by Aja James
Thankful for the distraction of words, Valerius cleared his throat and asked, “How does it do that?”
Without looking at him, the Healer smiled a mysterious smile, reminding him of the first time he’d met her. He’d seen far too few smiles since then and knew deep down that he was the cause. The knowledge shamed him.
“It is woven from my hair,” Rain replied with a whimsical tone. “I cut my hair at the end of the Phoenix Cycle, when black roots begin to emerge. By then the strands will have become entirely clear, reflecting only the colors of my imagination. Each tendril has a life of its own, and even when they are cut, they somehow remain part of my conscience, still obeying my will. And I weave them, with Wan’er’s assistance, into the scenes of my childhood, the four Zhous as you would call them now. Hangzhou, Suzhou, Guangzhou, and Liuzhou.”
Valerius recalled the scrolls he’d seen in her sanctuary, as well as the handkerchief she’d given him when they first met, and nodded in amazement. “Your homeland must have been very beautiful.”
The Healer sighed. “Indeed, it was. It still is, as you caught a glimpse of it yourself ten years ago, but much has changed. Human advancement and the evergrowing need for housing and industry have bulldozed over much of China’s original beauty. I can only hope to preserve it in my memories.”
Her lips quirked up at one corner, and he could hear the smile in her voice as she said, “Do you know the Chinese saying? Heaven Above, Suzhou, and Hangzhou below. That’s how enchanting my homeland was, as wonderful as humans imagined their Heaven on earth could ever be.”
Valerius tilted his head to look down on the Healer’s silvery crown. His very own Heaven was within reach in the form of one small woman.
And so was his Hell.
Suddenly she grew very still, her shoulders tensing under his gaze. After a long silence, she said, “Are you ready for me, warrior?”
“Aye,” came his deep, abiding answer.
She turned to face him and he did the same, his cheeks turning crimson once more beneath his bronzed skin as her gaze immediately locked upon his raging erection.
Hesitantly, she reached up to flatten her palms against his ribcage, and his muscles jumped in reaction. He didn’t know whether he would ever get used to being touched. Never mind being touched so intimately. But he vowed he would not reveal his inner battle to her, not let his demons tarnish the bond they shared.
“You body is ready but your mind is not,” she said quietly, spearing him with her insight. “I can see the aura of anguish and pain around you, every time I am near, every time I touch you. Will you ever tell me why?” She raised her eyes to his as she asked.
Mutely, he shook his head. It would horrify her to know his past, the filth that he’d lived with, the monster that he’d been.
And in some ways, still was. He was good at only one thing: killing.
She bent forward and pressed the softest kiss to his sternum, like the flutter of butterfly wings, so soft he barely felt the touch. Involuntarily, he leaned slightly into her, his swollen, aching manhood grazing the middle of her stomach. For the first time, he yearned for more. This was Rain, after all.
His Rain.
She sighed deeply and breathed him in, her hands moving to clasp behind his back. She buried her face in his chest and muffled out, “Don’t tempt me please. Just knowing that you are mine for the next thirty days is temptation enough. But I will resist for now. We cannot Mate until you are ready.”
I am ready, he wanted to respond. Or at least, as ready as he would ever be.
As if hearing his unspoken words, she retorted, “You will not be ready until you let go of your pain. When you trust me enough to share your burden, that is when you will truly be ready.”
“But the Nourishment,” Valerius protested, feeling panicked and hurt that she was effectively rejecting him.
She smiled a soothing smile. “Your blood I will gladly take, my Consort. As for your body…”
She took her arms away and stepped back until they were no longer touching. “We will ease into the intimacy slowly,” she stated in a firm tone, offering no room for argument. “I want you to enjoy our union as much as I will.”
Before he could protest further, she took his hand in a gentle clasp and led him to the gigantic, canopied, Asian style bed in the center of the chamber. She pulled back the silk coverlet and crawled beneath, white robes and all, almost getting lost in the fluffy mattress and mountainous pillows. She pulled on his hand and tugged him into the bed with her, his much larger and heavier body making a dent that made her roll into him like a magnet attracted to its mate.
