Two years hence, I bled, and Euthymios, on the master's orders, sent me to the hetaera Khryseis for "training." Her house was deep in the city and hidden from main streets. Its opulence and painted women did not belong in Sparta; Lacedaemonians looked down on anything that distracted from making or being soldiers. I have not seen so much gold and bright colors on a woman since my previous owners. Khryseis laughed at me upon inspection and said to Euthymios, "The Spartans should treat their chattel better, she's in a pitiful state! But she has that savage Kushite spirit." She looked at me with curious blue eyes. "What do they call you, girl?" I responded with my name, and she repeated it saying, "Indeed."

Euthymios discussed the master's terms with the Macedonian. "She will be educated and," he paused and his voice became quieter and more resigned before adding, "have knowledge of men, but she must not be penetrated. My master was explicit upon this, and will pay more."

"Your master is peculiar. Give a slave to a brothel and expect her to leave more or less a maiden? The Oracle has a better chance of that with those inbred Ephors."

"She will be given to his son." My eyes widened in horror. I expected I would be taken by a man—either for the master's pleasure or for breeding. Euthymios never told me I was to be given to the man who once would kill me. I could not protest, only shiver and listen.

Khryseis laughed at Euthymios' discomfort. "I see. An old man has time for such frivolities as a concubine, but a hoplite? They barely have time for their wives, what with their fighting and dinner clubs and other times with men." She sighed. "It is a gift of the gods we courtesans are able to earn a living in Sparta."

Euthymios looked at me with pity. "The young master—has affinities to which a Spartan wife could not possibly consent."

The hetaera nodded. "Then it shall be, helot. I shall teach her to please one man." She looked down at me and lowered her voice. "I predict it will be wasted, for you will spend much time maintaining the household, but pray to the gods, girl, that when your Spartan is with you, he sees you as more than just property."

Under Khryseis's roof I learned to read and write. Beyond that I learned poetry, arithmetic, rhetoric, philosophy, herbology, dance, and music. I exercised to keep close with the Spartan ideal. I did not excel in any of those areas, but I held my own.

Those studies were no different than that of the Spartan woman, the most independent and outspoken woman in the entire known world. Except for the hetaerae, but courtesans were not instilled by the city-state to bear strong sons.

According to Khryseis, my talents were elsewhere—in the carnal arts. I learned how to entice and how to give pleasure with my hands and mouth. She taught me how to please myself. But no man entered me, and no client could select me alone. I would start with a man, and then he would enter my replacement while I watched. Still, I learned men's bodies, and none could parallel the Spartan hoplite.

Even so, there was only one man that occupied my thoughts—my young captor, Dilios. He visited my dreams and I sat up at night sweating. As the years went on and I came to understand the purpose of my time with the hetaerae, repulsion gave way to a desire to get on with it and let him go to fight and have sons. Then the need to face the inevitable became longing to feel his heartbeat, to sense him close. I would be denied a climax with a man until he came for me. I feared I would not know him by sight, and he would not know me.

One day in my twentieth year of life, I was tending to the potted plants in the atrium when a Spartan man with deep blue eyes and hair the color of a setting sun strode in with Euthymios. I smiled and ran to embrace my helot mentor, now markedly advanced in age. "I missed you!"

"So did I, child." Then he took arms away and stood me up straight. "Did the lady not teach you to be mindful?"

I nodded and lowered my eyes. Khryseis came up behind me. "I have. Pardon the oversight. Melanthia, this is Dilios, son of the late Aristodemus. He is your master now."

I met his eyes, and I knew, for the intensity was unmistakable. I thought we would not recognize each other, but I was wrong. I lowered my eyes again before saying softly, "My lord."

Dilios did not take his eyes off me, but said nothing. Khryseis said, "She is to your liking?"

He approached me, and his scent, the memory of it, came back to me. His scarlet mantle brushed my feet, and I stepped back. If I looked straight ahead at him I faced the cleft between his chest muscles. But I would not be afraid, for I was a child no more. Another moment of staring passed before he said, "Bring her, Euthymios." His voice was deep and gravelly, different than the last time. He left without another word, leaving Euthymios to give the final payment and collect me.

