The curse that Theodora's mind ripped out at her verbal misstep would have been enough by itself to threaten her soul's salvation, but she kept her lips smiling as she protested aloud,
"There'll be time for that later, dearest Sit here for just a moment."
"Woman," snapped the Dictator, "this is important!"
"So," said the woman, her eyes sparking like flint and black steel, "is this."
She had already undone the clasp of the filigreed pin which fastened her upper tunic. When she twitched her shoulders now, the black silk cascaded to her feet, licking across the surface of the transparent undergarment.
Paradise was setting with a creamy, almost golden glow beneath the cloudbanks.
The light turned Theodora's skin to ivory and darkened the cones other fiercely erect nipples.
Sulla allowed himself to be guided to a seat on the end of the couch. His mouth was slightly open, and his left hand fumbled repeatedly as it undid the sash of his tunic.
"What?" he muttered as the springs lifted with a soft moan beneath him.
"It's from Paradise, my heart, my dearest dear," said Theodora, embroidering what she knew with what she believed. She lifted both hands to the throat of her tunic and ripped the garment with deliberate strength. Her breasts were firm here as they had remained throughout her life.
The nipples described a pair of flat arcs as the muscles beneath them tensed to tear the silk.
Sulla reached for her breasts, half rising and subsiding again, charmed by the springs, as the woman knelt and lifted the hem of the tunic he still wore. His member was erect, and the head of it was fiery red as she stripped back his foreskin.
"Little heart," Theodora murmured; licked the tip of the penis; and changed the angle other head slightly so that she could engulf most of the thick shaft in her mouth while her fingernails tickled Sulla's scrotum.
The couch whispered, and gave, and gave back. Such a little thing, but the visitor had been right...
Sulla was kneading one breast with a harshness that many women - other women - would have found painful, while the fingers of his right hand were buried in the shimmering hair which alone covered Theodora now. His muscles were matching the rhythms of his body and hers and the softly creaking springs.
Theodora's flared nostrils caught the sudden hormonal change other partner's odor into something goatish and male and intensely aphrodisiac to her. A vein at the base of his penis throbbed.
She lifted her head away and stood, her eyes filled with rapture.
"No, no," cried the man in dizzy amazement. The twist of her head had freed it from his fingers, so that they closed only on her black, rippling hair.
"Not that way," said Theodora in a voice that was a promise, guiding Sulla to his feet by leaning back and clamping his hand to her breast more savagely than he had done himself.
She twisted, then rose onto her toes and arched her pelvis forward to receive him. The tunic flapped, a momentary obstacle, but both of them together snatched the hem out of the way.
He would have the garment off before the next time - but there could be any number of 'next times,' now, and this was delight mounting to a bliss greater than godhead.
Theodora tipped them back onto the couch, her buttocks sliding on the warm, slick fabric while Sulla's member thrust as deeply within her as a man could reach and the springs squealed like a terrified infant.
Theodora's scream overwhelmed the other sound everywhere but in her mind. It was at the wizened face in her memory, streaked with placental blood, that she clawed -
But it was Sulla who leaped upright, howling in fury and amazement. His left hand covered his eye and cheek, but the reddened triple scratches extended well across his forehead.
The Dictator leaned forward again and slapped the vacant-eyed woman as she started to rise.
Then he swept out of the room, bellowing for his Luck.
Theodora lay sobbing on the couch whose springs chuckled beneath her.
Benito was the only servant visible when the Dictator tore from his wife's bedroom. The chamberlain was sweating so furiously that the breast of his cloth-of-gold outer robe bore dark stains. Through the lattice screen of the office, Sulla saw with his good eye that his Luck was standing with a concerned expression. Benito tried to say something, but the Dictator brushed past him.
Apicius strode from the-kitchen into his path. The cook carried a covered silver serving-dish by its handles, and his face was wreathed with an ecstatic smile. "Master - " he began.
"Idiot!" shouted the Dictator as the two men collided.
Apicius' shriek was too much like the cry Theodora had given as she lashed out. Sulla struck the cook with his clenched left fist as the man hobbled the platter desperately.
Apicius sprawled. The lid rang like a bell on the stone flooring, and the platter itself jounced from his hands despite his despairing wail. The fowl skidded over the up of the ornamental pool. It floated there, cooling and staining the water with the flavorful sauce with which it was to have been eaten.
Water seeping into the body cavity made the bird chuckle.
Benito was so distraught that his right hand reached out as if to pluck his master's sleeve. The chamberlain wasn't quite in such a state as to touch
Sulla as he knocked down the cook, but Benito did trail the Dictator unbidden into his office.
"What have you heard about the - " Sulla shouted to his Luck before motion and the gleam of gold cloth spun him again.
"What are you doing here?" the Dictator asked with anger the more terrifying for being offered in a voice of normal volume. He pointed with his whole right hand, palm down and trembling with eagerness to clutch the fat throat before it.
Sulla's left eye was bloodshot. The scratches traced scarlet furrows across a visage otherwise the complexion of mulberries in clotted cream.
"Ma - " stammered the chamberlain. "Ma-ma - " The fingers and thumb of his left hand were pinching the air, miming the nervous emptiness of his lips.
Sulla balled a fist to strike him. Then he would summon guards and have them -
"I'm afraid you'd best listen to him, my Lucius," said Sulla's Luck in a voice that was the Dictators in every particular save in the mouth from which it issued.
"No time for that!" said Sulla harshly, but the voice of his alter ego relaxed him. He turned again, lowering his arm and letting his face smooth into the gender contours of normal intercourse. "The caravan's come in, and - "
"The caravan's been destroyed," squeaked the chamberlain in a voice that could have summoned bats, "Everything's burned, everyone's dead. The guides you sent to meet them, they saw it all happen, everyone dead."
The Dictator did not look back at his servant. His left hand began very carefully to rub his stinging, tear-streaming eye.
"I'm afraid he's right, my Lucius," said Sulla's Luck. "The guides reported here while you were - otherwise occupied. There can't be any doubt about what happened ... though why, of course, that will require a great deal of sorting out"
"You may go, Benito," Sulla said quietly.
The chamberlain bolted, but he reached an arm back to slide the door lattice closed before disappearing toward a staircase and a place to keep out of sight on the second floor.
"How does this," said Sulla, watching his fingers extend toward the white powder heaped on the table, "affect our agreement?"
His Luck shrugged. "The terms were very rigid, you know," he said. By today, the shipment was to be placed m specified hands for distribution. I can only presume that there is no agreement any mere."
"I couldn't help that!" shouted the Dictator, animated again. He would have stuck out at any face that showed itself at the moment, but the only features he could see were his own.
"Well, of course I can inform them of that, my Lucius," said Sulla's Luck, turning his head tactfully so as not to watch the Dictator being reduced to puling incapacity, "But - well, you must realize that results rather than intentions are the, ah, coin they require."