She curved her clothed body along his naked one, fitting against his side seamlessly, and draped a slender pale arm over his belly as he lay on his back, stiff and unmoving.
“Does it pain you much when I touch you like this?” she asked as she reached over his torso for his hand on the other side. It seemed the most natural thing in the world for her to entwine their fingers and settle their clasped hands back on his belly.
“No,” Valerius replied gruffly, and surprised himself to realize that it was the truth. It felt right to have her beside him, holding him. For the first time in his long life he felt cared for, even cherished.
“When you were human, did many women hold you thus?” She asked on a whisper, sounding shy.
“No,” he answered, his jaw clenching against the memories. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut as if to blot them out.
Unaware of the battle he waged within himself, Rain pursued her curiosity. “And have you had many lovers?”
At his silence, she expounded, “Was there someone special in your human life? Is that why you can’t bear to be touched by another now?”
It was so far from reality Valerius almost laughed. But then the laughter would turn to sobs, and she would look upon him as one would pity the unhinged.
“No,” he replied finally, getting control of himself, “there was no one.” At least, not in the tender capacity to which she referred.
Distracted by his own thoughts, he barely noticed when she pulled his hand closer, feeling only the slightest sting when her fangs sank into the vein in his wrist.
But when she began to draw from him, his body came fully awake, jarring his mind back to the present. His heavy cock bobbed insistently against the silk coverlet, and the air was again infused with his fragrance, stronger and spicier than before.
A burning sensation filled him and drove his hips off the bed. Involuntarily he began to rotate and nudge, his buttocks tightening in time with her methodical pulls on his vein.
He felt as if he were dangling over the edge of a precipice, afraid to take the final leap yet inevitably drawn to the yawning unknown. His penis throbbed and shuddered as if milked by an invisible hand. His pre-cum seeped out of the slit at the head and trailed down the hot rigid length in continuous flow as if his cock were weeping.
“Please,” he begged, though he knew not for what. He’d never asked anything of anyone. Never put himself in such a vulnerable position. But he had no pride in this moment. He was utterly slain by her gentleness.
Answering his plea, she let go of his wrist and licked the wound closed, then shifted downwards so that she lay across his lower body like a sleepy kitten. Her soft hands took hold of his penis and she diligently licked at the fluids that had seeped out, adding her saliva to the tantalizing wetness engulfing the most private part of him. When her lips finally closed over the swollen head, his back arched high off the bed and a low groan vibrated through his system.
She was suckling him more gently than the night of the Rite, almost reverently. His entire body strained under her ministrations, the muscles in his neck popping in stark relief as he threw his head back into the pillows.
It was not enough, he wanted to shout. Do it harder, faster. Milk him dry.
But the words wouldn’t form, and his power of speech degenerated into animalistic sounds, deep moans and low growls.
The sounds of someone desperate.
The sounds of someone in pain.
Still she softly drew upon him, pausing once in a while to swipe her tongue meticulously around the fat, engorged head. She cradled him like a babe with her bottle, teasing his most sensitive flesh with tiny sucks interspersed with fleeting kisses. Then she would alter the rhythm with deep, soulful pulls and attend to the sacs below.
Valerius writhed helplessly in the bed, his sweat dampening the sheets, all twisted from his struggles. “Rain!” he managed to call out through a long, deep groan, his voice breaking.
But instead of giving him what he needed, she sighed and pulled away, gathering herself up to a sitting position astride his lower stomach just above his groin.
“I cannot give you the release you crave before you are ready for it yourself, warrior,” she explained, licking her lips as if to savor every last drop of him. Her hands enfolded the sides of his face, and to his utter self-contempt, her thumbs rubbed away the moisture that had leaked from the corners of his eyes.
