The Adventures of a Roman Slave

by Lisa Cach

  “Your eyes are glowing,” Sygarius said, his voice savoring the words. He liked what he was doing to me. “I’ve never seen them so bright.”

  “I’d never, ever want to do anything like that,” I lied, and knew he knew it for a falsehood. What was worse, I knew he thought I lied on purpose, to push him to show me worse things.

  Maybe I did.

  The girl slid off the statue and collapsed forward onto the couch, her face turned toward me. There was a soft smile on her lips. Her muscles looked lax, drained of strength.

  The two men came back and removed the statue, and the girl slowly pushed herself up, moving as if too wrung out to exert herself.

  “Do you deny that you’re excited?”

  I bit my lips, unwilling to admit the truth. Yet it was so foolish of me to continue to lie, when Sygarius plainly saw the state I was in.

  “You would tell me you didn’t enjoy watching our Leda with her swan?” he asked softly.

  I could feel, in the air between us, his dare that I deny it. He wanted me to deny it.

  “I feel nothing.” I held my breath, and waited for the consequences.

  I heard the sharp slap of leather against flesh, and a shriek of surprise. My attention snapped to the blonde, who dashed toward the couch with one of the men in pursuit. He gripped a short leather strap in his hand, half raised to strike the girl again. The brunette ran around the back of Sygarius, on a path to meet up with the blonde; safety in numbers, I thought.

  When the two women met up, they grasped each other’s arms—but then the brunette’s hold turned from one of comfort to one of capture. As the blonde fought to get away, the man with the strap came up behind her and thwacked her bottom.

  The blonde yelped. It seemed to be surprise more than real pain that she felt. She froze, seeing the other two men approach, and then erupted into a frenzy of motion, trying to break free of the brunette’s grip on her arms and, now, the strap-wielding man’s arm around her waist.

  Her frantic struggle seemed too real to be pantomime, and I suddenly wondered if she’d known this was coming, or had been told it was some other scene they would be playing out.

  One of the men tore her flimsy bit of clothing from her. The man with the strap lifted the naked blonde off her feet, carried her to the couch, and tossed her faceup over the rolled arm, her head bouncing once against the seat of the couch, her hair a wild tangle spreading out over it. Her hips were higher than her head, her legs dangling down to the floor, which her toes could barely touch.

  Before she could catch her breath and writhe away, the brunette hopped onto the couch and grabbed both her hands, pulling her arms out straight above her head. Two of the men squatted down and grasped her ankles, pulling her legs wide. The man with the strap took a position between her spread thighs. The blonde’s cunny was exposed before him, vulnerable, her legs parted wide enough that her petals were partly opened.

  He whacked the strap against his own palm once, then a second time, harder—as if testing the sting of it. The blonde whimpered, and tried to raise her head to see what was happening.

  Was he going to . . . No, he couldn’t! Why would he—

  The strap came down with a sharp smack against her mound.

  The blonde shrieked and jerked, then threw herself into another madly frenzied struggle to escape. Her strength was no match for the three who held her, though, and she quickly exhausted herself, lying supine in their grasps, her breath heaving.

  Smack!

  I gasped and flinched along with the blonde.

  The man was careful in his aim, and made his strikes without great force; he was not damaging her. She’d have no marks tomorrow. But that didn’t mean she didn’t feel pain when that strap came down on her most sensitive flesh.

  Smack!

  I dragged my gaze from the strap and looked at Sygarius. “I don’t understand. Whose pleasure is this? Who could enjoy this? Not her.” I nodded toward the blonde.

  “You’re enjoying it.”

  I shook my head in harsh denial. “It’s too . . . cruel. Can you stop it? Please?”

  Smack!

  “It would deprive us all of too much pleasure,” he said.

  “Not her!”

  “Especially her. This is not a beating, Nimia, with quick slash after slash delivered only to punish. It’s an arousal. The strap stings, yes. The flesh burns. And the flesh also swells between strokes, the blood drawn into it, making her exquisitely aware of every tender petal of her cunny, hiding the stiffening stamen within.”

