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  To my beloved aunt,

  RHODA MCLAUCHLAN

  Because any woman once known as the Condom Queen of Cowlitz County deserves to have erotica dedicated to her.

  NOTES:

  Verses used in the story were taken from:

  Ars Amatoria: The Art of Love

  by Ovid, translated by J. Lewis May, 1930

  (copyright not renewed)

  The Hymns of Orpheus

  by anonymous authors, translated by Thomas Taylor, 1792

  Who is he?” I asked, my hands clenching the window ledge of the storeroom. My eyes devoured the young man dismounting from his horse in the stable yard below, with his shoulder-length brown-gold hair hanging in thick, wind-tangled locks.

  “Which one?” Terix said at my side, his arm almost pressing against mine as he leaned forward to get a better look at the barbarian strangers crowding the stable yard. We’d been sent to fetch an empty chest from the storeroom; a fortunate thing, since it was the only place in the enormous country villa where one could see into the stable yard. Terix’s glossy black curls obscured my view for a moment, and I craned around him, trying to keep the young man in my sight. I would have pushed Terix aside, but I wasn’t allowed to touch anyone; nor was anyone allowed to touch me.

  The man’s narrow hips drew my gaze, bound in a leather belt decorated with a mosaic of gold and garnets, with an equally ornate short sword and scabbard at his side. For a brief moment as he swung his leg over the saddle, the blue tunic he wore rode up his thighs, revealing short breeches pulled tight across the firm mounds of his buttocks. I felt heat rising across my breast and up my neck. My heart pounded.

  “The only one worth looking at,” I said. Gods, I could gaze upon him all day.

  Tall. Broad shoulders shown exceedingly well by both the close fit of his tunic and the red fur cape held in place at each shoulder with an enormous gold fibula. For all his breadth of shoulder, his body still bore the evidence of youth: he was lithe and nimble, not yet heavy with the muscled girth of a fully mature man. His feet were encased in short leather boots, but between them and the breeches were no clothes at all, just bare muscled legs tanned by the sun.

  Terix slanted a look of feigned innocence at me from his freckled face and wide, hazel eyes. A slave like me, he was full of mischief and spent much of his spare time musing on his own prick and in what inventive way he might use it next. “There are half a dozen I wouldn’t mind seeing more of, like that bull there with the hair coming out the neck of his tunic. I’d give a month’s meat to see Lady Lydia riding atop him, her big soft thighs spread wide, her fingers digging into his pelt while her great jugs bounced up and down like to—”

  “Terix.”

  “I would, Nimia. But I suppose you mean that young wolf with the hungry eyes and the fox-fur cape over his shoulders.”

  The wolf looked up at that moment, his cold blue-gray eyes meeting my own. A wash of awareness went through me, unlike anything I’d felt before. It was an overwhelming premonition of a future both terrifying and ecstatic. This man, something within me said. This man will take my soul. I could feel coils of fate wrapping around me, squeezing the breath from my body. My heart raced, a cold sweat breaking out over my skin.

  Gods, what’s happening? Who is he?

  Below, the young wolf’s expression held neutral, the cold eyes assessing mine. Did he feel it? Did he, too, know? The corner of his mouth quirked in the hint of a smile and he winked at me, broke our gaze, and joined the other men as they passed through the gateway into the living quarters of the villa.

  I drew in a quaking breath, my muscles weak from the power of the premonition, my thoughts disjointed and echoing like lost voices in the fog. The wolf hadn’t felt it. I was no more than another female slave, of no import beyond the possibility of a quick toss in a shadowed corner.

  A wink, he’d given me. A meager, flirty, thrown-away-on-any-wench wink!

  Terix was saying something. “What was that?” I asked.

  “I said, don’t let Sygarius see you looking at the wolf pup like that. You know who that belongs to.” Terix pointed at my loins.

