Lia ran.
She didn’t need a torch to light her path. She knew the fastest way from the palace to the temple. Those had been her servant’s last words to her as the old woman lay dying on the floor by the great stone hearth.
“Hide in the temple. They may fear the gods. They fear nothing else, it seems,” Hagnes had said, coughing on the last word, blood on her lips. She died before she could take her next breath.
The temple, just ahead, gleamed like polished silver in the moonlight. Behind her, the battle sounds raged on. She heard the screams of men and wondered if any of the sounds belonged to her brothers. She did not wonder about her father or her husband. They had been among the first to fall under the sword of Achilles.
She reached the temple and found it eerily silent, eerily dark. No fires burned in the braziers. The priests were all hidden. Or dead, too.
Lia ran up the marble stairs and searched for shelter. Under the great altar, perhaps. There was a room that led deep into the bowels of the temple, where the sacrifices were offered. She saw the altar ahead. The eternal flame on the wide table still burned. But for how long?
She ran toward it, naked feet slapping the mosaic floor. As she neared, a shadow moved, coming out of the dark, and seized her by the arms.
A man. A soldier. An enemy, likely Athenian.
He asked her no questions. He simply looked at her face as she writhed in his iron grasp, trying to free herself. A beast of a man, grizzled doglike face, breath like rotten meat. Lia braced herself for death, expecting he would run her through with the short sword on his hip. Instead he threw her over his shoulder. As he started off with her, she reached for the handle of the iron brazier burning on the altar. She yanked it with all her strength and brought it down to the temple floor where the smoldering coals inside struck the soldier’s feet and legs. He screamed and dropped her. She hit the ground running. Hagnes had been wrong. There was no safety here. There was no sanctuary to be found anywhere but in death.
Lia raced through the temple, hoping to make her way to the mountains, the trees, somewhere she could hide until the army returned to their ships. Male voices shouting, barking orders, and still more screams followed her into the dark night.
Another man appeared, another soldier in armor with a sword. Lia threw herself behind the marble column next to her and clung to it for life. She crouched, column in front of her, trying to hide, to will herself invisible.
Wide-eyed, panting and panicking, she glanced around, searching her surroundings for a better hiding place.
She heard footsteps, the flat of sandals ringing against the marble steps. Men approached.
She counted five Greek hoplites, two carrying torches, the other three carrying their swords. They stood at the top of the steps, at the entrance to the temple, speaking in low tones. She tried to creep around the column but either her white gown was too bright in the moonlight or they heard her breathing...but one of the soldiers sprang forward and captured her, quick as a hare. She struggled in his grasp, but there was no use. She went limp to avoid getting run through with his blade.
“What’s that?” one of the other soldiers called to the one who held her.
“Pretty girl,” the soldier said, laughing.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” said a man with a booming voice.
She was dragged by the hoplite to the men holding the torches. Their faces were grotesque to her. Under other circumstances they might have been handsome, or at least not repellent. But even the oldest man, old enough to be her father, stared at her with a rapacious hateful gaze. She’d seen that same look in her husband’s eyes right before he put a spear through a stag’s heart or a crueler spear in whatever poor slave girl he ordered to his chambers every night.
“Who wants to be first?” asked the soldier who held her with arms pinned behind her back—so that if she were to try to run, he’d wrench her arms out of her shoulders. “I went first last time.”
The oldest soldier, who wore a gray beard and was heaviest around the chest, stared at her face in the torchlight.
“I know that face,” he said. “Gods...it’s the little queen. Aren’t you?”
The soldier who held her kneed her lightly in the back.
“The general asked you a question, wench. Answer him.”
Lia swallowed. “Briseis,” she whispered.
The old general boomed a laugh like thunder.
“Briseis...” he hissed like a snake. “Caught us a queen.”
“Can I keep her?” the soldier holding her asked.
“What would a shit like you do with a queen?” the general demanded. “Even a slave, she still outranks you.”
That got the other three soldiers to laughing.
“What we going to do with her, then?” another soldier asked.
The general seemed to puzzle that over, eyes narrowed, fingers stroking his ratty gray beard.
