DISCLAIMER:
The characters belong to Renaissance Pictures and Studios USA and were used without permission. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made.

WARNING:
This story contains explicit descriptions of male/male sexual relations, bdsm, rape and sexual violence. Do not read the story if these subjects disturb you.

This is a response to Dawn's Challenge for Caesar in love. It's also a sequel to An Audience of One

You can find more stories by Thamiris at her web sites The Ksmithares Archive and Odysseys and Ecstasy

Send feedback to thamiris@mail.com

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Hell
By Thamiris

Part I

O how fallen! how changed
From him, who in the happy realms of light
Clothed with transcendent brightness didst outshine
Myriads though bright...

---Paradise Lost

My punishment, as Hades explained, is eternal solitude. 'Someone with your ego,' he said, smiling, 'can surely occupy himself for infinity.' Another time, another place, and I would've ordered my guards to hang him from the walls of Rome, then sever his femoral artery. Blood splashing against grey stone, a raven plucking out the dying man's eyes...So effective against impudence.

Now all I have left is this theater of pain playing out before me, as I lie on the wide bed in this large, dark chamber. That was the death-god's intent, of course. I have to relive my own brutal life as penance for my crimes. I want to jerk off to relieve the boredom, but don't, in case *he* shows up. Persephone has arranged it, supposedly behind her husband's back, but I suspect Hades knows. After all, my beautiful visitor himself is the ultimate punishment, especially now that I'm in love with him, so the ruler of the underworld could hardly object to his visits.

I know--Caesar in love. But remember: my death shocked me. To fall from such heights-- crowned ruler of the world, scourge of the earth, lover of the wargod--to this...a creature mired in darkness, trapped here in this eery, unlit castle full of nothing. So when he came to me, a few years after my imprisonment, I was grateful. The emergence of that sickening emotion--gratitude--nearly broke me. But when you're living this grotesque parody of your former existence, alone in this dark replica of your palace, and Iphicles appears...But it was so much more than that.

Even though he's the wargod, has been since he slit Ares' throat in my dungeon and stole the god's power, when he materializes before me, it's always in his former incarnation-- only the slick black leather and silver jewelry mark his new identity. His hair is still the same shade of copper, curling to the broad shoulders stretching that studded vest. His face is clean-shaven, exposing his smooth, highplaned cheeks and that luscious mouth. And his eyes: not hard onyx but warm amber, shadowed... His body: curved muscle and smooth, golden skin. Iphicles was born to be a god.

How could anyone resist that combination of virility and vulnerability? Especially a man--a ghost-- doomed to haunt an empty castle, alone with his memories of pain? I tried to resist him, of course. And he certainly tried to resist me. After all, I'd raped and tortured him. In some ways, maybe all, I was responsible for what happened: Ares' death, Iphicles' secret assumption of his role, my own murder...

So why did Iphicles come to me? It's complicated. It's always complicated with Iphicles. I sometimes wonder if I would've fallen in love with him when he was the king of Corinth... I've already enjoyed the complicated ones. But probably not. I needed death and perpetual solitude to give me love.

Here is the beginning.

*****

I sat in the scriptorium of my palace, writing. I picked up the habit when traveling to Rhodes to study under the orator Appolonis Molon. On the sea voyage there, pirates captured me, holding me ransom for forty days. Bored, I harassed the captain until he gave me a quill and a bare scroll, then set about recording my experiences with these barbarians. I ended my narrative with a vow to return after my freedom and crucify them. Their screams were most satisfying.

Now, decades later, in a larger, but equally isolated prison, I dipped my feather stylus in the small pot of ink, carefully brushing the elongated tip on the parchment, as I recounted my history. Then a flash of heat passed through me. I froze, ink dripping onto the page, ruining my day's work. Because I remembered that surging heat. Oh, how I remembered it. Ares.

Then I saw him: Ares but not Ares. Brighter. Less chaotic. Equally beautiful, with the black leather caressing those hard curves. He didn't smile, as he stood a few paces before my desk, arms crossed over his massive chest. Ares would've smiled.

"Hail, Iphicles, former king, now god of war," I said, carefully pulling the nib from my pen and returning it to the engraved case. My hands shook, and I wondered if a seizure were coming. I hadn't had one since death had brought me here. Placing the pen in the tray, I next closed the bottle of ink.

"If you weren't dead, I'd kill you." With Ares, the words would be pure threat. With Iphicles, they were tinged with something else. Sadness. Regret. All of the emotions that I now struggled with for the first time. I understood him. That panicked me, so I attacked.

"I doubt that. You didn't kill me after I shoved my cock into your mouth, made you suck me while you were chained on that altar. You didn't kill me after Ares and I cut you, after we drank your blood while you cried on the stone floor of your castle..."

The directed concentration of heat smashed me into the wall. Alive, my bones would've shattered from the blow. Now, I felt only the pain searing through my dead body, rocketing inside me, seeking an outlet but finding none. Like a seizure, but I was conscious. This was hell.

As I lay against the marble wall, waiting for the agony to subside, he came to me. I heard the clack of his boots on the polished marble floor, but couldn't move, still trapped by pain. I caught a glimpse of his perfect face through half-closed eyes when he leaned over me. Still no smile.

"I don't like inflicting pain," he said. "You made sure of that."

"Not a good trait in a war god," I gasped. So close to me, he smelled like Ares: hot leather, spicy-sweet ambrosia, blood...But no cum. Ares always smelled like semen; it leaked eternally from his huge cock.

"You're wrong, Caesar. It simply means I don't use it excessively. As you've noticed by now, I can still inflict it. But I don't prolong it, don't pursue it to get off. Like Ares did. Like you did. But I guess your days of rape and torture are over. Your sister saw to that." Now he smiled.

"And how is dear Cassia?" I asked, finally getting up, staggering to the settee along the far wall, where I sometimes read poetry. Iphicles followed me, but remained standing.

The beautiful smile disappeared. "Dead." A flash of something--guilt. That most disturbing of emotions. I hated that one the most.

"And this was your fault?"

He nodded. His honesty surprised me. "She died in Britannia, fighting the Romans, after her two daughters had been raped. I would've helped her, saved her, but I wasn't experienced enough. Godhood isn't as easy as it looks."

Irony. He'd changed, lost some of his naivete, assumed more polish. He fascinated me. "So she became a warrior, and died for a cause. I always admired her for killing me. She must've matured into a powerful woman."

The amber eyes watched me, trying to gage my tone, testing the words to see if they were genuine. They were. Cassia was my worst crime, represented the black heart of my evil. I saw her in my dreams, as she looked just before I plunged my cock inside her. Only now I needed no sleep to dream; unbidden, those visions stole over me when my guard was down. Or maybe they were memories...

The panic rose again. "Why are you here? To punish me? Hades has taken care of that."

A large hand reached up to brush back the red-gold curls falling in his eyes. "I'm not sure. Part of me, an ugly part, wants to hurt you the way you hurt me. Part of me wants to confront you so that I can move on. I have nightmares, and they won't stop. I can't sleep."

"What do you want? An apology?" I laughed. "Take it. What do I care? I'm sorry for everything. Happy?"

His rage, when it came, reminded me of Ares': so intense, overwhelming. Iphicles wasn't thinking anymore, when he grabbed me by the throat, ripping off my plain white tunic before shoving me face-first into the soft red fabric of the couch. It was rage that hardened his cock, rage that made him shove it inside me, rage that made him bite my shoulder so hard blood spilled down my back, rage that made him cum so hard, shuddering while he pulsed inside me.

He disappeared after that. I think he was crying...

***** I never expected his return, although I prayed for it. Caesar, the iconoclast, on his knees, begging the copper-haired godking to visit him in his silent tomb--I know many who'd appreciate that image. Or I did, once...

So why did I want him to come back? I asked myself that question, as I walked through the sumptuous rooms of my noiseless palace. Undeniably, he eased the loneliness. Time, although I couldn't measure it, was omnipresent, heavy. It choked me. With Iphicles here, I could breathe. More irony--since his fingers, filled with divine power, had closed around my throat, squeezing tighter and tighter while he fucked me.

Because he did fuck me. He wanted to rape me, but he couldn't. I wouldn't let him. I wanted the pain--and there was much when he rammed that huge cock into me, when his teeth tore open my skin. When Iphicles penetrated me, I suddenly understood why Ares had sought it out: pain reaffirmed your boundaries, mapped out the lines of your morality. With its fierce demand for a response, pain can define you.

So when Iphicles' cock spilled his rage inside me, I accepted it. I'd caused his suffering when I raped and tortured him, and he was returning that suffering to me. But when it entered my body, the shape of his torment changed--it became my guilt. His angry act saved me, and I needed to tell him.

*****

The second visit took place while I searched the dusty library for something to read. Scrolls littered the long table in the room's center, as I removed one after another. My voice echoed in the room, as I named the authors whose works I rejected (talking to myself was my pathetic attempt to combat the silence). "Not Tully...too dry...Plutarch...too bitter...Cicero...too obnoxious...Ovid....hmmm..." As I pulled The Heroides from the shelf, the sudden wave of heat made me drop it. The scroll hit the floor with a loud clatter, rolling until it struck the wall.

"Why did nothing change after my last visit? Why the fuck are you still haunting me after all this time?"

"Because you feel guilty," I told him. "You think you're just like me now. Just like Ares. You're not. We never felt guilt. That's why we had to die."

My response confused him. He could tell something had changed. We stared at each other: Iphicles trying to understand me, while I...I watched his face because it was beautiful and I wanted him to fuck me. Not like last time. But really fuck me.

How pathetic is it when you're surprised by the feeling of desire? Sex for me was always about power. I had to prove myself, over and over and over again. Now I wanted him because he was so sexy in that leather, as he chewed thoughtfully on the full lower lip. I wanted him because he needed the comfort that only I could give him. I wanted him because he needed me. I wasn't sure he understood that yet, so I did nothing.

I spoke instead. For once, I tried to be honest. "I needed you to fuck me like that; I deserved it. You made me realize that. I've never taken responsibility for anything in my life. I killed, raped, and tortured thousands...Being stuck in this place helps, but it's not enough--I can still hide here. You forced me out of hiding. So don't feel guilty, Iphicles. I'm grateful."

"You're lying," he said flatly, taking a step toward me, hand on the sword at his hip. The wargod emerged.

I shook my head. "You know I'm not."

"I don't believe you. I hurt you on purpose. You hate me."

"Will you let me show you how I feel?"

"Show me?"

