Dying in Pleasure

IT WAS GOOD BUSINESS to free slaves and hire them back as freed workers. A willing worker worked harder than a compelled slave. The Aedile's next act as new owner was to free all the whores and hire them back at fair wages. Nearly all came back; the ones who refused were those too sick to work.

He did not, however, free Ibis.

"Why not me?!"

"Buying this house and freeing six slaves just depleted my assets. And I have six salaries to pay now. You're the most valuable of the group. If I needed to, I could sell you for what the whole group cost."

"Then sell me to Naso," Ibis said. "Wouldn't that be better for you financially?"

"That's out of the question. If he bought you, he'd never let you out of his bed. I need

you here."

"If you freed me, I wouldn't necessarily leave," Ibis said.

"Don't try to be crafty. I won't be rationalized into freeing you. You dislike your work, and would leave if you could. Wouldn't you?"

"What makes you think I dislike it?"

The Aedile stepped forward so they were only inches apart and Ibis refused to look away. He said, "You disrespect my authority by looking me in the eyes."

Ibis said, "Your authority is faulty. You don't exercise it properly."

"Because I don't beat you when you talk back to me?"

"You're unprofessional toward me," Ibis said.

"Unprofessional?"

The Aedile saw her eyes were awkward shades of pond blue and Pompeian red clay. "When you fuck me, you want me to like it. I'm a whore. I'm not here to like you. And to be honest, I don't like you." The last bit was a lie, and she knew it, but she said it only because she knew it would hurt him.

But the Aedile didn't really hear what she said; not wanting to hear her, he preoccupied himself studying her eyes. "It's no pleasure to think that I'm forcing you."

"I can't ever be not forced when you fuck me as a slave," Ibis said.

"Freeing you isn't financially possible," the Aedile said. "Can't we compromise?"

"Where have you gotten such democratic ideas? Are you Greek?" That was offensive and the Aedile bristled. He despised her arrogant tone, and her attempts to make him feel ignorant, stupid. Yet he felt the appeal of being bested, the rush of debate. He was amazed that a whore would, and could, be so verbally combative. Ibis said, "I'm not being forced."

"You're not doing it of freewill."

"If I didn't want to open my cunt to men for money, I'd refuse and consequently be tortured to death. Even a slave has the right to say No. They only fear the consequences of seizing their rights." Ibis turned away, hugging herself tightly. "Why are we discussing this? It's absurd to discuss what a whore does and doesn't want. What I want doesn't matter. That's not what my life is about."

"It matters to me. I'm the one that has to fuck you." The Aedile then blushed when she looked at him quickly: "has to" implied he had no other sexual alternatives; both knew that was obviously untrue. He "had to" fuck Ibis because his desire for her was overwhelming, and now that was completely obvious. She had enslaved the Aedile and it pleased her.

And there began an absurd, embarrassing, awkward, and turbulent courtship.

"I'm going to sleep with you once a week," the Aedile said.

"Do what you like," Ibis replied. "You own me."

Courtship is an inappropriate word: it was more like a battle of wills.

"I want to give you pleasure. Make you come."

Ibis laughed, throwing her head back and for a moment displaying the vulnerable whiteness of her throat: "Impossible."

But even that is inaccurate: "battle" is too aggressive, figuratively full of fighting and hostility. They were aggressive, but it was exciting, and as the days waned they enjoyed their aggression more and more.

"You think it's absurd that I want to give you something for your work? Would you prefer it if I whipped you every time you talked back to me? Every time you've argued with me, or refused me? Or even offered your opinion? Perhaps you prefer being treated like an animal, but I've always treated my slaves as people who one day would be free, and being free..."

"Be loved?"

"Be profitable. Isn't that what we all want? Success and happiness?"

They debated, like senators, yet without the practicality of subject senators would have: more often than not, they debated about ethereal issues, which had no solution. The more impractical their discussions, they more they looked forward to them, and the more they liked one another.

"You can't give me pleasure."

"I know how to give a woman pleasure," the Aedile said. "I'm very good at it."

"I'm a whore. I'm good at avoiding it."