  Smack!

  I flinched again, and the blonde moaned; I suddenly wasn’t sure if it was a moan of pain she felt, or of pleasure. “It’s wrong,” I said.

  “Wrong because it shocks you?”

  “You’re hurting her.”

  “Some people like to be hurt a little. But let’s pretend she doesn’t like what’s being done, and isn’t going to like what’s going to happen to her next. Let’s pretend she’s not at all willing. None of that will stop you from enjoying watching it be done, and feeling your own sex swell with hunger.”

  I shook my head in denial, and for once I believed myself. Pain, being held down . . . No.

  “Come here.”

  I jerked in surprise. I never moved from the chair during a lesson. Never.

  Sygarius beckoned with his hand.

  It took me a few moments to obey, so stunned was I. I walked around the foot of the couch to him, then stood, waiting, my heart pounding. What was he going to do?

  “Lie down on your stomach, there, at the end of the couch. Facing away from me.”

  My eyebrows rose, so high I could feel my forehead straining. My heart tripped. “L-l-lie down?”

  His eyes narrowed for a moment, a flash of irritation at my questioning. I clenched my hands and turned round, then crawled onto the foot of the couch as the brunette scampered out of the way, taking the blonde’s arms with her. I lay down on my belly, propped up on my elbows.

  “Bend your knees.”

  I did so.

  “Pull your skirts up to your waist.”

  I struggled awkwardly, hiking up the linen until I felt the air on my buttocks.

  “Part your knees.”

  I suddenly knew what he wanted: to see my sex, and see with his own eyes whether I lied or told the truth. The dampness, the contractions of my gate, the swelling . . . how much of it was visible? I didn’t know. I’d never bent down with a mirror to look, although I thought now that that had been singularly stupid of me. Why should I not know how my own body looked, despite being forbidden from touching it in a pleasurable way?

  I slowly parted my knees, dreading what they might reveal.

  “Farther.”

  I hung my head and obeyed, feeling the air on my cunny as my petals parted and revealed my guilt.

  There were several long moments of silence, and everyone in the room seemed to be waiting, breaths caught. Even the blonde, whose head was almost touching my side, seemed suspended in this moment, attending Sygarius’s next decree.

  It must have come as a silent signal, for there was a sudden flurry of movement, drawing my eyes. The man tossed aside his strap and scooped the blonde up into his arms as the others released her. He carried her to the side of the couch I faced, turned her around, and shoved her down on her belly, so that her face was by my knees, while my head was near her buttocks.

  Someone handed him the perfumed oil, which he poured liberally over her ass, then massaged into her crack and down to her cunny. The scent once again assailed my senses, seeping into my awareness and making my eyelids flutter. It seemed to call up distant memories, though of what, I couldn’t say: I only knew that some element—not the whole scent, but some single element or unique combination within it—was irresistible to me.

  The man rubbed the blonde�
�s buttocks, rolling them in his hands, then gave them a sharp thwack with his palm. She cried out, and he thwacked her again. And again.

  The redhead and brunette grabbed her ankles and pulled her legs wide. One of the men went round to the other side of the couch, put his knees to either side of the blonde’s shoulders, held her face between his hands, and then forced the head of his rod into her mouth.

  I craned over my shoulders to see what was happening, and when I did, I closed my eyes.

  “Watch, Nimia,” Sygarius said.

  I forced my lids open, to see the blonde gripping the man’s legs. I didn’t know if she was doing it to support herself and try to get away, or because she liked it. Her fingernails dug into his thighs.

  Movement at her back end caught my attention, and I turned forward to see the strap-man holding his thick prick in position at her gate. Like the man at the blonde’s head, he’d put his knees to either side of her; her pale flesh looked small and vulnerable between his muscled, black-haired thighs, with that enormous staff poised like a battering ram. He crouched over her, the position awkward but his body more than muscled enough to handle it.