“Don’t be ashamed,” she admonished gently, again seeming to read his thoughts. “This experience is not easily endured. Your body is torn between two extremes. On the one hand, it is triggered to Serve me.”
She demonstrated by sweeping her hand lightly along the length of his now intensely painful erection, “On the other hand, we are not truly mated, and your body knows I cannot reciprocate what it gives me. To some Consorts, orgasm is beyond their reach though there are many ways to satisfy me.”
She lay her head down on his still shuddering chest, over his rapidly beating heart and sighed, “just the scent of you can make me wet. The taste of you can make me come.” She guided his hand to the place between her thighs and he was stunned at the drenched heat he encountered there, wetting through her robes and the skin of her inner thighs.
“Some?” he barely managed to say, distracted by the exquisite softness beneath his palm.
She nodded slightly and murmured, “Some other Consorts find the balance within themselves and can achieve release. I think it’s a sort of guilt they overcome because they feel as if they are betraying their future Mates by having intimacies with the Healer, though these relations are sanctioned by the Goddess as Pure and Good.”
Valerius did not have that particular guilt. His inner battle was far more gruesome.
Determinedly putting aside his own needs, he focused his attention on Rain, concentrating on the softness that rested trustingly in his palm.
“How do I please you,” he whispered, embarrassed by his own deplorable lack of knowledge and skill.
Rain smiled her Cheshire smile, keeping her face pressed against the warmth of his chest. “Two thousand years made you a born-again virgin, warrior?”
A wave of pain washed over him as Valerius recalled the day he’d lost his virginity. Two thousand years was not long enough.
“That’s perfectly fine by me,” Rain continued, urging her hips against his hand in a voluptuous undulation. “I like feeling as if I were your first.”
You are my first, Valerius thought. And my last.
He slowly pulled her robes up until he could feel her naked skin and cupped his palm over her drenched core.
She sighed deeply and moaned a little, the sound tickling his senses like kitten fur. He shifted his hand to hold her more fully, instinctively positioning his thumb at the apex of her sex. She made a little mewling sound and used her hand to teach him how to please her. As he rubbed his thumb gently across her pleasure spot just the way she wanted, she moved her hand away.
Her breath quickened against his chest, and he could feel her heart beat in sync. Her small hands reached for his erection again and held him covetously, squeezing up and down the thick, velvet covered shaft of steel in time to the rhythm his thumb made over her clitoris.
His own breathing became increasingly labored once more, and he desperately wanted to get closer. He wrapped his other arm around her body and held her more tightly against his chest. When that wasn’t enough, he inserted one long finger, then two, into her wet core and was momentarily satisfied by her long moan of pleasure the action elicited.
She was so swollen and tight inside, even the width of two fingers seemed too much, but slowly he felt her body accommodate the intrusion, relax and accept him. His thumb stroked gently on her nub while the pads of his fingers found the swollen hardness inside of her. As he rubbed with more pressure, both inside and out, she undulated her hips with encouragement.
His body tensed abruptly in anticipation just before hers tightened and spasmed around his hand. She gasped softly as her release washed over them both, the scent of her passion filling the air around them, mingling with his own. His breath strangled on a groan in response, his cock jerking powerfully within her grasp, though his own release yet eluded him. He ground his teeth together to prevent from shouting at the excruciating pain as his entire body locked and tensed through her orgasm, becoming one giant muscle cramp.
Slowly, they let go of each other, but she remained curled against his chest.
“Thank you,” she said when her heartbeat calmed, and placed a tender kiss on his throat.
As the pain gradually subsided, Valerius felt he should be the one thanking her. For no one had ever shared such an intimacy with him.
Not like this. Never like this.
When her pleasure became his own. When her radiant goodness overcame his nightmares, fears, and centuries-old pain. She was his miracle, he thought as her breathing evened out in slumber.
She was his savior.
*** *** *** ***
Sometime before 200 B.C. Outskirts of Rome.
