The Rose

by Tiffany Reisz

  She squeezed him tighter in her fingers and pulled a little. A small tug, but it did something to him. A few drops of wetness emerged from the slit at the end. Her lips parted in a silent gasp.

  “Seed,” he said. He wrapped his hand around the back of her neck, his other hand on her shoulder. His hips moved forward, and his face changed. Eyes fluttered and closed, eyes fluttered and opened again. Lips parted. Quick breaths followed by another smile, a smile to make her drip onto the bed.

  “Seed...” she said, and touched the wetness.

  “Taste it.”

  Her gaze flashed upward.

  “It’s all right. Taste it. It is done, I promise. Wives taste their husbands. Husbands taste their brides. You should know me, the feel and taste of me, as I will know you.”

  She raised her fingertips to her lips.

  “Salt,” she said when it touched her tongue.

  “Ah, it pleases me to the ends of the earth to see you taste me.”

  “What else would please you, my lord?”

  “To kiss you,” he said. “To enter you. To fill you.”

  “I am yours,” she said. “I cannot refuse anything you ask of me.”

  He lowered his head to kiss her lips. She gasped and laughed when he nipped her bottom lip with his teeth. Her fingers flew to her mouth in shock.

  “You bit me,” she said. Luckily her lip wasn’t bleeding, but the surprise had certainly made her squeal.

  “I’m trying to confuse everyone listening outside,” he said. “I’m so tempted to make bird noises.”

  Lia laughed so hard she fell back in bed. Perseus laughed, too, even as he jumped onto the bed and pulled her into his arms.

  “Shall we?” he asked.

  “What? Make bird noises?”

  “I’m a son of Zeus,” he said. “They’ll probably think I’ve turned myself into a bird and am ravishing you midair. Or I’ve turned you into a bird. Or we’re both birds. Ah...the stories they’ll tell about us for ages and ages hence. We’ll be legends. Could you hoot like an owl, please?”

  “I am not making bird noises,” she said, still laughing. Why did no one ever tell her she would laugh with her husband on her wedding night? All she’d ever heard, all her life, was warnings about how awful and frightening and painful it was. She would get married every night if she could.

  “You know you want to,” he said. “Serves them right for listening to a couple on their wedding night.”

  “Are you sure they are?” she asked.

  “Why wouldn’t they? Here. Let me prove it.”

  “Prove it?”

  “Moan,” he said. “Moan like you do when the servants rub oil into your feet.”

  She stared at him, wide-eyed.

  “Go on,” he urged. “Trust me.”

  “I have married an unusual man,” she said. But she did as she was told. She lay back on the bed and began to murmur and moan softly as if she were receiving the most decadent delicious foot massage ever given.

  Perseus slid off the bed and tiptoed over to the door. He waved his hand at her, indicating she ought to keep moaning. She did. She moaned as she watched him walk silently to the door. He raised a fist and then...

  Bam! Bam! Bam! He hit the door so hard she thought it would splinter.

  Lia heard screams. Men and women both screaming in shock and right outside the door.

  “That’s what you get for eavesdropping,” Perseus called out. “Go away!”

  Lia had tears running down her face she was laughing so hard. And then Perseus made it even worse by running to the bed, naked, and leaping on it like she used to do as a girl.

  “That was very good,” she said. “You almost flew over the bed.”

  “The running bed mount should be an event in the next Olympic games,” he said.

  “You are sure to win the laurel crown.”

  “Ah, who needs a crown on his head with a prize like this in his bed?”

  He touched her face, turned her to kiss him, and she did kiss him then. A kiss of teeth and tongue and deepest gratitude for saving her and the kingdom. And desire, too. She did want him, though she scarcely understood what that meant.

  “Are they gone?” she asked.

  “I’m sure they are. And if they aren’t, fine, we’ll simply be very quiet.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Won’t we?”

  “Yes, my lord,” she mouthed.

  He grinned, pleased with her. And it pleased her to please him.

  “I want to do something to you,” he said. He still whispered, and she knew they would whisper all night like this. She felt like a little girl again, hiding with her girl cousins under the covers and telling secrets and ghost tales all night.

  “Do anything to me,” she said.

  “Put your hands over your head.”

  She obeyed.

  “Now I’m going to tie your wrists to the bed.”

  “But why?” she asked, in full voice. He put a finger over her lips.

  “Don’t you see? It’s to spite Poseidon, who ordered you chained to that rock to be ravished by his Cetus.”

  “Is it safe to spite him?”

  “I’m a son of Zeus,” he said. “He’d never dare try anything against me. My father wouldn’t allow it. Poseidon must know he has no power over you anymore. No one else does but I.”

  From no other man would she believe such boasting. But she had seen herself today the miracle of his winged horse, the wonder of his defeat of the Cetus.

  “As you say,” she said softly.

  He untied the cord from around her hips and it was the work of mere seconds before he had her wrists bound to the bar of the bed.

  “I’ll tell you a secret,” he said, “if you promise to tell no one.”

  “I’ll tell no one.”

  “No one has power over you but I,” he repeated. “And no one has power over me but my father.” He kissed her. “And you.”