“I know,” he said at last. He turned and stood at the edge of the temple stairs. He put two fingers into his mouth and blew a piercing whistle, loud as the cry of a hunting horn.
Lia went still as a statue in the grip of her captor. But though her body was frozen with terror, her mind ran wild. She was no fool. She knew her fate had been decided. As queen, she could be valuable. If her soldiers had taken any high-ranking Athenian or Ithacan prisoners, she might be ransomed for them. She might be given to Agamemnon, their king. She might be executed, publicly, in front of the remaining citizens in order to quell any rebellion.
Hera, Lia prayed. I, too, am the wife of an unfaithful husband. Protect your child. Deliver me from harm. Whomever takes me into captivity, let him be better than this disgusting rabble. And let him be a better man than my dead husband. You know I am asking for little in that.
The general had called someone up to the temple, and he now approached. She sensed the change in the soldiers surrounding her. Their backs straightened. Their chins rose. Their faces hardened to stone. They weren’t standing at attention out of respect.
They were afraid.
A man stepped into the temple.
The general walked to his side. The man was tall, taller than any of the other soldiers, including the general. Broader in the chest, too, with powerful arms and a king’s bearing. He wore magnificent armor—a bronze breastplate with an owl engraved on the gleaming metal and a bronze helmet with violet plumes.
As they approached, Lia composed herself. She sensed that this man, far more than the general, held her fate in his hands.
“Here she is,” the general said as they came to her.
Lia raised her face to the new soldier. He took off his helmet and stepped forward.
She met August’s gray eyes. She searched his face and saw August’s strong jaw, his nose, his olive skin—but his hair was short, a soldier’s haircut. In this world he was Achilles, not August, and though she knew him, he did not seem to know her.
Lia felt true fear.
“Achilles,” the general said. “Thought you’d like to meet one of the widows you made today. Briseis, meet Achilles, the man who killed your lord and husband.”
The five soldiers laughed. Achilles did not laugh. And when they saw he did not laugh, they stopped laughing.
“Your husband died honorably,” Achilles said. It was August’s voice, though with a new roughness to it.
“Are you sure it was my husband, then?” Lia, who had become Briseis, asked.
The five soldiers stared stupidly at her, not understanding the meaning of her question. But Achilles understood and, this time, he laughed.
She knew well of Achilles. They said he was the greatest warrior who ever lived. They said he was a favorite of the gods. They said he was immortal. They said he was merciless. They said he was loyal to no one but his own honor and his shield-bearer, Patroclus.
They said many things about the great Achilles.
They’d never said he was handsome.
Achilles looked at the general.
“She’s mine,” he said. Then, without another word, he grabbed her around the thighs and hoisted her over his shoulder. Lia went limp against his back, too terrified to scream or speak or fight. His steps were light and easy on the marble stairs leading down. Her weight on his shoulder didn’t slow him down one bit.
Achilles carried her for what felt like a mile before he put her on her feet by a stone hut at the edge of the city. He barked an order and an old woman in the worn wool garb of a laundress was brought forward.
“Sir?” the old woman asked.
“I want her washed and brought to my tent,” Achilles said.
“Yes, sir.”
Achilles walked off, and Lia faced the laundress.
The woman, though aged and stooped, was no fool. She tied a cord around Lia’s wrists and wound it around her waist and then around her ankles. Lia had to take short hobbling steps or she’d trip. With this humiliating mincing gait, she was escorted to a square wooden hut.
The woman opened a door with an iron latch and pushed Lia gently inside. She saw three women in the room, all busy at work—tending the fire in a large stone hearth or folding and rolling freshly washed and dried fabric. Words were quietly exchanged, instructions given and received.
The oldest woman, with white hair under a gray veil, came to Lia and looked her up and down. She was left standing, stupidly staring, while the trio untied the rope. Things happened so quickly after that, Lia had no chance to fight or run. She was led from the hut to a courtyard around the back, surrounded by high walls. The gray-haired washerwoman pushed her to stand in a sort of large wooden bucket or tub. Another woman pulled her bloodstained gown off her. Lia started to scream but the third woman immediately doused her with water, pouring it from a large clay pot over her head and shoulders. Before she could recover from the first dousing, she was doused a second time.
