The Rose

by Tiffany Reisz

  She took her mouth from him, though she still held him in her hand.

  “Do you like it?” she asked.

  “Is it...are we allowed to do that?”

  “We’re married. We’re allowed to do anything we want together.”

  “It feels like it shouldn’t be allowed.”

  “So you don’t like it?”

  “No, I like it too much. My father, the king, says the pursuit of pleasure leads men astray down evil paths.”

  “Your royal father is mostly right,” Lia said. “But he was speaking of idleness and drunkenness, gambling and chasing serving girls. It’s a man’s duty to please his wife. You know that.”

  “Does this please you?” he asked. “Putting my...me in your mouth?”

  “I wouldn’t do it if it didn’t please me,” she said. “You’d be the best of husbands if you let me continue.”

  “And the worst, I presume, if I made you stop?”

  “You’re a very wise prince,” she said, and was glad he was blindfolded and couldn’t see her laughing at him. Since she didn’t want him to hear her laughing, either...she put him in her mouth again.

  She drew him deeper, past the tip and down to the shaft, and once she had him where she wanted him, she lightly sucked on him as she stroked underneath his cock, the testicles and the sensitive patch of flesh behind them. If there were a painter in residence, this would make quite the mural. A winged goddess on her knees in front of a mortal prince wearing the night tied around his eyes. And his lovely thick organ in her mouth and his fingers twisting in the bedsheets and the muscles of his flat stomach twitching and his head falling back as he moaned...

  No matter. She didn’t need a mural to commemorate her wedding night. She was a goddess. People would be telling the tale of her marriage to Prince Psyche until the world ended.

  As well they should...

  “You have to stop,” her shy prince said. His voice sounded pained, pained from the pleasure. “Or I’ll spill.”

  She raised her head and smiled, though he could not see it.

  “I want you to. You must.”

  “I must?”

  “You absolutely must.”

  “Oh, well...if I must.”

  He collapsed flat on his back, in utter surrender to his bride’s erotic ministrations. Soon he was lost in the ecstasy of her mouth on him. She rose up higher on her knees to take him deeper in her mouth. His back arched on the bed once and then again as she pulled harder on the shaft until it nudged the very back of her throat. Her shy prince wasn’t so shy anymore as he neared climax. He breathed heavy and hard, and groaned with every breath. His cries filled the room to the rafters and she imagined that the whole world could hear the sounds of their lovemaking in the far distance. What would it sound like to them? The cry of a hawk swooping down on a dove? A coming rainstorm? An army marching to war?

  Or would they hear and know the truth—that Eros had at last been felled by her own arrow and this was the sound of Love Itself falling in love?

  With a final cry, almost loud enough to be a shout, the young prince grasped the sheets and came in her throat. His head lifted off the bed as every muscle in his body contracted in his coming.

  She swallowed every last drop of him and would have taken more if he’d had it to give. When it was done, she remained on her knees between his thighs as he lay panting on the bed. She gently kissed his fluttering flat stomach and the butterfly birthmark received a thousand tender kisses all its own.

  “How is my prince?” she asked, resting her cheek on his hip.

  “Happily married,” he said, chuckling.

  She laughed with delight and she delighted in his laugh. She rose from the floor, still delighted, still laughing.

  “You should lie on the pillows,” she said to her smiling Psyche. “And rest a moment.”

  “Will you lie with me?” he asked as he moved carefully to the head of the bed, finding his way by touch until he lay back on the pillows and stretched, happy as a black cat caught by a sunbeam.

  “My lady?” he whispered.

  “Oh,” she said. “Sorry. I was staring at you and forgot I should be speaking.”

  “It’s hardly fair you’ve enjoyed me so much and I’ve barely gotten to touch you.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “I’m a selfish monster. I’ll simply have to join you in bed and let you touch me. Would that help?”

  “It wouldn’t hurt.”

  Ah, clever boy. Lovely boy.

  She straddled him. This seemed to please him. He inhaled deeply when she rested her bottom on his lower stomach. She unbound the bodice of her gown and lowered it—well, tried to. It got caught on her bloody wings. Lia wrestled with the fabric and finally managed to get her bodice down to her waist.

  “Give me your hands,” she said to Psyche, taking them and putting them on her throat.

  He smiled when his skin touched hers again. Smiled and stroked her neck and shoulders. Had anything, she thought, ever felt so good in all the world as this prince’s gentle hands on her body? His fingertips tickled her skin and she shivered and quivered and sighed.

  “My dear modest prince.” She grasped his wrists and lowered his hands to her breasts. He inhaled sharply again—oh, he was a sensitive boy—and she held her hands over his so that he would know she wanted his touch, demanded it even.

  “Beautiful,” he said.

  “You can’t see my breasts. How do you know?”

  “They feel beautiful.”

  “Do they?”

  He nodded. “They’re so soft,” he said, lightly squeezing them. “And hard, too.” He then traced her nipples with his thumbs.

  “Would you like to kiss them?”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  She lowered herself over him and let her nipple dangle at his mouth. He caught it between his lips and sucked it gently, oh...too gently. She would never stop shivering. He slid his hands to her shoulders and that was dangerous. He was far too close to her wings.