I began to wonder if, on some level, he knew what I wanted. If, somehow, he wanted it, too. He'd never do anything about it, though--but I would. "Yes, show you. Will you let me show you that I've changed?"

"Caesar, want do you want from me?"

"I want to suck your cock," I said.

His hand shot up, and I tensed, waiting for the burst of fiery pain. Then he lowered it to his side and his long fingers began to slide up and down the leather covering one hard thigh. "I don't understand."

"I think you do. I want to suck your cock as an apology, as an expiation--and as an expression of desire. Please let me."

"I--I'm not sure." His hesitation only fueled my need, and I approached him slowly. He let me stand directly in front of him, but when I reached out to open his pants, he grabbed my wrist. "Are you sure about this?"

"Yes."

Up close, he was even more beautiful. Like Ares, his skin seemed poreless, smooth as ochre glass. His thick lashes came down, covering his eyes, when he let go of my hand, and I slid the leather down over his hips to release that massive cock. He was hard, and my own cock jerked in response to his obvious excitement.

Sliding to my knees before him, I took Iphicles' cock in my mouth. He groaned, a low rumbling that I could feel against my tongue as it swirled over the leaking head of his cock. I half-expected him to grab my head, forcing himself deeper into my mouth, like Ares would; instead, Iphicles simply placed a warm hand on my shoulder, rubbing my skin through the fabric of my tunic.

This experience of mutuality was so odd to me...Mutuality without violence. Just my tongue lapping at his tangy skin, his thumb stroking my shoulder...My cock was throbbing. Somehow every movement of my tongue on his cock transferred to mine, and I realized he was doing that.

Angrily, I pulled back. "No! Please. Just let me do this for you."

"But I want you to feel good, too," he said, looking down at me.

"Sucking you makes me feel good." It did. Like nothing I'd ever experienced. I didn't need the extra stimulation--this was enough. I told him that. Still, he wasn't convinced. I stood up abruptly, taking his hand and putting it against my erection. "Feel that? Sucking you does that to me."

Leaning forward, Iphicles kissed me. Just lips on lips. No tongue. I almost came.

"Keep doing it," he whispered.

I dropped to my knees again, and took that big cock in both my hands, catching the creamy flow of precum on my tongue. He was rubbing my shoulder again, looking down at me. I ran my tongue around the head of his cock in quick circles, until I felt that rumbling. Then, moving one hand down to stroke his balls, I licked his thick shaft with long, slow sweeps--so close to orgasm myself that my cock wouldn't stop leaking. Not wanting to cum before he did, I took him back in my mouth and began to suck him hard, my head moving back and forth in a quick rhythm I matched with one hand on his shaft. The whole time I fought a war with my desire.

When he tensed, I slowed almost to a stop, until his ragged breathing regularized. Then I started again: sucking and stroking him, tasting the salty drops that kept oozing from his cock, until his body shook.

I repeated the slow/fast pattern until the sweat ran in rivulets down his body, until he couldn't stop trembling, until he moaned my name. And then I sucked him until he came in my mouth. When Iphicles' hot semen streamed into my mouth, I shuddered, spilling my own seed onto the library floor.

Part II

...now first inflamed with rage, came down
The tempter, ere the accuser of mankind,
To wreak on innocent frail man his loss
Of that first battle, and his flight to hell...

---Paradise Lost

In life, masturbation bored me.

The solitary activity: your own hand stroking your own warm flesh in the dark. What's the point? An orgasm meant nothing without the context of another's broken will. I needed a frame for the act, so that my spilled semen read like a dripping symbol of power, each creamy drop an affirmation of superiority, as I came on the chests, backs and faces of my lovers. Masturbation was only a backdrop on my canvas of domination, the physical pleasure only incidental, nothing compared to the thrill of imprinting their skin with my seed.

In some ways, the act scared me: the shuddering and groaning evoked too closely the grotesque form of my epilepsy. Loss of control scared me. My father's legacy. A blunt soldier, he ordered servants to beat me after my illness had forced me writhing to the ground. He believed that my body required only discipline, a bloody warning not to disobey. My actions were a direct affront, embarrassing evidence of a hidden flaw in the bloodline hitherto unsuspected. To avoid the brutal punishment, the whip stinging my treacherous flesh, I became adept at retreating whenever I felt the warning signs--the black shadows before my eyes, the ringing in my ears. But I carried with me always a terror of abdicating to pleasure.

Most boys, when they cum by hand for the first time, are amazed by the result, the unexpected surge of sensation overwhelming them, as their eyes close, limbs tremble, and cocks pulse, rewarding their diligence with that thick liquid. They taste it surreptitiously, proudly. It's a rite of passage.

For me, the experience was different.

When I lay in bed one hot August night, running my fingers over my hard cock, sheet thrown back so I could see it swell in the golden light of the dying summer sun, I decided to continue this time, not stop when I felt that disturbing, pressure-heat slither through my veins. My strokes increased, as did my pleasure. And my panic. But I kept up the pace, my hand moving relentlessly over my shaft until...blackness.

When I awoke, my parents, sister and servants stood over my naked body. I was on the floor of my room, vaguely aware of a stickiness between my thighs and on the back of my head, the first semen, the second blood. Dazed, I could only stare up at pair after pair of disgusted eyes.

"You were shouting," my mother said faintly. "We heard the noise..." She trailed off, covering her mouth with long fingers. A pretty woman, my mother. Delicate. Painfully in love with her husband, who treated her with contempt.

My father, voice shaking with anger, finally spoke, gritting out his words. "Take Cassia and leave. Now."

With a pitying backward glance, she took my sister's small hand in her own and led her back to bed. Cassia's nervous giggling seemed to echo through the room.

The beating I suffered that night wasn't the worst I'd ever receive. The physical wounds eventually healed, although I still have a small scar above my right eyebrow. But from that day on my father spent very little time at home, and I understood that I'd driven him away.

I never touched myself again until I was eighteen. My uncle Marius, who'd become my mentor, invited me to choose one of the new Greek slaves as a concubine. A half-dozen men were led into the private chamber, chains rattling as they shuffled along. I studied them carefully, finally selecting a tall, beautiful man with dark hair who couldn't take his eyes off me, aroused against his will by my strong body, hardened by military exercises, and the patrician looks I'd inherited from my mother. He was an aristocrat, the steward informed me, kidnapped in a raid against Pelegra.

When he was brought, cleaned, chained and naked, to my room, his mocking gaze so unnerved me that I blindfolded him. With his eyes covered, I felt safe--if I lost control again, he'd never see it. Too inhibited to fuck him at first, I moved him to the foot of my bed, then lay back against the pillows, studying his muscular body while my hand slid under my tunic to caress my cock. He could hear my breathing and knew what I was doing--his thick cock rose in response. That excited me, so I moved closer to him, then closer, until I could stroke his bronzed flesh while I caressed my own.

I squeezed his nipples, then licked them, while my cock grew harder and harder. When he groaned with desire, I helped him onto the bed, laying him down on his back. I began to lick his body, infused with my power over this bound, blindfolded slave. I could do anything to him, and no one would object. No one would care. I could have him killed if I lost control, if I had another seizure while I came.

Straddling his hard thighs, I took my cock in one hand, and quickly jerked off over my slave's chest. His cock kept brushing my fingers as I did it, his hips arching. The man's desire had overtaken his pride--I had made this happen. When the realization hit me, the knowledge of my own power, I came, seed spurting onto his nipples, his flat stomach. When he felt the wetness, he came too.

I was so turned on by my triumph, by my newfound knowledge, that I had the courage to fuck him, sliding my oiled cock into his tight, aristocratic ass until we both collapsed. But from that day on, I consciously equated masturbation with power. I never did it, alone, for pleasure--only to stamp another's body with the white sign of Caesar. That was during my lifetime.

In death, masturbation obsessed me.

Remember: my life in the underworld is bleak. Almost unbearable. I live in a small necropolis, population one, where the odd light filtering through the windows is a shade of yellow never cast by the sun. Before Iphicles, my only pleasure came from reading the scrolls in my vast library, and from writing. But even my love for both activities couldn't sustain me endlessly, especially when the god left me after that second visit.

I couldn't stop thinking of him, how he looked when I sucked his cock: lips parted, hips thrust forward, sweat burnishing his skin, eyes heavy-lidded. Old habits are hard to break, so I struggled to repress my desire. Death, however, changed everything.

While I swam in my piscina, letting the cool green water sluice over me, I thought of his long cock, the delectable taste of his semen when he came in my mouth, of his lips on mine when he kissed me...

Climbing up the white stone steps, leaving a wet trail behind me, I sat down on the smooth floor, resting my back against one of the tall columns surrounding the rectangular pool. Then I grasped my cock. Imagining those lips on my body, I came almost at once, covering my wet chest with warm fluid. I rubbed it onto my cold skin, thinking about his tongue licking it off me...My cock was already hard again, and I jerked off a second time, to a vision of Iphicles...only his copper hair had darkened and his eyes had turned black....

After that, I couldn't stop. I became consumed with my need for the god. I tried to find substitutes for his mouth, his hands, his ass...My hand wasn't enough, so I rubbed my cock against silk sheets; against the ripe, juicy flesh of beautiful, tasteless fruit; against the rough, scratchy surface of Egyptian papyrus...Anything for a new sensation, a new way to channel my desire for the god-king.

In my futile search, I wandered down into the lowest regions of my palace. Passing cell after cell, where prisoners had lived and died, often for my pleasure alone, I finally came to the heavy door that concealed the room where I'd died, where Iphicles had killed Ares. It opened with a groan, on unoiled hinges, and I walked in.

Nothing had changed. I saw the iron chains on the wall that had held the god's strong body while I spilled poisoned wine on his gold skin, licking up my death, where Iphicles had tilted back Ares' head to slit his throat. I saw the small wooden table where I'd collapsed when Cassia had stabbed me so brutally; the dark corner where the watcher had studied us, after orchestrating the brutal finale of my life.

I hadn't been here since that day. Now, standing in that dank, stone room, where I'd raped slaves, tortured them, where I'd run my tongue over a god's body, I became the old Caesar, and I stroked my cock to the rhythm of my former perversion, picturing blood and cum and Ares' beautiful face. Walking to the cold wall against which the god's cock had rested while I'd laved the sweet wine from his back, I rubbed myself against it, feeling the mossy stone as he must have felt it shortly before he died.

Disgust set in. I, who'd covered my skin with the blood of fearful mortals to harden my cock and prove my control, actually experienced disgust. I pulled away from the wall, my tunic dropping down. Hades' decision to imprison me in this nightmare-palace had managed the impossible: I was developing a conscience.

