EXCERPT FROM THE ‘THE ROSE: THE GODWICKS BOOK 2’
August said nothing as he stepped forward and stood in front of her, naked and lovely and waiting.
She still sat on her leather club chair. Shaking and nervous, she lifted her eyes to his and found he was looking down at her with love. Love? Yes, she couldn’t call it anything else. The tenderness in eyes, the kindness, the desire…it looked like she’d always imagined love would look in a man’s eyes.
No wonder he made a fortune doing this.
He reached out and stroked her burning face with his fingertips.
“Touch me,” he said.
“God,” she said, heaving a breath. “Where?”
“Anywhere. Touch me anywhere and any way you like.”
He was fully aroused. His cock was thick and red and inches from her face. Lia did want to touch him. She absolutely did. She wanted to touch every inch of him and she knew exactly which inch she wanted to start with…
“Please, Lia,” August said softly.
She heard true need in his voice. Well, if he wanted her to…
Lia shook a little in her chair. She was so close to him she could feel the heat emanating from his body. His fingers were still stroking her cheek. She glanced up at him again and saw him watching her, waiting, eager for her to make the first move, to break the tension, to open Pandora’s box and see what flew out…
Lia leaned forward and pressed her fingertips against the three-petal rose tattoo. They were thick lines, deep, like scars, not like ink. Like burns. Like a…
With a gasp, she pulled her head back and met his eyes.
“It’s a brand,” she said.
He nodded.
“Did it hurt?”
“Have you ever been branded? Of course it hurt.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. I was branded after I was with my first patron,” August said. “First time in my life I felt truly alive, truly…human.”
She touched the brand again, as gently as she could, tracing the lines of it, the beautiful wound…
“Lia, Lia,” he whispered, “you are going to make my life very interesting this week.”
She sat back and put some space between them.
“Will I have to share you with other patrons?”
He shook his head. “For you I’m clearing my whole calendar.”
She smiled, though she tried not to let him see it.
“You’re so beautiful,” she said.
“That’s kind of you to say.”
“Credit where credit’s due,” she said, and cleared her throat.
He slid his hand under her chin, lifted it.
“I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do this week,” he said. “I don’t force. I seduce. But I will seduce you, and by the end of the week you will have done things with me you never dreamed you wanted to do. You understand?”
She slowly nodded.
“Let’s get into bed,” he said. “I want you on my cock.”
She took another heaving breath. She might have squeaked.
“You’re a grown woman, Lia. You’re allowed to have sex and enjoy it.”
“It was so easy to be with you before.”
“Because I was someone else?”
“Because I was someone else,” she said. “I don’t know if I can…”
“You can. You will. But we can go slowly. Bring the cup. I’ll fetch the wine.”
Lia relaxed slightly when August stepped away from her. She busied herself opening her bag and taking out the kylix, which she’d wrapped up carefully in clean linen. She carried it over to the bed.
August came up behind and pressed himself against her back. He took the cup from her hand and set it on the black square nightstand, next to an open bottle of red wine. He wrapped his arms around her stomach and kissed the side of her neck.
The warmth of his body seeped through the fabric of her dress and into her skin. She stood still, too nervous to move, as he nibbled the pulse point in her neck and ran his hands slowly up and down her back. She liked it but didn’t know how to respond. And she wanted to respond. She wanted him to know she wanted him.
“Relax,” he said into her ear, as if he’d read her thoughts. “Let me do my job. And let me show you why I love my work.”
She smiled, nodded, still nervous but relieved she wouldn’t be expected to perform.
“But first, let us bid adieu to your clothes.”
“No,” she said, turning to face him. “No. No, no, no.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “You do know how sex works, yes?”
She held up her hand and pushed the air, demanding some room between them. He obliged and took one step back.
Lia unzipped her dress, pulled it off and laid it over the back of a chair. Under it, she wore a simple ivory slip, one that had belonged to her grandmother in the `60s.
“Better.” He stepped forward and ran his hands over her back again and Lia shivered pleasantly as his skin warmed her through the silk. “This is very pretty. It will look even prettier on my floor…”
“Give me time,” she said.
“All the time you need,” he said, and kissed her neck again. “But we’re getting rid of the knickers right this second.”
She made a sound halfway between a whimper and a squeak.
They had a deal, she reminded herself.
