The House of Borgia, book 2

CHAPTER 19

Lucrezia was riding south on what, so she had assured her husband, was a sentimental journey to see her father's grave and visit the places of her youth. In fact, she had come to plead and use every means at her disposal to persuade the Pope to use his influence in securing her brother's release from the Spanish prison in which he was languishing, and from which an occasional letter arrived telling her of his boredom and depression although he was not treated unkindly.

Lucrezia had little to offer. But one trump still remained with her? the undecaying beauty of her flesh. Delia Rovere was accounted just as much a libertine as his predecessors and Lucrezia in a moment of sarcastic humor had declared that to have been the source of gratification for three Popes should open the gates of heaven for her without fail.

She traveled with a small retinue of ladies-in-waiting and a posse of men-at-arms. Her passing occasioned no apprehension in territories which once would have regarded her as a potential spy. Her brother was being forgotten. Some people were no longer sure whether he was dead or alive. Talk was centered rather on the possibility of Spanish invasion, which, since Cesare's departure, had come to nothing so far.

Lucrezia and her party were received with mock cordiality by Julius and accommodated in the Vatican for a short stay. Delia Rovere could guess why the beautiful Borgia had come and he was interested to see what her pleading and encouragement would be.

Over a luncheon which the two of them had alone in the Pope's private quarters, Lucrezia had broached the subject.

“My dear lady,” the Pope said, thinking at the same time what an exquisite creature she was and wondering just how true were all the stories he'd heard, “your brother is a remarkable man, but remarkableness alone is not enough to allow a man pardon for misdeeds.”

“But what did he do? Didn't he recapture for the Holy See lands that had long been lost?”

“He dreamed himself another Caesar, dear lady, but Caesars depend not only on personal qualities. They depend upon propitious circumstances at the right time. The world has, perhaps, become more complicated than in the days of Republic and Empire. Too many powers are equal, so much more depends on compromise, alliance, knowing when to change allies and how to maneuver a man out of favor with his superiors.”

“A cynical outlook.”

“One that your brother practiced well enough in his day, but failed to maintain to the bitter end.”

“But if he were permitted to return to Rome, Capua? anywhere? and undertook to take no part in political or military life. What would you say to that?”

“I would say, my lady, that a man's word is a reed which will bend and bend and eventually snap.”

“Do you think me beautiful?”

The Pope was startled by this change of flow in the conversation. But he replied with a smile which contained a hint of lechery.

“Your beauty is well-known, madam, and likewise your accomplishment.”

He placed an impudent emphasis on the final word and his eyes moved down to her neck and the low bodice which revealed the rising swell of her breasts.

Lucrezia's heart beat rapidly. This thought of giving herself to a lifelong enemy, of having his prick gouge her where her dear father's and beloved Cesare's had been before, was a bitter pill. But she had nothing else to offer.

“My accomplishment is admirable,” she said brazenly, “but it demands that return be made.”

“I see. If I don't mistake you, you are offering to be my mistress at the price of your brother's freedom? as far as my persuasion can achieve it.”

Julius' penis had moved and staggered up at the thought. This would be sweet vengeance, indeed. The old man dead, the son in prison and now the daughter to lie under him while he made her a harlot, punishing her body with his bludgeon to push home the subservience of the Borgia family to his will in the most sadistically dominating manner. And why need he keep his word. She had no way of enforcing it. She was completely at his mercy. She had to take him at his word.

“Your brother would be unable to resist trying to avenge your family's honor,” he hedged, feeling for how serious her proposal was.

Her hand came under the table at which they sat and rested on his thigh, a warm, foreign pressure, harbinger of things to come.

“He shall never know,” she said.

His eyes moved over her. The whiteness of her soft skin at the half-bulge of her breasts was a spur. It was so little of that beautiful body to see and it made the hidden remainder superbly exciting.

He leaned forward and kissed the white, soft patch and Lucrezia closed her eyes to hide her shame. She felt his lips glide over the revealed bulge and his fingers pull her dress away at its top so that he could look down the front. The man was a piggish brute.

But while her thoughts were those of hatred, her actions belied them and her hand moved up his thigh and pulled at the hard core of flesh she could feel under his robes. The Pope drew back his head and looked at her. She opened her eyes and smiled, forcing her look to be one of invitation.

Julius was suddenly hot with desire. To know that this famous beauty would be his, all naked in a bed, her whole body at his disposal. It was too much for a man like him to resist? particularly as he was not bound to make any return.

“I agree to your terms,” he said.

She took her hand off his erect penis and he felt naked and filled with passion.

“How shall I know you will keep your word?”

“I will draft out the letter and send it off immediately.”

“Very well.”