When I turned around, Iphicles was there.

"I dream of you," he said, words tumbling over each other. "I dream of the past. I can't stop. I think of how you controlled Ares, how you manipulated him. He was always a selfish pig, I think, but you made him worse. You made him into a monster. You made him rape me, you made him cut me, you made him love the taste of blood." He paused, breathing quickly, then sped on. "And I dream of the present. Who you are now. You seem different, more human now in death than you ever were in life. But I can't get over the past."

Beautiful, angry, violent, vulnerable god. "What do you want me to do?" I asked.

"I want to tie you up. I want to fuck you. I want total control. I want you to give yourself to me, to let me do whatever I want. Whatever I want," he repeated, his voice rising almost to a shout.

He wanted to be me. He wanted to be Ares. "No," I replied. "I can't let you do that."

Iphicles strode over to me. "Why the fuck not? You want it. I know you do. So let me. It will only work if you let me."

The smell again. Blood. Ambrosia. Leather. And his heat--he stood so close to me, warming my dead skin. He knew that would hurt, would make me long for him. Oh, he was learning, this new god of war. But if I let him do what he wanted, I'd be helping his transformation into pure god: no conscience, all violent impulse. Ares. "I can't," I said again. But he was right: I wanted it. I wanted him to take me. I wanted that dead god and the new one, fused in one, to fuck me. "No."

"How can you deny me this? You owe me. I need it." He pressed his hard body against mine, kissing me.

I pushed him away. "I told you: I can't do it. It's wrong. You think that dominating me will help you sleep, make your dreams disappear. It won't. It'll make you into...him." You need to fall in love with me, I wanted to tell him. That's the only way.

I'd forgotten how a god could heat a room. Iphicles, getting angrier at each refusal, was burning.

"You just don't want to give up control, you prick! After everything, you still want to control me! Now give me what I want!" His hand circled my throat, and he picked me up, letting my legs dangle to the ground.

I remembered how Ares had held up my sister's lover in a Gallic church in the same way before he'd killed him. But I was already dead. "No. I'm trying to save you!"

With a cry of rage, he smashed me against the wall, pinning me there. "Fuck you! You're the same selfish bastard you ever were! If you don't do this, I'll never come back! You'll be alone for eternity."

"Iphicles, I can't..."

But he was gone, and I fell to the floor. I died again.

*****

So there it was: the most noble act of a singularly ignoble life.

I didn't regret it at once. I assumed Iphicles would understand that I couldn't give him absolute control, not when part of him still hated me, not when he was immersed in the cult of war. It was...immoral.

I waited. I wrote lyric poetry; chronicled my life; read the history of the gods...Maddeningly desperate, I decided to paint, and spent what I think were weeks, maybe months, years--or maybe no time at all--mixing colors, splashing paint on any blank wall I could find, covering up my mistakes, painting over them...The palace began to resemble a madhouse, as I produced vivid images of monsters shredding human flesh, demons eating themselves from the inside, gods dying from bloody knife wounds...The white marble now blazed with color: crimson, black, violet, emerald, and amber for a dead god's eyes.

Still, Iphicles didn't appear. So I went to the shrine in what used to be the east side of the building--when direction had meaning. I threw out the statues and busts of myself as emperor of the world that had themselves replaced the Roman deities, and I covered the walls with endless portraits a copper-haired wargod. I replaced the half-burnt white candles with fresh ones, polished the high basalt altar until it gleamed blackly, covering it with a soft ochre cloth I discovered in a linen closet. I swept the imported tiles covering the floor in an endless pattern of vines and dragons. I lit fresh incense, filling the room with the smoky-sweet smell of jasmine.

Then I prayed to Iphicles, begging him understand, begging him to forgive me.

With my eyes downcast as I knelt before the altar, I felt his heat before I saw him. I couldn't look up, and he touched my hair while I shook at his booted feet. "I've been so alone," I told him. He placed his hand on my shoulder, trying to pull me up. My arms wrapped around his hips, and I pressed my face into his leather-covered cock, breathing deeply. I'd dreamed of that smell...Blood. Ambrosia. Leather...Semen.

I fell back, shocked, jealousy slicing open my heart. Unbelievable pain. Only the tall pillar at my back kept me upright. "You've been with someone." I don't know why I was so surprised. Surely thousands of men and women were lining up to fuck the wargod. They always had for Ares, drawn to his beauty and power. But Iphicles had always struck me as an ascetic, his desire inflamed only by the god whose life he'd taken. Then I knew. "You've been with Ares," I gasped. "You've fucked Ares." He tried to help me up, but I recoiled. "How is that possible?"

"Caesar," he began. His face--I couldn't read his expression. Guilt, anger, desire, pride. "He's in the bowels of Tartarus, so far from everyone he's almost unreachable, even by a god. The first time I visited you, I also visited him. After all, he's the one I loved; he's the one who betrayed me. He's the one I murdered."

I couldn't speak, unsure how to deal with my chaotic emotions. He stared at me, so unbelievably, achingly beautiful in his black leather, those red-gold curls tangling to his shoulders. "Tell me," I finally said. "Tell me everything. Please. I need to know."

Silently, he waved his hand, opening a window into the past. I saw Ares, the real Ares, lying on a narrow bed in a small, dark room. He was naked, with three men, strangely familiar, pleasuring him. One, a big man with dark auburn hair, lay between the former god's strong thighs, lips closed around that enormous cock. A second, lean, almost elegant, with short dark hair, bit one of the god's nipples, pinching the other, while a third, pale skin gleaming, stared down at Ares' face while he rammed his cock into the first man's ass.

"Who are they?" I asked. "Why isn't he alone?"

"You have your palace to keep you occupied--books, paints," he nodded at the bright walls of my shrine, "pool, parchment...Ares would never go for that, and Hades isn't a monster, so he gave his brother the only thing he's ever really cared about: sex. Sex for eternity. His only power is to make his three lovers appear and disappear."

I couldn't tear my eyes from the scene, from Ares' black eyes, his parted lips under the short beard as he got ready to cum in the mouth sucking his cock so enthusiastically. But a glint in the room's shadowy corner distracted me. It came from a large brass pot, the only other item in the chamber, its shining surface reflecting the action on the bed.

"You said that Hades wasn't a monster." I'd read the stories. I knew what the jar represented. The Aloads, giant twin sons of Poseidon and Iphimedia, who vowed to fight the Olympians, and nearly succeeded. Artemis eventually killed them in Naxos by changing herself into a deer, standing between the two then leaping away just as they threw darts to slay her--but not before the twins had trapped the young Ares in a brazen jar--perhaps this very one. Hermes had found his exhausted, nearly incoherent brother after thirteen excruciating months.

"Hades never liked Ares--none of the gods did. That's why they allow me to act as wargod, why they let Ares stay locked away under the earth."

Ares was cumming now, raising his hips to shove his cock deep into the mouth over it, one large hand pressed against the wall for support. That's when I noticed the murals. A man with a club fighting an enormous gold lion, then a many-headed serpent in a marshy swamp, a flock of enormous birds in a verdant wood by a lake..."That bastard! The twelve labors of Hercules. Hades does like his petty revenges..."

Iphicles' sudden presence in the window silenced me.

Ares, body still shuddering, must've seen his killer from the corner of his eye. He shoved the men off him, and they disappeared with a hurried wave of his hand. His handsome face contorted with rage. Then he howled. Even through the distance of time and space, that scream shook the floor beneath me. He lunged at Iphicles, wanting blood.

The former king, with his godly powers, could've stopped the infuriated Ares. Instead, he met him head-on, and they began to wrestle. Against my will, my cock hardened, as I watched the naked skin of the ex-god strain against Iphicles' leather-clad body. Teeth bared, muscles tensed, they rolled together on the ground. Sweat soon flowed down Ares' broad back, and Iphicles' curls began to dampen, as they struggled together.

Inevitably, the fury mutated. Violence became desire, and Ares kissed Iphicles. The kiss was so intense, so hard, so powerful that I felt an echoing ripple of passion through my own body, not a response, but an extension of the lust contained in that act. As their arms wound around each other, as their cocks ground together, as their tongues intertwined, I started to shake with jealousy. With my own desire. With anger. With disgust. With sadness.

But then Iphicles pushed Ares away. "You fucking bastard--you can't do this to me again!" His fist struck the other man in the face, and as he staggered back, the god vanished.

"That was the first time," Iphicles said to me, as the image faded. "The kiss...disturbed me, especially after what I'd done to you. I wanted to rape him. I wanted to fuck him. But I left because Ares...has changed. I don't think you can tell from here, but unlike you, he hasn't adapted. The jar, the mural, the closed space...Somehow it's made him worse. He's like an animal now. He's...evil."

"But you didn't know that until you went back."

"I suspected even after the first time. The kiss...It might look erotic, but he wanted to hurt me for his own pleasure."

"But you went back."

"When you turned me down, I was pissed. I...something was happening between us, and I didn't know what to do when you rejected me. I was angry, so I went to Ares."

Images again filled the air. The same dark room, but it wasn't Ares lying on the bed, but Iphicles. Ares held the god's hands above his head, and was biting a bloody path down the gleaming body, while viciously tugging the other's tanned nipples. Guttural moans came from Iphicles, as the man began to rake his teeth across the god's heavy, stiff cock. Then Ares let go of Iphicles' hands, grabbing his hair, pushing him face-first into his lap.

The god's full lips closed around the cock, and he let Ares fuck his mouth, not complaining at the brutal strokes. Instead, he gently stroked the heavy balls that swung with every cruelly deep thrust. With a loud grunt, Ares came, using his grip on Iphicles' hair to force his huge, leaking cock even further down the god's throat, until he choked. Ares never stopped, only laughed, even when Iphicles pushed him off, sending him sprawling to the edge of the cot.

As the god-king lay back, panting, his own cock gleaming in the half-light, Ares stroked himself to another erection. Lubricated with saliva and semen, he raised the god's hips, and rammed himself into Iphicles' ass, so hard I cringed. I expected him to fight back, to stop what was obviously now a rape. But he didn't. He only stared at Ares' demonic face, a look of such need on his own.

When Ares ignored Iphicles' cock, the god took it in his hand, and jerked off to the rhythm of the cock pounding into him. About to cum, driven to the brink by his own violence, Ares pulled out and let his creamy seed spill onto the god's chest. Iphicles' own cum joined it as he climaxed, head thrown back in ecstasy. Then Ares waved his hands, using his only power to conjure his three slaves. With a nod, he ordered the three onto the bed, and they descended like vultures, tongues extended to lick the sticky mess off Iphicles' chest. He didn't stop them, although I swore he flinched, even when two began to roughly slide their cocks inside him--one in his mouth, one in his ass--while the third fellated him. Ares watched, cock in hand, looking a wild animal, a wolf, a lion. A predator.