After, she was dried with a rough towel held in rough hands. A loose robe was thrown over Lia’s shoulders and she was taken back into the hut. The three women made her stand by the fire as they anointed her body with some sort of floral-scented oil, sparing no part of her. They were practiced in their work and it was done in seconds, it seemed. Then Lia’s wet hair was combed back, braided and laid over her right shoulder.
A gauzy linen dress, so sheer Lia could see her own nipples through the fabric, was pinned over her naked body—leaving her just as exposed as before. The three women looked her up and down and seemed to admire their quick handiwork. Lia wanted to vomit.
The eldest of the women tied Lia’s wrists together again, looped the rope around each ankle again to hobble her.
Another soldier waited for them outside the hut. Lia hadn’t seen him among the five soldiers who’d captured her. He looked to be in his late thirties, about ten years older than Achilles. He bowed his head to her when he approached. Bowed his head?
“You are Briseis?” His tone was respectful, measured.
“I am Queen Briseis, yes.”
His eyes gleamed as she claimed her title but he did not laugh at her, nor smile.
“I am Patroclus. I’ve come to escort you to the tent of Achilles. Are you ready?”
She took a step forward and nearly stumbled, forgetting she’d been hobbled with rope.
“May I?” Patroclus asked.
Thinking he meant to untie her she quickly answered, “Yes.”
But he didn’t untie her. He simply swept her up and into his arms to carry her through the soldiers’ camp.
They called out jokes and suggestions for what Patroclus should do to the girl in his arms until he shouted back, “She’s meant for Achilles.”
All were silent.
“Fools and heathens,” Patroclus said to her as they passed through an endless sea of round wooden huts and smaller leather tents. “If you serve Achilles well, he will do right by you and marry you when the war ends. He is noble to the sinew and bone.”
“It speaks much that his shield-bearer speaks so highly of him,” Lia said, amazed that, just like last time, the words she needed to say came to her so easily, like she had memorized a script.
“We are like brothers,” he said. “More so in some ways.”
As they passed one of the smaller stone huts, Lia was able to see inside through a gap in a curtain. A buxom young dark-haired woman lay on her back, naked, breasts bouncing, as an older man rutted on top of her, grunting. She panted under him, writhing.
Lia wanted to look away but couldn’t. The woman laughed with the man, and Lia prayed she was a camp prostitute and not a prisoner like herself. She found herself clinging harder to the neck of Patroclus.
“Forgive me,” he said. “Some sights are not fit for a young lady’s eyes.”
“I am no maid,” she told him. “And have you forgotten where you are taking me? And why?”
“I suppose I have,” he said, and laughed softly. He held her closer, like a father with a child. He, too, seemed noble, noble to the sinew, noble to the bone.
She caught herself staring at his profile, an elegant profile. Gray hair at the temples, a neatly trimmed brown-and-gray beard, and eyes just the same, brown with flecks of gray.
“We are nearly there,” he said.
“How do I please him?” she asked. “I have enemies enough in this camp. I wouldn’t like to make another.”
“You will please him,” he assured.
“How are you so certain, sir?”
“You please me,” he said. “And he and I share the same soul between us.”
“Do you share his tent?”
He paused, looked at her, smiled slightly. “I almost wish I did.”
They reached their destination, the tent nearest the battlefront. The position of greatest vulnerability in an army camp—it spoke of Achilles’s confidence that he’d chosen it. A man stood guard outside the largest of the soldiers’ tents. More a hut than a tent. The quarters of a wealthy soldier, indeed.
Patroclus opened the leather flap of the door, and carried her into the hut and set her gently onto her feet. Lia immediately collapsed onto the nearest pillow. She saw bronze shields and swords piled in a corner of the hut, a bow and quiver of arrows, boxes filled to overflowing with silver and gold coins, richly painted amphorae, and yards and yards of silk and other fine cloth. A fortune in war spoils.
Patroclus knelt in front of her and untied the rope from her wrists. He worked slowly when untying the rope from her ankles, and as he pulled them from her body, his fingertips brushed across the tops of her small bare feet. The touch was deliberate. She knew it. He knew it. She met his eyes; he met hers. Immediately he stood, putting distance between them.
