The Rose

by Tiffany Reisz

  Lia luxuriated in the touch of the hands on her body. She yielded completely to their explorations. The gilded hands pushed her onto her back again and she let them cover her from knee to throat. Every nerve in her body tingled and every muscle in her body sang as the hands stroked and caressed her. When the hands crept up her inner thighs, Lia lay there, legs spread wide, in a stupor of purest sensual pleasure.

  One golden hand cupped her between her thighs. She inhaled hard as a tendril of gold found her clitoris and encircled it. Pressure, gentle pressure. Kneading. Her clitoris throbbed as fingers of gold pushed under the hood of flesh that covered it and pushed back. A tongue of gold, a thousand times more precise and careful than any human tongue could be, ran over the exposed organ, teasing it until Lia’s lower back came off the bed in her ecstasy.

  Another one of the gold slicks pushed through her swollen labia and poured into her vagina. Lia flinched as she was slowly but incessantly filled and filled. The liquid gold inside her grew in volume as more of it entered her. It kneaded at the inner folds, pushing through them, pushing them apart, until it felt to Lia like she had the largest supplest dildo in the world inside her.

  But that wasn’t enough for August.

  Lia gasped, stopped breathing, when she felt the thinnest slightest tendril of liquid gold pass through her cervix, going deeper inside her than any man ever could. It should have hurt, but didn’t, feeling instead like the most tender intimate penetration...

  But that wasn’t enough, either. Another hand of gold slid over her hips and over her vulva and down to the other, tighter, entrance of her body and began to work its inexorable way inside her. And yet another hand of gold danced up her chest and to her mouth where it entered her even there, like a blunt thick finger on her tongue, and Lia couldn’t help but suck on it like a cock in her mouth.

  Two hands of gold covered her breasts and squeezed them, tugging and twisting her nipples until they were hard as diamonds, diamonds and gold. Her vagina was filled to bursting, her womb infiltrated, her arse, her mouth. No woman in history—except for perhaps Danaë herself—had ever been so penetrated. Every part of her was conquered, every hole filled. She could take no more. The golden finger on her clitoris never ceased to knead and mold that swollen knot of tissue while the golden organ inside her vagina pulsed and throbbed. Immobilized by the impossible weight upon her, Lia could do nothing but lie there and let the golden hands work her entire body, inside and out, into a frenzy. She was squeezed and rubbed, pressed and pleasured, invaded and lifted, and filled and filled and filled.

  When she came, it seemed her entire body rose off the bed, and perhaps it did, with hands of gold under her. Her hips pumped, and sensation burst from her clitoris and along every nerve, up her spine and into her back and thighs and womb. And when the obliterating orgasm struck her, all she could do was gasp August’s name once.

  She might have passed out. She thought she had. When she came to again, she lay naked on the bed. The golden droplets were all gone. Instead August lay on his side next to her, head propped on his hand.

  He smiled wantonly at her.

  “Now do you believe me?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  “That was the dirtiest sex in history,” Lia said, lying across August’s seemingly human chest.

  “Top ten at least.”

  “You went in places you’re not supposed to go,” she said. “Will I need to see a gynecologist? Or a metallurgist?”

  “Want to do it again?”

  “Yes, please,” she said.

  August wrapped them in his wings, and she held out a hand to stroke the walls of the feathery cocoon.

  “I’m so afraid I’ll wake up tomorrow and this will all have been a dream,” she said.

  “I just made insane love to you in the form of liquid gold. And you still doubt?”

  “It’s not doubt,” she said, rising up to look down at him. “Only fear.”

  He stroked her cheek and grinned.

  “Nothing to be afraid of. I’m here now,” he said softly. “I’m not going away. And if I do, I will take you with me.”

  “Yes, very sweet. But how did you talk your family into letting you back in?” she asked.

  “Mother’s behind all of this,” he said. “I had a feeling she was when I saw the statue of her on your mantel. She arranged for the Rose Kylix to come into your possession. She knew it would get my attention.”

  “She was playing matchmaker.”

  “Of course she’d pair me up with one of her acolytes.”

  “I didn’t even realize I was,” Lia said.

  “Mother said all she ever wanted was for me to learn how to really love so I’d know how wrong it was to play with hearts. When I gave up my freedom to help you and you chose my happiness over getting yourself out of trouble... Well, Mother thinks I’ve finally learned my lesson. She’s very happy I found a girl who loves me.”

  “I do love you,” she said, gazing down at him in adoration. “Although I am so furious at you for not telling me you’re bloody Eros.”

  “I tried telling you a, oh, million ways,” he said. “I mean, come on now, Lia, I named myself August Bowman.”

  “I was told August was short for Augustine, not a synonym for ‘exalted.’”

  “You didn’t want to believe,” he said. “That was the problem.”

  “I do believe now, though. I think.” She scratched her temple.

  “I’ll make you believe,” he said, and dragged her down to his chest again and held her tight to his body.

  “What happens now? Never been in love with a Greek god before,” she said, smiling. She really had gone mad. It was fine. August was here, being completely mad with her.