  “I? Power over you? How so?”

  “You wish to find out?”

  “More than anything. Tell me my powers.”

  “You have the power to render me speechless,” he said.

  “Do I?”

  Perseus smiled tenderly down at her. Then he pulled her gown down to her waist and looked longingly at her naked breasts.

  He said nothing.

  “Ah,” she said. “I do have power over you.”

  He still said nothing. He met her eyes and kept her gaze as he lowered his head to kiss the tip of her breast. She inhaled as his tongue touched the nipple, froze in something like fear when he drew it into his mouth. He sucked her gently at first and then harder. He made a sound, a quiet moan, and she felt the power over him again. She tried to hold him and remembered her tied wrists and his power over her. He was tongue-tied. She was hand-tied. They were equal, then. What a wonder.

  He moved on top of her and drew her gown all the way off her body. She lay naked under him. This was a thing that she knew happened to brides, that their husbands would undress them. And she’d feared it all her life. But Perseus had already seen her naked on the rock today. She feared nothing anymore. And certainly not him.

  Never him.

  Perseus touched her between her legs and his fingers quickly found the place, the little hole where she bled from. He rubbed it with his fingertips, and she was surprised to find she wanted that. His mouth moved over her breasts again and again while his fingers plied the hole until it had opened up for him. He pressed his knees wide, forcing her thighs to part and the hole opened up even more for him. He took himself in hand and pressed his manhood into the furrow of her flesh.

  He didn’t enter her, though she’d braced herself for it. Instead he rubbed her with his organ, rubbed along that seam. It seemed he was working himself into some sort of frenzy. H
is hips moved quickly against her and though he still didn’t enter her, she felt as if this was the moment she’d been waiting for and warned about. With his hands on either side of her and his head resting between her breasts, he pushed against her. She hadn’t known it would feel like this—good. More than good. She didn’t want it to end, though it seemed to be reaching a sort of finale. As his organ slid through the folds of her body, she grew wet and then wetter and the little knot of tissue that ached sometimes when she lay alone in bed...it swelled and throbbed. She caught herself moving under him and with him, seeking more than he was giving her. When she released a hoarse moan, Perseus placed his hand over her mouth. Yes, of course. Silence. They might have people still listening in the hall. And she didn’t want them to hear what they did. This was for their ears alone. And her ears heard sweet sounds—Perseus and his quiet rough breathing, her own breaths hitching in her throat, the slight movement of the bed under them and her heart in her ears, her wild beating heart.

  Perseus pushed himself off her, and she didn’t know what was happening until he grasped his organ in his hand and pressed the head of it into her. Only the head and then only barely. Enough to pinch a little or tear but not enough to really hurt.

  She watched him, fascinated, as he shuddered without moving. Something was happening. She felt even more wetness than before on her. He sighed long, long, long, until it seemed like he’d sighed the very breath from his bones.

  Then it was over. He lay at her side, his head on her breast. His organ rested on her hip, soft now and dripping. She shifted her legs slightly and felt liquid between them.

  Ah, he had entered her but a little and released his seed inside her, filled her up with it. And she was now very, very wet.

  “I have an ocean between my legs,” she said. “Or a river.”

  “Ocean, definitely,” Perseus said. “Salt water.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “So I could do this.” He moved over her, and she saw he was stiff again.

  “Already?” She’d been warned by an old handmaiden of her mother that once a man spent, he was done for the night.

  “I’m a son of Zeus,” he said. “I can’t turn you into a bird, but I’m not entirely without powers.”

  He nestled between her open thighs and placed the tip of his manhood again inside her. And then he pushed. She was so slick and wet inside that his organ went in without causing her much pain at all. No pain, really. Nothing more than a sensation of stretching, of being pleasantly filled.

  “There,” he said into her ear as he settled his body on top of hers. “You like it?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “It’s, ah...it’s nice.”

  He laughed, burying his mouth into the pillow to muffle the sound. Then he lifted his head and looked down at her, grinning. He touched her cheek, stroked her hair.

  “We’ll have to do better than nice.”

  Slowly he withdrew from her before entering her again fully. The seed inside her made the movement easy for him and her. He withdrew again and entered her again, faster this time, and still she felt no pain.

  “Move with me,” he instructed. “When I push in, you lift up.” He pushed in. She lifted her hips.

  “Ah...” she said, her chest fluttering.

  “More than nice?”

  She nodded. “Much more.”

  He settled himself into her and began to take her in earnest. She closed her eyes when she found it helped her concentrate on the sensation of being filled over and over again. And such a delicious wanton sensation it was...all that seed inside her, so much wetness and his organ thrusting into her.

  Perseus sucked her nipples again, fondled and pinched them. They grew hard in his fingers, and her breasts ached. The shaft of his manhood rubbed against the swollen knot where he entered her. She twisted under him, seeking more contact.

  Perseus seemed to understand how to give her what she needed. With both hands on either side of her shoulders, he lifted himself up, looming over her with no parts of their bodies touching each other except where they were so intimately joined. He thrust harder now, giving his organ to her and not holding anything back from her. She lay beneath him, speared, her breasts rising and falling with his thrusts.