Valerius yanked with all his might on the chains that secured him against the prison wall.
Though his entire body was one large, gaping wound from the rigors of battle a few hours before, he willed his strength not to leave him, not until he got free and slit the throats of the fuckers who did this to him.
Only a few hours ago, his father was still among the living, badly injured but breathing. He’d half dragged, half carried the aged gladiator from the bloody arena down to the pits below, the crowds’ cheers still ringing loudly above ground. Valerius could have cared less about his victory. All he wanted was to get his father to the healers. With every step, every trickle of blood, he felt his father’s life bleed slowly away.
But when he returned to the pits he was waylaid by their master, a bald, ruddy man with beady eyes and double chins.
“You ingrate!” the odious little man erupted, striking Valerius with his brass-knuckled fist.
Taken aback by the unprovoked assault, Valerius staggered off balance and almost dropped his father hard onto the dirt ground.
“Take him!” the master ordered, pointing to Valerius’ burden. Four armed soldiers came forth and pried the fallen gladiator from Valerius’ grasp, knocking him back with the blunt hilt of their swords.
“He needs a healer, my lord,” Valerius urged, thinking that perhaps their master’s displeasure, though he had no clue as to its cause, extended only to him, that his father would be spared.
“He needs to fulfill his bargain,” the enraged slave owner hissed, then gestured to the two soldiers holding the unconscious gladiator.
Before Valerius could comprehend what was happening, one of the soldiers held his father upright while the other bared his blade and slit it in one clean strike across the gladiator’s throat.
“Nooo!” Valerius rammed forward with enough force to escape the clutches of the two guards restraining him, but the soldier with the unsheathed blade turned quickly and swiped it in a horizontal arc to block Valerius’ momentum.
The blade cut a long gash across the boy’s stomach and he lost his footing, giving the two guards behind him the opportunity to catch him around the shoulders and twist his arms behind his back, restraining him once again.
Valerius watched horrified as the soldier holding his father dragged him by the fee
t deeper into the pits, presumably to be dumped in the bin with all the other dead bodies.
“Why?” he cried, staring after his sire and falling to his knees.
“Why?” the nasty little man echoed. “Why! Because he is supposed to be dead! Because we made a deal! It was supposed to be his final battle, a glorious battle like no other, and he was supposed to die a glorious death!”
The master rounded on Valerius and grabbed his chin, forcing the boy to face him.
“But you, you little maggot, you ruined all my welllaid plans with that heroic rescue of yours. Do you know how much gold I lost because of you? I’d bet the entire enterprise on this battle!”
“But the crowd cheered,” Valerius whispered, tears of bewilderment and frustration and anguish filling his eyes, “they approved.”
“To what end!” the master thundered. “It is all a game! And. You. Sabotaged. My. Hand!” The master punctuated each screech with a swinging fist against Valerius’ head.
Then he bent down to the slave boy’s level until his bloated visage was not one inch from Valerius’ face.
“You stupid, stupid little shit,” the master spat, practically foaming at the mouth like a mad dog. “If you let your pater die like we planned, the profits would have been enough to free you both, and your pathetic womenfolk. But now, oh no, now you’re going to PAY!” the master shouted with quivering vengeance.
“I’m going to sell your ass to the highest bidder, and I don’t care if they use you for a potty urn. I’m going to whore your mother and sister out. They can kiss their peaceful little farm life goodbye.”
Valerius struggled anew and tried to break free, but the pressure on his arms behind his back was unrelenting, forcing him to stay on the ground.
The master inhaled deeply and straightened, appearing to find some small semblance of calm, his rage somewhat subsiding.
“Take him to the dungeons,” he ordered the guards, “and see that he’s in too much pain to even think of getting free.”
The guards dragged Valerius away, chained him to the wall of a square, corner cell and proceeded to rain pain upon his weakened body, with their fists, their boots, their daggers. They knew what they were doing, for they left him no mortal wounds, just enough to put him out of commission for a time.