  The clever goddess knew what to do. She pulled a ribbon from her hair and ordered her prince to place his hands over his head. He obeyed—she’d given him no reason not to trust her, after all—and she tied his wrists to the bar of the headboard.

  “You don’t want my hands on your body?” he asked.

  “I do,” she said. “Always. But we have all our lives to play all our games together. And it pleases me to see you there, like a gift tied up with ribbons and bows.”

  “A gift for you alone.”

  “Yes. And no better gift have I ever been given...”

  Lia raised her skirts and straddled him once more. Young and virile, he’d grown hard again already. He inhaled sharply as her wet flesh came to rest on his stiff organ. She moved on it and her folds parted. Her prince was as eager for her as she was for him. He raised his hips off the bed, lifting her with him in his need to bury himself inside her. She shifted and spread her thighs wider until the tip found the entrance of her body.

  “Uh...” he breathed. Beautiful sound. Heavenly sound. She wanted to hear it again and forever. She pushed down onto him and he slid into her slick passage. In his male instinct, he lifted his hips again to push all of himself into her and then cried out in pleasure as he fully penetrated her.

  Her shy prince lost his shyness then. He took her hard from beneath her, entering her with long slow strokes as he pumped his hips. He shivered against her, and his breathing was ragged. She balanced herself on his chest, her fingers digging so hard into his skin she knew she would bruise him. She gasped, suddenly—shockingly—so aroused she could have come simply by willing it. She pushed her hips into his and he said, “More,” and she did it again. She lay on his chest, pressing her breasts against his warm skin as they consummated their marriage, silent after his “more,” though she could hear h
is cock moving in her wetness. She meant to kiss him once and quickly, but as soon as their lips met, the kiss turned wild, hungry. He bit her lips, sucked on her tongue.

  She rose up again, and rocked on his cock, riding him, riding him hard, and as she did her wings began to spread on their own. They spanned the room and cast a shadow over the bed. She couldn’t help it. She kept her heart in her wings and they spread as her heart filled with unbearable, impossible love for the prince inside her.

  Her head fell back. She called his name. With a soft sob she came and came and came.

  Beneath her, her new husband shuddered with his own coming, and when he came into her, he gasped her name.

  Ophelia...

  She collapsed onto him. Her heart kicked against her chest like the hoof of a wild horse. He must have felt it.

  “Gods,” he breathed. “I love being married.”

  “So do I,” she said. “I married very well.”

  “I wish I knew who you were.”

  “I can’t tell you. It’s against the rules.”

  “Tell me something, then,” he begged. “Tell me something that tells me who you are.”

  “I am she who loves you,” she said, touching his face. “My prince.”

  “Ah,” her shy prince said with a brazen smile. “That tells me all I need to know.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Lia opened her eyes. She lay on her back and August was at her side, looking down at her face.

  She started to say hello, but he stopped her words with a kiss. If she’d been expecting a quick kiss, she was wrong. The kiss was rough and passionate and dirty, and she couldn’t get enough of it. Suddenly she needed to have sex. Not wanted...needed. August must have felt exactly the same because he paused in the kissing only long enough to roll on a condom. With his knees, he pushed her thighs wide and with one thrust he was inside her.

  But it wasn’t enough for him to simply be in her. He slid his arm under her right thigh and yanked it up and over his shoulder. She lay there under him, completely open, spread out and impaled. His cock rubbed every tender spot within her. Pinned down as she was, she couldn’t even move. All she could do was lie there and take it and take it and take it. August loomed over her. His shoulders were like iron, his arms like steel and his cock rock hard and splitting her in two.

  Lia groaned and panted. She hadn’t known it could be like this outside of her fantasies. She’d known passion existed, and pleasure and desire and orgasms, but she didn’t know they existed for her.

  “You like it?” August demanded. “Don’t lie to me.”

  “Yes,” she said, breathing hard. Her nipples were so tender as they brushed against his chest. The harder he pounded her, the harder she wanted him to. Just as in the fantasy they’d shared, she whispered, “More.” And he gave her more. He braced himself over her on his elbows and knees and rammed his cock into her in a frenzy of rough rutting thrusts. Lia had to grab the bar of the headboard with both hands to brace herself so she could take what he gave her. She was so close...her stomach was in a knot, her vagina dripping wet and her heart galloping like it would run away with her.

  “Come for me,” he ordered as he pounded away at her.

  “I don’t know if I...”

  “You can. You have. You will.” He dug his hands into her hair and tilted her head back. He met her eyes and held her gaze as he slammed into her.

  “You will,” he said again. “For me.”

  A part of her wanted to close her eyes to hide from him. But another part of her couldn’t bear to look away from his storm-wild eyes. She pumped her hips into his, hard as she could, meeting his every thrust. Her clitoris was swollen and throbbed as the shaft of his cock rubbed against it.

  “Hold my neck,” August said. “Don’t hold the bed. Hold me.”