"I don't want to see anymore," I said abruptly. The window evaporated. "I'll do it. Tie me up, Iphicles. I want you to do it."

"I'm not sure that..."

"Just do it. You still want to. You need to. Do it. Here, on the altar." I grabbed the silken cords tying the curtains on either side of the sacrificial table. "Do it."

Part III

...Horror and doubt distract
His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir
The hell within him, for within him hell
He brings, and round about him, nor from hell
One step no more than from himself can fly...

---Paradise Lost

I'm past the beginning of my story. I'm past the point of my introduction. I'm now in the present, a present that involves the making of a monster. A new beginning. In principio...

*****

"Tie me up," I command him. "Tie me up and fuck me the way you want." The words sicken me. Not because they confer my loss of power. I've already lost that. I flung it away when I desecrated my shrine and rebuilt it to the copper-haired god of war, begging him on my knees to appear. I can live without power now. I think.

What sickens me about a command I should find erotic--the offer to give myself up to the tongue, fingers and cock of Iphicles--is the implicit request for violence. He's made clear that his request for my submission could involve pain. Our relationship, after all, is predicated on it.

It's not that I fear pain--I spent a lifetime conquering it. But by agreeing to his request, I accept responsibility for his depravity. Because that's where this act will lead. He'll fuck me, and he'll hurt me, and he'll love it. Pain will become eroticized--and he'll want to inflict it not just on me, but on everyone. It will be his revenge for the torture he's suffered. My torture.

I have to agree to his request. Because, ironically, I think that I'm the lesser of the two evils. Ares has become the animal I'd accused him of being. If Iphicles returns to him, he'll be devoured by the mad, violent creature in the depths of Tartarus. So I'll let him act out his violence on me, to keep him from returning to Ares. I'll seduce him away from the pleasure of submission to the greater pleasure of domination. And who better to do that than the former emperor of the world? I'll save him so that he'll become a destroyer of men.

He'll lose his humanity. I understand that. He'll become Ares. But he'll never again be that weeping, bleeding figure on a cold stone floor. I did that to him. And now Ares is doing it to him again. Only one way to stop it. "Tie me up, Iphicles."

He's been watching me while these thoughts charge through my brain. Does he know? At this point, does he care?

"I'm not sure, Caesar..."

Not sure because Ares, even Ares as demon, fascinates him. So I have to present my submission as a seduction. I climb on the altar, gripping the hard edge of the table behind me. The short skirt of my tunic rises, and he can see my cock jutting from between my thighs. I'm hard. Even hell can't completely tame my perversion. "I want you to fuck me," I tell him. "I want to feel your tongue everywhere on my body. I want you to control me. I want you to do whatever you want to me."

I mean it. For him. And for me. I'm in love with Iphicles. I admitted that from the beginning. I think of him as my lover, even if I have to share him with Ares. And I want my lover to use my flesh however he wants. Even if that means pain.

Taking my cock in my hand, I stroke it, licking my lips. "Feel how hard it is." I put the tip of my finger against the head to catch the drop of liquid poised there, offering it to him. "Taste how much I want you."

His erection is outlined against the shiny leather. I change positions, lying lengthwise along the altar. The fleecy ochre cloth covering the stone feels soft against my skin, as I extend my arms above my head. "Look at me, Iphicles. Remember what happened when Ares chained you to that altar in your palace. Remember how I rammed my cock into your mouth. Remember how I forced you to suck it while you nearly gagged. Remember how I came down your throat, getting off on your struggles."

He makes a noise. I spread my legs wider, letting him think my arousal springs only from the memories of the rape, not from the desire I have for him here. He can know the truth later--right now, he'd respond only to violence. Because Iphicles doesn't want to betray Ares. Ares never gave a shit about him, still doesn't, but Iphicles...Iphicles is still human that way. That's the part of him I have to destroy. "Why don't you fuck my mouth the way I fucked yours?" I let my head drop back even further, allowing my lips to part slightly.

The shrine is heating, as Iphicles' violent desire rises. But he still doesn't move.

I turn my head and look up at him. "Remember how I sliced open your skin in that dark dungeon. Remember how you cried out. Remember how I laughed, then rubbed that blood onto my cock and fucked you."

Suddenly my hands are chained to the altar. He's rejected the more gentle silk cords from the curtains. Good.

"I hate you," Iphicles says, as he climbs up, kneeling over me. His clothes have vanished, and his huge erection rests against his firm stomach.

"Like I care, you pathetic bastard? I'm begging you to fuck me, and you can't even do that--"

My words are cut off when he shoves his cock into my mouth. Not as hard as I did to him, but hard enough. I refuse to suck it, even though I want to more than anything, especially when his precum drips onto my tongue. This still isn't the time to show my desire.

His eyes glow as he slides his hands under my head, forcing his erection down my throat. I bite him. Iphicles cries out, surprised by the pain, and strikes me hard across the face. "You bastard!" he snarls. But his cock jumps in my mouth, as my ears ring.

I bite him again. Again, he slaps me. And again. Tears run down my cheeks. It's not just from the pain, although my skin burns and my throat feels raw. It's not just because I'm making him get off on violence, making him into Ares. I cry because it turns me on so much. I thought I'd changed. I thought that death had made me human. But I'm still a monster. I'd like to believe that somehow I'm redeemed because I hate what I'm doing as much as I love it. Only I don't think it's enough.

I pretend to struggle, trying to move my head from his hard grasp, from his stinging blows. But I want more. I need this as much as he does. Maybe more. He fucks me harder now, the slaps ringing out to the rhythm of his thrusts, to his harsh breaths. When he raped me on the couch in the library, it was too easy. He couldn't see my face and the act lasted seconds. This is different. He's looking directly into my eyes, telling me that he likes what he's doing...he can't help it. He's not thinking anymore, overcome by the wetness and the exertion of blow/stroke/blow/stroke. He is now, truly, the god of war. I love him.

And when he cums, head thrown back, full lips parted in a loud groan, it's confirmation. Because he can't stop now. But he tries. Pulling his cock from my swollen mouth, he apologizes, which infuriates me.

"That's it? One little blowjob? You're a god now, you stupid fuck! You can rape me for hours! Even I fucked you a few times before I threw your sorry ass onto the floor!" The heat is rising again. Sweat pours into my eyes, and I blink it away. "For once in your life, do something you want! You're the god of war--start acting like it! Rape me! Hurt me!"

His large hand clamps down over my mouth while a knife appears in the other. He slices open my tunic, and the sharp point of the blade leaves a long, red trail down my body. So hot in here...His cock is erect again. It's the blood now flowing from my wound. He's remembering what Ares and I did to him. He's furious. And aroused. He is so beautiful...

Iphicles keeps the hand pressed tight while he reaches down, running his fingers into the wetness on my chest, then smearing it over my lips. I lap it up. But the cut is already closing, so he picks up the knife and reopens it, slicing a little deeper this time. He immerses his hand in the blood, covering his cock with the red fluid, wiping it on his chest, licking it off his fingers. He's growling as he sucks it off, and his cock, shiny with cum, saliva and blood, looks ready to burst.

I think of Ares again, how he looked in that church when he killed my sister's lover, when the boy's blood sprayed over him, and how he'd fucked me after that, shoving that huge cock into me in a frenzy. Iphicles would kill me now, if I weren't already dead. He's using the knife again, cutting even deeper, trailing his cock in the gash. It hurts, but I love/hate the look on his face. Like an animal, some wild cat frenzied by blood, aroused by the kill, tearing at the carcass with pointed teeth and claws. I want his bloody cock in me.

The blade flashes in the candlelight, and more blood spills. He's covered in it, red drops spilling off his taut nipples, streaking down his chest, matting the dark hair... I'm at the center of the sun. The heat is so intense--the room shimmers with it. Then Iphicles tosses back his head and howls, just as he lifts my hips and slams his blood-oiled cock into me.

As he thrusts into my ass, his sweat and my blood pour off him. I want to scream, but his hand is still covering my mouth. It's so good....His cock is huge, like Ares', and it's like his entire body is in me, like there's nothing between us, like we're one. Every stroke tears me, every stroke opens me up to such intense sensation that I forget, for once, that I'm in hell, and that he'll be leaving me...

My ass tightens, my body reacting to the pain of my slashed chest and the pleasure of his cock in me...I've never been so excited. Or so despairing. He's a monster: a beautiful, bloody monster. And he's fucking me so hard, thinking he's raping me, loving the idea that he's hurting me, wanting to hurt me more, to take the knife and slice me again and again....I'm writhing so much under him--he thinks I'm struggling but I'm going to cum...So is he...He's so hot, burning... "You're pathetic," I gasp.

"Take it, you fucking bastard," he hisses at me, ripping me open with his thrusting cock. "Take it into your tight ass. Hard..."

His teeth sink into my neck, ripping the skin open, lapping up the blood, drinking it while his semen spills into me. My body is shaking, shuddering--it's like a seizure, but I never lose consciousness. There's only ecstasy.

Still, he's not done. He takes that massive cock in his hand, and jerks off over me: long, hard, fast strokes until his semen mingles with my blood. The whole time he mutters a litany of hatred: "Take it take it take it..."

He masturbates again, hand racing over his reddening cock until he cums. And then he does it again, and again, until I'm drowning under the thick, red blood and the milky seed. Only then does he collapse on top of me, never taking his hand from my mouth. He crushes me with his bulk, scalds me with his heat.

My body has never been so savaged--mortal, I would die from the wounds he's inflicted. But I'm already dead. I wonder about the consequences of this blood-letting for a moment. I prefer to focus on that than on what just happened. But when his amber eyes open, staring into mine, I can't ignore it anymore. Because I see Ares. I see the history of violence. I see death and chaos and pain.

Iphicles is dead. And I've killed him.

The manacles at my wrists open, but I keep my arms above me, unsure for once what to do. The semen in my wounds burns, even though the split skin's begun to close. Hotter still is Iphicles' skin against mine.

I wait for his head to rise, to see the aftermath of this ritualistic sacrifice of his humanity--a sacrifice I'd engineered. I wonder what that missing piece of humanity looks like, that piece of Iphicles that I've destroyed. Where is it located? Is part of his brain now desiccated, shrivelled? Or maybe his heart, the wet, red center blackened and dead? Or maybe his dead heart, bloated with the poison of violence, exploded, sending fetid toxins coursing through his body. Maybe when he looks up, I'll see it in his eyes: the whites now pale green, the irises red...