“All right.”
August pulled her knickers down her legs and with a dainty lift of her feet she was out of them.
“Not so bad, was it?” he asked after tossing her underwear all the way across the room.
“I survived.”
“Now would you be so kind as to bend over the bed?”
“Why?”
“It will make lubricating your vagina easier.”
Another small sound came out of Lia’s throat, like air escaping a balloon.
“Or you could lie on your back,” he suggested.
He was trying to be helpful.
“I’ll just…um…do the first one,” she said.
With as much grace and dignity as she could muster under the circumstances—weird bed, weird bedroom, weird yet incredibly attractive naked male prostitute standing behind her with an erection—Lia bent over the bed.
“I’m not going to spank your arse,” he said as he lifted the back of her slip.
“Thank you.”
“Unless you want me to.”
“Let’s table that for now.”
He didn’t say anything. That troubled her. Deeply.
“You’re looking at my vagina, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She sighed.
“It’s very pretty.” He touched the seam of her vulva and lightly stroked it with his fingertip. It parted at his touch and Lia’s fingers curled into the bedspread. “Beautiful cunt.”
Lia grimaced. “Do you really have to call it that?”
“Yes. You should, too. It’s sexy.”
“It’s rude.”
“Sexy.”
“Crude.”
“Prissiest madam ever, I swear to the gods.”
Lia heard him opening a drawer and felt the first touch of warm liquid on her body.
“I thought it would be cold,” she said.
“I have a lube-warmer.”
“Of course you do.”
She tensed as he spread her labia open wider. He made a sound like “Hmm…”—the sound of an art critic judging a painting.
“What?” she demanded.
“Your cunt looks like a rose,” he said.
“Does not.”
“Pink-red petals, dark little center, bit dewy.”
Lia buried her burning face against the cool suede of his bedspread.
August touched a tender spot inside her.
Lia gasped as her vagina clenched around his fingers.
August laughed. Wonderful laugh.
“I’m falling in love with you already,” he said.
“Well. Stop,” she said. “Please and thank you.”
“Prude.”
“Are you finished now?”
“I am,” he said. “And you really didn’t need the lube. You were soaking wet before I got there.”
He pulled his fingers out of her—bad—and Lia stood up—good.
She turned to face August, who was using a little white towel to wipe his fingers clean.
“Now what?” she asked. She was feeling quite…slippery.
“I need to know what sexual fantasy you’d like to experience tonight.”
“Don’t rush me,” she said. “This is my session, isn’t it?”
He put his hands together in a prayer position. “I am all yours.”
“Thank you. I thought so.”
“What would you like to do, Lia?” he asked, the picture of submission.
Damn him…he’d called her bluff.
“Well…I’m open to suggestions,” she said. August managed not to laugh at her too loudly.
“Probably a good idea to get started,” he said. “Before you lose your nerve.”
Lia nodded. “Agreed.”
He slipped into bed and propped himself against the tufted leather headboard. How was he so comfortable being naked while she was shaking in her slip?
“Could you pass the condoms, please?” he asked.
He’d put an entire box of them on the nightstand. Felt rude, like bragging. Surely they wouldn’t need more than one. She passed him one.
One.
“Lia? You’re there.” He pointed at the floor. “I require your presence here.” He patted his stomach. Lia slowly crawled onto the bed, wishing the entire time August had a much bigger bed.
“Why is your bed so small?” she asked.
“More intimate. You can hide from someone in a king-size. Not in this bed. No hiding places at all…”
He reached for her and, with his hands on her waist, pulled her on top of him. She sat on his stomach and found herself very aware of her wet bare vulva pressing against his warm flesh. She was trying to ignore his cock, though it certainly wasn’t ignoring her.
Lia was of two minds. One mind wanted to get her things and rush straight home and pretend she never had this terrible idea. The other mind wanted to press her entire body to August’s entire body and stay there a few millennia. August took her face in his hands, stroked her cheeks, her neck. Then he smiled at her.
Might as well stay, she decided.
“It won’t hurt,” he said.
