The first press of him within me leaves me breathless, the sheer size of him feeling as though it will cleave me in two as he lowers me onto his rigid spear. The pleasure I had felt is supplanted by fire, and with every thrust into my body, the inferno burns. I am stretched too wide, too far, and he batters my core until I cry out in pain, which causes him to still.
The burning ceases when he abruptly pulls me from him, dropping me to the floor, not ungently. His body covers mine as I am pulled to my knees and mounted from behind. His size is just as overwhelming as it was a moment ago when he held me upright, but there is something about this new position, this new angle, that leaves me breathless in a different way. Rather than clenching my muscles against the intrusion of him, I find myself pressing back to take him in further. When the pleasure returns, I understand why the other brides circle around and beg to be next. There is little else here for us, after all. We have no vocation, no purpose, and no role to fill other than the role of bride.
When my body seizes, overtaken by clenching contractions that make my core pulse, it is as though I were being hurled from the highest mountaintop, thrown out to the sparkling sea. There is no darkness as my body sails through the air, no chains or cruel king to imprison me. Only pleasure and the shape of my husband within me, the sparkling waves and the free air, and I realize the truth of the words the others have spoken.
Submitting to him, being one with him, is the only way to ever see the sun.
“Ilovefuckingyouthis way.”
His voice was a low rumble against her hair, his hands snug around her waist, and Gwen whimpered. Pulsing her thighs together excited the tingle between her thighs, but there was no friction, no pressure, nothing her clit desperately wanted, and his words were not helping in the slightest.
The vase was another depiction of a bride on her knees, being taken from behind by the crouching minotaur. Shedidlove when he fucked her this way — the swell of his shaft making her cry out on every thrust, dragging over her g-spot, the angle allowing him to plumb her deeply, bumping the edge of her cervix in a way that made her back arch. It was harder for him to find the right angle with her on her back, and she’d taken the full brunt of his cockhead against her cervix before, always an agony, and he was always sheepish and apologetic when she cried out in pain.Thisposition, however . . . there were no downsides. If she pressed her shoulders to the mattress and kept her ass high, his balls slapped into her clit, fat and full and low-hanging, and she always, always came quickly this way.
“You’rereallynot making this easy to get through,” she grumbled, shifting purposefully against him until he hissed. “The horniness of this exhibit is an intentional attack on my self-control.”
There was a primal energy to the images, and as they moved in a circuit around the room, it awoke something deep inside of her. Gwen wasn’t sure if she ought to be as turned on as she was by the sight of the Minotaur on the vases and frescoes engaged in non-stop intercourse with the tributes that were sent to him, but with every piece of artwork that showed the bullman in a similar position to the ones she enjoyed with Madoc, she found the press of her thighs moved a bit easier, an increasing slickness aiding the movement.
When the painted figures depict one of the women on their knees, Gwen couldn’t help pushing her own rear end back, bumping into the growing hardness she found behind her. At one point, he gripped her hips with both hands, pulling her hard into him, the action mirrored by the human and Minotaur in the fresco before them.
She could feel the shape of him, straining against the front of his pants, opening her thighs in an effort to trap the bulging outline in her cleft. The swingy skirt of her a-line dress could be easily flipped up, the strained zipper on his pants given relief, and the fat firehose of his cock allowed loose . . . the thought of balancing over one of the marble plinths made her whine, and she was almost able to feel the roughness of his belt and the rasp of his zipper against the curve of her ass, the stretch of his head and thick, mid-shaft swell within her and the slide of his fingers against her clit . . . she pushed back again, certain she could feel his cock jump.
“You’re going to get me fired before you even move,” he groaned, grinding against her. There were cameras everywhere; she knew that without needing him to say it, and no matter how hot and bothered the display was making her, she didn’t actually want to be arrested for public indecency or to have him fired from his new job before she’d unpacked her toothbrush in the rental house.
Gwen squirmed, bumping her ass into him one last time before they moved on to the next row. Surely, she thought, the distance hadn’t made her this pathetically needy.You can get through one exhibit. If school kids can do it, you can do it. It’s history. Anthropological. Educational. Get a grip.
Afterthatnight,itbecomes a routine we have, my husband and I.
I’m still unable to sleep when the time for sleeping comes, and so my feet wander the corridors of the maze. The first time he finds me after that first night, he seems angry. I do not know how long I had been away from the group, only that I noticed the torches burn brighter at the heart, spread further and further the wider I roam. At first, I think it to be a clue on how one might escape, but I soon realize that the darkness is uniform beyond the center of the maze. There is comfort in the darkness. At the heart where we dwell, the torches burned bright, always lit, always burning. The outer rings of the labyrinth are dimmer, and those long stretches of darkness that frightened me so much on the night we arrived hold a measure of tranquility now, a peacefulness that reminds me of the temple where I had served. I linger long in the shadows, stopping in between torches to rest against the stone and sink into the blackness that resides there in between. It is not the sun, but the familiarity is a small comfort, and those are in short supply.
I am languishing in the shadows when he finds me. That first night I assumed he had stumbled upon me by happenstance, perhaps out wandering the maze himself, searching for a way out, but when he finds me in between the torches, he stops and huffs, snorting from his wide nostrils and grunting deep in his throat. When his hands — hands so like mine — wrap around my arm and tug me back to the torchlight, I realize he was looking for me. It is silly and foolish to admit, but my heart thrills at the notion. We have turned several times, still within the dimmer outer corridors when I pause.
