Bred by the Spartans (3 page)

The steps seemed to go on forever, though there were only twenty-four of them, really. The numbers of things on Olympus, and in the sanctuaries of the gods down in the lands of men, always possessed great significance. Thaleia tried to keep her fear in check by wondering what the twenty-four steps meant—twelve was the number of the gods, and twice twelve must mean that Aphrodite claimed twice their power.

What was that power? At the top of the steps at last, Thaleia saw only an empty colonnade, with a stairway leading down from a few feet in front of her, into what must be the halls. There was a kind of cracking sound, and another, even louder moan, and she heard Eros (it must be he) say, “Is that nice, my lady? Do you like having Lord Ares’ cock inside your wanton cunt?”

Then she heard another, much deeper voice, say gruffly, “Quiet, boy. Who is whipping this naughty woman, you or I?”

“You, stepfather!” Eros exclaimed, laughing.

“An empty colonnade,” Zeus said behind Thaleia. “To tell us all that her true sanctuary is in our loins. Sometimes she goes too far, but I must admit that the gesture is worthy of an Olympian goddess.”

From where she stood, through the pillars to the East, on the other side of the colonnade, where the sun was just beginning to come up, Thaleia could see the place where the sheer cliffs that guarded the enclave from assault, or even discovery, began. The world opened up there, and she could see, far out and far below, the curve of the terrain of the lands of men green with grass, grain, and vines and trees, and rolling gently with hills. And she would go there, Zeus had said. How?

“Down the steps now, girl,” Zeus said. “Tell the Graces that you are to be prepared for Zeus’ discipline and pleasure. I will see you at sundown.”

“What, my lord? You are not…?”

“The sun is rising, girl. I promise you, as I did a little while ago, a long night with my cock in your backside—that is what I always give disobedient girl-goddesses, when I break them and send them down the mountain. And you’ll feel my whip tonight as well, I promise, and take me deep in your throat. But when a girl comes to Aphrodite’s halls, she must be prepared before she can give me pleasure; Aphrodite requires it.”

The father of gods and men gave Thaleia yet another thunderous spank on her bottom, and Thaleia yelped.

“Now get down there. Remember, you are to be prepared for Zeus’ discipline and pleasure.”

Then Zeus was gone, as swift as the wind. Thaleia stood alone at the top of the steps leading down into the halls of Aphrodite. “One last stroke,” she heard Lord Hephaestus say, below, and then there was the cracking sound, and she heard the female voice cry out in a strange kind of agony that made Thaleia feel faint.

Thaleia, without even willing it, began to run across the colonnade. She would jump off the other side, and it would hurt, but being immortal she would survive, and she could hide, invisible, in the lands below.

But suddenly she found that she couldn’t continue to run… no, that wasn’t it. She found that she didn’t want to run further, because it felt too good to be here in this colonnade. A pleasant feeling seemed to run through her whole naked body, and as she felt it, the sensation grew in strength until she fell to her knees, helpless with pleasure. To her shock, she realized that the feeling came from her shameful places; it seemed to find a center at the top of her tender cleft, and she found that she was powerless to keep her fingers away from that center. She fell forward, and supported herself on her left hand while she shamelessly, to her horror, rubbed her maiden furrow, moaning with pleasure just as she had heard the goddess moaning below.

Unable to resist the power of the terrible pleasure, she put a finger inside the grotto that was lower down, then another, and cried out at the feeling. Why had she not wanted Zeus to put his huge cock there?

“Your middle finger in your bottom now, girl,” came a voice that was somehow both sweet and cold, behind her. It was Aphrodite.

She heard a strange sound, like a swishing in the air, and then she felt Aphrodite’s lash, full across her backside.

“Put your middle finger in your bottom, Thaleia,” Aphrodite said.

“Ah! No, please… I… I can’t.”

The lash fell again.

“Zeus is going to put something much, much bigger there tonight, girl.” The lash found her thighs now.

“Oh, heavens…”

“Do it, Thaleia. Do it now.”

Thaleia screamed, and found her little ring with her middle finger and, with a sob, penetrated herself there. The lash fell one more time, and then suddenly the entire universe seemed to come undone, and the pleasure that shot through Thaleia’s body was too great even for an immortal to survive. She collapsed onto the green marble that made the floor of the colonnade.