  I flushed. “I’m not likely to forget who owns me,” I said, and touched the thick gold torc around my neck. It was crafted in the style of the long-conquered Celts from whom I was partially descended, of a hollow tube of gold as thick as my thumb, encircling my neck and ending with dual caps at the center of my collarbone. Inscribed along its length were the words Touch me not, for Sygarius’s I am. It was meant as a warning to any man who might forget his manners and make use of this particular slave without asking; but it was also meant to remind me that my body was not mine to share.

  “Maybe your head remembers, but I’ll bet your cunny would rather drip on someone else’s cock.”

  “It doesn’t drip on anyone’s, and well you know it. Must you always be so lewd, Terix?”

  “I think I must, yes,” he said, his eyes dancing. “It comes so naturally to me.”

  I laughed. “Better a cock rubber—”

  “—than a pot scrubber,” Terix finished, and grinned. It was our private joke, a reversal of what a scullery maid, jealous of an old gown Lady Lydia had given me, had once sneered. There was a hurt defiance hidden in our joke, a recognition of what we were: slaves who could be used at the will of their master. Better to own and flaunt the truth than to let it corrode our spirits from the inside.

  Though there were times—increasingly frequent—that I wondered if the truth was destroying me, no matter how hard I tried to embrace it.

  “There you are!” Kyrian cried, spotting us. Eleven years old and dressed androgynously in a loose tunic, with his glossy black hair worn to his shoulders, Kyrian was a slave treated as a pretty pet, neither male nor female. If he was lucky, he’d have a year or two more of such delicate treatment before his voice started to change and spots to mar his skin, at which point his hair would be shorn and he’d go from waiting at table to mucking out the stables. He was already as tall as me, so his time was undoubtedly short. “Lady Lydia is furious with you, Nimia. She says she’ll have your hide.”

  A familiar rush of panic went through me. Ah, gods. What had I done to displease her now? I dashed away to see what she wanted.

  Lazy, useless girl; you’ve made me late,” Lady Lydia scolded, her mouth pinched tight like an anus.

  “Your pardon, my lady,” I said, curtseying to the ground and bowing my head until it touched my knee. I knew better than to meet her eyes until she had spent her spleen.

  “Not worth the space you take up on the floor. Never at hand when I need you, are you? And precious little good when you are here.”

  I said nothing and held motionless, using my dancer’s strength to hold the awkward pose. Her moods were mercurial, and I’d long ago learned that the quickest way to soften them was to offer the appearance of utter submission. She might be even more quickly mollified if I allowed my muscles to tremble, but pride had its limits. I would not cower. I instead imagined myself to be a painted marble statue, a human shape created to be perfectly, unnaturally still.

  “Gods, girl, get up,” she finally said, and from the corner of my eye I saw the impatient waving of her hand. “Fix my hair. Hermina has made a bird’s nest o
f it.”

  Safely out of sight behind Lady Lydia’s head, Hermina rolled her eyes and gave me a sour look. She’d been taking care of Lady Lydia since my lady was a baby, and while not intimidated by her tantrums, she was also jealous of her mistress’s care.

  “Yes, my lady,” I said, and rushed to do her bidding. Lady Lydia was Sygarius’s wife, and mother to his two small daughters; he was still waiting for a son. It might be a long wait, given Lady Lydia’s reluctance to admit her husband to her bed; her affections were completely taken by her daughters, and she didn’t much care for men to begin with. “So . . . crude,” she often complained. “Their bodies have none of the soft beauty of a woman’s.”

  Arranging Lady Lydia’s hair was as close as I ever came to physical human contact, and even so I was careful to keep my fingers from her scalp, touching only the hair, the comb, the pins. My nimble fingers quickly undid Hermina’s work—truly, the old nursemaid had little talent for styling hair; a braid looped there? What had she been thinking?—and I combed out Lady Lydia’s dyed red locks. She insisted on the color, though it did not flatter her skin and the dyes left her hair dull and dry. Perhaps it was part of her plan to keep Sygarius at bay.

