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“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.