Or maybe when he looks up, everything will be alright. I want to believe, even more than in the myth of my own humanity, that Iphicles' red heart hasn't yet burst. I want to believe that he'll recover and take me in his arms and fuck me without violence, without blood. I want to believe that Iphicles will love me the way no one ever has before.

But I know that this can't happen. I'm in hell, after all. How can I find love and happiness in hell? I never found it in life, and so while I need him more than anything, I know it'll never happen. Iphicles is now a simulacrum--the model for which there is no original. An imitation mortal, an imitation god. A monster. And it's my fault. I did this. To save him from Ares. To save him from pain.

At first, when his heavy body starts to shudder above me, I think it's my imagination. I want so much for him to cry, to show that this has been only one more night-terror that he'll survive, one more bloody vision of hell that will dissipate with time. But I can't believe it. I won't. If I'm wrong, it'll hurt too much. I won't be able to stand it.

Only the shaking is unmistakable now. "Iphicles," I say. A whispered shout. I stroke the damp curls of the head resting against my shoulder. "Iphicles. It's alright. You needed this. Things will only get better from now on. It's cathartic. It's ok. It's ok."

When he doesn't stop, I finally tell him what I've thought all along, what I've been wanting to tell him forever. "Iphicles, I love you." I've never said those words and meant them. It's time. He needs this now. I need this now. "I love you."

And he responds, raising himself up to look into my eyes.

My dead heart turns to stone. There are no tears. There were never any tears.

"I've killed you," I say with regret. I don't understand, you see.

He begins to laugh again. "Caesar, you always were a pretentious fuck. You killed me?" He sits up, teeth flashing.

He's so beautiful, even covered with blood. And so evil. "Iphicles, I'm so sorry."

More laughter now, harder. "You always thought you were smarter than me. 'A barbarian,' you called me. 'All body, no brains.' Guess you'll change your tune now. Because I've fucked you good."

I don't understand. I don't.

"Of course you do, Caesar. You just don't want to admit how gullible you've been. Oh, this is priceless!" Now his tears are flowing, as he clutches his sides, nearly hysterical with mirth. "C'mon--do you actually think that Iphicles would have the balls to rape you? Then to cut you open and fuck you bloody?" He's smirking, clearly pleased with himself. "Iphicles is rotting his murderous ass off somewhere around here." He waves a hand at the regions beyond the castle's walls. "I even fuck him once in awhile, and he *still* sucks my cock like he can't get enough of it!"

My shocked expression sets him off again.

"You didn't think..." He pauses to catch his breath. "You didn't think Zeus would let him get away with killing a god? Daddy dearest may not be my biggest fan, but he's not going to let some piddling mortal slay the god of war. I mean, how would it look?"

My brain refuses to process this information. I only stare into his perfect, bloody face, letting myself get lost in those high cheekbones, those full lips. Iphicles' perfect face, with Ares' eternally black heart. But I can't resist. He's waiting, after all. "So it wasn't real, that scene the little room with the jar and the mural?"

He's grinning. "I thought the jar was a brilliant touch. You almost felt sorry for me, didn't you, you heartless bastard? Of course your cock was hard, watching me fuck those three, and then fuck that stupid king--kinda screws up the pity thing. But you never were good at pity."

"Ares...It's been you all along...It's always been you."

Suddenly, my body is submerged in frigid water. I sink to the pool's bottom, swallowed up by the cold, dazed by the emerald clarity. Sputtering to the surface, I swim to the half-immersed marble steps, leaning back to face the piscina, legs extended before me. The rippling waves lap my balls. I think of the god's tongue...

Ares, still beardless, still smooth-cheeked, stands before me, the water at his nipples as he stands on the pool's slick bottom. He smiles, then dives under, reappearing between my thighs.

The copper curls are black once again, the beard grown back, the vulnerability lost. Surely no one was ever as seductive as the god of war, especially as he now appears: black hair slicked back, lashes spiky against his cheeks, golden skin glittering under the sheen of moisture...

"I've always liked your cock," he says, licking the head.

Ares gives the best blowjobs. His tongue works with centuries of practice, and his velvety mouth is so warm against my chilled skin. My cock is swelling, and I run my hands across his broad shoulders. How can I resist him? The god of war--the strong, aggressive, violent, dominant god of war--between my thighs, lowering himself to suck my cock...It's the ultimate turn-on. To dominate all of that power. He knows how I feel. That's why he's doing it. It's a trade-off, really. I forget about my newfound morality, only an illusion in any case, and he licks my cock like he's doing right now, running his tongue along the shaft, dipping it into the slit while he cups my balls, rolling them between his fingers...

If only it didn't feel so good...And now, dead, I don't have to worry about having a seizure; I can focus on his skilled touch, his expert mouth...How can I not forget my regret, my guilt? They mean nothing against this god's lips tight around my cock. Then why can't I stop thinking? Why can't I lose myself in sensation? Why do I think of Iphicles, even though he was just a fantasy?

Ares pauses, looking up at me. If only he didn't look like that, skin so shiny-smooth, lips so pink under the dark beard...

"Caesar," he says. Then, climbing from the water, he pushes me down against the marble floor, lying on top of me. His body, even wet, is blazing, warming my own strangely cool flesh. "I've made you hot for the king, haven't I? You can't stop thinking about him. You want to taste his cock again. All that crap about falling in love with him, though--what a joke! You just liked controlling him..." He laughs. "That was my favorite part--the shit you fed me about how I needed to rape you, to hurt you...when you were just manipulating me to satisfy your own lust. Same old Caesar."

Why do I want to disagree?

"Because you hate to admit that I'm right. You bought into this little fantasy of your own goodness when all you wanted was to break me into a thousand pieces, then fuck each one."

"Maybe I've changed," I say, staring into those dark, disbelieving eyes. "You wouldn't understand; you're a god. You've never been human."

"Fuck off, Caesar! Neither have you. You were born a twisted bastard." He traces my lips with his tongue, grinding that huge cock against mine.

"Maybe you're just scared that you're wrong, Ares--did you ever consider that?"

He's easing the oiled head of his cock into my ass. "If you've changed, then I guess I shouldn't mention my little proposition to you...Ohhh, yes..." Ares is now fully inside me.

I don't want to respond. I want to be strong. But that cock is stroking every sensitive inch of my ass, and I can't resist the lure of pleasure. But I try. "Fuck me harder," I order him.

Perversely, he slows down, pulling his cock to the edge of my ass, then pushing back inside me in a long, drawn-out motion. He repeats that until my legs start to quiver. His tongue's now in my ear. "I think you'd like it," he whispers. "You've always like to fuck with people's heads."

I know, of course, what he's going to suggest. That's really why I resist him.

"I think we should pay Iphicles a visit. He's still obsessed with me, but he hates your fucking guts. We could seduce him. Then you could find out what it's like to have your cock willingly sucked by both of us at the same time. You'd have to seduce him, of course. It'll be tough. But you're the guy who seduced his own sister, so Iphicles should be a piece of cake, right?"

His breathing is getting erratic. Ares is aroused by his own depravity, and his belief in mine. He's got my cock in his hand now, squeezing it. How can I not cum? Ares and Iphicles. Oh yes...

Part IV

Since now we find this our empyreal form
Incapable of mortal injury
Imperishable, and though pierced with wound,
Soon closing, and by native vigour healed.
Of evil then so small as easy think
The remedy...

---Paradise Lost

"I want... to watch...you....fuck him," Ares groans as he cums inside me, cock pulsing. His teeth break the skin of my shoulder and blood flows into his mouth. My orgasm is so intense that I shout his name.

My violent god is back.

He transports us from the damp floor of the piscina to my bedroom. It's time to plan my seduction of Iphicles. And a plan is already forming in my mind. I admit that I'm challenged by Ares' devious actions toward me. I'd underestimated him. I was fooled by his beauty, distracted from the role he plays in the order of things. He is the god of war, after all, and by virtue of necessity, he is a strategist. No wonder I can't get enough of him. But I don't like to be bested.

As he turns me on my stomach to lick his own cum from my ass, I tell him what I want. "Since the odds are against me, given Iphicles' hatred, I demand a concession."

His tongue stops. "A concession?"

"Don't worry, Ares. I think you'll like it. You want to watch me fuck him? I'd like to fuck him twice. The second time, it'll be your way. A seduction. I'll make him want his worst enemy. But for the first time--I'd like to fuck him in your body."

Ares is easing his cock back into my ass, and doesn't answer until he's all the way in. It takes a few minutes--he's doing it slowly for a change, teasing me, giving me himself in pieces. He's so good in bed when he wants to be...I love when he takes his time, allowing me to adjust to his size, letting me appreciate the sensation of his huge godcock sliding into me.

Trying not to be overwhelmed by what he's doing, by the hardness stroking the walls of my ass, I wait for his answer. I know he'll say yes. He has to. If he denies me, he'll be admitting that there's something about the situation--me, fucking the man I thought I loved, experiencing the king's adoration--that bothers him.

"That could be interesting," he says against my ear, one hand reaching down for my cock. "I'd like to see what I look like fucking him."

His cock swells inside me, and I wonder if I'm wrong. The supreme narcissist, Ares would love to watch himself. He chose the king as a lover in the first place because of the resemblance. He'd love to fuck himself.

I thrust back against him. "I'll put on a show for you. You'll see everything. Every lick, every bite, every penetration..."

"Are you going to hurt him?" His chest is slick with sweat as he presses against me.

I shrug as best I can with his cock inside me. "Maybe not physically. But he'll cry." The god's fingers move faster along my shaft in harsh, rapid strokes--it's almost painful. He licks my damp back, shoving himself deeper inside me, while he groans loudly. "You like that, don't you, Ares? Like the thought of me hurting the king? Maybe fucking him 'til he bleeds? 'Til he screams? And doing it with your cock. Fucking him with your cock while you watch..."

He's losing control. "Tell me. Fuck, tell me."

He's getting so hot against me, inside me. I grab handfuls of the silk sheets to keep my balance--he's fucking me so hard. My cock is throbbing in his hand...It's turning me on, too, thinking about hurting Iphicles. Maybe I hate the king a little for not being the one.

"I'll make him beg for it, then I'll shove my cock in his mouth, between those pouty lips..."

"Yes, more..." Ares, panting, drops my cock to grab my hips, forcing himself deeper up my ass.