  She released the bar and clung to him, one hand on the back of his neck, the other on his shoulder. His knees were under her now as he pulled her into him.

  “I can go as long as it takes,” he said into her ear. Then he kissed that ear, her neck, her throat, all the while fucking her as hard and deep and dirty as any man had ever fucked any woman since the beginning of time. Everything disappeared in that moment, with August on top of her, driving into her without mercy. She lost her mind and her shame, her past and her future. Nothing mattered except the cock inside her and the climax building there, brewing like a storm, ready to burst. The bed rocked under them. August groaned as he rammed her endlessly. Lia lifted her head and buried it against his chest.

  She came. She came like a tornado, like an earthquake, like the end of the world. Her entire body shuddered as her inner muscles contracted so sharply it hurt, so sharply August cried out. He slammed his own climax into hers and it seemed the ecstasy would never end, that she’d be lost in it forever. She wasn’t afraid. As long as she was lost with August, she didn’t care if she ever found her way back again.

  When it all finally ended, August rested his full weight on top of her, trapping her under him. In a daze of orgasm and afterglow, Lia laughed drunkenly.

  “What was that about?” she asked in a small sleepy voice. “You had fun playing virgin groom or something?”

  “You told me you love me,” he said.

  Lia stiffened in shock. He couldn’t believe that, could he?

  “That was a fantasy.”

  He raised his head and then stroked her cheek with the back of his hand.

  “We are most ourselves in our fantasies,” he said.

  “Or least ourselves,” she said. “That’s why they’re called fantasies, not memories.”

  He met her eyes. “I’m going to make you fall in love with me. I don’t know how, but I am. Before this week is over, you’ll tell me you love me in this world.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you will believe in Eros.”

  She touched his face, his lips, his sweat-damp hair.

  “I believe in you,” she said. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “It’s a good start.”

  PART FIVE

  Ariadne & Dionysus

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  When Lia got home that morning, she attempted to sneak to her room and avoid her parents. Her father would be cross the rest of the day if he knew she’d spent the night with August, and her mother would ask wildly inappropriate questions that Lia had no intention of answering.

  She slipped in the back door, the old servants’ entrance, and crept past the kitchen. She’d made it halfway up the stairs to her suite when she heard her mother’s voice.

  “It’s 6:00 a.m.,” her mother said. “You’re up early.”

  Lia turned around slowly on the steps.

  “I have got to get my own flat.”

  “Shall we go for a run? That’s why you’re up so early, isn’t it?”

  “You think you’re one of those funny mothers on telly,” Lia said. “You are not.”

  Her mother laughed a mocking laugh. A good old-fashioned ha-ha-ha-ha-haaaa.

  “Stop being smug about it.”

  “You look exhausted, dear,” her smug mother said smugly.

  “I had a long night.”

  “I bet you did.” More smugness. “How’s Mr. Augustine Bowman?”

  “Fine. Dandy. I’m going to bed now.”

  “Not a bad idea,” her mother said. “I may go back to bed myself.”

  “Do that,” Lia said. “We’ll all just have a lie-in. And none of us will tell Daddy where we were last night.”

  “Oh, Daddy knows where I was last night.”

  “Ugh, don’t call him Daddy,” Lia said, wincing. “Why do you do this to me?”

  “Because it’s so fun to watch you squirm,” her mother said. “My own mother used to torture me, too. This is cosmic payback.”

  “Can’t you pleas
e let me complete my walk of shame in peace, Mother?”

  “Walk of fame, darling. Walk of fame. We do not buy into those sexist and outdated notions that girls aren’t allowed to have as much fun as boys are.”

  “Thank you, Gloria Steinem. I’m going to walk my famous way to bed.”

  “Aren’t you even going to ask why I’m awake so early and loitering by your staircase?”

  Lia sighed heavily. “Why are you awake so early, Mum?”

  “Because August called.”

  “What?” Lia was suddenly wide-awake.

  “He called your father’s mobile. Said you weren’t answering yours and it had rained a little and he wanted to make sure you got home safely.”

  “Out of juice,” Lia said. “I’ll charge up and text him. Now can I go to bed?”

  “You can.”

  Lia turned and started—gingerly—up the stairs. She’d need to put an ice pack on her twat after the things August had done to her last night.

  “He’s in love with you, you know,” her mother called up to her. No more smugness. Now her mother was absolutely crowing.

  “He is not,” Lia called back.

  “He called your father’s phone to make sure you got home safe. Either he’s in love with you or he has a death wish.”

  Lia went to the top of the stairs and glared down at her mother.

  “Today is Wednesday,” she said. “I met him on Saturday. That is five days.”

  “Five? That’s a lifetime. I was already married to your father and pregnant with you two days after meeting him.”

  Her mother had a point. Why were people always making good points when she didn’t want them to?

  “Going to bed, Mum. Alone and not pregnant. Please stop talking.”

  “Fine, fine. But you should know, even if your father disapproves, I like your boyfriend.”

  Lia walked back down the stairs, put her hands on her mother’s shoulders and smiled.

  “Mother, he is not my boyfriend. I am using him for sex. Gobs of very weird sex.”