“Good girl,” said Aphrodite, mockingly. “Now get up and come with me.”

Chapter Three

When Thaleia rose and turned around, she saw the stunningly beautiful goddess of lust—how well she understood now the realm of which Aphrodite truly was queen!—looking at her coldly, a whip with three leather tails bound to a golden handle in her right hand. Aphrodite looked like a woman of twenty-five years, whose girlish beauty had not yet departed, but who had developed the allure of an adult. Her hair was of a chestnut hue, and it flowed down the back of her rose-colored peplos, gathered by an electrum comb at the nape of her neck. Aphrodite was no bigger than a mortal woman of average height, but in her sky blue eyes sat such authority over the lives of gods and men that Thaleia trembled in fear, as well as with the remnants of her strange, explosive climax.

“Lovely,” said Aphrodite. “A shame you resist. Zeus would have set you up on your own island, I am sure, if you had just let him fuck you like a good girl does.” Aphrodite regarded her for a moment, then said, in a matter-of-fact way, “You saw your cousin with Zeus and Poseidon, I am told, so you will have a special doom: you will never find true satisfaction with a single god or man, alone.”

The great goddess turned and walked away. Thaleia, to her confusion, could not tell if she followed out of fear, out of desire, or simply because the power of the goddess continued to overwhelm her will as it had when Thaleia had fallen to her knees with pleasure.

Thaleia followed Aphrodite back to the top of the stairs that led downward, and then down those stairs, hewn from the rock of the mountain. Covering the walls and visible in the strange roseate glow that seemed to emanate from the air itself were frescoes that Thaleia could not at first comprehend, but which she suddenly realized with a fierce blush were of the loves of the gods, but depicting them engaged in their fucking, their spanking, and their whipping.

In one fresco she saw a goddess who could only be Leto, mother of Apollo, so beautifully flaxen and flowing was her hair, kneeling before Zeus with his cock in her mouth. Thaleia remembered what Aphrodite had said about the island, and realized that she must have been referring to Leto, to whom Delos was now sacred. With a kind of shocked pride, Thaleia realized that the goddess of lust had compared her to one of the fairest goddesses in the pantheon. Thaleia was red-haired and green-eyed herself; her sister Argeia had the same eyes, though Argeia’s locks were dark as night, and her breasts were small but pert. Lord Hermes had once given her a spank, through her chiton, at a festival and said that she had better stay out of Zeus’ way. If only she had remembered that advice last night, when Argeia had made the dare.

In a fresco on the opposite wall, Semele, mother of Dionysus, received Zeus in his full panoply. The brilliance of the fresco painter (it could only be one of the Muses, Thaleia supposed) depicted the Theban princess’ dying moment, as Zeus’ true lightning bolt, the same titanic cock that Thaleia knew would take her bottom’s maidenhead that very night, filled her, and broke her mortal body apart in the moment of the fucking.

The stairs led down to an entrance hall, where the three Graces waited, in their naked loveliness.

“Prepare her for discipline and pleasure by Lord Zeus,” said Lady Aphrodite to the Graces, and walked, without looking back at Thaleia, through the doorway on the far side of the room, and into the darkness beyond. The rose glow of this room seemed, in the distant chamber into which Aphrodite had just stepped, to give way to a fiery redness that frightened Thaleia just with the intensity of the color, which seemed to flicker in a room that seemed otherwise entirely dark, and also vast.

Suddenly, from that same doorway, Eros flew into the room and landed right in front of her, dodging through the Graces as a swallow darts through a colonnade. Thaleia felt very strange at the same moment Eros stopped his flight and looked at her. Something about the mere presence of the god seemed to have a powerful effect on her mind.

“Hello, sweet thing,” Eros said in a voice that crystallized the influence his mere divine presence exerted: an overwhelming feeling of weakness—of feebleness, even—in the face of a power so great that its owner need not even look like he should be taken seriously. In the guise of a boy who looked no more than fourteen, despite being in reality countless ages old, with wings whose blindingly white feathers coruscated in the roseate light of his mother’s halls, the raw, basic power of the cosmos confronted Thaleia. Eros could not do anything he wanted himself, but he could make everyone else in the cosmos, on Olympus or in the lands of men, do his bidding. That kind of power, Thaleia realized, truly was power.