I am still not convinced the others speak truly, for I have not been consumed with lust since our coupling. I have not pushed and shoved before the brazier amongst the other brides, fighting for position to be taken by him, and I do not rock in corners when I am not chosen. Instead, I walk, and put distance between myself and the debauchery . . . but I would be branded a liar if I were to say I had not thought of that night more than once. When I stop in the darkness between the torches, he grunts, tugging my arm to follow. Instead, I lay my hand over his, my fingers that are so like his, sliding up his arm until I am able to drag them down his chest. The broad plain of his body is familiar to my hands, in the way a sword is familiar to a sheath.
Despite the silky-coarse hair that covers him like a pelt, his body is that of a man’s, and the curves of my own form fit against him as if they were carved in stone to do exactly that. My fingers — small, but so like his — trace the shape of him, the line of his throat, and the hollow of his chest, learning him. There is a bubble of fear in my chest, but it has been eclipsed by a mad bravery, like Apollo’s chariot covering the darkness of the sky with his radiance. In this darkness, my husband is the only sun, and I am eager to be warmed by his light.
It does not take much to prod him to arousal. He grunts again, deep in his throat, a much different sound than the one he made when he found me. His manhood is a thick, shining rod, and for the first time, I am able to take a long look at it. As it rises from the furred sheath above his heavy testicles, I am able to see the pink of it is yet another sheath, pulling back slowly to reveal the winking tip, already leaking a viscous stream of his seed. My observance is short, for his hand lands at my waist, and I am lifted once more.
I am taken on hands and knees once more, and once again, I find myself opening for him eagerly. I do not wish to be one of the desperate, scrabbling women who push and shove for the privilege of his cock, but I am unable to pretend I do not enjoy it when he ruts me against the labyrinth floor. When he empties inside of me with what is nearly a growl, I am once again sailing through the sky, sailing on wings into Apollo’s bright sun. My belly bulges with the shape of him and his copious release puddles on the floor even before he has withdrawn. When I am pulled back to my feet, it is not without gentleness, and I cling to his strong arm until I regain my balance.
“Are you able to speak?” Since arriving, I have not heard him utter a word to any of us, and it is easy to think him a mindless beast without speech. When his hands motion to his throat, I am able to see the scars buried deep beneath his thick hide. I understand then, that he is a prisoner here, just as we all are, and my heart quivers at the thought. I wonder of the life he has lived, if he has ever known the warmth of the mountainside and the wind blowing free across his face, if he has ever looked out to the sparkling sea.
He knows the way back to the heart, and he knows how to find me when I wander too far, an indication that he has walked the same halls over and over and over again. I wonder if he, too, misses the sun, if he knows the same absence of hope I have felt wandering these endless corridors. There is nothing cruel in the way he grips my arm, leading me back to where the torches are tightly aligned on the walls, and the way he looks back to me whenever we pass beneath the flickering flames leads me to believe he is not without intelligence.
If he could speak like a man, it might have forced those topside to treat him like one, and I remember for the very first time since my lot was drawn as a tribute that he is a prince. A prince of Crete, born of the Queen herself, and if he is a prince, then I am a princess. There is no throne to which my husband leads me back, but I follow him willingly, allowing him to grip me tightly.
***
The next time he finds me, there is almost a hint of a smile playing at his wide mouth, as if this has become a game.
I put my hands around the great spear of his cock as it rises from its sheath upon finding me, stroking up the pink skin, feeling the way it swells, and closing my small hand around the fist-sized head that graces the tip. The sheath of skin covering him moves easily, and he grunts as I pull it up to cover his cocktip completely before moving my hand down once more, exposing the moisture he leaks. He takes me against the wall, and it is the first time I face him as he mates me. My hands are free, and I am able to grip his wide shoulders and feel the strength in his arms and chest, drag my fingertips over the scars at his throat and gently touch his face.
The next time I go wondering, he very nearly manages to take me by surprise. I had turned a corner paying more attention to the torchlight flickering ahead than I did to the shadows beyond, and when he hooked me around the waist, swinging me into the air, I shrieked. It is only when I realize they are his broad arms encircling me that I’m able to relax, melting into the warmth of his skin. His tongue is just as rough and wide as I remembered from the first time when it strokes up my legs, parting my thighs. I hold onto his horns as he spreads me open, and for the first time since I watched the frenzy of brides encircling him, my own voice rises in a hitching, gasping moan.
If new brides were to arrive at that moment, it would be my voice they followed, my screams that caused their own, and when they found me, I would be on my knees in the dirt, carried on the tide of ecstasy as my husband took me from behind. They would see my belly swell like a wineskin as he filled me, would see his seed dripping from me as he thrust through his release, and it would be my body they pulled aside to clean with their tongues, every drop of his essence a feast not to be wasted.
I understand now, that scene I first saw on arriving in the maze. I am able to feel him inside me even when he is not; able to feel the shape of him pushing through my skin and stretching me wide, and when I realize it is a dream and I am alone, the maze is darker than ever.
When he holds me aloft in his arms, thrusting relentlessly into me, I can see the sun’s glow and feel its warmth. It is the warmth of his breath, I come to realize, and he is the only sun I will ever need again. When he releases into me, filling me with his seed in great spurts that I am able to feel shaking up my spine, I am able to see across the sea, to the very gates of Mycenae, to the top of the Acropolis, to the fires of the great oracle.