Lucrezia was well aware of the probability of trickery, but her bargain was a long shot. She had to take a chance if anything was to be done for her brother.

Julius, now, could hardly keep his hands off her and as they stood up he took her in his arms and pulled her to him. He crushed his lips hungrily on hers and she fought down her anger and opened her lips so that she could flick her tongue into his mouth.

She drew back as his hand began to fumble with her body.

“Later,” she said.

He laughed fiercely and rang a bell for his servants.

Lucrezia watched while the letter was written. When it was powdered and signed, she took it in her hands and read it with a glow of hope. It explained that due to new information which had come to light, Cesare Borgia was, in fact, no longer considered guilty of the motives which had previously been ascribed to him. It asked, on behalf of the Pope, that he be returned to Rome as soon as possible as his services were needed.

The letter was sealed, a courier summoned and then dispatched to Ostia that the document might leave on the next ship setting sail for Spain. He had hardly left the Vatican when he was intercepted and the letter taken from him to be burnt to ashes within minutes.

Lucrezia, all unaware of the promptness of the treachery, feeling that there was a good chance of Cesare's rejoining her within the next month or so prepared to fulfill her side of the bargain.

The Pope excused himself for a few minutes to give her time to undress. While she stripped herself of her few garments, bitter and almost tearful at preparing to be ignominiously used by the oldest enemy of her family, the Pope was inviting one of his nearest cardinals, Cardinal Rimini, to secrete himself in the papal rooms and witness all that followed. For so overjoyed and proud was the Pope that the beautiful, luscious daughter of his old enemy was to open her legs in subjection to him that he could not keep it to himself. Only by having a witness could he be sure that he would be believed if ever he told the story. The thought of a voyeur?and how that would further humiliate Lucrezia?added to his own lecherous expectation of enjoyment.

So by the time Julius returned to his bedroom, where Lucrezia lay on the bed, naked, not looking at him, Cardinal Rimini had slipped into the papal apartment and was peering through the crack of an open door at the beautiful and unexpected sight.

“So this is the luscious Lucrezia Borgia,” Julius said, with a slight break in his voice as he saw her curved nudity. He flicked his tongue over dry lips. Her buttocks and breasts were the most superb he'd seen in his life, full and juicy but with a firmness which indicated a power in the act and a luster which made them look as smooth as he was to find they felt. Her shoulders were slim, her waist tiny, which accentuated the voluptuous quality of her rotundities. Her thighs were soft and full, with muscles hidden under the surface which could work like a Trojan when her body was afire.

“A bargain well made,” he added, with theatrical hypocrisy.

Lucrezia turned her eyes toward him as he stripped off his robes. He had an ugly narrow body, with a rough, pockmarked skin. His prick which pointed out at her like a cannon seemed out of proportion to the rest of his body. It looked wicked and capable of producing pain and desecration.

“How do you find that?” he asked, taking it in his hand and holding it toward her. Obviously he'd been told by other conquests that he had a prick second to none.

“I have seen its equals,” Lucrezia lied with a haughty irritation.

“Never its superior, however,” he chuckled.

He came toward the bed and the sight of his prick almost frightened her. Belonging to a desired friend she would have regarded it with a trembling anticipation. It promised a brutal and therefore ecstatic penetration. But, belonging as it did to an enemy, she felt it had the power to humiliate and destroy her.

The Pope stretched out on the bed beside her and his hands trembled as they began to feel her body. She shivered with repressed antipathy as she felt his hated hands foraging her breasts and buttocks, stroking her thighs. She hated him more than ever now that the moment had come and she saw in his eyes as he bent and ravaged her lips, a gleam of triumph mingled with his passion.

She felt no answering passion. His body, his face, the whole hostile idea of his position repelled her. He was the master. She had sold herself to him. He was not lost and reveling in his passion, he was owning her?with passion?but cruelly, knowing that she could not escape him, had no option but to submit to what he demanded from her body.

“Ah, I want you, I want you,” he whispered hoarsely, as if the very sound of the words increased the power he felt over her.

“You're mine, mine. Lucrezia Borgia, you're mine!”

She uttered a little cry at the wanton ring in his words and the cry was muffled in her groan as, with a quick movement he mounted her and thrust into her dry vagina.

The dryness, unresponsiveness of her flesh tore at his prick, drawing a hoarse cry from his lips.

“Oh, oh, you beauty?you slave!” he shouted, his voice broken with ecstatic fury.

Lucrezia, pain shooting between her thighs, winced at his words. She had never been taken thus. She was virtually being raped. She hated the man who was joined in one flesh with her.

Her passage was so dry that his penis scraped and drubbed it so that it seemed to her he must be drawing blood. She relaxed. It was too painful not to, and gradually her channel moistened a little and his progress became easier and with it her comfort greater.

