the room.
Sharon arrived later with the two boys and the first wave of unloading and unpacking began. Victoria moved through the chores without enthusiasm. She smiled at the boys and sent them outside with peanut butter sandwiches to play in the yard. She helped Sharon assemble bed frames and carry dressers and suitcases over her threshold. By the end of the day she lay on her back on her bed, sweaty and dirty, staring at the ceiling, too tired to get in the shower. She did anyway. Water ran down her face and over her breasts and down the drain. It started out brown and grey and soapy, but ran clear after a while and long after she was clean. Victoria sighed. All week she had tried to forget him. Each of him. She dismissed the blacksmith, erased the Norseman, and tried to crumple the Roman like a piece of paper and toss him in the wastebasket.
Her body was warm and moist from the shower, and the memory of each of her men moistened her inside. She grumbled a little that she missed the sex. But why not? It’s not like I am getting any in real life. None of her so-called relationships had lasted more than a few months. None had been satisfying. As soon as she had a man, she wanted to get rid of him. Each had been flawed in a way that she could not overcome. One was obsessed with video games, another with sports. One could not leave his work at the office when he came to her and was always on his phone talking to clients instead of to her. In the middle of sex he would answer his phone talking into the little glowing device in short puffs as he fucked her. That pissed her off. The one thing they all had in common was how self-centered and shallow they were. My books are better company.
She moved to her bed and threw the coverlets aside so only the bare sheets lay spread out before her. She opened the drawer in the lamp table and took out her dildo. And my dildo is a better lover. She tested the battery. Good. The low hum reminded her cleft what was to come and another wave of moisture slicked her. She lay back on her pillows and bent one knee. One arm was behind her head in her wet hair. She touched the humming tip of the dildo to her clit and wriggled her buttocks into the mattress. Not too much too soon.
She imagined the Roman first. Marcus. She imagined him in his battle gear, then little by little she took off each bit of leather. As she removed his breastplate she touched herself, then each leather strap of his sandals, another touch. She squirmed. She slid the leather skirt thing over his thighs and a word popped into her head. Pteruges. She stopped. How did I know that? Her clit called out to her so she made a note to follow up with some research. Right now she had to attend to something. She touched the tip of the dildo to the inner lips of her vagina and waited for the familiar tingling welcome. In her mind her Roman was naked now. She raised his cock in her imagination like the legion’s standard until it was thick and ready. She imagined him kneeling and leaning over her, then imagined the hard cock touching the outside of her cleft exactly where she positioned the dildo. She brought her other hand down from the pillow and stroked the edge of her breast as her demon sometimes did, as Jack stroked Maggie’s. Her hips twitched and she pushed the dildo in a little further then used her thumb to flip the switch to a higher vibration. The hum of the dildo grew louder, which was annoying but it couldn’t be helped. If a man’s penis hummed, it would be easier to fantasize, but the only thing that hummed with a real cock inside her was her spine.
She arched her back and pretended that Marcus was pushing that thick cock inside. She pushed the dildo and tilted it so the hum would reach her clit. It did and she gasped. Her vagina gripped the dildo with waves of contractions and the electric tingle in her clit ran up and down her spine, down her legs until even her scalp tingled with the orgasm. She did not want to stop,