The Rose

by Tiffany Reisz

  Only when he pressed his lips to the tendon of her throat did her body respond. It shocked her when he kissed her, shocked her enough that she gasped. And when he kissed her again, a longer kiss that lingered at her throat and ear, she felt her sex unexpectedly begin to swell.

  She’d borne his thrusts until then and now...suddenly and strangely...she almost welcomed them. She grew slick. Her fingers gripped the silk beneath her harder, and her toes curled against Achilles’s iron thighs.

  “Look at me,” he demanded, and she obeyed without thinking. As soon as she’d turned her head, he caught her lips in a kiss. His tongue plundered her helpless mouth as the cock inside her throbbed. She whimpered, but he gave no quarter, neither with his kisses nor his bruising thrusts.

  At once he sat up on his knees and tore the sheer linen gown from her body as if it were made of parchment. He took her breasts in his hands, and though they were full breasts they seemed small in his palms. He held them hard and squeezed them, pinched the nipples and tugged them until they felt sore and heavy. He rubbed the pads of his thumbs over the nipples until they grew painfully, yet deliciously tender.

  “Good,” he breathed as she began, for the first time since he’d entered her, to move under him. She hadn’t meant to, hadn’t wanted to, but her body took over from her will. As he rolled her nipples, her breasts swelled, and her sex grew even wetter. Her thighs seemed to spread farther apart of their own accord. The cock shifted in her, going deeper until the tip kissed her womb and she shuddered in pleasure and shame.

  “You take my cock well,” he said. She heard pleasure in his tone, but mockery, too.

  “I am no maiden. You give me nothing I have not taken before.”

  This desire, unwanted and unexpected, had loosened her tongue. She half expected him to slap her for her words. Instead he laughed, a low and heady sound.

  “The silk under you is soaked and I’ve yet to spill in you. Don’t pretend you hate this. Your body tells me otherwise,” he said as he squeezed her breasts to the point of pain. They were like twin hearts on her chest, throbbing from his brutal attentions.

  She opened her mouth to protest but he covered her lips with one massive hand. His right hand. She could smell the salt water on his skin from the sea and the subtler scent of her own body on the fingers that had penetrated her.

  “This is my sword hand,” he said as he pressed his first finger into her mouth. “I killed your husband and king today with this hand.”

  If he’d thought to hurt her with that taunt or goad her into biting him, he did not know her husband. She would have thanked him if she could speak. Since she couldn’t, she closed her eyes and sucked the finger deeper in her mouth. Achilles moaned his pleasure, and at the sound, her raw inner muscles clenched around his cock.

  Achilles pulled his finger from her mouth and grabbed her hips with both hands. He worked her up and down on his shaft. It would end soon. She knew it would end. And she willed herself to endure it until that end. But she failed there, made a fatal mistake. She looked at him again, looked at his head thrown back in pleasure and the long line of his bare throat, the pulse throbbing at the base. His chest, harder and stronger than any bronze breastplate that could shield it. The stomach, so hard and flat that she could count the ridges of his muscles under the smooth brown flesh. And his manhood, thick and slick with her juices, pumping in and out of her body, nearly lifting her hips off the pillow with its urgent thrusts.

  “Please.” She sobbed the word as her head fell back on the pillow. It seemed Achilles had been waiting for her to surrender to him and he took that as her white flag waving. Through eyes hooded and heavy with desire, she watched him lick his fingertips and press them against the sore and swollen knot of flesh at the entrance of her body. He bore down on her with quick pumps of his hips as he stroked that knot. How did he know to do it? She alone had ever touched herself there, in the quiet of the night when all who were about her slept. He stroked it and she swelled even more and pulsed against his fingers. Sharp pleasure radiated through her sex, through her belly and back. Fluid trickled out of her, dampening her thighs as she worked herself up and down the cock that pierced her. As big as Achilles was, she could have taken a cock twice its size at that moment. She could not get enough of him. She cried out as her climax took her by force and left her shuddering in her innermost parts.