Thaleia fell to her knees, as she had up above in the empty colonnade of the sanctuary of Aphrodite, and knew that it had been Eros there as well, for the pleasure that coursed through her veins making her want more and more of it, making her touch herself between her thighs now again, in front of Eros and the Graces, and moan shamelessly, was precisely the same.

What was it? What did Eros make her want?
Oh, heaven
,
she thought, as a vision came into her mind of what she wanted.
No, not that
. Thaleia saw herself in Clea’s place, over the dining couch in the
andron
of Zeus’ palace, with Poseidon in front and Zeus behind. Thaleia saw herself full of divine cock and begging for more; begging for the whip, begging to be fucked harder.

Thaleia looked at Eros’ feet, as she helplessly rubbed and rubbed at the most sensitive spot, at the top of her tender private furrow. “Please… please…” she gasped.

“The funny thing,” Eros said, in a conversational tone, “is that she thinks she’s saying ‘Please stop,’ but she’s really saying ‘Please don’t stop.’ ‘Please fuck my cunt, my bottom, my mouth. Please beat me and then take me. Please humble me, and make me serve your lust until your lust is satisfied through my pretty body.’”

Thaleia looked up at Eros, and saw that he was looking down at her not in cruelty but in a kind of detached pity. She saw him give a little nod, and suddenly the terrible pleasure left her body, and she fell to the floor, sobbing.

“By the authority given me by my mother, and with the approval of Lord Zeus, father of gods and men, I curse you to a mortal life of the most degrading lust. The sight of you will make every man, full of the desire that comes from me, wish to ravish you and to use you for his pleasure to the furthest measure of humiliation.”

“What? Oh… Lord Eros… please…”

Eros turned again to the Graces, with a sad smile. “Again, she thinks she refuses, when one only has to hear her voice to know that Thaleia here has no need at all of my encouragement for her own part.” He turned back to Thaleia. “Nevertheless this power is mine, and the curse must find your own body and soul as well. You shall lust after their ravishment, and above all you shall lust after the double ravishment of two strong men, but, being still in your heart the fine young goddess you have learned to be here on Olympus, you may never confess it.”

He turned now to go, but said to the Graces as he floated slowly back among them, “It’s more fun that way anyhow. More erotic, if I say so myself.”

Then, “Goodbye, Thaleia,” he called back over his shoulder. “Have fun with Zeus tonight.”

Eros left the room through the doorway that seemed to lead to the main hall, from which the flickering red light still seemed to emanate. Thaleia had begun feeling very strange, in quite a different way to how she had felt when Eros had filled her with the terrible yearning pleasure. She looked up at the lovely Graces and said, pleadingly, “What’s happening to me?”

“You’re turning mortal, sweet girl,” said the red-haired Grace. “It won’t hurt, but you’re going to feel very weak for the next hour or so.” She and the blond Grace helped Thaleia to her feet then, and led her to a little sleeping couch in a corner of the entrance hall. “You just rest here,” said the red-haired Grace. “We’ll be back to get you for your preparation.”

Thaleia’s head felt woozy, as if clouds were coming in her ears to take up residence, hiding from her things she thought she knew, about Olympus and about the gods. “How…? What is it?” she asked the Grace. It didn’t feel bad. She had always thought it would feel bad, if this ultimate humiliation happened to you, if you did something so against the will of an Olympian god or goddess that he or she turned you mortal and banished you. It just felt like her body was becoming more sensitive. Suddenly things seemed to matter, more than they had just a few hours before, when she and Argeia had decided to stay up all night. Why would you want to stay up all night, she wondered now, distractedly. You’d be tired all the next day.

“Well,” said the kind red-haired Grace, “we don’t understand it, really, because it’s never happened to us, but we’ve watched it happen to several goddesses. We think it’s because when Lord Eros’ power grows inside you, you don’t care about the same things anymore.”

But now Thaleia was too sleepy to hold her head up.

* * *

The dark-haired Grace stroked her shoulder to wake her up. “It’s time to prepare you, Thaleia,” she said.

They led her into a little room that opened off the entrance hall. Inside was a strange sort of a couch, upon which the Graces laid Thaleia; this couch had short raised beams extending up from its surface. Over the smooth tops of these beams the Graces urged Thaleia’s knees, so that her private places were spread open before them.