  The head of his prick forced its way inside her. Her body tensed, and then she writhed as if to get away from the great force of it. He gripped her buttocks, hard, and with one long, slow thrust he buried himself within her.

  The blonde whimpered, a cry smothered by the rod that gagged her mouth.

  I watched, wide-eyed, as the strap-man slowly withdrew, then plunged within her again, deeply kneading her buttocks while he did it, and all of it so close to my eyes that I had only to lean and bow my head and my face would be on her tortured ass. She would have bruises to show for this night.

  “Are you enjoying this, Nimia?” Sygarius asked from behind me, only his voice sounded distant, as if trying to find me through thick layers of curtain. My attention was all on that rod, sliding in and out of the beleaguered blonde. Something was happening to me; to me and to my body. I heard a buzzing sound, and as strap-man thrust and plunged, I began to see a shimmering of golden stars.

  Strap-man held the blonde’s ass cheeks wide, and then thrust one thick finger into her puckered, oiled hole. She groaned, long and hard, and bucked her ass up against his hand.

  The golden stars burst before me into a swarm of golden bees, the buzzing deafening me to all other sounds. I was dimly aware of waves of pleasure going through my body, and a strange moaning sound coming from my throat, but it was the golden swarm that had me, held me, devoured me. They landed on my face, my shoulders, my back . . .

  And then I saw Clovis’s face near mine, and felt him lift me against his body, his mentula a hard ridge between us. I cried out at the pleasure of it, and the yearning to have it inside me. I needed him in me, in a way that I’d never needed food, water, or life itself.

  Nimia, Clovis whispered, and his hands moved down over my buttocks to my thighs, lifting and parting them.

  “You can hardly deny that,” Sygarius said, his voice edged with a cynical amusement.

  Clovis vanished. The golden swarm took instant flight and disappeared. I blinked, and found myself on the couch, my ass bare, my cunny still clenching at the echoes of pleasure.

  What in Hades had just happened to me?

  Strap-man had pulled out of the blonde, who lay limp beside me.

  “Women’s bodies make the choice, not their minds,” Sygarius said. “It’s why men are so jealous and controlling—they know their women can be led to do anything, no matter the perversion.”

  At some unseen signal, the players gathered themselves together and left the room. Linnaeus, too. I could feel the absence of others in the air; it was a stillness that should have been calming, but it left me aware that I was alone with Sygarius.

  “Stand up.”

  I did, my legs feeling weak. My skirts fell down to cover my betraying loins, the fabric like a curtain that fell too late, concealing nothing.

  Sygarius sat forward and pulled his tunic off, flinging it to the side where it fell in the shadows. I stared at his black-haired chest, the soft rises of his pectoral muscles, the smaller descending mounds of muscles that went down his ribs until the smoother spread of his belly.

  My eyes continued downward, to the massive, dark, red-purple erection sprouting at his loins like an oak tree from a thicket of black hair. His mentula was as thick as my wrist, the slit at its end shining with the first drop of his desire. I had a sudden, almost overwhelming desire to put my mouth over it, and lick that drop away with the tip of my tongue.

  “Take off your gown.”

  Startled, I looked up at his eyes. Were we going to join now? Not wait for the solstice and the formal initiation?

  His gaze told me nothing. It was dark and intent, as it always was. I untied the belt at my waist and let the garment fall to the floor over my feet.

  “Come here.”

  I stepped closer to his spread thighs, and then when he nodded again, I stepped between them. I could feel the warmth of his legs to either side of mine, but he did not close them against me. My gaze fell again to his mentula, the head of which was now a mere hand’s width from the plucked-bare mound of my cunny. I swayed, some force within me seeking to make contact. I wanted to feel that domed head pushing against my petals, sliding along them, rubbing against the eager stamen of my flower.

  “Part your legs.”