  Arching, eyes wide open, she saw the shadow of a two-headed, two-backed beast moving on the walls of the tent. Lia went limp beneath him, his cock still embedded in her deep as a knife.

  Though she lay limp, half dead, half asleep, he had not finished with her. He placed his hands on either side of her head and he rose and rose, his back arched and his pelvis flush with hers—and the sigh that came out of him was a sound of purest, most erotic male pleasure. She ran her hands from his stomach all the way to his neck and down again. Lia felt sealed to him, soft to hard, wet to wet. Her sex continued to give little spasms as he moved slowly in her, not thrusting but rolling his hips into her hips. Her thighs were damp, as was the pillow underneath her, though he hadn’t come inside her yet. It was her pleasure that perfumed the room, her arousal combined with the sweat of Achilles’s body and the oil—a primal scent.

  He lowered his head and licked the sweat from her body from her belly to her breasts to her throat. Then he rose up again, pressing his hips into hers, sealing them together again.

  He thrust three times, hard, harder, hardest, then cried out as he released inside her, spurting his seed into her, against the mouth of her womb.

  When it was done, he exhaled, a deep groan from the back of his throat. He rested on his elbows over her, his cock still inside her. Slowly he withdrew from her, almost reluctantly. She closed her legs as he rolled onto his side, propped his head on his fist and looked at her.

  “Water?” Achilles asked. “Wine?”

  “Wine, please,” she said. He stroked her cheek once before standing. He found a clay jug and poured wine into a rough clay cup and passed it to her. She sipped the sweet wine, then passed the cup back to him. He took it from her and remained standing.

  “Thank you, sir,” she said.

  “Palace born and bred,” he said as he filled the cup again. “I killed your husband today, made you my concubine and you thank me for a sip of wine.”

  “You did me a favor,” she said.

  “You did not love your husband?”

  “No.” He loomed over her, but she didn’t look up at him when she replied.

  “Was he cruel to you?”

  “He is dead. I will not speak ill of him anymore.”

  “He was cruel to you. You should know I killed your brothers, as well. All three of them. And your father. Will you still say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to me now?”

  “My father forced me to marry. My brothers served as my husband’s lapdogs. If you wish me to shed tears for them, I’ll require a sharp knife and a fresh onion.”

  He laughed.

  “I seem to amuse you, sir,” she said.

  “You delight me,” he said. “Briseis.”

  She shivered as he spoke her name. His Greek tongue made the syllables into music—Briss-eee-uss...

  “Achilles,” she replied.

  He nodded. “Do you know who I am?”

  “The world knows who you are.”

  He smiled, pleased. He squatted in front of her, his powerful thighs holding him still as a statue as he looked long at her face.

  “You are very beautiful,” he said as he took the cord from her braid. “But young.”

  “This is my twentieth summer,” she said.

  He ran his fingers through the plaits of her braid and loosed it into soft waves.

  “Too young to be a widow,” he said.

  “But the proper age to be a concubine?”

  “I think you might be. Though I won’t f
orce you to stay with me against your will.”

  “You would set me free?” she asked, heart racing with hope.

  “No, but if you despise my attentions, I can send you to the laundresses. Though I think you will prefer my tent to scrubbing Spartan seed off woolen bedrolls.”

  “Is Spartan seed worse somehow than Athenian seed?” she asked.

  “It puts up much more of a fight.”

  A jest. The great warrior Achilles had made a jest. She smiled, almost laughed.

  “You choose my tent, then?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  “You did seem to enjoy coupling with me.” He lay back on the bedroll and drank deep from the wine cup. “Whether you wanted to or not.”

  She thought of lying, thought better of it. He twirled her hair in his fingers, tugged it lightly to make her speak.

  “That is true,” she confessed.

  “Am I simply too handsome for you to resist?”

  “I pretended you were Patroclus.”

  A jest to mock Achilles for his arrogance. He laughed like a man so certain of his prowess there was nothing to do but laugh at such a statement. Laugh and call for Patroclus.

