The General's Virgin Slave (10 page)

"Silence!" He sat up suddenly and
grabbed her wrists. "I have endured enough of your defiant mouth.
Remember, Axa, you please me or you go to Gaius Damianus. And now
you will work even harder for my entertainment, since you schemed
to be here and your task was to seduce and then kill me. You have
much evil to make up for, Druid woman."

Wow, he really had taken an idea and
run with it. "For heaven's sake, you didn't exist to me until this
afternoon. I'm a second year history student, not a spy or a witch
or a seductress. Quite frankly, you have a wilder imagination than
mine if you think I could seduce anybody." She tried pulling her
wrists free, but his fingers tightened like a vise.

"From now on, you will
never say no to me. I will take you as I please, where and when I
please. Whatever
my
pleasure!"

She pulled against him so hard that
when he released her wrists she fell back to the bed.

"Your only concern from now on," he
said, "is my sexual contentment."

Amanda crawled as far as her chain
would let her go and sat there, breathing hard, furious. "If I am a
witch, aren't you afraid I might put a curse on you?"

He squinted at her, hands resting on
his hard, broad thighs. Even spent, she realized, his cock was an
impressive size. Everything about Marcus Cassius was larger than
life. Including his ego.

"I fear nothing, woman. Nor do I
believe in magical spells. The only power you have is pure sexual
allure. 'Tis not supernatural. And I have great willpower to resist
pussy when I wish to. No desire for you will ever overcome my good
sense. Whoever sent you to me underestimated the great Marcus
Cassius."

She gazed at him, half amused, half
enraged.

After using her so brutishly, he
yawned and settled into his bed, forgetting her.

Or pretending to.

Well, she'd see about that.

Chapter
Six

Thus began a battle of two strong
wills. The Roman general, intent on proving he could ignore her,
sent "Axa" to the slave quarters the following morning and decreed
that she should work alongside the others until she learned
gratitude and humility.

Humility. As if he even knew what that
meant!

Amanda put her mind to the work she
was given and didn't even look at him when he passed through the
atrium with muddy sandals, freshly marking the tiles she'd just
scrubbed clean.

In fact, the work helped her mind
settle. It gave her something practical on which to focus for a
while. After the shock of finding herself there and being captured
by Marcus, there hadn't been much time to catch her breath. As the
days passed with no sign of normalcy returning to her life, Amanda
decided to start planning for her future as a slave in this world.
She'd have to survive in it as best she could. Make friends, if
possible. Allies.

But the other female slaves were wary
of her and kept a careful distance. It seemed they too, like the
embittered Julia who oversaw their work, were doubtful of her
motives and jealous of the marked attention the general had shown
her. Julia, of course, took spiteful delight in her downfall and
when she found Amanda on her hands and knees cleaning a covered
passage she made the most of it.

"Kicked this out of his bed already,
eh? I knew his fancy wouldn't last for this sorry creature." She
pushed her foot between Amanda's legs, poking her sharply in an
intimate place with the toe of her sandal. "He soon tired of that
cunt."

Amanda bit her tongue and said
nothing. Flavian had quietly warned her to watch out for Julia's
sting. He called Julia a "viper" and now it was clear
why.

"He might not want you marked, slut,
but I can still hurt you." She moved her foot again, prodding her
arse harder. "A few bruises can easily be explained away." Now she
pressed the sole of her sandal on Amanda's left buttock, probably
leaving a dusty footprint. "If the general wasn't so particular
about his slaves, I'd let the guards have a go at you. That's what
they do in most houses when the slaves are mouthy." Then she leaned
over Amanda and hissed. "But once you're out of his favor for good,
then I can have my fun with you. And this." She showed Amanda a
stick with a pointed end, attached to a broken knife hilt. Then she
reached around and jabbed the point into Amanda's buttock. "Sluts
who don't heed me get pricked all over." She stuck it again in her
other buttock and laughed cruelly. "Outside and in, if you get my
drift. Now bend over and I'll show you where else it
goes."

Amanda swiveled around and punched
Julia in her gut. The woman dropped her makeshift weapon, slipped
on the wet floor and tumbled back onto her arse with a shocked,
breathless curse. "Oh, you'll get it now, slave," she
shrieked.

"We'll see who
gets it
." Amanda picked
up the stick, stepping firmly on the other woman's reaching hand
and grinding down hard with her foot. Suddenly a cluster of female
slaves appeared, as if they came out of the walls.

Julia lay in an undignified sprawl,
but none of the girls moved to help her up. They stood in a ring,
staring and pale, but not about to offer a hand to the
Viper.

Meanwhile, two soldiers, belatedly
aware of a revolt taking place, broke into a trot and headed down
the passage toward the group.

Amanda looked down at the older woman
who, while trying to get up had slipped again on the wet tiles. "I
won't tell the general that you had a weapon, Julia. Unless I have
to bring it to his attention. I hope, for your sake, that won't be
necessary."

"You would never dare."

"Oh yes I would. I'm not afraid of
him. And I'm certainly not afraid of an old whore." She dropped the
stick out of sight in her vessel of soapy water and by the time the
soldiers had arrived on the scene Julia, although still flustered,
was upright, yelling at them all to get back to work. Now that
soldiers were present to witness, she pulled herself together and,
after one last fierce scowl at Amanda, she walked away.

A few moments later one of the slave
girls approached again and pushed a sweet cake into her
hand.

After that they began to talk to her
and she learned that Julia had done the best she could to rouse
suspicion among the girls and make them think ill of the new
arrival.