“I’m not a virgin.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” He brushed her hair over her shoulder and leaned in to kiss her. His lips met hers and Lia shivered. She clung awkwardly to his shoulders as she returned the kiss, tentatively at first but with growing confidence. August ran his fingertips up her arms and over her shoulders, across her back and down to her waist. The man kissed like he invented kissing, patented it and made a fortune off the patent. He nipped her bottom lip, dipped his tongue into her mouth and retreated, pushed and retreated, teasing her until there was nothing for her to do but put her own tongue in his mouth. That would show him.
When her tongue met his, August moaned softly. He pulled her closer and Lia could almost swear he wanted her as much as she wanted him. Of course he didn’t. This was the job, and she knew how it worked. And that was fine. She wasn’t here to fall in love. She knew better than that, and even if she didn’t, she knew she couldn’t.
But…she could enjoy herself while it lasted, right?
“You’re a good kisser,” August whispered.
“I was thinking the same about you.”
He smiled again, and looked in her eyes again, making her blush again.
“What?” she asked.
“You’re insanely beautiful.”
“Shut up. I have a gap in my two front teeth.”
“Like Isabella Rossellini.”
“Like David Letterman,” she retorted.
“It’s a sign of a strong libido. Ask the Wife of Bath. And very, very sexy.”
He kissed her again, before she could tell him all the ways he was wrong about that. And as he kissed her, he slowly and with the utmost care moved her so that she was on top of his cock.
“Take your time,” he said.
Lia pushed a lock of hair out of her face and tucked it behind her ear.
“So…” she began. “Help?”
He really had the most wonderful smile when he was trying not to laugh at her. Lia could get used to that smile—when she got over the urge to wipe it off his face.
“Allow me,” he said. He took her by the waist and gently pulled her down until she was sitting on his erection.
He reached under her slip and took himself in hand. With one hand on her and the other on his cock, and with a judicious lift of his hips, the tip found the entrance of her body and pressed against the tender hole. With her hands on his shoulders, she moved up and then forward as August pressed up and into her.
Accidentally—she was trying to look anywhere but at August—she met his eyes while steadying herself against the headboard. And once he had her attention, he didn’t let her look away.
He wasn’t smiling now, but the expression on his face was somehow better than a smile. His eyes were soft as he gazed at her face, and his hands gentle as he lifted her hips and guided her onto him. Lia felt pressure as she lowered herself onto his cock. Pressure and penetration as he entered her slowly, inch by inch, until she’d taken as much of him as she could. She rocked back and forth simply to make herself more comfortable.
August must have liked it because his eyelids fluttered, and his back arched against the pillows. Beautiful man.
“There,” he said, panting slightly. He put his hand on the side of her face and stroked her cheek with this thumb. “That’s not so bad, is it?”
Lia swallowed. “It’s all right. Not bad.”
The lacy hem of her slip lay over her thighs as she knelt on him. August slid his hands under it again.
“Do you want to make love?” he asked. “Or talk about your fantasies?”
“You’re a man. Don’t you need to come?”
“I’m not a normal man. I can stay hard for a very long time. Especially if a beautiful young woman is sitting on my cock and blushing pink as a rose. If I start to get soft, I’ll just peek.”
“Peek?”
He lifted her hem, and she slapped it back down again.
“Do not peek.”
“Lia, I’m literally penetrating you right this moment. We are having sexual intercourse. We are fornicating.”
“Fine,” she said. “You can peek.” He really did feel very good inside her. The cock in her throbbed and her flesh surrounding it throbbed in time. She placed her hands flat on his chest and rocked her hips into his. She was rewarded with a deep spasm inside her stomach, a spasm that traveled up her spine and down into her thighs. She braced herself, her hands flat on August’s broad chest, and did it again.
“Take your slip off,” he said, his voice hoarse. He was already inside her. There was no reason for her to feel modest, but her fingers were shaking as she tried for the zipper in back. He grew impatient with her fumbling fingers and pulled it down for her. When he’d bared her breasts, he looked at them so long and so longingly Lia blushed.
“You’re staring,” she said.
“Phryne of Athens,” he said. “The courtesan. When she was charged with impiety and taken before the courts, she bared her breasts to the judges. At the sight of them, they acquitted her. At the sight of your breasts, they would have crowned you empress.”
He squeezed them, molded them into his palms, fondled the nipples until they were so hard she hurt. He wrapped his arms around her waist. Her head fell back and she arched for him, gasping as he licked her left nipple, placed his lips to it and sucked it into his mouth. The slow draw, the tug, the moist heat on her breast, was bliss.