  “Patroclus!”

  No. Surely, he wouldn’t...

  Lia looked around in terror, saw the scarlet cloak of Achilles and hastily wrapped it around her naked body.

  Patroclus entered the tent and did his noble best to not look at her, though she did see his eyes dart her way once before looking away again. Achilles made no move to cover himself nor did Patroclus seem shocked by his friend’s nakedness.

  “You have need of me?”

  “I need your good company,” Achilles said.

  “You have company already.”

  “Which I have enjoyed to the hilt.”

  “I know,” Patroclus said. “Half the camp knows.”

  Achilles looked at her. “You were too loud, my lady,” he said.

  “I meant you, young fool,” Patroclus said to Achilles.

  He raised his wine cup in salute. “You know this man is the other half of me when I let him speak to me that way,” he said to her as he pointed at Patroclus.

  “The better half.” Patroclus’s eyes glinted with amusement.

  “No greater truth has ever been uttered,” Achilles said. “Not by the prophets or the priests. And Briseis agrees. Don’t you?”

  Lia said nothing. He rolled to his feet and poured new wine for Patroclus.

  “Don’t play shy, little queen,” Achilles urged. “Tell Patroclus what you told me.”

  “What did she tell you?” Patroclus asked.

  “This one,” Achilles said, pointing at her, wine cup still in hand, “said she pretended I was you while I took her.”

  Patroclus roared with laughter. “She only said that to take you down a peg, you arrogant child.”

  “It didn’t work,” Achilles said. Lia blushed to have her words repeated to Patroclus. “But even I am able to yield when bested. She thinks you’re the better-looking man, apparently. It must be the beard.” Achilles yanked on Patroclus’s chin hair.

  “I told you to grow one,” he said, slapping Achilles’s hand away.

  “I tried,” Achilles replied.

  “Try harder,” Patroclus said. “I’m tired of old men thinking you’re my son.”

  “Brother.” Both men looked at Lia. “You look like his older brother. His wiser, kinder, older brother.”

  “See?” Achilles said. “I told you she likes you better. But no matter. We share a heart and a soul between us. Might as well share a prize.”

  “She is your prize,” Patroclus said. “Not mine. She was given to you.”

  “And as she is mine, she is mine to share. So now I—” Achilles pointed at his chest “—share her with you. Come, little queen. There is war enough for all by day. Let us make peace by night.”

  Achilles waved at her, beckoning her to rise. She stood slowly, and as she did Achilles pulled his cloak off her body, revealing her to Patroclus.

  How is this happening? she thought as Patroclus raised his hand to her face and stroked it.

  “You’ve scared her now, boy,” he said.

  “It’ll pass,” Achilles assured. “Help him with his armor, little queen. Earn your keep.”

  Achilles had propped himself up on his elbows, crossed his long and muscled legs at the ankle. He seemed quite happy to be watching the entertainment unfold before him. She knew little of men’s armor, so Patroclus had to whisper instructions to her.

  “There’s a tie behind the shoulders,” he said very softly as she stepped in front of him. He looked past her as she raised her hands to unknot the leather straps of his breastplate. She heard him breathe in sharply as she lifted her arms to the shoulder strap.

  When her head was next to his, he lowered his mouth to her ear and whispered, “Forgive me.” He raised his hands to her back and stroked her there. “I should not take you, but he wants this... I spoil him like a firstborn son.”

  “Do you want this?” she whispered back.

  “Can you doubt it?” he asked.

  She didn’t doubt it. Patroclus desired her. She’d known that from the moment he’d touched her foot when he’d removed the rope that bound her.

  But how had August known?

  Lia hadn’t told him this was part of her fantasy about Achilles. She’d told him about her desire to be a concubine to Achilles, but not the other half of the fantasy—where Achilles shared her with Patroclus, his soul mate and shield-bearer. And if she hadn’t told August that...how did he know to make it happen?

  “Go on, my lady,” Achilles said. “You wanted him. Now you have him.”

