Chapter 7: Back In Time - 01
The dawn light, thin and disinterested, found Alya standing at the penthouse window, looking down at the city waking up. The shower had washed away the night’s sweat, but a deeper residue remained—a faint, lingering disgust at the cheapness of it all. Lucian’s gilded cage, his performative depravity, it was all so small. It scratched an itch, but it didn’t reach the bone.
She thought of Briv, asleep in their bed across town, his breathing slow and even. His love was a quiet river. But sometimes, she needed the storm surge. Sometimes, she needed to remember what it was to be a force of nature, to be consumed not by one man’s petty hunger, but by a raw, untamable appetite that matched her own.
Her mind slipped its moorings, drifting back through the centuries, past empires and oceans, to a time when power was not measured in digital transfers but in the grit under a sandal and the strength in a sword arm.
Rome, 100 AD.
The air was different there. Thick with the smell of roasting meat, cheap wine, and the musky tang of men who had marched all day. She remembered the young soldier, Marcus, his face still soft with youth but his forearms already corded with hard muscle. He’d found her near the forum, a foreign girl with too-knowing eyes. “Come,” he’d said, his grin flashing white in the dusky light. “My century celebrates. We have wine. You have… a face that could launch more than ships.”
He took her to a barracks annex, a low-ceilinged room hazy with smoke from a brazier. Ten, maybe twelve men were there, their tunics loose, their voices a roar of shared exhaustion and relief. They fell silent when she entered. Their eyes, sharp and assessing, tracked her every move.
She played the part of the wide-eyed traveler, the innocent caught in the lion’s den. She let Marcus ply her with rough red wine, letting it stain her lips. She smiled shyly at their jokes, letting her gaze linger just a second too long on the ones who held themselves with a quiet confidence: the grizzled optio with a scar down his cheek, the broad-shouldered hulk of a man they called Taurus, Marcus himself, buzzing with nervous energy.
“Dance for us,” one slurred.
She shook her head, demure. “I don’t know your dances.”
“Then take off your dress,” another growled, laughter following. It wasn’t a request; it was the tide turning.
She looked at Marcus, feigning alarm. He just nodded, his eyes dark. “It’s just a bit of fun.”
So she began. Slowly. She untied the simple belt at her waist, letting it slither to the packed-earth floor. She swayed, not to any music they could hear, but to a rhythm only she felt. Her hands slid up her own thighs, over the thin wool of her stola, teasing the outline of her hips. She let the fabric shift, granting a fleeting glimpse of ankle, of calf. Their breathing changed, becoming a ragged chorus. She owned the silence.
Then she pointed. “Him,” she said, her voice losing its shyness, gaining an edge of command. She pointed to the optio. “And him.” Taurus. “And you, Marcus. Stand up.”
Bemused, they obeyed. She approached them, her movements liquid. She didn’t ask. She untied the leather knot at the optio’s shoulder, her fingers brushing the rough, sun-leathered skin of his chest as his tunic fell away. She revealed a torso mapped with old battles. She did the same for Taurus, her small hands stark against his monumental frame. Finally, she turned to Marcus, her smile no longer innocent. She pulled at his tunic, baring his smooth, eager chest.
“Now me,” she said.
She turned her back to them and, with deliberate slown, untied the pins at her shoulders. The stola pooled at her feet. She stood naked in the firelight, her skin glowing like polished amber against the drab surroundings. A collective, sharp inhale. She turned to face them, utterly unashamed. “See?” she whispered. “Just flesh. Like yours.”
She walked to the optio first, her eyes locked on his. She sank to her knees in the dirt before him. His cock was already half-hard, thick and veined. She didn’t hesitate. She took him into her mouth, all the way to the root in one smooth, deep swallow. He groaned, a guttural sound that seemed to shake the room. She sucked him hard, her tongue working the frenulum, her head bobbing with a rhythmic intensity that made his knees buckle. She pulled off with a wet pop and moved to Taurus.
His was a monster, and she greeted it with a hungry gasp. She used both hands and her mouth, taking as much as she could, lapping at the broad head, making him curse in a language she didn’t know. She was a creature of pure appetite, servicing their cocks not out of submission, but as a conqueror claiming tribute. She took Marcus last, his erection slick from her saliva and the others’ precum. She sucked him tenderly at first, then fiercely, her fingers digging into his thighs, urging him deeper into her throat until he cried out.
“Fuck her,” someone rasped. It was all the permission needed.
The optio pulled her up by her hair, not roughly, but with absolute possession. He turned her, bent her over a low bench, and without ceremony, drove his cock into her cunt from behind. The invasion was brutal, perfect. She screamed, not in pain, but in raw, vibrant triumph. He pounded into her, each thrust jarring her whole body, the bench legs scraping in the dirt. She reached back, grabbing his scarred thigh, pulling him deeper.
Before he finished, Taurus pulled him aside. The big man spat on his hand, slicked his enormous cock, and pushed the head against her other entrance. “This too,” he grunted, more statement than question.
“Yes,” she snarled, pushing back against him. “Give it all to me.”
He breached her with a single, relentless thrust, stretching her impossibly wide, a blinding flash of exquisite pain that melted into a deep, fulsome ache. He fucked her ass with a steady, piston-like force, each stroke a conquest of its own. The room dissolved into a chorus of grunts, the slap of flesh, the smell of sex and sweat and smoke. Men jostled behind them, waiting their turn.
Marcus came to her front, sliding his cock into her mouth as Taurus claimed her from behind. She was filled, utterly, a vessel for their collective heat. She sucked Marcus in time with Taurus’s thrusts, gagging, tears streaming down her face, lost in a symphony of sensation. They swapped, they shared, they took her on the floor, against the wall, over the brazier’s heat. Someone came in her mouth, the salty bitterness flooding her throat as another man spilled inside her cunt, the warm spill mixing with the sweat.
It went on for hours. Until the fire died to embers and their energy was spent, leaving them in a heap of tangled, sated limbs on the dirt floor. She lay among them, sticky, sore, gloriously used. The young Marcus curled against her back, his hand possessively on her breast even in sleep.
That was a feast. That was being devoured by life itself. Not caged, curated fire, but a wildfire meeting a field of dry grass.
The memory faded, leaving a phantom ache in her bones, a ghost of true fullness.
Behind her, a door clicked open. Lucian stood there, dressed in a silk robe, his face drawn. He looked at her, standing silhouetted against the morning, and saw not a woman, but a monument. Something that had existed long before him and would watch his dust settle.
“Last night…” he began, his voice hoarse.
She cut him off, not turning from the window. “Last night was a transaction. You paid in spectacle. I gave you a lesson.” Finally, she looked at him, her black eyes reflecting the sterile city light. “You tried to cage fire, Lucian. You got burned. And you didn’t even get warm.”
She walked past him, toward the penthouse door, picking up her coat from a chair.
“Where are you going?” he asked, the question sounding small in the vast, empty space.
“Home,” she said, without looking back. “To my musician. He’s composing a new piece. It’s about the silence between the notes. You wouldn’t understand it.”
The door closed behind her with a soft, final click. Lucian remained, staring at the space where she had been, the memory of her laughter from the dungeon now just another echo in a room full of them. The city below yawned, indifferent, already forgetting.
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