  “No need to go too fancy,” she said. “And use one of my lesser diadems. It’s not as if I need to impress barbarians. Why Sygarius insists I welcome them I do not know. They’re nothing but mercenaries. Entertain them in our home? Why? We’ll have to burn the linens when they leave. And you!” Lady Lydia turned on her seat, the abrupt movement pulling the braid I’d been working on out of my hand. “Given the chance, they’d have you bent over a couch for each to take their turn, with no thought for destruction of our property. Which would be a great pity; Sygarius has so been looking forward to your initiation.” Her gaze drifted down to my breasts, unbound beneath the yellow linen gown. “As have I.”

  She suddenly reached up and fondled my breast. Startled, I gasped and jerked back.

  “Shh,” Lady Lydia cooed, and gently pinched my nipple two, three, four times, until it hardened between her fingertips and I felt an answering, unwelcome tingle in my sex. She slid her palm over the fullness of my breast, and then cupped it from beneath, weighing it in her hand. “Your last menses, when did they finish?”

  “A few days ago,” I said, my voice gone hoarse in shock at her touch, both because it was forbidden and because I’d never thought she wanted me that way. I’d heard stories of her predilections among the servants, of course, but she’d never shown any sexual interest me. I had thought she was content to leave my body to her husband.

  She gave my breast a final caress and released it. “You haven’t grown for five months?”

  “My sixth and final measuring is to be at the full moon.” Sygarius had sworn not to touch me—not so much as a hand upon my cheek—until I was a woman full grown, who had gone a half-year without gaining in height. I had once thought this a testament to his gentleness, but that was before my growth had slowed and my breasts had bloomed to their full flower, and he had begun to whisper to me of the pleasures we would share. I had realized then that it was not gentleness that made him wait, but an inhuman self-control. He was aroused by the anticipation of our joining, and had been savoring the years of waiting as if they were extended foreplay.

  And then, two months ago, the “lessons” had started.

  I was yet untouched in body, but my mind: ah, my mind! I had been taught to crave that which previously I had not guessed to exist.

  At the thought of the lessons, a warm rush of fullness filled my sex. I tightened my thighs, and felt a throb as my nether gates closed on an empty passageway.

  “The full moon is three weeks hence.” Lady Lydia tapped her lower lip with her fingertip. “Hermina! Measure Nimia tonight.”

  “My lady?” I dared to question.

  “The summer solstice is in only two weeks. It would be a pity to wait until after; it is such a propitious night. Of course there are so many arrangements yet to be made . . .”

  “My lady?” Arrangements? What arrangements? If she was speaking of the taking of my virginity, what arrangements could there be other than a bed and Sygarius, cock at the ready?

  She ignored me, and devoted her attention to selecting bracelets. I cast my eyes to Hermina, only to find her studiously looking elsewhere. So she knew what was going to happen, and was no more willing to speak of it than Lady Lydia.

  Trepidation ran across my skin. I did not like the sound of “arrangements.” It hinted of props and planning and other people. For all the perversities that I had seen in my lessons, I had still assumed that Sygarius would enjoy me privately, in the standard manner. I almost demanded that Lady Lydia tell me more, but my years as a slave caught my tongue before the words could leave my lips. It was clear she did not wish to explain, and insisting would earn me only punishment.

  It’s my life they are deciding, a rebellious spirit inside me complained. I was not born a slave. They should not hold secrets from me about my own body, my own future.

  Dangerous thoughts. My body was not my own.

  I picked up the fallen braid and went back to work on Lady Lydia’s hair, trying to bury my worries . . . and my rebellion.

  “Who are these barbarians who’ve descended upon us?” I asked. Thoughts of the young wolf were an easy distraction from whatever was going to happen on the summer solstice.

  “Franks. One of the tribes of them, anyway. Salians from . . .” Lady Lydia waved her hand in the air. “North or northeast of us. Somewhere beyond the Rhine River. It’s all uncivilized wilds out there. Long hair and beards, and gods only know how they smell, though I suppose we’ll know soon enough.” She shuddered.

  “They’re hired soldiers, you say?”