  Lia ignored the taunting and concentrated on her task. At last she succeeded in unknotting the straps of the breastplate. She removed it and set it next to Achilles’s armor, propped against the hut wall.

  Patroclus pulled off his tunic and stood bare chested before her. Broad, dark patch of hair in the center—some brown, some gray—and muscle to spare. Hard flat broad stomach.

  “Touch him, little queen,” Achilles ordered.

  She raised her hands and pressed her palms lightly to the hard flat plane of his stomach. Patroclus looked down at her small hands on his body and took a labored breath. She wondered how long it had been since he’d felt a woman’s hand. A pity as he was a pleasure to touch. She stroked his sides, feeling the hard rib cage underneath his skin. She touched his chest, the bones of his throat and collar...and then the shoulders that had carried her weight so easily through the camp.

  Patroclus lowered his head and kissed her mouth. He ran his hands down her back to grip her by the hips and pull her to him. She sensed he was on the verge of losing control of his desire. It seemed Achilles sensed it, too.

  “Briseis.” Achilles gestured to his hip, wagging his finger there as if trying to tell her something. She narrowed her eyes at him.

  “What, sir?” she asked.

  Achilles sighed dramatically.

  “He’s trying to tell you to do this.” Patroclus stepped back to untie the leather thongs on the pteruges. She moved to obey, but Patroclus finished before she could help. His clothes landed on the floor and he kicked them away.

  She gazed at his entire body. Achilles was the greater warrior, it was said. He was lithe and quick as a striking cobra, but Patroclus was the larger of the two men, the heavier. He had massive thighs, a huge chest, broad back and powerful hips. But it was his arousal she could not look away from, the red, thick, straining organ.

  “To serve him is to serve me,” Achilles said.

  “How would you have me serve?” Lia asked, though she already knew the answer. She knew because she’d been here before, in her mind. She knew what Achilles would say...

  “As a slave
should serve. On your knees, of course.”

  And she knew what Patroclus would say...

  “Achilles.” Patroclus’s tone was chiding. “She’s a queen, not one of your whores.”

  And she knew what she would say...

  “I’m not a queen anymore.”

  And with that, Lia went down onto her knees as Achilles laughed in his delight. She looked up once at Patroclus before she took his cock in hand and brought it to her mouth. As she surrounded it, drawing it in, Patroclus shuddered. He gently cupped the back of her head. Lia felt his hands stroke her hair, and she turned her gaze upward to see his head fall back in pleasure as she sucked him. As if he sensed her gaze, he looked down at her and lightly lifted her hair, held it fisted in his hand as she took him deeper into her mouth.

  Lia wrapped her arms around his waist and sucked him hard, hungrily, moving her mouth on him in rhythm with his quick rasping breaths. She dug her fingers into the flesh of his lower back and sucked until the swollen tip of his cock pressed against the very back of her throat.

  She turned her head just slightly and saw Achilles—August—stretched out on his side, stroking himself as he watched them, his body bathed in the flicking light of the fire. He was hard again already.

  “Lovely,” Patroclus said with a low groan. He lowered his hands to her hair and cupped the back of her head. On his wrists he still wore his leather vambraces, and she wrapped her small hands around them.

  Lia had imagined them in her fantasies about him, but this was the first time she ever truly felt the stiff leather under her fingers and the zigzag pattern of the thongs that tied them and held them in place. Suddenly she became aware of Achilles standing next to her. She’d been so lost in the pleasure of touching and sucking Patroclus that she hadn’t known he was there until she felt a third hand on her head.

  “Lovely queen...” Achilles softly whispered. Patroclus gently withdrew his cock and Achilles took his place in her mouth.

  She sucked him deep, still clinging to Patroclus’s wrist to steady herself as Achilles fucked her mouth. Lia knew she should feel ashamed of herself—and she did—and she knew she should be terrified to be used by these two lethal men—and she was. But the shame and the fear were two little drops of rain falling onto the ocean of her desire.