Claiming Ariadne (7 page)

His hand caught her wrist as she started to slap him. Turning it over, he nibbled briefly at her pulse before leaning down to claim her mouth.

Once she was calm and pliant under his kisses, he let her breathe again. “You planned this!”

“Of course I did,” he said, laughing. “And you agreed to it. What did you think would happen? That I’d be fully dressed and respectfully waiting while you took your time? You know perfectly well what I’m like in bed—and out of it—and you just can’t wait to be fucked.”

Ariadne lay unresisting as he undid her cloak. “Are you just going to rut on me like an impatient bull, or are you going to try better than that?”

Her cloak fell open. Underneath, she wore a belted shift that did little to ward off the chill. At the first touch of cool air, her nipples drew taut. Of course, he noticed. Propping himself up on one arm, Taranos manipulated a bud through the thin wool. “Is that better, High Priestess?”

She caught her breath between her teeth. “You do realize I’m with child, don’t you?”

“You’re not showing yet and won’t for some time. Unless you get nauseous and vomit all over me, I don’t see what your pregnancy has to do with my fucking you.”

Most men knew precious little about women’s matters. Pelinos, for instance, had continued to demand his conjugal rights right up until the moment her water broke. So, too, had it been with the others. Only Taranos seemed to grasp the practicalities of her condition.

“You have other children, don’t you?” Neither accusation nor even a question, it came out as a simple statement. A thirty-one-year-old man who
hadn’t
fathered at least one child would have been an oddity indeed.

Taranos stopped fondling and nuzzling her; his hand remained cupped against the side of her breast. “Just one son that I know about. It happened long ago. She was a laborer in the fields below Tiryns. Obviously I couldn’t marry her, and she died some years ago, but over the years, I made sure my son wants for nothing. Kerkios will be sixteen this summer.”

And now, pregnant with his child—maybe another son to add to the first—Ariadne wondered how Taranos regarded her. Was she simply another female conquest, like the field worker who bore Kerkios, or did she mean something more to him than a rich prize to be won and flaunted? “Do you ever intend to go home for good?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard when you’ve spent most of your life traveling.” Taranos teased her with kisses, nibbling softly at her lower lip until she responded. Just enough to make her hot, then he withdrew. “I first went to sea at fifteen, with my Uncle Idomeneus. Since then, I’ve been just about everywhere, from the hot, dry lands of Egypt to the windy plains of horse-breeding Troia to Canaan and Babylon. And I’ve had many more women since Pylia, and probably a few more sons I don’t even know about.”

“You say that like you’re proud of your accomplishment.”

Taranos laughed, so close to her cheek she felt the warm exhalation of his breath. “Prouder than you are of your many children.”

The barb stung. “I see very little of my children.”

“That’s by your own choice, Ariadne. Why shouldn’t I be proud of the women I’ve lain with, or the pleasure I’ve given them?”

Oh, he was a typical man, boasting of his conquests even while trying to make another. “Should you really be bragging right now?”

Snorting, Taranos dropped a kiss on her cheek. “Did I say those women were more beautiful than you? Most of them were sacred prostitutes serving the Great Mother. Oh, yes, they worship her in other lands, under different names and customs. Sometimes she is Rea, sometimes Aphrodite, but always she’s all things female, and a man who goes there looking to please a woman comes away learning more than he bargained for.”

Ariadne gently swatted his shoulder. Even as they lay talking, she remained conscious of his nakedness and the hard pillar between his thighs. And where her nipple rubbed against the fabric of her shift, she remembered his touch. “All you’ve done so far is talk.”

A broad grin lit up his face. “Ah, then,” he said, kissing her again.

This time, his tongue slipped into her mouth, and his hand fell away from her breast and ventured under her hem to slide between her thighs. Oh, how she wanted him there; how she wanted his finger inside her wet pussy; how she wanted him to pull off her shift and cover her with his body! Sensing her eagerness, he parted her folds and teased her slit, but never pushed his finger inside, never opened her enough to play with her little pearl.

Breaking off the kiss, she gasped, “What are you waiting for?”

His hand came away. She opened her mouth to protest and found herself silenced with fingers that tasted of her own juices. Stunned at his nerve, then by the salty tang, she obediently licked them clean. Only that, the mere act of sucking his fingers, drinking in herself—and it was the wildest, most unthinkable thing she had ever done.

When he sensed she’d had enough, Taranos undid her sash and hitched up her shift. But where she expected him to mount her, she never anticipated the hand closing around her wrist, tugging her up. “On your knees,” he said.

Ariadne bit her lip. Like an animal. Like her second consort, who had shoved into her from behind so he couldn’t see her bitter tears. “Taranos, I…”

As she started to comply, he stopped her. “I said, on your knees, not on all fours. Sit up, with your thighs spread apart.”

Then, as he came around behind her and encircled her waist with one arm, she understood. She held her shift bunched in one hand, hiked up to her thighs, but he made no attempt to remove it. Taranos just slid his way between fabric and bare skin, tracing a confident path to her nipple. Rolling it, pinching it between his fingertips, he caressed her relentlessly until she tensed and moaned.

His mouth fastened on the tender skin of her neck, raising a mark she would wear for days afterward. Against her buttocks, she felt his erect cock nudge her cleft, pressing hotly into her. She was open, vulnerable, and dripping wet from wanting him.