  Now they made no attempt to silence or mute their cries of pleasure. They echoed through the room—his desperate breaths, her moans and whimpers. She couldn’t bear to wait anymore, though what she was waiting for, she didn’t know. Perseus must have known because he kept at her, pounding himself into her, rattling the bed, rattling the walls, shaking the world down to its foundations.

  “Take it,” he said. “I can give it to you as long as you can take it.”

  She squirmed under him, seeking the release she craved. The organ spearing her was bliss, but it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. She lifted her head and, red-faced, tears streaming from her eyes, begged a quiet “Please...” He reached between their bodies and found her knot, her swollen aching throbbing knot, and touched it.

  Her head fell back on the pillow and she arched under him. He rubbed her knot, rubbed it quickly, roughly, endlessly, as she lifted her hips under him once, twice, and then on three she was overtaken by a release that felt ages in the making. She shuddered, frozen stiff as a statue while her body went mad around the pulsing organ inside her. There was lightning in her belly, thunder in her hips, a storm all through her body. A thousand miles away Perseus was still on top of her, rutting into her. He found his own release and pushed it in hers, and for a tight, tense, aching moment they were joined so completely she thought there would be no parting their bodies ever again.

  But the storm passed as all storms must, and a few seconds or years later, Perseus lay with his eyes closed, his head on her heart, weak as a newborn babe. She twisted her hands and freed herself from the cord he’d wrapped around her wrists. When she put her arms around Perseus, he smiled in his half sleep.

  “My wife...” he said.

  “Why,” she whispered, “does it feel like you have always been my husband?”

  “Because I will always be your husband,” he said, “and eternity is a river that runs all ways.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Lia sat up.

  All the lights were on in the room again. Lights. Electric lights. She nearly cried with relief at the sight of them.

  Her heart pounded so hard in her chest she thought it was trying to escape. Where was she? Her bedroom? Yes, this was her pink-and-white rose-print bedspread. That was her fireplace mantel, painted white. Aphrodite sat upon it and smiled benevolently down at her. And there was the door to the bathroom...that Lia ran through so she could promptly throw up her dinner.

  That helped.

  She rinsed her mouth out and brushed her teeth. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she saw a pink-cheeked woman of twenty-one with pale brown hair partly braided into a crown, partly down and curling. Midnight blue eyes, just like her father. Annoyingly large breasts, just like her mother. A tiny gap between her top two front teeth.

  It was her. Not anyone but Lady Ophelia Godwick, Lia to her friends.

  What the hell had just happened?

  The kylix. August. The world turning inside out.

  The rock. The monster. Perseus.

  She’d married Perseus and they’d made love. Twice. She could still feel his hands on her breasts, hear his laughing voice, his cock inside her, his come...

  His come.

  Panicking, Lia slipped her hand under her dress and pushed her fingers into her knickers. She was wet. Extremely wet, like she always was after having an orgasm. She pulled her hand out of her pants and looked at the wet shimmer on her fingertips. Only her wetness. No semen.

  And she felt...normal? Not like she’d had sex with someone. She knew what that felt like, even though it had been a long time.

  All righ
t. So whatever had happened, she was pretty sure she hadn’t actually had sex with August Bowman. But something had happened between them.

  Where was August?

  Lia stumbled into the sitting room. “August?”

  No answer. She saw the Rose Kylix sitting on the fireplace mantel, next to her statue of Aphrodite that August had yet again turned to the wall.

  Under the kylix was a note.

  Lia—

  The disorientation will pass quickly and you’ll be feeling on top of the world very soon. I’ve left you the Rose Kylix as it is legally yours, but please, I beg of you, do not drink from it again. It’s very unsafe to drink from it alone. I’ll explain more if you’ll see me again. Apologies for leaving you. There’s a side effect to drinking from the cup that I thought we ought to avoid.

  I have to say, I loved playing Perseus to your Andromeda. We should have made the bird noises.

  Love,

  August

  Bird noises.

  August knew about the bird noises.

  That meant she hadn’t dreamed it. Two people couldn’t have the same dream.

  It had happened. It was real.

  But it couldn’t be. It just...couldn’t.

  Yet, what if it was?

  Lia read the rest of the note.

  PS: The Moirai, otherwise known as the Three Fates, who weave our destinies just as you weave stories on your loom, have a bad habit of getting their threads tangled sometimes. The thread of your life and the thread of mine are knotted together for reasons unknown to me. Don’t fight fate, Lia. You will not win.

  Lia jumped when she heard a sudden knock on her door. She put the cup back into the box and went to answer it.

  “Yes?” she called out. Her mother poked her head into Lia’s sitting room.

  “Darling? You all right? You’ve been gone almost an hour.”

  An hour? Lia thought half the night had passed.

  “I threw up, Mum,” she said, a truth if not the whole truth.

  “Threw up?” Her mother came in and put her hands on Lia’s face, her skin was cool against Lia’s flushed cheeks. “Too much to drink?”