For the first time, Lia felt the line, the red cord of nerves that ran from her breasts to her sex. As he sucked the nipple, drew it deep into his mouth, her vagina grew wetter, riper, swollen.
She pressed her hips against him and felt the pleasure run down her back and into her hips. August pulled her against him again and pushed his hand between her thighs. Lia’s vagina ached around the thick organ inside her, and she moaned against his shoulder.
Never had she felt this good before, not in her own body. He took her breasts in his hands again—his large, strong male hands—and held them firmly. She covered his hands with hers, wanting to feel him touching her. Lowering her head, she pressed a quick kiss onto his knuckles. That one kiss, no matter how devout, wasn’t nearly enough for August. He grinned that wild dangerous grin of his again. He kissed her again with that wild dangerous kiss of his.
August wrapped an arm around her and scored her back with his rough fingertips. She’d never felt something so sensuous. Every time she moved, even the slightest bit, her clitoris brushed the shaft of his cock.
“August,” she said.
“Yes?”
“What?” she asked.
“You said my name.”
“I did?”
He slowly nodded. She forced her eye to focus.
“Stop gloating.” She’d been clinging to the headboard, but August took her hands by the wrists and brought them down to his stomach.
“I can’t help it,” he said. “You’re beautiful and I’m arrogant. This is so much fun I can’t believe I get paid for it.”
“Are you really enjoying this?”
In lieu of answering, he rolled her onto her back on the bed.
“August—”
He took her legs and wrapped them around his lower back. Then he pried her hands off his upper arms and pressed them into the bed. To make matters worse, he put his hands over her hands, and locked their fingers together.
“You’re trying to make me feel something for you,” Lia said. “I know all the tricks.”
“I feel something for you already,” August said. “And this isn’t a trick.”
Slowly, and very deliberately, he began to thrust into her.
Slowly, and very deliberately, he let his full weight rest on her until she could think of nothing and no one but him.
“Remember what I said about the Fates?” he asked. A kiss on her lips. A kiss on her cheek. A kiss on her neck. “About the threads of our destinies being tangled together?”
“You really believe that?” Her voice was breathless. His thrusts were so incredibly deep and slow she couldn’t help but move with him.
“We’re tangled together right now. Can’t you feel it?”
She nodded, too turned on to speak. He released her right hand and brushed her hair off her cheek and then cradled the back of her head. August pushed his knees in until they were at her hips. He’d tangled them together in a tight, tense knot of arms and legs and a hundred deep kisses.
“How’s this for a Gordian knot?” he said into her ear as he thrust into her again. Lia arched under him.
He kissed her mouth, deeper even than before. Their tongues touched and mingled as August moved in her with long slow strokes of his cock.
“We can stop if you want to,” he said. “Do you?”
She shook her head. “No.”
August smiled down at her, caressed her cheek with the back of his knuckles.
“I don’t know what he did to you,” he said, “but I’m going to enjoy undoing it.”
“You can’t change the past.”
“No, but I can give you a very good present.” He thrust into her again.
She laughed, a real laugh, deep and throaty and sensual. She sounded like a woman who was enjoying herself. He laughed with her, dropping dozens of tender kisses on her neck and along her collarbone. All right…so maybe he did want her. She relaxed underneath him and spread her thighs a little wider.
“Shall we play?” he asked. “I think the wine’s breathed enough.”
“What do I do?”
“Tell me your sexual fantasy you want to explore tonight.”
Lia tensed again. Two steps forward, one step back.
“You first,” she said.
“I’m a wicked king,” he said immediately.
“Oh my God.” How many of these insane sexual fantasies did he have?
“And a very powerful king at that,” he continued. “And there’s another lesser king who has to send tribute to me. But this poor king has no gold or silver or diamonds to send me. All he has that I might desire is…”
“His daughter?”
“His only daughter,” August said. “She’s sent to me to be my concubine.”
“It’s never a secretary, is it? Or a juggler? The tribute always has to be a concubine.”
“And when she arrives at my palace, because I am so very wicked, I make her strip naked and show herself to me in front of the entire court.”
“You’re an absolute bastard. Worst king since Nero.”
“Nero was an emperor, not a king,” he said. “But don’t worry, she gets her revenge. When I make love to her the first night…she tries to stab me with a dagger she’s hidden under the pillow.”