  “I’m supposed to keep a low profile, but as long as I do we can come and go as we please,” he said. “And you’ll be treated like Ganymede, the beautiful youth the gods found so lovely that Zeus took him up to live in Olympus.”

  “As long as I’m with you,” she said. She thought of something and hated to bring it up but...she had to know.

  “What about David?” she asked.

  “Oh, he’ll be a free man in time for his art show,” August said. “But Mother had a word with him while he was in the clink. She put the fear of goddess in him. She said you were her son’s lover, and if he tried to hurt you, she would have him chained to a rock and she’d instruct an eagle to peck out his liver for all eternity.”

  “Harsh,” Lia said.

  “She told him we’re a Greek mafia family, not entirely inaccurate. After the death threat, he went very quiet. But we let him go,” he said. “He won’t be bothering you anymore.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered, then kissed the center of his chest.

  August put a finger under her chin, raised her head to look at him.

  “If you want me to,” he said, “I can make you forget what happened with him. And I can make your mother forget. I can make it all go away. I know how.”

  Lia considered it. Then she discarded the idea. Tempting as it was to make the painful memories disappear, getting rid of them would mean discarding the good memories that came after. Yes, David hurt her and her mother, but now she and her mother loved each other even more. And she cherished the memory of her father leaping to her defense without hesitation and her mother slapping David across his smug face.

  “No,” Lia said. “I’m fine. I’ll keep my memories as they are. If I forgot the hurt, I’d forget the healing.”

  “Good choice,” he said, stroking her back.

  “Will you miss being a prostitute in your own cult?” she asked.

  “Fun while it lasted,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t stop you if you wanted to keep doing it,” she said. “As long as you love me the most.”

  “I think I’ve played enough for a few centuries at least.�
�

  “I haven’t,” Lia said. “But I’m forbidden from being a madam anymore. Mum and Daddy are opposed to the idea for some reason.”

  “They’re very conservative for a couple of married perverts,” he said, then snapped his fingers. “Oh, speaking of married perverts...we have to get married.”

  Lia sat up, shoving his wings aside.

  “We have to do what?”

  “Don’t worry. Not right this minute. One of Mother’s conditions. She was very serious about me getting married and settling down. If I was going to get my crown and wings back, I had to agree to get married. But I got to pick the lady—or fawn or cloud. And the lady I picked was you. Do you mind?”

  “When exactly?”

  “Not today. But a short engagement would be preferred. Say...five years?”

  Lia’s shoulders slumped in relief. “Five years isn’t considered a short engagement.”

  “When you’re several thousand years old, five years is nothing.”

  “But what happens when I get old and you’re still this?” She pinched his too-handsome cheeks.

  “Mother would make you immortal, if you want. Or I’ll quit being a god again, and we’ll grow old together.”

  “You’d do that for me?” she asked.

  “I would,” he said. “Mother wants a grandchild, but we have plenty of time to figure all that out. Eons...”

  Lia straddled his stomach and sat on his hips.

  “I love you, August Bowman.”

  He wrinkled his nose at her. “Do you?” he asked. “Tell me how.”

  “With all my heart,” Lia said.

  “And?” He batted his eyelashes.

  “All my...soul?”

  “And?” He batted his eyelashes harder.

  “And all my...”

  “Starts with a C,” he said.

  “All my concupiscence?”

  August threw her on her back and entered her with a stroke.

  “I’m going to pound that prissiness out of you if it takes eternity,” he said.

  “Good,” she said. “My cunt can’t wait.”

  When August stopped laughing he made passionate love to her.

  Though if anyone was standing outside the door listening, all they would have heard was bird noises.

  * * *

  Aphrodite, goddess of love, the universal mother and evening star, was too busy crowing to eavesdrop on Eros and Lia. The Godwicks had long been worshippers of hers, and she’d planned for decades to marry her son to one of them if they’d ever hurry up and have a bloody girl child. But of course her son wouldn’t marry anyone she told him to marry. Oh no, gods forbid! Yet, it was all too easy to trick him into thinking he’d picked out his own bride. And she supposed he had, but she put them together. Full marks for Aphrodite. She patted herself on the back. The old girl still had it.

  Still...she did regret hurting her sweet, wicked son. In a show of affection for the young lovers, Aphrodite took a page from her sister Athena’s playbook. She pinned the night into place to give her son and his fiancée more time together in the intimate dark...a romantic gesture that went entirely unremarked by the lovers who were too busy making love to even notice what Aphrodite had done for them.

  Ungrateful children.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Lia called the final meeting of the Young Ladies’ Gardening & Tennis Club of Wingthorn Hall to order. She looked at her friends, her “ladies,” and smiled with genuine affection.

  “Well, boss?” Rani said. “What’s the news?”

  “We have a problem,” Lia said.

  “I’m really starting to hate these meetings.” Georgy slouched deep into Lia’s armchair.

  “Is it that bloke?” Jane asked. “The ex of yours Rani wanted to gut?”

  “No,” Lia said. “He’s all taken care of.”

  Rani’s eyes widened.