“Do you require anything before I leave you? Food? Water? Wine?”
“No, thank you,” she said. “You have excellent manners for a soldier.”
“Soldier, yes,” he said. “Not savage.”
“My servant, a stooped and sickly woman of sixty years or more who tended me from my birth, had a sword put through her belly today. I buried her with a sprinkling of ashes from the fire grate.”
“I am sorry for her death, but it is good and right that wars are so vile,” he said. “Otherwise there would be more of them.”
“Strange words from a soldier.”
“I wish nothing more for the world than the time comes when it has no need for my services. I promise you, I can find better things to do with my days and nights than waging war.” He looked down at her. “Be well, my lady. I shall be just outside, standing guard.”
“Will you listen when he takes me?” she asked him.
“I will not listen,” he said. “But I might hear.”
“Then I hope he gives me pleasure,” she said, “so that you will enjoy what you hear.”
He stared at her, and she could not fathom the look in his eyes. It was a long look, long and longing. Then he turned and left her alone. Lia gathered the fabric of her gown around her as best she could and once more tried to make herself small and invisible.
She heard male voices outside the hut, softly talking. She strained her ears but couldn’t make out the words.
The door of the hut opened.
Achilles entered.
He’d removed his cuirass and now wore only the stripped leather pteruges of the hoplite and a loose tunic. His hair looked damp and he carried with him the scent of salt water. He’d bathed in the sea.
He glanced at her, sitting still and small on the red silk pillow. She’d had a pillow like this in the women’s quarters of the palace. Was this her pillow? The palace had been sacked. How much of the loot in the corner of his tent had been her husband’s? Her father’s? Hers?
“Were you touched by anyone?” he asked.
“The women who bathed me,” she said. “And Patroclus, who carried me here.”
“Did he take you?”
“No. He honors you. He...he touched my foot. That’s all.”
Achilles nodded, pleased.
“I fight all day,” he said. “I have no interest in fighting in my own tent.”
“I will not fight you, sir.”
“No,” he said. “You will not.”
Lia gazed at him as he pulled off his tunic and dropped it to the floor. He brought his fingers to a small leather tie at his hip, unknotted it and dropped his battle skirt to the floor, as well. He stepped toward her, naked but for the sheen of oil on his dark olive skin.
“Lie back,” he ordered, and she did as instructed. Lia’s heart pounded in her throat. She tried to tell herself this was a fantasy—that this man was August Bowman and she was Lia Godwick—but no matter what her mind said, her body knew this was very, very real. This was real, and she was Briseis, a slave of war, and it was Achilles who now owned her body.
On her back, she panted, nearly hyperventilating.
Achilles loomed over her. “Show me your cunt,” he said.
She knew disobedience would win her nothing but a quick death but that wasn’t the reason she obeyed. She lifted her sheer gown up to her stomach and spread her thighs wide. She gazed at the high white moon that shone through the small square in the roof of the hut where the smoke from the fire was meant to escape. She obeyed Achilles because this was nothing new for her. For three years, she’d been little more than a concubine to her husband, the king. She was well versed in the art of submitting to survive. What wife in this cruel era was not?
And at least Achilles had a face and form handsome enough not to repulse her.
He took his organ in his hand and stroked it as she slipped her hands between her open thighs and opened the folds of her body to him. With the moon so high and white, the room was bright enough she knew he could see all he wished to see. A slight smile spread across his lips. Not a cruel smile, however.
“Beautiful,” he said.
She said nothing. With her husband, she had learned silence was her salvation. He wanted her breasts and her holes—no part of her was spared—but a woman’s mouth was for taking cocks and not conversation, in his opinion. It was easy enough with her husband to will her mind far away. When he took her body, her mind ran free in verdant forests, playing hide-and-seek with nymphs and gentle-eyed does unafraid of the hands of wounded women. But though she tried again and again to cast her mind away to the sacred woods where she hid from men, it kept coming back to this moment of Achilles standing over her, staring down at her spread-open sex.
