Pure Healing (9 page)

She was so swollen and tight inside, even the width of two fingers seemed too much, but slowly he felt her body accommodate the intrusion, relax and accept him. His thumb stroked gently on her nub while the pads of his fingers found the swollen hardness inside of her. As he rubbed with more pressure, both inside and out, she undulated her hips with encouragement.
His body tensed abruptly in anticipation just before hers tightened and spasmed around his hand. She gasped softly as her release washed over them both, the scent of her passion filling the air around them, mingling with his own. His breath strangled on a groan in response, his cock jerking powerfully within her grasp, though his own release yet eluded him. He ground his teeth together to prevent from shouting at the excruciating pain as his entire body locked and tensed through her orgasm, becoming one giant muscle cramp.
Slowly, they let go of each other, but she remained curled against his chest.
“Thank you,” she said when her heartbeat calmed, and placed a tender kiss on his throat.
As the pain gradually subsided, Valerius felt he should be the one thanking her. For no one had ever shared such an intimacy with him.
Not like this. Never like this.
When her pleasure became his own. When her radiant goodness overcame his nightmares, fears, and centuries-old pain. She was his miracle, he thought as her breathing evened out in slumber.
She was his savior.
*** *** *** ***
Sometime before 200 B.C. Outskirts of Rome.
Valerius yanked with all his might on the chains that secured him against the prison wall.
Though his entire body was one large, gaping wound from the rigors of battle a few hours before, he willed his strength not to leave him, not until he got free and slit the throats of the fuckers who did this to him.
Only a few hours ago, his father was still among the living, badly injured but breathing. He’d half dragged, half carried the aged gladiator from the bloody arena down to the pits below, the crowds’ cheers still ringing loudly above ground. Valerius could have cared less about his victory. All he wanted was to get his father to the healers. With every step, every trickle of blood, he felt his father’s life bleed slowly away.
But when he returned to the pits he was waylaid by their master, a bald, ruddy man with beady eyes and double chins.
“You ingrate!” the odious little man erupted, striking Valerius with his brass-knuckled fist.
Taken aback by the unprovoked assault, Valerius staggered off balance and almost dropped his father hard onto the dirt ground.
“Take him!” the master ordered, pointing to Valerius’ burden. Four armed soldiers came forth and pried the fallen gladiator from Valerius’ grasp, knocking him back with the blunt hilt of their swords.
“He needs a healer, my lord,” Valerius urged, thinking that perhaps their master’s displeasure, though he had no clue as to its cause, extended only to him, that his father would be spared.
“He needs to fulfill his bargain,” the enraged slave owner hissed, then gestured to the two soldiers holding the unconscious gladiator.
Before Valerius could comprehend what was happening, one of the soldiers held his father upright while the other bared his blade and slit it in one clean strike across the gladiator’s throat.
“Nooo!” Valerius rammed forward with enough force to escape the clutches of the two guards restraining him, but the soldier with the unsheathed blade turned quickly and swiped it in a horizontal arc to block Valerius’ momentum.
The blade cut a long gash across the boy’s stomach and he lost his footing, giving the two guards behind him the opportunity to catch him around the shoulders and twist his arms behind his back, restraining him once again.
Valerius watched horrified as the soldier holding his father dragged him by the feet deeper into the pits, presumably to be dumped in the bin with all the other dead bodies.
“Why?” he cried, staring after his sire and falling to his knees.
“Why?” the nasty little man echoed. “Why! Because he is supposed to be dead! Because we made a deal! It was supposed to be his final battle, a glorious battle like no other, and he was supposed to die a glorious death!”
The master rounded on Valerius and grabbed his chin, forcing the boy to face him.
“But you, you little maggot, you ruined all my welllaid plans with that heroic rescue of yours. Do you know how much gold I lost because of you? I’d bet the entire enterprise on this battle!”
“But the crowd cheered,” Valerius whispered, tears of bewilderment and frustration and anguish filling his eyes, “they approved.”
“To what end!” the master thundered. “It is all a game! And. You. Sabotaged. My. Hand!” The master punctuated each screech with a swinging fist against Valerius’ head.
Then he bent down to the slave boy’s level until his bloated visage was not one inch from Valerius’ face.
“You stupid, stupid little shit,” the master spat, practically foaming at the mouth like a mad dog. “If you let your pater die like we planned, the profits would have been enough to free you both, and your pathetic womenfolk. But now, oh no, now you’re going to PAY!” the master shouted with quivering vengeance.