"I'll let him suck your cock, let him lick the thick head--maybe have him bite your nipples...Then I'll throw him onto his knees and ram your cock into his ass--"

"Fuck him hard," the god moans, as he cums inside me. His semen feels like molten steel. When he finally finishes, Ares rolls off me, collapsing on the bed at my side.

I sit up beside him, my own cock, engorged and heavy, resting against my stomach.

"I'd blow you," he says, grinning, "but I think you'll have more fun with Iphicles if you haven't just cum in my mouth."

He's right--my own frustrated desire will make me more eager. And more cruel. Exactly what he wants. But his mouth is so incredible...Death, apparently, has made me a bit needy. "Suck it first--just for a while." I hope my imperious tone covers the need. I'm surprised when he climbs between my thighs still slick with his semen. I don't care about his motives, though, when my cock disappears past his lips, and his tongue starts to move; I only stroke those dark curls and pray he doesn't stop before I cum.

He does, of course. "That's enough."

"You'll regret it, Ares--you'll be stepping into this body soon enough. And you're not used to dealing with frustration."

He laughs. There's a dizzying blackness--then I slam into heat, brutality, desire, anger, power, despair, jealousy, hatred. Ares.

The god's gasping beside me. I look over--and see myself. Long, lean body, massive erection, heavy-lidded dark eyes, short dark hair damp with sweat. I'm struck with a violent need to possess him/me. Desire...No control. Out of control. I pin him to the bed, tongue snaking into that arrogant mouth. Ares groans against me, kissing me back as hard as I'm kissing him. His lips...my lips...can't tell where it starts and stops...so much sensation...

My cock stiffens at once--and I'm throwing his thighs open. No thought. Only desire...Can't stop.

Suddenly, I'm smashing into a heavy oak cabinet.

"Caesar," he hisses at me. "Get a grip. Where's the famous restraint? Can't you handle my desire and yours at the same time? Didn't you realize you'd feel both? And that you'd get double the sensation?"

I try to focus. Sensory overload. His body--so receptive to everything. I can feel his breath from across the room, can smell every molecule of his semen, my semen...Can taste the lingering traces of cum in my mouth, can feel every grain of wood in the cabinet...can feel his divine heart beating, the blood racing through my veins...My cock...another heart beats there...and I can feel the throbbing of the second cock...His cock...my cock...Pounding rhythm...

I cum, writhing and moaning on the floor, like an animal. He's cumming, too, and I can hear him threatening to take his body back if I can't get in control. The orgasm helps. A little. I realize that he's disappointed in me, so I make a supreme effort to reign in the bursts of sensation blinding me to everything but my need. I can't.

Grabbing the beautiful, thick cock already jutting from my thighs, I jerk off. The god's panting noises drive me crazy--it's like he's right beside me. I love his cock...Another orgasm. "Last chance, Caesar," he manages to say.

Ok. I can do this. I can. I try to rise, but my large body stirs the air, and it feels like a thousand tongues blowing cool, damp air on my skin. My nipples...it's like they're being sucked by this breeze...

"Caesar, you pathetic fuck--control yourself!"

He's angry now. He'll take this away from me if I don't calm down. Slowly, hesitantly, trying not to stir any air, I face him, leaning against the marble wall. Ignore the coolness of the stone. Ignore the way it clings to my godskin...

"I'm ok," I lie. Fuck. His voice. My voice. So sexy...So much range, so timbered...And then I look over at him. Ares is leaning against the red velvet pillows, hands balled in fists beside him. Cum splattered on his chest. Death has perfected me. Skin so smooth, hair sleek and shining, body all carved muscle...I close my eyes. "I'm ok," I repeat. "It's not just the double sensation... It's your body...The way it responds to sensation..." As long as I keep my eyes shut, body still, I'll be alright. I hope.

"What the hell did you expect? I'm not mortal. It's not just fireballs, strength and teleportation. My body's wired differently. No pain--but every other sensation. Not like your boring human flesh."

"No...not like boring human flesh." Tentatively, I run a finger lightly over my left nipple. Instantly, I'm ready to cum. "Why don't you fuck me, so I can get used to it?"

He laughs. Sounds odd. I don't think I laugh very much. "No. Maybe later. I want to see what happens when you try to fuck Iphicles in your overcharged body. It'll make things more interesting."

"Were you always such a bastard?" I ask him, opening my eyes. The colors of the room astonish me--I can perceive every shade of red, every hue of white...I can see every fiber in the black silk sheets...

"You helped. Now listen to me. Don't get any ideas about this body. It's all you've got. I've kept my powers--" he waves his hand, and we're both clothed-- "which means that I have all of the control. Remember that. You're going to entertain me with your little show, cum a few dozen times, then you're going back into your own body."

He stares down at me, while I try to recover from the shock of the tight leather squeezing my erection, supporting my balls...Returning his gaze, I decide that I'd make a great god; I've got presence. The arched eyebrows, the raised chin, the dead eyes...I could terrify hordes of marauding villagers with one look. "I'd like to fuck you, Ares."

"Later. First, I want some foreplay. Now get your ass in gear--Iphicles is waiting."

"I'll be able to see you while I fuck him?" I try not to sound too eager.

"Yes, but he won't. And don't forget--I want to see everything."

His excitement fuels mine. I've wanted to fuck Iphicles, alone, since Ares first brought me to his new lover. Some of it was jealousy--I hated knowing that the god desired someone other than me. And the king is so beautiful. He bored Ares, but I still resented him. Then I fell in love with him...Or with a vision of him. And now I'm going to fuck the real thing. In Ares' incredible body. While he watches me in mine.

A rush of heat, and we're there. Ares modelled his own imaginary hell on Iphicles'--the same gloomy, barren space, devoid of decoration, except for the mural depicting the labors of Hercules. Only the brass jar is missing. Hell as solitude.

Iphicles is lying on the bed. When he sees me standing there...The look on his face...No one has ever looked at me like that. It's how I wanted him to look at me. With love and desire and need and longing.

"He's desperate for you," Ares whispers in my ear.

Shivers run down my spine. I'm already shaking from Iphicles' smell...It's so familiar. I remember burying my face between his legs and inhaling his scent. Or thinking I was...He's shaking, too. His eyes shine as he takes off his clothes.

Do I seem this desperate to Ares? Did I, when the god I believed was Iphicles came to me?

He's naked now, golden skin gleaming, lips parted, thighs spread as he lies back on the bed.

"Fuck him," Ares says. Our clothes disappear. When he takes his cock in his hand, I nearly fall over. Double sensation. Control. Control.

"Iphicles," I say. "Come here now." Can he hear my excitement as he walks toward me? My eyes don't leave his. "Kiss me." His lips are softer than I remember, his tongue sweeter. His hands roam over my body, down my back, onto my ass. It's like water sliding over glass. His heavy cock rubs against mine, and he's telling me how much he missed me, his kisses getting harder and more urgent. "I've missed you," I tell him. Iphicles pulls back, startled.

Ares smiles. "That's good. Tell him how much you missed him."

"There's no one like you," I whisper.

The god smirks, his hand racing over his cock. I can feel it all: the hot blood teeming under the tight skin. And my cock--the one pressed against Iphicles--is ready to erupt.

I take the king's face in my hands. "I love you."

"Ares," he says, voice breaking, "don't do this to me. Just fuck me. You don't have to lie."

I kiss him again. Softly, on the lips. "Why do you think I keep coming back? I could fuck anyone. I want you."

"Caesar, you're evil," Ares laughs.

Every inch of my skin is responding to Iphicles' need, to his body against mine, and to Ares' lust, as he watches us, fingers idly reaching out to stroke my back, hand just under the king's. I get on my knees before Iphicles. Looking up into those amber eyes, I let my tongue touch the swollen head. He's rubbing my shoulder in slow circles. Ares knows Iphicles too well--he mimicked all of these gestures, and so they feel disturbingly familiar. Painfully erotic.

The god issues a command. "Take it all in your mouth. I want to see you deep-throat him."

I obey. It's what I want to do: take that long, hard cock all the way into my mouth. Iphicles groans above me, fingers digging into my skin. I'm using my tongue only, no teeth, as Ares does. Semen drips into my mouth--he's so close. But I don't want him to cum, not yet. Guiding him back to the cot, I ease him down on the coarse sheet and climb over him. Ares follows us, stopping at the bedside.

Unblinking, the king lies back, unsure what I want. I know he's waiting for the pleasure to end, for the violence to start. But I only want to lick him, run my tongue over the death- smoothed skin, taste him. I begin with his lips. I hear the god's impatient sigh behind me, but I know he won't stop me because he likes the heightened sensation I'm bringing him. Gestures that he takes for granted are infused with a new intensity. And Ares appreciates novelty.

Iphicles, forever locked away in a tiny room in the heart of hell, is nearly crying. His neglected skin, deprived even of light, begs for the warmth of my tongue. I understand that. He whimpers when I lap at his throat, licking away the cool sheen of death, and his hands tangle in my hair. He thinks that if he lets go, I'll stop. I won't. He tastes too good. It's like I can taste his humanity on his skin.

I'm moving so slowly over his body. This is partly for him, partly for me. Any faster, and I'll be frenzied. I'm already shaking with the effort of not cumming. Even Ares has slowed the furious movement of his hand--he knows that if we time this right, the pleasure will be unbelievable.

My lips close around one of Iphicles' brown nipples. Tight before my mouth found it, the skin tautens even more, and his broad back arches, bringing his cock against mine. A long hiss of air burst from my lips. "You feel too good," I say, teeth clenched.

"Why are you doing this?" he asks. "Why? I can't stand it. Please stop. Please, Ares."

"Stop, Caesar. Make him beg for it."

I sit up, resting on my knees, as I straddle the king's body. "If that's what you want." I pretend to get off the bed.

Iphicles grabs my arm. "Don't go."

"Why not? You just told me you didn't want me to touch you."

"Ares, why are you torturing me like this? Or is this more of my punishment?"

"Does this feel like punishment?" I ask, returning to his nipples, licking one then the other in rapid succession.

"Yes," he gasps, thrusting his hips forward. "Yes."

Again, I move back, staring down at him. His lips are swollen, face flushed.

"Ares..."

"What do you want?"

"Fuck me."

"I want to lick you first. If you don't let me, I'll leave."

"Lick me," Iphicles almost shouts. "Lick me. Everywhere. Don't stop. Lick me until I cum."

"Push him a bit harder," Ares says. "This is good, but I want more."

I push a strand of red-gold hair from the king's eyes. "Beg me."