Julius was determined to be brutal. Watching the old man die and going to the devil, breaking Cesare's power and getting him imprisoned were not made of the same physical revenge as this?this flesh-to-flesh punishment and chastisement of the living body.

He saw the disgust and self-hatred in her face and the hatred of himself and it increased his appetite for savagery so that he crashed his prick into her with all the force of his loins, so that their crotches met in a smack which was bruising and made her cry out.

He pushed her thighs out and up so that they were waving at first out over the bed and then crushed back against her shoulders. She was doubled up under him, twisted and pain-racked, with her naked toes against the sides of his hips and the whole pressure of his upraised body meeting hers at the out-curved point of his loins, culminating in the stiff tree of organ that rammed into her with increasing force and vigor.

Forgotten, out in the next room, with his fine view of the proceedings, Cardinal Rimini was beside himself. He had never in his wildest dreams hoped to see even the breast of such a woman as Lucrezia Borgia. And now to be seeing all?and to be seeing it in operation. It was too much for a man to bear.

On the bed, Lucrezia felt as if she were suffocating under the narrow, bony body of her invader. His prick, digging to its full depth in her, seemed to be splitting her passage, to be tearing away layers of it in a painful, sickening, widening process.

He was mouthing oaths and wild expressions of his power over her. He called her names, harlot names and spat words like “fuck” and “cunt” at her as if they would physically hurt her.

Hurt and seared with pain, Lucrezia moved her head from side to side, biting her lips. His words humiliated her and in conjunction with having her legs cramped and defenseless as she lay naked on her back under him and felt his penis filling her loins with a persistent, drubbing, dominating rhythm, the humiliation was overwhelming.

His hands pulled and twisted her breasts as he undulated on her. He made them into weird shapes and she cried out with protest at the pain and tried to wriggle free. But she seemed to be pinned to the bed as with a spear by his enormous fleshy weapon. Her body was being ransacked, torn and turned inside out for the savage pleasure of an old enemy who had her at his mercy.

She opened her eyes and saw his eyes on her face, taking in her fear and horror. His eyes were mad with lust and triumph and his mouth twisted into an ugly gash of sadism from which burst roaring explosions of passion as he speared her.

Lucrezia closed her eyes again to keep the sight of him away from her, but its image followed her eyes, creeping under the closed lids, making a picture in the darkness, which the physical touch of his rapacious taking of her body seemed to hold in position no matter how she tried to thrust it out.

She heard him growing frantic with excitement and her crotch and lower buttocks were aching where his loins around that protruding sword rammed at them. There was pain and aching and hatred all contained in a melting pot which was her vagina.

And suddenly there was something else. Her head had been caught by hot hands and, while Julius still drummed into her with frenzy, a hot, pliable-feeling penis was wormed into her mouth which opened in astonishment.

The excitement of watching had become too much for Cardinal Rimini. The soothing touch of his own hand on his prick was not soothing enough. He needed something cooler, something more foreign, some part of the luscious fruit of a woman on the bed to coax his juices from him.

For several minutes he had stood, trembling, fondling his organ in the doorway in full view of their unseeing eyes. He had gone through fear and desire in quick succession, alternately several times, until he could stand it no more. He would risk the Pope's displeasure. The woman was obviously in no position to resist.

With a guilty, scuffling movement, he had rushed to the bedside, seized her face and thrust himself into her mouth.

His eyes took in the Pope as he did so and the Pope nodded and he said through his gasps: “Take care of him Lucrezia, or I'll recall the letter.”

Infamy, infamy. Lucrezia felt a tear roll from her eye. She was helpless and chastened. To be doing this against her will and with these men who had brought about her brother's downfall. The tears were rage and humiliation, with the rage suppressed of necessity.

She began to work. The sooner it was over the better.

On top of her still, the Pope had slipped his hands under her buttocks, raising them slightly off the bed and was- squeezing them so hard that it made her cry out. He was gasping and groaning in a wild excresence of sound and his loins were not only pummelling at her but undergoing contortions in every direction as well.

The object in her mouth had bloated until she could hardly breathe. She bit it with-a sudden supreme fury at what was being forced on her and the bite brought a wild, wavering cry from the lips of Cardinal Rimini.

Lucrezia, still struggling for breath, looked up at the Pope. Her pelvis was numb with its buffeting and her quim was a raging area of pain. She saw his head go back and then come forward sharply so that his eyes could look at her. The eyes dilated and he emitted a shrill gasp as he came into the pain that he'd caused her. There was savage conquest in his eyes and the thought that this man's sperm was a great lake in her belly was the final humiliation.