"A woman's body is a woman's body, despite her profession and attitude."

"A woman's body is ruled by her mind. My mind won't allow me to get close to anyone who uses my body. It's self protection."

"How can I win your mind when you won't let me in? You won't even tell me your name."

"Drop all this nonsense," Ibis said. She removed her tunic and the extreme whiteness of her body gleamed in the lamplight. The Aedile thought that a goddess's naked body would gleam in the same way, as if the skin was solid light. "Just have me the way you can have me, and be happy with it."

No, he wouldn't be deterred, nor discouraged. He pulled her down on the mat, rolled her onto her back, and slid into her slowly, gently. He swirled his strokes and was sure to press against her to stimulate her clit. His tongue flicked her nipples as he squeezed a breast. Wanting to pound her and finish quickly, he resisted and stroked even slower. This technique had been successful before, very successful in the past. He couldn't tell if she was getting wetter, because Ibis had already lubricated herself with oils. Raising his head from her shoulder with a supreme effort, he looked at her face. Her eyes were closed. Her expression was sleepy. He said her name, softly. Her eyes flew open.

"Stop looking at me, please," she said in a normal tone. "If you're going to take this long, let me get more oil. I'm drying out."

The Aedile withdrew and came all over her belly. Dressing quickly, he left without a word.

BUT HE RETURNED the next day. And then two days later. The day after that one. Three days after that. And on and on. Fucking only Ibis every time. The Aedile slept with Ibis more than any other woman in his life. More than his current wife, and then more than his second.

With Ibis, he was obsessed with making her come and all his efforts were futile. He took her in every position he could imagine. He fucked her while she was menstruating, using scented oils so their bodies moved together slickly and easily, with toys, and being drunk. Nothing. He grew more frustrated, and she oscillated between annoyance with his seeming childish stubbornness, his arrogant Roman male attitude of conquering territory, and being touched by what seemed to be an honest desire to please her. How typically Roman, though, to be so blind as to the concept of impossibility. As if every world could be conquered and every person could be made a slave.

It never occurred to the Aedile that Ibis didn't like men.

That was a fact she kept carefully, jealously, and obsessively guarded. He probably would have accepted it, and the knowledge wouldn't alter anything about their relationship. It might make him aspire more to conquer her, and assimilate her to the world of men, but that wasn't her fear. It was an act of will and defiance to keep it secret. It was private. It was the only thing Ibis owned. Loving women made her free.

WHEN THE AEDILE gave Ibis management duties at the whorehouse, she was overwhelmed by the volume of work facing her. She had to restructure the entire organization, make new rotation schedules, and had to deal with great amounts of money. More money than she ever had been responsible for in her life. Ibis developed problems sleeping, had sudden piercing headaches, drank a little more each night, and found she cried in the mornings when she woke and thought of all the problems and responsibilities she had to endure that day.

Ibis discovered how deeply ingrained the problems with the suffering house were. It had a horrible staff of lazy whores (wonderful people, and her closest friends, but horrible employees). She pleaded with the Aedile to buy new prostitutes. He refused, unless she could raise the money herself through the house through budget cuts and generating more profit.

"But I can't do that with the staff I have!" she said, backing away from his advances. Ibis wanted to discuss business before he fucked her. The Aedile was always useless mentally after sex. "Two more girls and I can REALLY do something."

"Let me REALLY do something to you," and he inserted his fingers inside her.

Business pressures, his sexual obsession with her, and her own growing frustration with the situations, turned Ibis against the Aedile. Her feelings toward him were manic anyway—one day nearly loving him, the next wanting to stab him. Now she felt consistently angry with him. He didn't care about the great responsibility he had given her—all he cared about was getting his cock up her cunt. And some stupid, arrogant, Roman desire to conquer her like she was fucking Greece.

"I have an idea to make more money," she told him a few nights later. "Join forces with Naso's bar next door. Knock out the adjoining walls. We get all their clients anyway. Why not make money on wine and food, too?"

"Naso would be over here every day," the Aedile said. "He'd never leave."

"He's here every day anyway?"