"Lick me, suck me...I want to feel your tongue everywhere. On my cock, on my balls, on my nipples, in my mouth. I love you, Ares. I always have. You can do whatever you want to me. I'm begging you. Just don't leave."

I run my tongue around his lips, then over his shoulders, down one muscular arm, tracing the crease inside his elbow, licking the blue vein at his wrist before I move slowly down his chest. Spreading his legs open with my hands, I outline the skin where thigh meets groin. His cock is so hard--I look at it, wanting to suck it again.

"Not yet," Ares cautions. "I want him desperate for me. You can hold back, can't you, Caesar? This isn't too much for you, is it?" What a bastard. I'm not sure whose suffering he's enjoying more--mine or Iphicles'. How can I not identify with the king? I know what it's like to be alone in hell, knowing your lover will leave you, and the only sound you'll hear for an eternity is your own heartbeat. Your skin will cool without the sun, without another's touch, and you'll slowly go mad.

Do I like torturing Iphicles? Yes. Because my torture brings him pleasure, if only for now. Because he loves what I'm doing as much as he hates it. I understand him. And I want him. I want him so much that I would die all over again just to have him. So I lick his balls, laving the finely-textured skin while he sits up to stroke my hair. To watch me.

Lifting the heavy sac, my tongue flicks back and forth over the sensitive skin there, before sliding into the tight ring of flesh. Iphicles moans above me, while Ares encourages me.

"That's it. Lick his ass. Deeper. The way you'll do to me later. Move your head a little--I want to see it go in...Yes, that's good." The god lowers himself beside me. "Now his cock, Caesar. Just the head. Let me see it."

I return to Iphicles' golden cock, and catch the liquid leaking there. The king bucks violently. I take the tip in my mouth, tongue never stopping its sweeping motion.

"He's crying, Caesar," Ares says. "This is perfect. Don't fuck him--blow him him 'til he comes in your mouth."

How can I refuse? The god's hand is now raking over his shaft, fingers teasing the head until my vision nearly dims with lust. I suck Iphicles' cock, my head moving back and forth as quickly as I can, while I stroke his balls with one hand and slide a finger inside him.

Iphicles is shaking, shuddering--out of control. I can hear him calling my name, and I know he's about to cum. So I'm shocked when he suddenly pushes me off, flipping me onto my knees, and shoves his cock up my ass.

Ares and I both cum at once. Words can't describe it: it's color, memories, pain and ecstasy all at once. And it lasts for hours...spurt after spurt of semen shoots from my body onto the sheet beneath me while Iphicles pounds into me and the god shouts. Then the king cums, too--hothothot seed fills me.

"I love you," Iphicles whispers, kissing my shoulder blade.

Then we're gone.

Part V

Whence in perpetual fight they needs must last
Endless, and no solution will be found:
War wearied hath performed what war can do,
And to disordered rage let loose the reigns...

---Paradise Lost

How do you choose between love and obsession?

Romantics will choose the former. Amor vincit omnia. Love conquers all. Follow your heart and be saved. Heaven.

Who chooses obsession? Who chooses suffering over sweetness? Pain over pleasure? Follow the flesh and be damned. Hell.

Iphicles and Ares. Salvation and damnation. Love and obsession.

Yes, I'm arrogant as always. Who says, after all, that I have a choice between the two? But I think I do. Ares is mine. He's as obsessed with me as I am with him. This is why he plays games with me, fucks me, in this eternally sunless dungeon. This is why he comes to me in hell.

But Iphicles? I've raped him, tortured him, deceived him. An odd introduction indeed. But you can learn a lot from people in those circumstances, since you watch them very carefully during each of those acts. Your pleasure depends on their suffering, and so you begin to learn their limits, their boundaries, their strengths. And when Ares appeared to me in the king's flesh, I learned more. The god's desire to trick me dictated accuracy in his simulation: he had to *be* Iphicles, or I would've guessed the truth.

And now that I've finally been with the king, albeit in Ares' body, I've learned even more. I know what he feels like, locked away in his dark cell, never leaving, the only contact with a cruel dark god. No one can understand that isolation, that desperation. This is why I love him. This is why Iphicles wants me.

I think that he knew I wasn't Ares when I told him that I loved him. Or maybe when I sucked his cock, using just my tongue. Something about his response...He confirmed it when he threw me onto my stomach and shoved his cock up my ass. The act doesn't make sense otherwise, you see. He wouldn't do it to Ares--he knows, like I do, that the god gives up control only on his terms.

Ares himself realized it, too, realized that something was happening between Iphicles and I. That's why he rushed us from Iphicles' cell--he was confused by this new development. I think. Or maybe he's planned this all along. I don't want to underestimate him again. After all, what better amusement for the god than to set up this little mini-drama? Sex is always so much more enjoyable when it's suffused with conflict and suffering. I lived by that principle. And now, apparently, I die by it.

So here am I, in this sensation-flooded godbody, about to fuck Ares, who's dressed in my own death-cured form, asking philosophical questions about love and obsession, feeling conflicted, confused, aroused. Just like he wants.

"Caesar, I'm going to suck your cock. I've always wanted to taste myself. And while I do it, I want you to tell me what it felt like to suck Iphicles in my body."

Ares, still in my mortal flesh, now naked like me, pushes me back against the pillows, lifting my arms above my hand. Manacles appear, clicking shut. The ultimate narcissistic fantasy: to see your own body chained to a bed, sucking your own cock, feeling everything, able to give yourself the pleasure no one else can quite manage because they can't feel what you feel... And as an added bonus: you'll feel the double-sensation of your cock in the mouth, and your mouth on the cock.

The silk sheet whispers beneath my body, as I spread my legs, each delicate thread caressing my skin like a tiny finger. I'm already squirming, while my cock--my huge, divine cock--pulses with need. "Suck it," I say. Ares' lush voice covers the command with a gloss of seduction.

"I will. Soon."

I should've known it won't be that simple. That the chains aren't just aesthetic, but also practical: to keep me in place while he rubs warm, spicy oil onto my skin. Ares, kneeling between my thighs, is breaking the wax seal on the blue glass bottle, pouring the liquid into one hand before placing the jar within easy reach on the small table beside the bed.

I remember how, in life, I chained Ares to this bed, smearing his cock with a special unguent that delayed orgasm, purely so I could tease him. I remember how I rode his cock, then licked it endlessly until, finally, he came. My only consolation is that here he'll experience whatever delicious torment he inflicted on me. But Ares, used to his receptive body, can endure much more than me, especially now that death has withered my control.

His hands glowing with oil, the god kneads my shoulders, pressing his thumbs into my skin, moving them in slow circles. "Don't cum yet," he tells me impatiently, when my eyes close under the burning river of pleasure. "We're just beginning here."

I've never noticed the danger implicit in my smile. A lover of mine had once called that upturning of my lips a 'presage of painful death.' Not liking his tone, I'd proven him right, ordering my guards to flay him alive. Then I'd gone to his villa and fucked his pretty young wife. Because I know what that tone means. I know what he has planned.

Iphicles appears in the room. He says nothing, only stares at the scene before him: the god tied to the bed, while Caesar kneels between his thighs, looking over his shoulder at the intruder. The king isn't quite sure who is who now. He isn't sure of anything.

"You're still in Tartarus," Ares informs him with a smirk. "In case this little scene didn't convince you. Now come here, and help me oil up your beloved before we fuck him."

"Ares?" he asks. Confusion, disgust and desire filter through. He hates himself for the desire. But it's there. Only he's not sure who it's for.

"It doesn't matter who's who. You want us both." The god glances pointedly at Iphicles' crotch where the swollen skin distends the leather.

The king flushes, and I pity him. He hates his reduction to a hungry body, hates his need, hates the way it makes him compromise his anger and his hurt. Hell does that to you.

"Please come here," I say. "I want you. This is all we have." And it's fleeting, I want to add. We depend on the whims of a very fickle god.

Iphicles knows this. It's what impels his feet forward. The chance to escape, if only briefly, from the numbing anti-world in which we live. Stopping at the edge of the bed, he pulls off his clothes, then, naked, climbs up beside Ares. He's tense, discomfited to be this close to the body of Caesar, even if the god is inside. But his cock is hard.

He's watching Ares, still trying to determine if my body contains the god's essence. Ignoring him, Ares reaches over, grabs the oil, and pours some into Iphicles' hands. Almost uncertainly, the king moves up so that he's kneeling beside my chest, and begins to smear the fragrant liquid on my nipples, first with his palms, then with his finger tips. The tanned skin tightens, and he circles the aureoles until the god and I groan together.

"Bite them," Ares tells him, his voice thickening.

Iphicles shakes his head. "Not yet." His lips are slightly parted, his color heightened. He's getting off on the power, but his response surprises me with its confidence, its sensuality. I'd expected violence. I wonder for the first time if the brutality Ares showed me when he masqueraded as the king was purely his own.

The god's hands are working my inner thighs now, never connecting with my cock. His touch is light--he luxuriates in the sensations surging through our bodies. I don't think that I can stand this. It's too much. The loneliness, pain and pleasure of hell are remaking me, undoing the strangling cords of my mortal history. Need is replacing control. I'm being resurrected by those four hands softly stroking my flesh. That terrifies me.

"Unbind me. I want to touch you both." I'm not sure Ares will agree, but the bonds open. I put one arm around Iphicles, and pull him to me. We kiss, his tongue slipping hotly past my lips. I can feel Ares moving up the mattress to join me on my right side. Breaking my kiss with the king, but keeping my left arm around him, I kiss the god, tasting my own sweet mouth, while one hand slips behind Iphicles' neck, sliding up through that thick, red-gold hair. It's almost alive under my fingers, curling around them. Iphicles responds by licking one of my nipples, wetting it, while Ares fucks my mouth with his tongue.

When I was with Iphicles in his tomb, I curbed my desire by focusing on him. Now I don't have that distraction--I can't concentrate all of my attention on his responsive skin. And to have the two of them touching me, kissing me, licking me...It's paradise.

The god's mouth--my mouth--the white teeth are so slippery, so smooth and sharp. My tongue, as it wraps around his, is so stimulated, like a cock ready to explode. My nipple under Iphicles' lips, between his teeth, is swelling, ripening...My skin stretches, straining toward him, toward the pleasure he's giving me.

And their hands...the king's fingers curl into my pubic hair, tantalizingly close to my cock--they scratch me gently, almost caressing me. The combination of the soft pads of his fingers and the abrading nails has Ares panting as much as me, and he thrusts his tongue deeper into my mouth, while he languidly strokes my thigh.