“I’m going to sell your ass to the highest bidder, and I don’t care if they use you for a potty urn. I’m going to whore your mother and sister out. They can kiss their peaceful little farm life goodbye.”
Valerius struggled anew and tried to break free, but the pressure on his arms behind his back was unrelenting, forcing him to stay on the ground.
The master inhaled deeply and straightened, appearing to find some small semblance of calm, his rage somewhat subsiding.
“Take him to the dungeons,” he ordered the guards, “and see that he’s in too much pain to even think of getting free.”
The guards dragged Valerius away, chained him to the wall of a square, corner cell and proceeded to rain pain upon his weakened body, with their fists, their boots, their daggers. They knew what they were doing, for they left him no mortal wounds, just enough to put him out of commission for a time.
Now, Valerius leaned his head back and closed his eyes. He knew his father would never have agreed to his own death. He had too much fight left in him, too much life yet to live. And he loved his wife too much to leave her. Loved his daughter. His son.
Valerius blocked out his anguish and tried to focus on the immediate future. He must break free before the master acted upon his threats against Valerius’ family.
He must protect them at all cost.
A sennight, perhaps more, passed while Valerius bided his time and rebuilt his strength in his
windowless cell. His keepers kept him alive on broth, stale bread, and occasionally, moldy cheese and half rotted fruit, the rubbish that the servants threw out at the end of the day. But he ate everything they tossed at him and worked to store up a reserve, forcing his body to absorb every last morsel.
During this time, the master brought various people to look him over, staying true to his words to sell Valerius to the highest bidder.
There were slave traders who poked and prodded him, but deemed him too scrawny to get much hard labor out of. He was still a boy growing into his own body, his lanky frame and long limbs dangling awkwardly from the chains.
There were more polished versions of the traders who procured personal slaves for wealthy patrician households. But they reared back in aversion when he bared his teeth and emitted threatening animalistic growls. Too unrefined and feral to be a personal slave, they decided.
With every failed showing, Valerius received a vicious beating for denying the master the payment he felt due. And so Valerius bided his time, plotting his escape, teaching the bones of his hands and feet through repeated, painful exercise to bend and contort in ways they never had before.
Then one day, just as he was almost able to wriggle loose of one manacle, the heavy wooden door to his cell opened with a bang. In marched the master with a team of four heavily muscled and armed guards.
This was new, Valerius thought with a tilt of his head. Usually the entourage of brutes and the shower of meaty fists followed visits from prospective buyers, not before.
And then the guards parted to reveal a man and a woman, both expensively dressed in the finest patrician robes.
Valerius could see in the dim light afforded by the torches in the prison hall that the woman was tall and blonde, the man of an equal height, but dark and stocky. They seemed to glide above the bloodstained dirt ground as they stepped lightly forward, their calculating eyes riveted on his person.
“So this is the boy,” the master all but spat out in disgust, “you can try him out before you pay if that’ll seal the deal.”
Valerius raised his head, alerted to the malicious tone in the master’s voice.
The woman stepped closer to her quarry and gestured for one of the guards to bring forth a torch. When the firelight illuminated Valerius’ face, she gasped with delight, “Oh my, but I do believe this one has promise beneath all that grime, my husband.”
The man moved closer as well and gazed upon Valerius with the same avaricious gleam in his eyes, “You may be quite right, my dear, you have a discerning eye indeed.”
Valerius bared his teeth and growled his most ferocious growl, but the woman only laughed behind her hand.
“Oh he has spirit, this young one, how fun he’ll be to break.”
The man nodded in agreement and smiled slyly at his partner. “Shall we give him a trial run and see if he lives up to his promise?”
The woman seemed to enjoy that idea immensely, for she gave the man a wet, smacking kiss on the mouth.
A bead of sweat trailed down Valerius’ spine as deadly foreboding descended upon him. But he had little time to dwell on that sharp stab of fear before a wide belt wrapped around his throat and cut off all the air.
When he came to, he found himself laid flat on his back on a wooden bench, his legs spread apart on either side, bent at the knees, his feet flat upon the ground. He was held down by a guard at each shoulder and a third at his head, holding it to the bench with the belt that was still clenched around his neck.
And he was naked. Completely and utterly vulnerable.
Valerius began to struggle with everything he had, but the guards held fast and the cinch around his neck weakened him the more he fought. Breathing heavily, he could only watch, helpless, from the corner of his eye as the woman approached him with a jar of something pungent in her hands.
She sat upon the bench just below the juncture of his thighs and proceeded to spread the slimy stuff she spooned from the jar over his genitals.
