pulsed around the shaft that still filled her.

  But was he done with her?

  No. He had only begun to school her on what it meant to give oneself to a god.

  Still holding her, he went slowly to his knees and brought her back down to the floor. Delicious warm water encircled them as they copulated again. She was allowed movement now and she braced her feet on the floor to lift her hips in offering. His stony expression began to crumble as they made rough love. Sounds escaped his lips. Desire hooded his dark eyes and turned them glassy. The whole of her sex—her vulva and vagina, clitoris and cervix—all throbbed with one heartbeat around his organ. She couldn’t believe she could take so much into her. She rolled up a little and touched the tender flesh where he was joined to her and wrapped her hands again around the impossibly thick shaft. She measured him as he measured her. Even fully and completely embedded in her, she could take little more than half his length. She wanted every inch of it but knew he’d have to open her womb to fit it in, and he seemed content with what he could get of her.

  As he rammed her with his cock, she gazed upon his body with adoration. The tendons in his arms moved and strained, as did the veins in his neck. His body was a mountain, his chest the cliff face, his shoulders like peaks and his head the snowcapped summit. Beautiful god...not less human in his goodness but more...more...taller and stronger, with a man’s eyes and a man’s hungers but a thousand times more virile than any mortal man.

  “Lovely,” she whispered, and he laughed at her praise, rewarded it with a fresh burst of seed into her womb. She felt it, the thick hot fluid as it filled her and filled her. She sensed a quickening deep inside her, like lightning insi
de her belly. His godseed invaded her womb and staked its claim there.

  “Yes,” he said into her ear. “Your son will be my son.”

  So this was Athena’s blessing...her son would be a great hero with salt water in his veins. Athena had sent Poseidon to her in this temple, to claim the child already in her womb. And what would she say to that, to a god who would deign to bless the mortal seed of a mortal man and his mortal bride?

  “Thank you, my lord.”

  “You will tell your husband whose seed made your son great,” he said.

  “I will.”

  “And you will tell him you were more a wife to me than you were to him.”

  His arrogant laugh filled the temple, and the mighty and terrible god began to thrust into her again.

  He wrapped his arms around her back and hips and lifted her from the floor. Her legs were spread out over his massive thighs. Again and again he lifted and lowered her, spearing her on his iron-hard organ. She arched back and offered her breasts to him, which he roughly suckled, pulling the tender tips into his mouth and lavishing them with his tongue. Pleasure swept over her in wave after wave. She couldn’t stop her climaxes even if she’d wanted to. They were too powerful and there were too many of them.

  She whimpered when he withdrew his cock from the wet cleft he’d been penetrating for what felt like hours. But she found he was not done with her, merely moving her for his own pleasure. He put her on her hands and knees and spread her thighs. With one smooth, long stroke, he speared her again. Her back bent and her head lifted like a supplicant in prayer. He ran his hands up her back and around her body to take her breasts in his hands. He held them in his palms as he pumped into her. The feeling went beyond pleasure into sheer obliterating sensation. She felt everything, and she felt it all at once—the humbling of being used, the fullness of the enormous organ in her as it pumped and spurted into the core of her. The god wrapped his arm around her and pressed his chest against her back. She was overtaken, he dwarfed her; her much smaller body disappeared beneath his. At last she released the cry that had been building inside her since her first sight of him looming naked and erect in the archway.