Then she turned away. Her hips swayed enticingly and the plump, molded cheeks of her derrière rippled as she waded into the brook. Then they were covered as she stood in the water waist-high, caught some water in her hands and splashed it over the long, red tips of her breasts. She shivered visibly and the tips grew redder and longer. She laughed, a free, uninhibited laugh, brought the fingers of one hand together and strummed the tips of her breasts with obvious pleasure.
She ducked under the water completely for a moment. When she stood erect again, her lustrous, ebony hair was wet and spread out over her body like a fan. It stuck to the curve of her breasts and the red tips peeped out between the strands erotically.
I was aroused. I was about to be a lot more aroused. Thinking herself alone, Dymitria didn’t hesitate to give her feelings free reign.
She emerged from the pool and stretched out on the grass, lying on her back. Droplets of water glistened on her creamy flesh. Lying thus, her head thrown back, she stroked her breasts. Her hands slid further and further down her body as she was caught up in the sensation. Her long legs bent and unbent alternately, the knees rising and falling as her hips slowly writhed. Her hands drifted down over her hips, guiding them. Then the fingers trailed over the exquisite thighs, parting them and dipping into the apex of the triangle of soft, black curls.
Dymitria tossed more frantically now, one of her hands completely out of sight. I could hear her breathing grow heavier. Her body arched like a bow. It became very taut and stayed that way for a long moment. Then she laughed aloud, a long laugh, half a cry, and her nether-cheeks came down hard on the grass-once, twice, three times.
She lay still now, her breathing subsiding. After a moment she stretched like a cat and turned over on her stomach. She propped her head up with one hand under her chin, shielded her eyes against the sun’s glare with the other hand and surveyed the landscape. That’s when she first saw me.
Startled, Dymitria leaped to her feet. She darted behind a bush and looked at me again. “You were watching!” she called accusingly.
“I was.” I admitted it.
“Why didn’t you make your presence known?” Her face was indignant over the top of the bushes.
“I’m an erotic god,” I reminded her. “I would never interfere with such pleasure.”
“I don’t believe you’re really a god,” she said defiantly.
“You’ve seen the proof,” I reminded her.
“I’m not sure what I saw. I didn’t really have a chance to examine it.”
I was sorely tempted to tell her to come on up now and examine it at her leisure. But I couldn’t forget that she’d tried to kill me. Attracted as I was, I managed to hold on to a modicum of caution. Dymitria, however, soon dispelled it.
“If you are a god, then you must be immune to the charms of women,” she said.
“I’m not that kind of god,” I wavered.
“I’ve never known a god before.”
“What about Alexander?”
“Oh, come on. He’s not really a god, is he?”
“He thinks he is.”
“And you think you are.” There was a challenging note in her voice.
“I know I am.” I corrected her.
“Are you now?” She came out boldly from behind the bush and started up the hillock towards me. Her nude body took on the flush of heat in the sunlight. When she reached me I could see a few tiny beads of perspiration glistening in the deep cleavage between her breasts. Breathing hard, she stooped over and lifted the skirt of my tunic. Her breasts swayed deliciously as she stooped over me. “It really is gold,” she said with wonder. Her hand dropped and she grasped me. “But it doesn’t feel like gold,” she said, squeezing her fist gently in time with the throbbing.
That did it! It may have looked like gold, but it wasn’t really made of metal after all. I grabbed a handful of Dymitria’s hair and pulled her face to mine. Her lips were warm and clinging. They parted willingly for the duel of our tongues.
I pulled her to the grass and my hands moved over that luxurious body with a sense of touch that seemed to feed on itself with the feel of her soft, warm flesh. Her breasts were wondrous soft, but their long, ruby tips were hard and quivering and burning in my palms. Her legs grew feverish under my caresses and her eyes smoldered with desire. I stroked the lovely globes of her buttocks and she strained upwards, the ebony triangle thrashing wildly with the urgency of her passion. When I touched the near-purple length of her swelling clitoris, she cried out and dug her nails into my shoulders.
I moved over her now and her legs shot wildly into the air, locking around my neck as my golden godhood buried itself. We moved together then, rocking to a frantic rhythm and lost to everything but the pure sensation of the act. I felt like I was being consumed in a fiery furnace, yet nothing could have made me stop stoking that fire. Noth- ing, that is, except the final, ultimate explosion which seized us simultaneously and actually propelled our locked bodies down the slope of the hillock with its mad intensity. We lay there like that for a moment, exhausted, before we finally broke apart.
Catching my breath, I rolled away from Dymitria. My eyes had been closed and now I opened them. When they focused, it was with a shock that drove the recent pleasure right out of my skull.
Alexander the Great was standing a few feet from where we lay!
His face was like thunder! His whole body quivered with a jealousy too great for words. He held a naked sword in his hand. Slowly, a roar of rage built deep in his throat and finally burst from his lips. With it, he leaped for me. I jumped to my feet and started running.
I ran as hard as I could. I didn’t look back. I knew what was behind me. I had a feeling I was better off not knowing how close behind. Over the crest of the hillock, down the slope on the other side, across an open field, into a grove of trees-—I ran.
The land fell away again and I found myself scrambling down the sides of a gully. It was a moment before I realized it was the gully where the High Priest had hidden the ox-cart with the Gordian Knot the night before. I didn’t dwell on that fact. The swish of Alexander’s blade at my rear made me tumble into the gully with even greater haste. I dived into the camouflage we’d set up to conceal the cart. Alexander thrashed about behind me. His Greek curses rang in my ears. I got the cart between him and me, crouched down and hoped he wouldn’t see me. The hope was in vain. A sudden roar told me I’d been spotted. His sword came crashing down towards my head. I managed to move just in time. The blade whistled in my ear and slammed down, connecting precisely where the pole of the wagon was joined to the yoke.
The Gordian Knot was shattered!
I’d brought about the very act I’d tried to guard against. I’d led Alexander right to the cart and provoked him to smash the Knot. Instead of preventing the disastrous course of history, I’d provoked it!
Alexander swung his blade a second time. Wedged against the wheel of the cart, there was no way I could avoid it. The severing of my head from my shoulders seemed a foregone conclusion.
It seemed as inevitable as Alexander’s severing the strands of the Gordian Knot!
CHAPTER FOUR
There’s no business like show business!
“All right. All you Greek extras for the Persian rape scene line up over there. The Emperor wants to select the principals himself.” The speaker was a Roman centurion. The tongue he spoke was Latin. Fortunately, I speak Latin. “You there!” He leveled a finger at me. “Why are you on your knees like that with your hands on top of your head?”