Valerius was mortified. What was she doing? Why was she touching him there? He’d only discovered what his penis was capable of at the age of twelve when it stood straight up from his groin one hot morning. He’d tended to it shyly and furtively since then, but his small pleasures were painfully private, though he suspected his father knew what he was doing when he stayed too long in the bath hall.
This woman had no right to touch him there. He’d rather be gutted with a spatha than bear her hands on him. Valerius struggled anew and tried to kick out at her, but the choke hold on his throat grew tighter and his efforts quickly faded with exhaustion.
She held his penis with both hands and began to stroke and squeeze its entire length, harder and faster until the thing grew enormous and swollen and painfully erect.
Valerius could barely countenance what was happening.
He didn’t want this!
But his body betrayed him. The ointment she’d rubbed over his genitals was stinging like a fiery rash, but it made his penis elongate and swell despite the horror that froze his mind.
“Look at that,” he heard the man say as the patrician stepped closer to view his wife’s progress. “Praise the gods but he’s a fine young stallion. Have you ever seen the like?”
“Happily, I have not, my love,” the woman tittered in response, “I can’t wait to try him out.”
Valerius heard a throat clearing just beyond his personal hell.
“Just remember, you break him, you pay double,” the master put in, then abruptly silenced when the man threw him a pouch of coins.
“For the trial use,” the patrician said, then turned back to his wife, now gathering up the folds of her stola and positioning herself above Valerius, “this one is worth it.”
As she grabbed his penis and rubbed it against her nether region, Valerius felt sick at the fluids that seeped from her body onto his. Before he could brace himself, she came down fully astride him, taking his length deep within her body.
“Aaaahhh,” she cried, then awkwardly rammed her hips against his as if to get a better seat. “He’s so large he barely fits. Just… Just a little more. Oh gods, I can’t even take all of him inside!” She laughed hysterically, overjoyed.
After a few more bungling attempts, she seemed to find her stride, though Valerius could feel the tip of his penis bending at an agonizing angle within her. Every movement she made hurt him terribly.
She groaned in ecstasy and began to ride upon him, squeezing his flesh and slapping her moist thighs jarringly against his hips, moving up and down, forward and back.
Valerius felt his throat close around the tears that threatened and struggled to breathe even as he wished for death to blot out the misery and
humiliation.
After a long, bruising ride, she stiffened suddenly and let out a keening wail, her inner muscles clenching painfully around his erection.
Was it over? Valerius dared to hope. He breathed more easily as she clambered inelegantly off of him, straightening her robes in the process.
“Well,” she said shakily, “that was certainly worth every last dinar in that pouch.” She smoothed her hair away from her face, the knot at her nape having come loose from her jaunty ride.
“My turn, then, my love,” her partner said in a covetous voice, as he threw a second bag of coins to the master’s awaiting hands.
Valerius was pulled up by his hair and shoved roughly to face the wall where he had been chained for the duration of his imprisonment. He could barely hold himself upright much less try to fight off the guards’ restraining hands. His knees buckled and he would have fallen if not for the manacles they secured once again around his wrists, holding him up in a half stance.
Again, heavy hands held him in place flush against the dungeon wall. His legs were kicked apart and his ankles secured, until he stood spread like a virgin sacrifice before the gates of Tartarus. There was some rustling and jangling and what sounded like a coin belt falling to the ground. And then Valerius felt the man’s hands clamp upon his hips a moment before something blunt and hard stabbed into his body.
Valerius bit down hard on his tongue to keep the whimper of pain from escaping. He would not let them see him break, he vowed.
He would never give them the satisfaction of knowing his pain!
The stabbing continued at a steady pace, harder, deeper, faster. The man’s rutting hips pushed Valerius into the wall, the force of his movements scraping Valerius’ naked torso against the rough, jagged bricks, leaving scratches, cuts and bruises on the boy’s chest, stomach, thighs, and even his still swollen erection.
After what seemed like an interminable period of time, when Valerius had grown numb and disoriented from the abuse, the man heaved one final push and bellowed his release. Stomach acid gurgled up Valerius’ esophagus as he felt the man’s filthy cum jettison into him.
Amidst the heavy panting and the woman’s fervent whispers, the master threw down his demand, “Five hundred gold pieces, and you can use him to your little black hearts’ content. He’s young, just over fourteen. He’s got a long useful life ahead of him.”
“Done,” the man said without hesitation. “Shall we retire to your receiving chambers to sort out the details of the transaction?”
“Come right this way. And while you’re here, I’d like to show you a few other morsels…” The master’s voice faded away, along with the footsteps of the guards and the Roman nobles.