Upon entering Dilios's house after a silent journey, Euthymios spirited me away to the servants' quarters, where I ate and reunited with old friends. Euthymios removed my old collar to replace it with one with my new Master's name. "Melanthia. Your name befits you now. Dark as earth and lovely as a flower. I gave you that name when you were a scared little girl not long from Persia, remember?"

I nodded.

"You are the daughter I never had—even if you are not a helot." He laughed heavily, and then sadness washed over his face. "Who will watch over you when I am gone?"

"What?"

"I shall go to the Elysian Fields soon, resigning you to this fate. A Spartan's pleasure slave. A life without family or love."

I took his wrinkled, bony hands in mine and squeezed them gently. "I need neither, Euthymios. I have had both with you, the slaves in this house, and the hetaerae. If this was my homeland or Persia, I would have been married off or forced upon by an old man as a child. Do not feel pity for me. I need only to survive."

"Do not just survive, Melanthia. Live." He continued with his duties and motioned to a young girl holding a bundle of blue linen. "Chara will help you prepare for tonight. You are to stay elsewhere in the house. You will take your meals with servants, but you are to be available to the Master otherwise."

Before he left, I asked, "Euthymios, what kind of a man has Dilios become?"

"He is a son of Heracles and a devotee of Ares. What more is there to know?" He hesitated, and then lifted a finger. "But he is the king's favourite, and he does regale his sons with tales of their battles. He is rather long-winded for a Spartan."

I laughed after he left, and I disrobed. "Perhaps only to other Spartans." Chara bound my hair in leather while I put on the one-shoulder chiton and girded it under my breasts with a thin leather belt. We stopped by the kitchen to pick up a bowl of apples, an already-filled pitcher of water, and a bronze cup before going towards one of the rooms in the Master's apartments at the far end, away from the main and children's bedchambers. It was silent but for our footsteps. Moonlight came in through a small window, but Chara lit a lantern hanging on the wall. There was nothing peculiar about the bedchamber—small table and chair, a raised pallet with a mattress and linen covers. A reed basket beside the bed contained some rods and thin leather strips. "This is where you will sleep now. May the gods watch over you," Chara said after placing the apples on the table and then left. Resigned to my fate, I placed the pitcher and cup on the table and lay down on the bed, brought my feet up and propped up on my elbows. I stared at the entrance and waited. And waited. And waited.

Were it not for my nervousness, sleep would have taken me by the time Dilios entered the room. He was bare but for an undyed linen loincloth. I rose from the bed, bowing my head in deference but meeting his eyes. My lips parted, and I brought my shoulders back to lift my breasts. I watched him move, watched his chest expand and contract, watched his eyes move from my head to my feet, but his taciturn expression did not change.

I could do no worse with such a man, physically speaking. He was agreeable to my eyes. But he gave little away in terms of feelings. "Am I not to your liking, my lord?" I repeated Khryseis's question.

"You are," he replied softly, and then added, "for now." He sat in the chair with the table to his right, then glanced to the pitcher before looking back at me. "I am thirsty, slave."

I walked over to the table and stopped between his legs, faced the table, and bent forward at the waist to pour the water. He placed his hand beneath my breasts to stop me, and I turned my head to face him, slightly puzzled. He was toying with me, surely.

"Disrobe," the hoplite commanded, dropping his hand back on the arm of the chair. "I would inspect my father's gift in full."

I turned to face him, and inhaled deeply, closing my eyes. This was the moment I trained for. I untied the belt, then the strap on my right shoulder holding up the chiton. I let my hands drop to my sides as it fell to the floor. I stood, shoulders back, and locked my eyes with his.

His eyes widened slightly and his well-defined chest stopped taking in air for just a moment. He approved of what he saw. He took his eyes off me and placed them on the jug and tsked, his tone mocking. "You are a forgetful one. Still I thirst, slave."

I turned back to the jug with haste and poured. He continued. "You are different than when last we met. Not the scared little whelp I almost killed." He brought his hands up to my back, and his fingers traveled down until they lingered on the scar. "Do you remember?"

I paused and attempted to steady my now-trembling hand. His touch made me fully aware of my nakedness, but I had to be strong. "How could I not remember, my lord Spartan? The scar will not allow me to forget."

