Occasionally his hands twitched out to her and managed to grasp and feebly squeeze her thighs or even reach to her breasts.
So furious was her youthful onslaught that she began to feel the excitement of culmination and forced herself to slow down the pace so as not to lose any ferocity of attack until Innocent was ready to come himself.
The Pope was no longer chill. His whole frame was flushed with a pink heat which was a frame between his legs. His prick felt bloated, aching and growing up to an ecstatic bursting point. His thighs and back ached with the upward pressure he'd continuously exerted at Lucrezia's bobbing crotch.. The drumming in his ears was almost unbearable. He was trying desperately to force the explosion at his prick before there was an explosion in his head or in his chest.
His breathing had become a pitiful consumptive whine but Lucrezia showed no mercy at his tortured, pathetic state.
Innocent opened his eyes. In his aching head he suddenly felt a power of great emotion. She was beautiful, so beautiful and innocent and trying to do right. He would keep her after this day; he would keep her and look after her and any future intercourse she had would be with him and then she'd be able to enjoy it because she could tell herself always that it was purifying her, giving her a holy outlet for desires which would, of course, continue to beset her.
In that moment Innocent felt that he loved the child with the woman's body. He wanted to reach out and hold her to him, but he no longer had the strength and he had already closed his eyes and become acutely conscious once again of his prick which seemed to be swelling in her so that it seemed it might never come out again.
He writhed his loins against her. The desire to come was intolerable and yet he couldn't quite seem to manage it. It would happen, but his head felt as if it was splitting and his chest was constricted and he hoped it would hurry.
Feebly he tensed his thighs, felt a twinge of cramp and relaxed them again. He pressed his abdomen against her descending nether parts. He opened his eyes again and fixed her with a gaze which did not take her in clearly.
Lucrezia sensed from his writhing, his agonized expression, his gasps and groans that the end was approaching and she unleashed her body and began to pummel him for all she was worth, letting herself be carried away by her own momentous passion.
She could feel her loins swarming as if a thousand snakes were writhing inside. She released a stream of gasping cries which broke through the blackness in Innocent's head and revived in him a last flush of passion so that he thrust his loins up at her, mumbled painfully through dry lips, groaned agonizingly in an evident warning climax and clenched his fingers into her thighs with a last strength.
Dazedly he opened his eyes again. His loins seemed to be covered with a sticky wetness amidst Lucrezia's meanings. His prick felt grazed, beaten, full of something that must escape. He saw her face mistily, head thrown back-beautiful neck-lips moving. His fingers dug hard into her fleshy thighs in a last paroxysm of life. He felt the climax near… on him… there! He gasped deliriously, felt his penis explode as if in a thousand pieces, fought for breath, fought for consciousness, felt himself losing both, tried to appeal to her with his eyes and slowly slipped off into a painful darkness.
Lucrezia had echoed his feelings with precision. Her flood of sensation had swamped up in her loins with a dragging delightful pain, swamped up and over just as his prick had seemed to be at its biggest in her so that she felt it would smash right through her and up into her belly.
For some seconds afterwards, still excited and hardly knowing where she was, she had swayed about on his prostrate body and then she had flopped down on top of him.
It took her almost a minute to begin to collect her wits.
The first thing she realized was that Innocent was not just lying still through exhaustion. He had lost consciousness. Lucrezia wasn't dismayed: this was all part of the plan-except that it appeared to be succeeding almost beyond expectations.
Swiftly, methodically, she got up and dressed. With the inside of her dress she wiped away any tell-tale signs of the Pope's incontinence and then she rearranged the bed and his body. After that she collected herself for a moment, checked everything, quietly went to the door and unbolted it. She tiptoed back to Innocent's bed, let out a high-pitched scream and rushed back toward the door.
She hadn't reached it before it was flung open and two attendants rushed in.
Lucrezia pointed to the bed.
“God protect us,” she cried. “His Holiness just passed out in the middle of talking.”
CHAPTER 6
The news of the Pope's collapse spread like pillage through the city.
His doctors came forthwith and pronounced that the strain of receiving visitors had obviously been too much for his weak heart. There was little hope of his survival beyond a few hours.
His doctors stayed at his bedside and visitors from the Pope's circle were frequent. He got weaker and weaker at a very rapid rate. His physicians were agreed on their helplessness in face of his critical state.
The following day, Innocent, without having regained consciousness, was still clinging weakly to life and a Hebrew physician came to his bedside, claiming to have a prescription which would save the dying prelate's life. For his task, he said, he needed the blood of young boys. The Pope's skeptical physicians eventually found him two young boys, who, for a ducat each, were prepared to give him all the blood he needed.
But so complete was the failure of his remedy that the two boys died and the physician was forced to flee to save his own life from the wrath of those who had doubted him from the beginning.
For just one more day, Innocent lay in his bed breathing very feebly. In the early hours of the following morning he was found to be breathing no more.
Cardinal Roderigo lost no time in organizing the succession. Even during the prescribed nine days of ceremonies connected with Innocent's death, he was busy arguing, offering, bargaining, encouraging toward his own ends.
On the tenth day the cardinals assembled in St. Peter's to hear the Sacred Mass of the Holy Ghost recited on the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles. They swore upon the gospels to faithfully observe their trust and the Conclave was immured.
A few days later Cardinal Roderigo Borgia was elected Pope Alexander VI. He had bargained well.
Many were the cardinals who benefited from Roderigo's election. To Cardinal Sforza went the vacated vice-chancellorship and the bishopric of Agri; to the Orsini the Church of Carthage and the legation of Marche; to Colonna the Abbey of Subiaco; to Savelli the legation of Perugia; to Raffaele Riario went Spanish benefices worth four thousand ducats yearly. They, too, had bargained well.
Lucrezia, who had played the largest part of all, was rewarded with a beautiful diamond necklace and a passionate night in her father's bed during which he mounted her five times and both were completely satisfied. She was then sent off to continue her studies under the tutors who were shocked at her provocative display of bosom and would have died of horror had they known exactly what had been displayed to the Pope before his death.
CHAPTER 7
Cesare had been brought back to Rome on the news of his father's election. Cardinal Roderigo felt it only fitting that his son, whom he hoped would one day succeed him, should be present at the ceremony.