His breath caressed her inner ear. “Are you ready?”

“I’ve
been
ready, you fool.”

“That’s what I like: a woman who’s ready to claw my eyes out if I don’t hurry up and fuck her.”

A slight shift of position, then his cock pushed at her entrance and up into her. Ariadne waited, adjusted her hips so he fit more easily, and let him take over. From the way he angled his thrusts to the movements of his hands, he knew exactly what he was doing. One arm clasped her about the waist, bracing her against his chest, leaving only the other hand to explore. It roamed everywhere, up under her shift to knead her breasts, over her belly, always avoiding the place she most wanted him, until, panting, groaning with animal lust and frustration she seized his wrist and guided him between her thighs.

Her own fingers, helplessly sliding through her folds and touching herself where his cock pounded into her, didn’t suffice. Where she might have lain still and explored her body and found her center of pleasure, excitement fevered her senses. So when his practiced fingers opened her and began rubbing her nub back and forth, faster and faster, all she could do was shudder and beg him to make her come.

Even as the words escaped her, her body clenched and spasmed. Breathing hard against her neck, Taranos groaned into her tangled hair. His hips ground feverishly, his pelvis slamming into her buttocks, shoving deep inside as he climaxed. Ariadne, lying limp in his arms with every nerve tingling in satisfaction, felt his cum mingle with hers.

She scarcely noticed when his flaccid cock slipped out of her, or when he eased her onto her back among the soft sheepskins. Only the stiffness in her legs and the wet void where he had been reminded her that it was over. Sated, she let him remove her shift and cover her with the discarded cloak.

Just as she began drifting off, Taranos spooned up against her back. “You can be on top next time.”

“Next time,” she mumbled. “I’ve never tried it that way.”

“You haven’t?” Taranos didn’t sound tired at all. “You can pretend you’re a bull-leaper and I’m your bull.”

“Girl bull-leapers hardly have breasts.”

His lips touched her shoulder. “That’s a shame.”

Slowly, against her will, Ariadne stirred. Sleep could wait. “Sacred bulls have large horns.”

“Well, I have one very big one.”

She snorted. “All men say that.”

“Maybe, but it’s not every man who can satisfy you.”

“Taranos…” Had he only held his tongue and not boasted, it would have been perfect. Men didn’t seem to know when to stop. “You’ve had me. I agreed to see you, and you had me. Just let it be.”

Though she couldn’t see his face, she sensed his withdrawal, the slight tension in his arms where he held her. “Ariadne, is it so difficult to show me you care?”

She closed her eyes. “It’s better that I don’t.”

“Because you think you’ll lose me next spring? I told you before that I have no intention of ever being killed.”

Achaean kings kept their power through force of arms. No wonder a prince of Tiryns thought he could seize the lily crown of the Sacred King and hold it indefinitely, as long as he could kill all comers. “Taranos,” she said, turning toward him, “it doesn’t work that way. You might live another year, but after that…”

“Then what? Will the priests drug me as they do the sacrificial bull?”

Would they? “A Sacred King must die.”

“No, two men must fight for the honor of wedding the High Priestess, the Mother Goddess on Earth. One must die. I questioned Aktaios and Kitanetos very carefully. I’d never enter into a bargain without knowing all the pitfalls.”

Oh, how little he understood! Ariadne’s heart bled with the knowledge he obviously lacked. “Don’t you know the stories? In all those lands you’ve visited, don’t they tell how the Goddess’s love dies, how his soul flies to the Underworld where she can’t be with him? Don’t they tell how she begs the cold powers that rule the dead to return him so spring can come again?” Would that she could muffle the despair leeching through her explanation! “At least here the young men chosen are men the High Priestess doesn’t know, so she doesn’t have to care when they die.”

“I know the stories,” Taranos said patiently, “but the Goddess—whether you call her Demeter or Rea or Ashtoreth or Inanna or Aphrodite or Isis—knew her consort and loved him. What you’ve been doing isn’t in the spirit of what the Great Goddess should be.”

Having never heard such criticism, much less from a man, Ariadne did not know what to make of it. “It’s what I was taught, to never give all of myself.”

Taranos touched her arm. “Is that why you’re always so cold? Is it because you want to love me and are afraid, or because you’ve always been afraid? You have a choice, Ariadne. You can step down as High Priestess and become a woman again.”

Such a picture he painted, as joyous and hopeful as any fresco. Ariadne blinked away tears she never expected to shed. “It would still be too late for you, Taranos. You would still have to die as the Sacred King. Please don’t try so hard to make me love you. It isn’t necessary. The Great Mother demands only my submission. She demands only that I receive the Sacred King and be fruitful.”

His embrace became possessive, protective. “
My
honor demands that I treat you accordingly, as a wife, not a concubine. Had you been a little older when you became High Priestess, you would have understood more about the things that pass between a man and a woman.”

“Twelve is old enough to be a bride.”

Taranos grunted assent, then said, “Nobody expects a twelve-year-old girl to enjoy her wedding night. Perhaps it would have gone easier had I been your first.” Yet then, to her surprise, he shrugged, revealing the first hint of doubt. “Or perhaps it takes a woman many years to discover what she likes in a man. It was always the older women, I recall, who made the best lovers. No dewy-eyed girlish nonsense with them, and they had appetites that could drain a young man’s vigor faster than he could get it up again.”