  “Yes. Lawless mercenaries. But Childeric calls himself a king, and he has his princeling son Clovis with him.”

  The young wolf—it could be no other. I could feel the rightness of that. I conjured his face before me, and the moment when our eyes had locked. A trembling echo of the premonition washed through me again, and I felt my breasts swell, my sex tighten yet again. I knew: this princeling, this Clovis, would have not only my soul, but my body as well.

  Impossible, I told myself. For Sygarius’s I am. The weight of the golden torc lay heavy round my neck. I was his treasure, which he’d been waiting to plunder for the nine years he’d owned me. We were so close, now, to that time of final consummation: he would never give me up, not without taking his full pleasure from me first.

  But again I saw Clovis’s cold, assessing eyes, and the width of his shoulders. His sun-streaked light brown hair, and the short beard he wore, so unlike the clean-shaven faces of Roman men. I imagined Clovis’s narrow hips with those taut buttocks . . . imagined those buttocks beneath my hands, those hips between my thighs, as he took me for my first time. He, barbarian, instead of Sygarius.

  Sygarius, my master. Sygarius, Dux of Soissons, ruler of the last province of the fallen Western Roman Empire. Sygarius, who had groomed me to be his concubine since he took me as a war prize from a vanquished Visigoth foe.

  For years I had imagined being bedded by Sygarius—even before the lessons—and both longed for and dreaded the day. He was woven into all my fantasies of what it was to join one body to another: to be a female, penetrated by a male. To be touched, explored, licked, taken, used. To lie with him sprawled across the sheets, covered in sweat, the wet evidence of our joining smeared across my thigh.

  And yet today, with one gaze, I had seen another in that role.

  How could there be any other?

  The two possible futures stretched in front of my inner gaze, possibilities weaving in and out, crossing and parting like the strands of Lady Lydia’s hair in my hands. One face turned into another; one body, tall, young, and lithe, turned shorter, stronger, darker. My limbs tangled with one man’s, then another’s, our bodies rolling agains
t and over each other like fighting dogs, until I didn’t know who I lay with even in my own imaginings. My breath came in short pants and I struggled for air, feeling those bonds of fate binding round my chest like the arms of a man who would never release that which was his.

  “Splendid, Nimia!” Lady Lydia said, and clapped her hands together. The sharp sound brought me back to myself, and I looked down at my handiwork: an intricate arrangement of braids, false hairpieces, and jeweled diadem in a style I’d never seen before—and would likely never see again, for I had no memory of how I’d achieved it.

  Lady Lydia held a silver mirror this way and that, taking in the structure atop her head. “Too impressive for barbarians, to be sure.” She made a moue at her reflection. “But perhaps they should know what a true queen looks like. They might not think more of Sygarius for having such a comely wife, but certainly they would think less of him should I appear haggard and slovenly. Not that they could tell the difference; gods only know what their standards of female grooming are, assuming they have any at all.”

  “Do you wish me to attend you to the dining hall?” I asked, and caught myself moving my fingertips in spirals down the outside of my thighs. It was a nervous habit, tracing the tattoos that were hidden by my gown. I wanted to go into the great dining hall and see Clovis again.

  “I can’t think why I should need you,” Lady Lydia said, standing and brushing out her skirts. “I do hope they leave in the morning; I see no reason for them to stay longer.”

  My hands stilled, disappointment a sudden weight upon my shoulders. He might leave without my having seen him again.

  “Hermina,” Lady Lydia said, pausing in the doorway on her way out, and inclining her head toward me. “Measure.”

  My need to see him proved irresistible.

  I moved silently through the shadowed garden of the central peristyle courtyard. Dusk had come, turning the sky above to deep blue, while still leaving light enough to see my way. The garden was surrounded on all sides by a colonnade, and beyond the columns were the open doorways of the public rooms of the villa. The largest of these, the richly decorated garden room, spilled yellow lamplight and music into the evening air each time a servant pushed past the heavy curtain over the doorway.