Her head began to move from side to side on the divan. Her legs released his waist and swung down, flattening into the couch and then gripped him again before falling away, almost at right angles to her body.
Her crotch was running with moisture. Cesare's fingers slipped from it and ran up the crease between her buttocks. He pulled the buttocks apart and she gave a start of passion through her moaning. He plunged a finger against the tight, warm, puckering of her anus and felt it give and his fingertip break through to soft, tender flesh.
“Oh, oh, oh!” she gasped again and again.
She began to writhe as if in a paroxysm. It must be now, Cesare was able to think as he drummed into her, pulling back and then thrusting in his whole length in a slow, grinding crush.
She opened her eyes and looked at him desperately. Her eyes seemed to be speaking to him, loving him, wanting him, abandoning herself to him. Her mouth opened and her tongue came out?a long, point-tipped, moist and perfectly smooth tongue. Cesare lowered his lips to hers and bit the tongue gently. He ground in with slow, strong strokes. He could feel his penis swelling in a hot tingling expansion. He couldn't keep his mouth on hers and drew up, his hands under her buttocks, pulling them up off the divan, against his loins.
She wriggled furiously, her shoulders quivered, and her breasts under his eyes. She groaned and looked at his eyes in a last gleam of passion and then her mouth opened in a great circle, her head dropped back, her thighs clasped him and she emitted a loud, aching gasp and another and another, dwindling away into body-racking sighs.
Still holding her buttocks in his hands, fired by the sight of her fulfillment, Cesare, himself, trembled on the brink of release. His penis was chafing against the flesh of her passage and his loins were screwed up in a turmoil of pre-explosion. Her beautiful body, heaving with passionate sighs, was in his hands. He looked down and saw her thighs hanging over his hands as he held her bottom, and saw his prick, inflamed and wet, disappearing into her red, loose lips. Her breasts swayed and heaved below him and that narrow waist was heaving too, above the hips that he held up slightly off the bed.
He thrust savagely in and felt his knob growing and growing as if it would burst into a thousand pieces. He ground slowly, slowly, extracting every iota of sensation from the long, slow stroke. His breath was rising up from his chest, rising up through his throat at the same time that his knob was expanding in unbearable torture. He felt the quick fire dart in his loins and come racing through. His mouth opened wide as the breath finally, suddenly, reached it. He shattered his sperm up, up into her belly as the breath broke from his throat, twisting his mouth out into an agonized explosion. He felt the pressure of her thighs renewed, fleetingly, heard a faint gasp echoing a recognition of his orgasm.
For several seconds he pumped into her, seeming to loose all the juices of his pent up body into that lovely, waiting receptacle. Then, slowly he collapsed on her warm, cushioning flesh and felt her arms encircle him gently and her lips, light and tender on his cheek.
Later, nude still, she preceded him as they walked to the private chamber Cesare had been allotted off the banquet hall. Watching her buttocks swaying and rounding under the slim, taut waist, Cesare wondered if the Chief Councillor meant it when he said it would be worth getting a stiletto in one's ribs if one could be sure of fulfillment first. Looking at her thighs, slenderly moving under the rounded voluptuousness of the buttocks, he felt pretty sure he meant it.
CHAPTER 4
It was a very cheerful Cesare Borgia that directed his forces for the storming of the citadel the following day. He was to have the delight of Maria's company for the remainder of his nights at Imola. She had fallen for him and was his to do with as he wished. In his mind he was even turning over plans to establish her near him when he finally settled in a permanent headquarters after the campaign.
So touched and pleased by his success had Cesare been that he'd even refused himself the satisfaction of giving the Chief Councillor an account of his conquest.
“She is, indeed, a fiery one,” was the only comment he would make when discreetly pressed by his host.
With a concentration equalling that of his lovemaking of the night before, Cesare set about the quelling of the citadel.
His lieutenants had suggested a storming of the walls immediately a breach appeared. But the Duke, with some acute questioning, was able to establish that munitions in the citadel were not very plentiful and were likely to give out in a very few days.
Content with his host and his companion of the nights, and ever sparing of the lives of his men who would have to cross a deep moat in order to reach a breach in the walls, he settled down to a siege, maintaining a steady bombardment, producing a breach from time to time, which, those inside, panic-stricken at the thought of a resultant assault, rushed rashly to repair, exposing themselves to a deadly fire from the Borgian troops.
The Borgian army, after a week of women-less nights, were very happy, in turn, to remain in a town long enough to win over those maidens who were conserving of their reputation in the first encounters.
For four days the siege continued. The last breaches in the walls were not repaired and it was doubtful whether Dionigio di Naldo, the rebellious captain of the guard, could risk losing any of his dwindling number of men to see to them.
Those days of constant cannon fire from outside, dwindling ammunition and men inside, wore down the defenders with an inescapable psychological inevitability. They had little hope of relief from Forli which was too busy preparing its defense as the next on the Duke of Valentinois' list and they were surrounded by a vast sea of Borgian troops. There was no hope of victory and very little hope of holding out until Cesare tired and moved on leaving just a covering force which might afford some hope, at least, of escape.
At the end of the four days of concentrated pressure, during which he was able to profit from no risks taken by his besiegers, di Naldo begged for a parley.
Within a few hours he had made a formal surrender of the citadel, Cesare having, generously and not without political acumen, granted a safe conduct to his garrison.
Joy at yet another triumph was tempered in the Borgian ranks with a reluctance to leave what had proved to be such a sexual haven. But lusty men will find lusty women no matter where and Forli was likely to prove as welcoming as Imola once the amazon Countess had been removed.
CHAPTER 5
Countess Caterina Sforza-Riario was often described as a virago. She was certainly beautiful, severe and of a fiery independence. Life had hardened her. She had seen her father murdered by patriots in Milan Cathedral and her husband, Girolamo Riario, butchered by a mob in the very city she now defended. Her second husband, too, had been killed by a band of rebels. She had ordered a massacre of all who lived in the quarter from which the rebels came and had ridden, herself, at the head of her men-at-arms, to see that her orders were carried out.
A third husband had died of natural causes. It would be true to say she had, in spite of her terrible revenge for her second husband's death, not been floored by the loss of any of them.
Caterina Sforza-Riario was one of those unfortunate women unable to find her place. She didn't like to be alone, she wanted men, a husband, a lover. But she also wanted independence and was totally unable to make any compromise by which she surrendered any or part of it. She had finished by despising each of the three men she had married. Fascinated by that very independence, their devotion to her had grown in proportion to which hers for them had diminished. They had been unable to lead her as she really needed to be led and consequently she had found herself doing the leading?and that was the way the world saw her, as a severe, often cruel and totally unbending woman.