He knelt between her thighs, still stroking himself. She couldn’t help but glance at his organ, though she regretted it immediately. He was larger than her husband by far, the organ so thick his fingers could barely encompass it and his hand so much larger than hers. What did that mean for her body, she didn’t want to wonder.
“You don’t weep,” he said. “I wonder why that is.”
She still did not speak. Some men loved the sound of their own voices and found their words sweeter music than anything wrung from the harp or lyre. Best not to interrupt.
He took her by the hips and pulled her closer to him. He found the entrance to her body with two fingers and pushed into it all the way, to the knuckles of his hand. Lia flinched and whimpered but held her tongue.
“You’re very young,” he said. “And small. I am neither.”
He removed his fingers from inside her and put them in his mouth, wetting them before pushing them back into her. He pushed his thumb into her to join the first two fingers, and Lia had to spread her legs wider to take it. Achilles parted his fingers, prying her open from the inside. Lia gasped in pleasure and pain as he widened her opening, then pried her apart even more. A low grunt escaped her throat.
“Better like this,” he said, “than tear you apart with my cock.”
He pulled his hand out and wet his fingers again in his mouth. This time her body yielded more readily to the intrusion. His fingers moved inside her, probed and pushed until she was open enough for him.
The tips of two fingers found a knot inside her, a tender tensed muscle and kneaded it. Lia’s eyes rolled back in her head.
“Good,” Achilles said.
She tried to breathe as he went about preparing her for his cock. He rubbed along the front wall, rubbed along the back. When she made a certain sound, a tiny gasp or quick inhalation, he stopped, as if he could simply take no more.
“Enough,” she heard Achilles say to himself. Abruptly he pulled his fingers from her and replaced them with the tip of his organ. With his large hands, he gripped her by her waist, lifted her, and then with a stroke he impaled her.
On her bed of silk, so incongruous in this rough wood and leather hut, she lay still as Achilles rutted into her with long rough thrusts. She willed herself to not move, to let him take all while she gave nothing.
At first her strategy worked. The huge phallus splitting her demanded nothing of her but that she yield to it. And Achilles was careful to not let his full weight rest on her and crush her. He crouched over her, hands and elbows on either side of her head, knees holding her legs apart as he pumped into her. He exhaled in rough, ragged breaths that tickled her shoulder and neck.
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 force 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.
Patroclus knelt behind her as she licked Achilles’s organ from the base to the tip. His strong arms came around her and his lips kissed her neck as he held her breasts in his hands, squeezing and lifting and holding them hard. She felt his cock seeking the entrance of her body. It pressed and pushed into her wet folds. A primal instinct she didn’t know she possessed set her arching her back and spreading her thighs. The head of his cock found her hole and she sank down onto him as he pushed up and into her.
Speared as she was—a cock in mouth, a cock against her womb—she could hardly move. The men held her pinned in place. Achilles held her head as he pushed himself into her throat. Patroclus held her kneeling back against his chest. Nothing in her fantasies had prepared her for the sensations of being taken by two men at once. The scent of their bodies—salt and sweat—and the incredible heat of their skin, the taste of male flesh in her mouth and the sound of low hard breathing in her ears. And Patroclus’s hands all over her, groping at her breasts, pulling her nipples as his mouth licked and lapped and bit at her neck and shoulders.
The grip on her hair tightened. Achilles thrust into her mouth faster. He grunted softly, rapidly, in time with his thrusts as he worked himself toward his climax. Patroclus wrapped one hand gently around her throat and tilted her head back against his shoulder, holding her in place for Achilles to use. Her jaw ached, and her sex clenched around the cock inside her. Patroclus whispered, “You’ll have my seed next.”
Achilles grunted loudly, whimpered that way grown men did when undone. His seed, hot and thick, filled her mouth. Her throat moved against Patroclus’s strong palm as she swallowed every drop as it came.
When Achilles had emptied himself into her mouth, he pulled out and dramatically dropped to his knees.
“She sucked the life out of me,” he said with a sigh as he collapsed onto his side on the pillows.
Patroclus laughed softly as he pulled Lia back against him again, holding her tightly to his chest. She looked at her own body and saw his impossibly thick strong arms imprisoning her, the vambraces on his wrists, the veins popping in the hands that squeezed her breasts and the cock inside her, spearing her from behind.