“Good girl. I like her spirit.”
“But I’m not deterred.”
“Quitters never win,” she said.
“I decide that I can’t simply overwhelm her with power and might. I must make her love me. So begins my attempt to win her heart and obedience through a strict regimen of hand-feeding, spankings followed by forced orgasms, and tender poetry.”
“Poetry?”
“Yes, I tie her to the royal bed and recite poems to her until her heart—and thighs—melt.”
“This is an actual sexual fantasy you get off to?” Lia asked.
“Often.” August nodded. “Though there are variations. Sometimes it’s the king’s son instead of his daughter. And instead of poetry, it’s near-constant oral sex.”
“I’m speechless.”
“Your turn,” he said, his voice tender and coaxing. “I’m dying to hear what you dream about in that deep dark little corner of your mind, the one with all the locks on the door and Cerberus guarding it with all three of his vicious heads…”
He massaged her breasts as he spoke, and she did find herself strangely melting into his hands.
“Close your eyes, Lia,” he said as he then pushed his hands gently into her hair and tugged her head back to bare her throat to another hundred soft kisses.
She closed her eyes and sighed at the bliss of the moment—his beautiful cock embedded in her body, his fingers wound into her hair, his warm lips licking and sucking her neck and his hot breath on her skin… And his words, his perfect words.
“Tell me your secrets, Lia…tell me everything you want. I won’t laugh. I won’t judge. Whatever you desire, I can give it to you, but you have to tell me what it is…”
“You won’t laugh?”
“I really won’t laugh.”
“Well, to be honest…I wouldn’t mind playing in your fantasy.”
“You’d make a wonderful wicked king.”
She opened her eyes and looked at him. “The bloody concubine, August.”
He pulled back, his eyes wide. “You disgust me.”
Lia pushed him off her. That act of rebellion was quickly quashed. August grabbed her around the waist, wrenched her slip off her and threw it across the room. Then he dragged her on top of him, and it took no convincing at all to get her to straddle him.
“So she wants to be a concubine,” August said. He took her by the hips and eased her down onto him again.
“No, I don’t want to be a bloody concubine,” she said. “It’s a fancy word for being a victim of kidnapping and rape.”
“But you fantasize about being kidnapped and raped.”
“In a nice way.” She let her head fall back and smiled dreamily up at the ceiling. “A sexy way. A not-at-all-real-in-any-way way. That's what I meant.”
He ran his hands up her arms and drew her down to his chest.
“Who do you imagine being your keeper? Your captor?”
“Achilles,” she said.
“Ah, does that make you Briseis?” he asked.
“I think I’d make a very good captive queen.”
Achilles and his best friend and shield-bearer Patroclus were her two favorite characters in The Iliad. She loved how much they loved each other, protected each other. And from her first reading, she’d secretly envied Briseis, the enemy queen who Achilles took as his personal concubine.
“Let’s find out.”
Still underneath her, August reached for the kylix and wine bottle on the bedside table. He splashed in a little wine and offered the cup to her. Lia’s heart beat madly as she took it from him and cradled it in her hands.
“Ready?” he asked. She took a shuddering breath.
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
Her toes were already curling in anticipation and excitement. But fear, too. Real fear. What on earth was about to happen to her?
Lia lifted the kylix to her lips and drank deeply. Her hands shook so badly August took the cup back from her. He drank from it and set it on the table again. Then he rolled them over so that he lay on top of her again.
“Nervous?” he asked.
“Very.”
“You’ll be safe,” he said. “I won’t let anything happen to you except the preauthorized capture and very pleasant rape.”
“Good, thank you.”
“Until then…” He kissed her deeply on the mouth, and his tongue tasted of wine. She wrapped her arms around his back and held on to him tightly. Before she knew what she was doing, Lia opened her thighs for him again.
August entered her with a thrust.
“My lovely concubine,” he said.
“You’re more my concubine than I’m yours. I bought you.”
“Rented,” he said. “Do you really want to play my concubine, or did you just want to see me in a leather kilt?”
“It’s called a pteruges,” Lia said.
August laughed softly into her ear. “I know what it’s called, and you didn’t answer my question.”
Lia started to answer it, but before she could speak another word, the world went dark.
* * *