Apparently Marcus taking her to his
bed on her very first night there had raised eyebrows and caused
much talk. Usually, slaves were trained and well-vetted before they
were allowed into his bed. So Julia was easily able to convince the
other girls that she must possess some sort of evil
witchcraft.

Now, of course, the woman would have
it out for her even worse than before. Amanda had no idea why the
female overseer took against her so immediately.

The following day she heard Flavian
warning the woman to leave her alone. Had one of the other girls
spoken up for her and told the slave-master about the incident in
the passage?

"The flame-haired witch should have
been made to serve with the rest of the women before he singled her
out in that fashion," Julia protested bitterly. "She was not ready.
She needs training."

"It was the general's
desire."

"But I told you she is a spy. Probably
an assassin. Now it seems he knows it too. Why does he keep her in
the villa?"

"It is not for us to question the
general."

No, thought Amanda grimly, that was
just the problem. No one ever brought that man down a peg or
two.

But the slaves had more to worry about
than her presence among them. Flavian went on to discuss the Spring
feast which Marcus Cassius hosted at his villa every year after
crop planting. A celebration of life and fertility, it sounded like
a bacchanalian affair with an abundance of everything— wine, food
and whores from the town fornice. When Amanda heard this she threw
her rag into the water vessel with a loud splash that made the
other slaves turn to look. Then she wrung it out hard with a hearty
grunt, before resuming a violent scrubbing of the mosaic
tiles.

He had all these female slaves at his
disposal, yet he hired whores too? The man ought to be stopped. If
all the stories she'd overheard of his stamina and sexual prowess
were even half true, she was surprised his knob didn't fall
off.

Of course, he invited all the
important people of Aquae Sulis to his spring feast, and this year
it would include Governor Damianus. The mention of that name gave
Amanda a chill. She did not want to come to that man's notice
again. The other slaves— now that they spoke to her— were full of
bloodthirsty tales about the governor and his temper and the
terrible punishments dealt to slaves who had displeased
him.

She kept her head down and got on with
the tasks she was given, but her mind explored the dreadful
possibility of Marcus handing her off to the governor. Surely he
wouldn't, would he? Perhaps he was just fat-headed enough to do it.
If he had so many other women, he didn't truly need her.

And that was what really smarted.
Amanda did not like to be bested by anyone. As Chrissy had said to
her, she was terribly competitive and couldn't stand to lose. When
Marcus banished her from his bed after that first night, she
suspected he must be using one of the other slaves. She saw him
striding about the villa, casting admiring glances at the other
women, while studiously ignoring her.

Flavian sent her to the training field
one morning with the water vessels and there she watched Marcus
riding, saw him instructing his soldiers in combat on horseback.
His strength and stamina was incredible. Many of his men wilted
under the sun, but he worked on for hours.

Amanda heard the wistful sighs of the
other slave girls who had also carried water out to the practice
field and, much to her annoyance, she knew exactly what they
felt.

* * * *

Everyone looked forward to the Spring
feast and the coming of warmer weather, but Marcus worried that the
arrival of a cunning female spy could signify an enemy uprising
ahead. What better chance would they have to catch him unawares
than during his annual feast, while he offered up prayers to the
gods? Well, they would not catch him with his guard
down.

As he had said to Axa, they
underestimated Marcus Cassius the Invincible, if they thought one
woman's untouched pussy would drive him to distraction.

Now, if only he could stop thinking
about her.

He had hoped to get the truth out of
Axa, but despite exiling her from his comfortable bed and handing
her off to Flavian for menial tasks, she stuck to her ridiculous
tale of being from some future world when the supreme Roman Empire
no longer existed. He had commanded that she be put to work with
the other household slaves, scrubbing floors, laundering clothes
and helping to prepare meals, but nothing quashed the pride out of
her and she stuck stubbornly to her story.

He should have her whipped, but he
could not bear the thought of her fine, silky skin being spoiled by
the cruel cut of the lash. Instead he decided to let her learn hard
work — something her smooth hands assured him she had never known.
Perhaps then she would appreciate the luxury of his bed and if she
wanted to sleep there again, she would spill all her secrets. And
stop arguing with him.

But by only the third day of her
"banishment" to the slave quarters, Marcus found himself day
dreaming of Axa's soft mouth, tight pussy and lush buttocks. Of her
full breasts and those enticing cherry nipples. Despite a full day
spent on the training field, working off his frustrations and
keeping the men on form for whatever troubles may come, he remained
restless.

Flavian waited to greet him in the
atrium as usual.

"Where is she?" Marcus demanded at
once. "The redhead slave," he added, although from the look upon
the old man's face he had no need to clarify.

"The slave girl, Axa, cleans the stone
steps in the peristyle, general."

"Hmph. I hope she completes her tasks
well, without complaint."

The slave master replied with a slight
equivocation, "She completes the tasks set."

So Marcus went out through the arch to
inspect her work and “accidentally" stumble upon her as she worked
on her hands and knees scrubbing the tiles of his peristyle. He had
told Flavian to allow her a short toga, in the simple style of his
other female slaves, but even in this garment she did not blend in
with the other women. Her looks and her demeanor set her above all
others and when he saw her there he felt his throat tighten, his
mouth go dry.

Over the past few nights he had
summoned several slaves to his bed, but none had pleased him enough
to erase thoughts of Axa or to make his cockerel crow. Now, as he
looked down at her, that elusive erection was immediate and almost
painful.

She wore her stunning, sunset hair
tied up today with thin leather bands. The collar remained around
her neck and a guard held the end of her chain while she worked.
Axa did not see him for he walked up to her from behind and she was
on her hands and knees, but the soldier saw him and quickly stood
to attention.