Riganna: Avaricum Falls
The crash of splintering stone slammed straight into my ribs—a deep, brutal throb that pebbled my nipples hard against the thin linen before the sound even reached my ears. Chalky dust coated my tongue like forbidden salt, bitter and intimate, forcing me to swallow as if I already tasted surrender. Cold wind slapped through the window, carrying raw feminine screams that twisted hot, shameful heat low in my belly, making me clench.
The wall had fallen.
And with it, the last barrier between me and them.
Through the breach poured a tide of bronze and crimson—hundreds of disciplined bodies moving as one, leather and metal gleaming wet. Short, efficient Roman blades flashed. Each thrust was precise, merciless. Our tall warriors fell like broken oaks, but the Romans… gods, they moved like predators who already knew they had won. My pulse hammered between my thighs at the sheer, terrifying control of them.
One man at the front—tall, broad-shouldered, crimson cloak whipping like fresh blood—turned his head as if he felt my stare. Our eyes locked through the chaos. In that frozen second his lips curved, just barely, as if he already saw me on my knees before him. As if he already knew exactly how wet I’d be when he took me. His stare burned straight between my thighs, hotter than the flames devouring the rooftops.
A shriek ripped the air. The bakery door burst open; Isolde’s sky-blue skirt—the one she’d twirled in laughing yesterday—was yanked into the mud and blood. Bile rose, but lower a traitorous slick heat bloomed at the thought: tomorrow those rough hands could be tearing mine away, exposing skin no man had ever seen. My core clenched at the image, a fresh rush of unwelcome wetness slicking my inner thighs beneath the dress.
A heavy, muffled blow shook the stone floor, the vibration racing up my soles, up my spine, and straight into my core with a wicked pulse. Each boom throbbed between my thighs, forcing them tighter together to trap the slick, traitorous heat swelling there. My breath came short, breasts aching against the chill stone, nipples hard and begging for rough hands that were already coming.
This was no clash of swords. This was the sound of patient, overwhelming force striking at the very heart of my home.
I pressed myself to the rough, freezing window, letting the icy air sear my cheeks. Below, at our main gates, a blind beast of dark wood moved, swung by a dozen hands in perfect, synchronized rhythm. Hit. Another. The smell of sweat and wet wood rose even here, mingling with the acrid scent of smoke.
They were breaking through our door.
Another strike—and a jagged crack ran along the old iron-bound oak. My breath lodged in my throat, my thighs pressing together until the sinful ache pulsed. My legs moved of their own accord. Run. Hide. The corridor I knew blindfolded became foreign, infinite; the tapestries with hunting scenes blurred into streaks of blood and green rushing toward me. The smooth floor chilled my bare feet, each step echoing before drowning in the next battering—boom… boom…—counting down not to death, but to the moment rough strangers would find me, pin me down, and break the untouched seal Father swore no man would ever claim.
Mother.
I tore open the heavy door of her chamber, and a thick, suffocating scent of lavender and wax struck me—the fragrance of a world already gone. My mother knelt in the center of the room, her back to me, straight as a drawn bow. Her fingers were clenched white together, her lips moving silently, forming words that no one could hear.
Outside, a deafening crack resounded—the sound of the bones of our house breaking.
“Mother!” My whisper was a ragged tear. I rushed to her, grabbing her shoulder. “They are here! We have to run!”
Her shoulder beneath my hand was hard and freezing, like marble. She did not flinch; her eyes, wide and hollow, stared through the wall, through the crumbling world itself. She did not hear me. She heard only her gods, silent in their answer.
And then, from below, came a triumphant, multivoiced roar—no longer from outside, but from within. From our home. And it surged upward, toward us.
The heavy, scraping grind of iron-shod sandals against the stone stairs grated on my ears, sending a prickling heat crawling across my skin. The sound, methodical and alien, climbed higher with every step, the floor beneath my knees trembling in its wake.
No. Not this sound.
In my memory lived another set of footsteps—my father’s. Seven years old, storm raging, I ran to him barefoot, nightshirt clinging to my skin. He dropped to one knee, pulled me against his chest that smelled of smoke and leather, and growled against my ear: No beast, no man shall touch you while my heart beats, my spark.
His large, calloused hand had burned through the thin fabric straight to my spine. That innocent heat had pooled strangely between my legs even then, a secret I never understood—until now, when the promise was ashes and new hands approached to break it.
Now that hand was dust. And the new footsteps outside the door belonged to men who had never made such promises.
A sudden crack made me flinch. It was not thunder. A door to the next room had splintered under a boot. A sharp, guttural scream in a foreign tongue cut the air, shattering my memory into fragments. I was still kneeling in my mother’s bedroom, smelling icy lavender, not the strength of my father. His heart was gone. His promise turned to dust.
And the footsteps stopped. Right outside our door.
The silence beyond the door was louder than any scream.
The steps had stopped.
They were here.
Mother’s eyes flared with desperate, animal fire. She grabbed my arm, nails digging in.
“Riganna! This way!”
She yanked me behind the heavy tapestry, shoved me into the shallow recess. Stone scraped my bare back. My nipples tightened painfully against the linen. The fabric fell, leaving only a narrow slit of light.
Through it I saw her face—terror and something fiercer.
Then the door exploded inward.
Iron-shod sandals stopped inches away.
A low, rough voice rolled out in Latin—calm, commanding, dark amusement wrapped in velvet and steel.
He spoke words I didn’t understand.
But my body did.
A hot, traitorous rush of wetness flooded between my thighs as the tapestry swayed. My nipples ached, my core pulsed, every inch of skin prickling for the calloused hands that would soon rip the cloth away and take what was never meant to be his.
And I knew, with shameful, soaking certainty:
The man who had taken my world was about to take me.
And part of me already wanted him to.