“They say he’s immortal,” Patroclus rasped into her ear, loud enough for Achilles to hear. “But you and I know his mortal weakness. Suck his cock and he’s done for.”
“Don’t let that get out,” Achilles said, propping himself up on his elbow again. “Bad enough I have every Trojan soldier aiming for my heart. I don’t need them trying to get under my pteruges, as well.”
“I’d pay a month’s wages to see one try,” Patroclus said. “I might bribe a Trojan tomorrow, if I can find one that won’t run from me at first sight.”
“Are you going to mock me or fuck her?” Achilles asked.
“I can’t do both?”
Achilles patted the pillow next to him. “Come here.”
“Me or her?” Patroclus asked.
“Both, old man.”
Patroclus lightly pushed her forward onto her hands. He pulled out of her, and as soon as he was out, her body clenched on the sudden emptiness inside her.
Lia crawled to the pillow and Achilles took her by the chin and kissed her. Patroclus laid on his side behind her, stroking her back while Achilles pinched her nipples.
“You like Patroclus?” Achilles asked as he looked at the breast he held in his hand.
“Yes, sir,” she said.
“Good. I love the man,” he said. “It pleases me to please him. And you’re doing a very good job pleasing him. But I think we could do better.”
“A worthy goal.” Patroclus kissed her shoulder and caressed it. Lia shivered. God, it was exactly like her fantasies. Exactly like them—down to every single touch, every word they said.
Achilles pushed her gently onto her back and took her nipple into his mouth. Patroclus needed no urging to take her other nipple into his. She lay beneath them as they suckled her tender breasts, overwhelmed by their male hunger. It seemed they’d devour her if they could.
“Patroclus, lie on your back,” Achilles said.
“Do I have to? I’m enjoying this.” He said that as he stroked her wet folds and slipped two, three, four fingers inside her...
“You’ll like this more,” Achilles assured. “On your back.”
With a much put-upon sigh, Patroclus rolled onto his back. He picked up a dainty blue pillow and propped it under his head.
“On top of him,” Achilles ordered Lia.
She turned and straddled Patroclus. He pulled her to him and kissed her roughly as he gripped her by the hips and settled her onto his cock. She sank down onto it, taking every inch. With his strong hands on her narrow waist, he made her ride him. He lifted her and brought her down on his cock, lifted her and brought her down again. Achilles watched at first, but he wasn’t content to merely watch for long.
He touched Lia where Patroclus entered her, touched her tender, spread-wide labia, touched her throbbing knot.
But Achilles wasn’t content to simply touch. He lowered his head and licked her clitoris. She gasped at the shock of pleasure as he brought his mouth down onto her.
And Achilles wasn’t content to simply lick her. He lowered his head farther and licked Patroclus, as well.
“Gods,” Patroclus said. His hands gripped her breasts so hard she knew she’d have bruises on them. Achilles licked them both as they coupled, licked the cock that slid in and out of her body, licked her open flesh. She writhed in pleasure and Patroclus took her by the waist once more, to hold her still as he fucked her. Meanwhile, Achilles lapped at her, at both of them. Patroclus panted underneath her, his chest rising and falling fast as Achilles rubbed them both with lips and tongue. Lia’s inner muscles twisted up into knots and tightened around the shaft inside her. Patroclus pumped into her and Achilles worked her clitoris with his tongue. For the span of a stroke of lightning she met the dark eyes of Achilles...and they weren’t dark anymore, but the wild gray of storm clouds. Patroclus grunted as his hips came off the floor and he filled her and filled her with his semen.
Achilles lifted her off Patroclus and pushed her onto her back again. He mounted her, entered her and pounded her into oblivion. She was too spent to even move. She lay limp as a rag doll under him as he used her for his own pleasure. She felt nothing except Patroclus stroking her thigh one more time before he rose, dressed and left her alone with Achilles again. Achilles spent himself inside her with a low cry that branded her memory. After, he remained on top of her—his cock still inside her, this a temporary respite before he would use her again.
And again.
And again.
Ah, love truly was a far better game than war.