Iphicles moves up from my nipple, and Ares, feeling the shift, interrupts our kiss to look across me at the king. I want to see their lips press together, their tongues meet. I want to watch myself kiss Iphicles. But the king's still unwilling--the act, I know, is too personal. Even if Ares is in my body, he'll still be kissing me.

With my hands at the base of each man's neck, I slowly draw them together, as both rest their hands on my hips for balance. Iphicles resists for a moment, then lets me guide him to the god. Their mouths are so close; their warm breath is mixing. Unable to resist, I let go, my hands dropping to their thick, hard cocks, fingers circling the bursting skin. I rub the leaking heads together, blending the pearly drops of precum.

The room is steamy--my arousal is like the August sun. When Ares and Iphicles finally kiss right before me, the action not forced, but based on their desire, I cum. So does the god--my own body, the one he's in, can't resist, can't withstand the assault of pleasure. And when I smooth Ares' semen onto the king's cock, he gasps against Ares' mouth, and then cums himself, spilling his seed onto the god's shaft, and onto my belly.

Still holding tightly onto the pulsing flesh, I get quickly to my knees, and while the two kiss deeply over my head, I lap up their creamy juices, sucking one, then the other, back and forth. They both taste incredible: both tangy, salty, but Iphicles a bit sweeter. I suck them both harder, taking all of the king's cock into my mouth, then doing the same to Ares. Their moans ring in my ears.

While I'm tonguing Ares, Iphicles spreads my semen onto my nipples, coating me with it. Then he and the god lower themselves and, taking the swollen flesh in their mouths, lick away the cum. I'm instantly hard again--so is Ares. His body is completely under my control. His monumental willpower is nothing against my weakness. Maybe that explains his willingness to let go, to allow the three of us to pleasure ourselves without any games.

I want to fuck Iphicles while I suck Ares' cock, but I'm...I'm afraid to ask. I know I could do it, force the king down on all fours, but I'd rather he offered. The mutuality of this encounter, the willingness of everyone to give, is more exciting even than the sensations. When you're dead--no, I'll try honesty for once. It's not just death anymore. The craving goes deeper than the need for someone to scour away the physical chill of loneliness, of hell, with their hands, tongue and cock. It's as though the textured layers of protection in which I'd shrouded myself have disappeared, and I'm once again oddly innocent. And my innocence, like my mortal cruelty, has somehow infected the others.

"Pass me the oil," Iphicles says to the god. With the bottle in his hand, the king pours some of the liquid directly onto my cock, then passes it back. Using both hands, he massages the oil onto me. Ares helps, using his thumbs to make the head of my cock glisten. Iphicles now crawls further down the bed, and positions himself to receive me.

The god follows him, as I do. I stroke the perfect skin of his rounded ass while Ares eases an oiled finger inside him. Resting my bearded cheek against Iphicles' golden flesh, I watch as each joint of the finger disappears into the tight hole, then I add my own, stretching the man for my massive cock. He's thrusting back against us, and when I reach around, I find his cock already stiff. And I realize now that while I want to suck Ares' cock, I want him to suck Iphicles' even more.

Turning my head toward the god, I kiss him, while we continue to fuck Iphicles' ass with our fingers. Then I ask him to blow the king. Staring into my dark eyes, I wait for his answer. He's been generous so far--will he stop now?

A smile passes over his face. "I'm not a monster, Caesar," he says quietly. "It's not always rape, violence and deception. I like pure pleasure, too." He kisses me, and I let go of Iphicles' cock to take Ares' in my hand. I jerk him off--only a few strokes, only to make us even hotter. The king's ass tightens around us when he hears Ares' words and the sounds of my hand on the god's cock.

When Ares pushes me away, and moves back from both of us, my heart sinks. But he's only positioning himself under the king, taking Iphicles' cock in his mouth. When I see that over the man's broad shoulder, when I see that heavy cock sliding between my lips, feel it as Ares feels it, I remove my finger, and aim my cock at the well-oiled opening. I have to be inside him.

The god's cock is bigger than mine, and I don't want to hurt Iphicles, so I begin slowly. I want to savor it, of course--I want to feel everything. The slick, engorged head distends him, the skin expanding to fit me. Holding my cock in one hand, I guide myself in.

"Oh gods, Caesar, that feels good," he groans.

"It feels incredible," I reply breathlessly, pressing myself against him, pushing my cock as far as I can inside his ass. His back's damp; he's warm from my body, from his own desire, as I fuck him and Ares licks him.

"I knew it was you." The words are so low I can barely make them out. "I couldn't understand why you seemed so concerned about pleasuring me--Ares never had. And you--you'd only wanted to hurt me. But who else could it be? And when you ran your tongue over my body like that, I knew you'd changed, like I had...Oh, yes--right there!"

He's shaking almost uncontrollably--or is that me? I can't tell anymore. "I think I've always wanted you...I hurt you because I was jealous. Because I didn't know what else to do. I'm sorry." My last words are choked out, as he contracts around my cock, cumming into Ares' mouth. His clenched muscles draw the orgasm from me, from Ares...We both shout--so much pleasure...A wall of fire before my eyes, maybe it's sweat...can't tell...too good...

"I love you." Who am I telling? I'm not sure of anything anymore.

Ares, lips swollen, slides out from under the king's body, joining me behind Iphicles. With a small shove, he pushes the king flat on his stomach, spreads the bronze cheeks of his ass, and begins to lap up the semen that's trickling out. Again, I bend down to watch, to see the tongue probing, catching the milky fluid, tasting it...I've always loved that act. It gives so much pleasure to the one receiving it. And there's the perverse pleasure that comes from doing it. And watching it.

I stroke his dark head while he does it. "Ares, I want my body back. I want to fuck you both as me. In my skin."

"Of course you do," he says, raising himself up to kiss me. I taste Iphicles' cum and my own-- his--on the god's tongue. He keeps his lips pressed against me, holding me, as we switch back. I nearly collapse, but his strong arms restrain me. Ares is gasping--his body must be a shock after mine. He seems to realize how my flesh must feel after his--sore, bruised, sluggish, with a faint, lingering pleasure from the orgasm--because he's kissing me harder now, one hand tugging at one of my nipples, while his fingers circle my cock. "Iphicles, help him."

I close my eyes. I can't look. I'm like a child, hiding in darkness. Iphicles, despite everything, hasn't yet fucked me as me, as Caesar. Ares' body has always been between us. I'm not sure if he'll still want me. To see me without the mitigating factor of Ares' beauty might remind him of our violent mortal history.

This, then, is the true test. This is the moment when I discover if somehow there is hope, a future, within these prison walls, or whether my past has made me irredeemably unlovable.

When Iphicles' mouth closes over my cock, my eyes burn. My body is nothing compared to Ares'--I don't have his capacity for pleasure.

But the god doesn't have my newfound capacity for love. That's the difference between us. It's taken me my own murder, an endless stay in hell, a borrowed day in a god's body, to realize that. To love is the essence of mortality. And I know beyond doubt that I love Iphicles. And I know, too, finally, that he loves me.

I raise my hips, letting Iphicles take all of me in his mouth. Even in this inferior body, it's amazing. So warm...My muscles have already been pushed to the limit, and my nerve endings scream when I tighten them, but I want to cum between those lips, as he willingly, eagerly, licks me.

Ares, lying beside me on the bed, lifts me up, before pulling me down onto his erection. Iphicles repositions himself, but never stops sucking my cock.

"Do you like it?" Ares grunts in my ear, as he thrusts into me. "Do you like my cock in your ass, while he sucks yours?"

"Yes..."

He fucks me harder. "Why don't you tell Iphicles what I did to you in your shrine when you thought I was him...about how much you liked that?"

Ares is such a bastard. I should've known this was too good to be true. Only he would remind me of how he tied me to the altar, cut me open, drank my blood and fucked me, while I'm so close...

He bites my shoulder while I cum, while he cums inside me. Mind games always turn him on.

Iphicles swallows my semen. When my cock stops spurting into his mouth, he sits up. "What are you talking about?" His tone is hesitant. He knows that he won't like what Ares has to say.

"I paid a few visits to Caesar. As Iphicles the war god. The last time was the best--wouldn't you agree, Julius?" He smiles. "You came for hours. I think it was the memories I evoked--all that blood..."

I try to move off him, but he won't let me. His cock is already hard again, and he holds my hips tightly, fucking me slowly. Iphicles watches us, lips slightly parted as though he wants to say something. But Ares continues.

"I had Caesar bound to his altar...He was begging the whole time. Sound familiar, Iphicles? And when he was chained down--his cock was hard as granite by this point, just like yours was when we raped you--I shoved my cock into his mouth. Remember when he did that to you? Remember when he held your head and fucked your mouth? Not just the first time, when we all took turns with you, but later--when it was just the three of us."

Iphicles' color is draining. He's not moving at all, barely seems to be breathing.

"Ares, shut up," I say.

"Look how hard his cock is." Ares begins to stroke my treacherous flesh. "What really got him off, though, Iphicles, is when I took out a knife. Do you know why he liked it?" With a sudden swift move, the god pushes me on all fours, and starts fucking me from behind. It's not just the more degrading position that he likes; he also wants a good look at the king's face while he tortures him. "Iphicles! Do you know why he liked it?" The god's repeated question is hissed, demanding a response.

I want to intervene, to say something. But I don't know what. All I know is that Ares' cock feels so good, that his hand is stroking me just the way I like it.

The king finally answers. "He liked the knife because it reminded him of what he did to me. How you held me down, and he...cut me." He's breathing hard now, and his color is returning. I think he's going to be sick.

"You got it! Caesar's sick that way." Ares laughs. "Just like me. I loved cutting him, too. I made sure to do to him just what we did to you. I fucked him, covered in his blood, came on him...And he came, too. He loved it--all of that blood, all of that violence. Especially when he thought it was you doing it to him. He thought you'd become like us. It's his greatest fantasy."

Iphicles' beautiful face is now flushed, his fists clenched. A knife appears in his hand, and he looks down at it.

"It's his greatest fantasy..."

He's right, of course. That's the worst thing about Ares. He knows me too well.

*****

I'm alone right now. But they'll be back. Iphicles is developing quite a taste for blood, and Ares loves to watch the king tie me down, cut me open and fuck me. He stands beside us, cock in hand, and jerks off.

Is this the conclusion you expected? Maybe. You know the teller too well--just like Ares.

Is this the conclusion you hoped for? Probably not. No romance, no heaven.

But you have to remember: it had to end this way. I'm in hell, after all.

Continue on to the sequel Metamorphosis