  “Oh, I didn’t have him killed,” Lia said. “He’s just out of the picture. God, it does sound like I killed him. The point is, it’s over and done with without a drop of blood shed.”

  “Then what’s the bad news, boss?” Georgy asked.

  This was the hard part, the part she’d been dreading.

  “Ladies...the time has come for me to retire my nonexistent garden shears and my invisible tennis racquet,” Lia said. “I’m quitting the biz.”

  The three ladies stared at her with heartbreak in their eyes.

  “Lia,” Rani said. “Why?”

  “Um...because my parents told me I had to.”

  “You really have got to get your own place, boss,” Jane said.

  “Working on that,” Lia said. “But there is good news. You won’t be left alone and without protection. I found you a new boss.”

  “A new boss?” Jane sounded very skeptical. Lia didn’t blame her. “Who?”

  “She’s a bit older and she’s had loads of experience at this. She’s got more connections than I do, more money. Also—”

  Lia heard a tap on her bedroom door.

  Before she could answer it, the goddess Aphrodite threw open the door and sashayed inside, wearing pink faux furs in June and towering over them all on her hot-pink high heels with diamond-encrusted roses on the toes.

  “Hello, ladies,” Aphrodite said, a wide smile on her cotton candy lips. Jane, Rani and Georgy stared slack-jawed and wide-eyed at the goddess of love herself. “Call me Mrs. V. We’re going to fuck beautiful men, make enormous amounts of money, and be worshipped night and day like the goddesses we are. Shall we get started?”

  Georgy looked at Lia and nodded her approval.

  “Well done, Lia,” Georgy said. “She’ll do nicely.”

  PART EIGHT

  Daphne & Apollo

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  “What are we doing?” Lia asked August—she would never get used to calling him Eros—as he put her in his Tesla.

  “Indulge me,” he said, then kissed her. “Just one more bit of unfinished business.”

  August had made love to her all last night and all morning and even that afternoon. But, by evening, he’d nudged her awake and told her to get dressed in her very best. She reminded him she was under her father’s house arrest.

  He reminded her that he was a Greek god.

  Lia wore a vintage burgundy gown that had belonged to her grandmother. She pinned her hair in a loose knot with tendrils flowing, and August put a pink rose behind her ear. He’d slipped into a trim black suit, and she was amazed how neatly his wings disappeared when he folded them into place.

  “After a couple thousand years, you learn a trick or two,” he’d said.

  On the way to wherever he was taking her, they stopped by his house.

  “I have to pick up one thing,” he said.

  “The Rose Kylix?” she asked.

  “Mother’s confiscated that—again. This is something else.”

  He ran into the house and emerged minutes later carrying a longbow as tall as he and a quiver of arrows.

  Back in the car, Lia looked at him.

  “I don’t want to know, do I?” she asked.

  “You’re going to like this,” he said.

  The next stop was the Attic Gallery.

  “It’s a good thing I love you,” she said as he helped her out of the car. “I really do not want to see David again. Trust me, I don’t need closure.”

  “This isn’t for you,” he said. “This is for me. And don’t worry. You won’t have to talk to him.”

  Funny that no one tried to stop August from entering the gallery with a bow and quiver slung over his back. Either no one could see it, or they simply assumed it was all part of David’s surrealistic art show.

  Once inside, Lia paused by a massive canvas. The plaque said the title of the piece was The Forest of Apol
lo. The painting was nothing but women who were human from the waist up and trees from the waist down. Ah, the story of Daphne and Apollo. Eros had struck Apollo with a golden arrow of love and he’d struck Daphne with an iron arrow of hate... Daphne ran from Apollo as he pursued her, prayed to the gods to save her from the obsessed deity and she was turned into a laurel tree.

  “Mum was right,” Lia said, staring at the painting. “Male artists really do love painting horrible things happening to women. And you should be ashamed of yourself.”

  “That,” August said, pointing at the canvas, “was not my work. Apollo was royally miffed when Daphne wouldn’t go out with him, and he turned her into a tree to punish her. Then he had the balls to blame the whole thing on me.”

  “Really?” Lia asked. She wondered what other myths about him were and weren’t true. “What happened to Daphne?”

  “I turned her back into a nymph,” August said.

  “And then you made love to her. Right?”

  “No,” he said, sounding insulted she’d even suggest it. She raised her eyebrow at him. “I didn’t want to get splinters.”

  Lia looked at the painting again, all those poor tortured Daphnes...

  “If you were going to paint one scene from any Greek myth,” Lia asked August, “what scene you would paint?”

  “You,” he said. “You at the feet of Pan, holding a baby otter in your arms.”

  Lia’s heart rose half an inch in her chest.

  “I’m not in a Greek myth,” she said.

  He kissed her on the mouth. “You are now, my love.”

  That’s when Lia knew she and August would be happy together forever.

  “Come on,” August said. “Let’s get this over with so we can make love again.”

  The Attic Gallery had a mezzanine level that was home to the artworks that were always on display. Most of the guests at David’s show were on the main floor. She and August walked around and around the mezzanine.