  I did, helpless to do otherwise. I wanted him to tell me to impale myself on that massive rod. I wanted to feel it stretching me. Filling me. Breaking me free of what had begun to feel like a perpetually inviolate state. I wanted to be touched, taken, used. I wanted his hands on my hips, thrusting me down upon him, again and again.

  He moved one of his legs, sliding it between my open thighs. “Wider,” he said.

  I scooted my feet wider apart, the shift lowering my cunny until it was so close to the top of his thigh that I felt the brush of his leg hair against it.

  “Tell me what you want.”

  “You.”

  “How do you want me?”

  “Any way you say. Please,” I begged. Unable to control myself, I lowered my sex upon his leg, rubbing against him in one quick, rough, luscious stroke before he dropped his leg lower, avoiding my touch.

  “Bad girl,” he said, his voice low and uneven.

  I gazed at him in apology. “Punish me by your own hand,” I said, envisioning that masked man’s hand slapping the girl’s mound, and her writhing in helpless submission and desire.

  He chuckled. “And give you exactly what you want? No.”

  “Do we have to wait for the solstice? We could do it now.” I cast a glance over my shoulder at the woven basket. “Whatever’s in there, I could see it now, couldn’t I? The waiting . . . becomes unbearable.”

  “Has this ‘unbearableness’ tempted you to break your oath?”

  He meant my oath not to bring pleasure to myself with my own hands. Not only could no other man or woman touch me, but I was not allowed to, either, beyond the basic necessities of bathing and of plucking hair from my sex. It seemed the cruelest prohibition of all. Many nights I’d lain awake, my sex full and throbbing, and I’d lie on my belly and fight against the urge to rub against the sheet. But always one of the other girls would shift in her bed, reminding me I was not alone, and reminding me that they were all charged with watching that I did not break my promise. So I would lie silent, motionless, hoping to fall asleep and find in dreams the stroking touch and release that I was denied in waking life.

  “I have not broken my oath.”

  “Your body is mine. You’ll feel pleasure when I give it to you.”

  “At the solstice.”

  “That depends upon you. I’ve decided you have to earn my touch.”

  I whimpered. I’d thought myself so close to the long-awaited fulfillment. Now there was the
potential for failure?

  “I want you to get close to Childeric—no, you won’t let him touch you,” he said, reading the look of panic on my face. “He wants you, but you aren’t to let him have you. Use his desire for you as bait. Hint to him that you want to escape from me and go back to your barbarian roots. Tell him you hate all that is or was Rome. And from his reaction, find out what his feelings are: does he want Soissons for the Franks, or is he happy for them to serve as our hired army?”

  He wanted me to spy for him. The thought scared me. I hadn’t found Childeric frightening when he was a guest in Sygarius’s house. But to approach him on my own, while pretending to be seeking escape from Sygarius . . . It would put me beyond the bounds of Sygarius’s protection, at least in Childeric’s eyes. And the idea of confronting and attempting to manipulate the barbarian king did frighten me. I was no match for such a one. “Why would he tell me anything?”

  “Because men, my dear Nimia, cease to think in the presence of a desirable woman.”

  “He would see through me in a moment.”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? It’s an old ploy, sending a woman to loosen the tongue of a man; there is no brilliance behind such a scheme, no cunning. Nor does there need to be. He won’t be able to think near you, Nimia. His cock will do the persuading for you; it will silence his suspicions and choose his path.”

  I wet my lips, thinking. I could ask if I could try such a ploy on Clovis, and thus get permission to talk with him in private.

  Sygarius was watching me closely. It occurred to me that he still seemed able to think clearly while his cock was rampant. A man so jealous of my body that he would not allow even my own hand to touch it was a man who might quickly figure out that my interest in a young, handsome prince was not purely for his benefit. He must know himself to be far more sexually attractive than Childeric. He might not come to the same conclusion when comparing himself to Clovis.

  “It’s . . . You . . .” I started, and fumbled over the words, not knowing if I dared ask the half-worrisome, half-hopeful thought that had sprung to life in the back of my mind.