"Is he?"

"He gets drunk with the girls and plays strip dice. He always loses and dances around naked. The girls love it. He never touches any of them and it's hilarious to watch." Ibis laughed and the Aedile frowned.

He said the idea about the bar was a good one. The next day (she heard through rumor) he did exactly that for his more prosperous house. When he came to her that night, and he took her in his arms, she roughly pushed away. She yelled, "That was for our house! We need the money more than they do!"

"It would be more expensive to do it here than there. Once that house makes money, I'll funnel it to you," he said calmly. "I'm not concerned. Why are you?"

"I'm running this place, not you."

"I own this place, not you."

BEING A SLAVE wasn't something Ibis chose. Neither was being a whore. But doing her jobs well, being admirable, being respected, and respecting her owners was something she chose. Dignity for a slave was accepting one's fate and doing the best one could.

The whorehouse had a back entrance. It was never really used because the corridor to get to it was too narrow to travel comfortably, and one had to climb steep stairs to get to the upper level. The second back entrance wasn't known to many, except those that worked there. As far as Ibis knew, even the Aedile didn't know of it. Or if he did, he never used it.

This back entrance would become the entrance for the Day House, as they called it. The Day House was for women only. The Night House for men (women rarely traveled the streets at night). Through word of the mouths of slaves, the best information system available, Ibis slowly developed a secret clientèle of women who wanted women.

Not that these women didn't like men. Almost all of them were married Roman matrons, respectable members of the community. They saw their visits to the house, and the moments when whores would crawl between their legs and lick them in places their husbands probably didn't know exist, as a means to release. Pleasure. A treat, in no way different than a bath, or buying themselves new perfume. They sought relief their husbands, nor their slaves, ever provided. They wanted to try something new, possibly because another friend recommended it, or they heard lurid rumors from their chamber slave that women enjoyed pleasures beyond their imaginations when touched by a woman.

The Day House clientèle had no problem keeping its existence secret from their husbands.

Ibis never worked in the Day House. It was a professional decision, based upon the fact that she wanted to work there very very much. There were many Roman matrons she desired desperately, on the verge of loving. It was inappropriate to indulge her desires under the auspices of prostitution. It would only lead to unhappiness. Ibis was very experienced in such matters.

Part of the money earned in the Day House Ibis wove delicately and invisibily into the profits of the Night House. The Aedile, impressed with Ibis's success as manager, took the money and spent it on his thriving whorehouse, or the construction of his new expensive bathhouse (located next door to his thriving whorehouse).

"Why? Why, why, why?!" Ibis yelled after being refused money for repairs. "Why do you spend everything I make on the other house?!"

"You can function with what you have," the Aedile said calmly, amused with her anger. "The other house has a reputation to maintain."

"It's almost as if you don't want this house to be a success. I work my ass off for this house—"

"I know. Your devotion touches me."

"—not the one across town. You know it's our biggest rival! Why build the bath next to

it? Why not us?"

"Better location where it is."

"Why not move us to a better location?"

"Too expensive. You don't make enough money to warrant such a move."

"We do, you just TAKE all our money!" Ibis threw a glass at the wall. Not at the Aedile, but nearly hitting a chipped statue which was already missing an arm. The Aedile promptly grabbed Ibis, threw him over his lap and spanked her, yanking her tunic up so her ass was exposed. He swatted her until his hand hurt and her skin was bright red. She squirmed and yelped and shouted for him to stop. But the truth was she could have easily gotten away; his grip was awkward. There was something different in her anger, she noticed. It had a different charge, and the spanking didn't make her hateful, but excited. Then he stopped, and with a gentleness she had never seen before, the Aedile led her to the bed, laid her on her back, and fucked her so smoothly, their legs twinning threw one another, that he seemed to be making love to her. Ibis grew disgusted with his emotionalism, and yawned rudely when he came.

The rivalry between Ibis and the Aedile helped her not feel guilty about running the sub-business. All the money she made from female clients, at that point, was kept completely separate. The whores got paid more money, and she kept the rest.

Ibis was saving money to buy her freedom.