Dilios' lips curled slightly. "Much more confident now. The harlot has taught you well. Perhaps too well." His hand traveled to my buttocks and after drinking water with his free hand, asked, "Do you not fear me as you did before?"

I swallowed my mounting trepidation. "No, Master. Should I fear you?"

"Well, now, that depends," he retorted. He placed the cup down, and his hand shot up to cup my jawline. He pulled my face closer to his, and he clenched his jaw when he spoke. "How much can you endure?"

Although he was hurting me, I did not cry out. I faced him fully and with all the resolve I can muster, I replied, "I assure you, Master, I will endure whatever you place before me."

He laughed. "I will relish putting your words to the test." He released the tension on my jaw and smirked, tracing my bottom lip with his thumb. "You are fortunate I like the sound of your voice. Slaves have lost their tongues for less insolence."

I cocked my eyebrow. "Oh, but Master, were you to cut out my tongue, I could never..." I ended my sentence with his thumb in my mouth, my tongue taking a long swath from where it joined with the index finger up to the tip, then repeating in a flicking motion. I followed suit with the other fingers on his hand before bending forward to trace his nipples with my tongue, the cleft between his pectorals. I kneeled, and my hands slid up his thighs towards the bulge beneath his loincloth, my tongue at his navel and working its way down. He closed his eyes and leaned back into the chair, his breath deepening.

In a sudden motion Dilios took a handful of my hair in his hand and yanked my head up so our faces were within an inch of each other. I gasped and closed my eyes as pain gave way to something more intense that spread throughout my body. "You are persuasive. I would not cut out your tongue. How could I hear you beg?" He grabbed my right breast and squeezed. "Come now, slave. Beg."

I held out as long as I could while he almost crushed my breast. Finally I cried, "Please."

Triumph covered Dilios's features. "A lovely start. I believe nothing short of warfare stirs me more than hearing you beg, slave."

Confusion overcame me. Pain, then pleasure? My bottom lip trembled, and he covered my mouth with his, tasting—no, devouring it, biting my bottom lip. I moaned when he stopped. He hurt me, and I did not want him to stop. I breathed deeply, my confusion mounting. I had waited for him to claim me, and that moment would come, but he intended to hurt me. My mind told me to run at the first chance I got, but my body seemed...conditioned to respond, to take whatever he gave me and distill pleasure from it. He stood up, and I moved closer to him, and arched my back so our chests pressed together, and leaned my head back, lips parted. I asked him in a cajoling voice what I asked him that fateful night: "Will you not release me, Spartan?"

Dilios smirked and shook his head. "You are meant to be used." He turned me round, cleared the table with a wide sweep of his arm, and pinned my wrists down upon it. "Your training, your very life has come to this, slave." I was bent over, my buttocks high, my right cheek planted on the table. "There will be nothing else for you." He shifted so that one hand held both of my wrists. His red beard tickled my cheek as he whispered in my ear. "You. Were made. To please me."

I knew what was to come, but I was not sure how it would feel. The girls told me at first it would hurt, but if I let my body adjust it could be most pleasurable. I knew he was removing the linen between us so that he could take what was his.

"No," he said, and he released his hold. "Not this way." He led me by my wrist toward the bed and I laid down upon it. I saw him fully naked—the gods were generous to him—and I wondered if I would be able to accommodate him. He reached into the basket to grab leather straps. I panicked when he took my wrist, punching and kicking though it was futile. I never found comfort in having my arms and legs bound; the Persians transported my mother and I in chains. I could hear their ominous clinking as our master raped her after they obtained us. And now my Spartan owner would tie me when I would give myself willingly. I didn't understand why, and I was frightened. He lay atop me, pinning me, amused at my protest. He had bound one wrist to one of the wood pillars holding the platform off the floor. I felt a tear running down my cheek. Before he finished with the other, I pleaded, "No, Master, you need not bind me! I will do what pleases you."

The Spartan did laugh, and he tightened the knot on my other wrist with finality. "I bind you because it pleases me. I will beat you because it pleases me." He spread my legs apart and positioned himself to enter me. "And I will take you in every way possible because it pleases me." He wasted no time, and when I cried out from the distension, he closed his eyes and thrust harder. I wanted to press my hands against his muscled chest to halt him so I could become comfortable with his cock in me, but I could not. I tried to lie still, but I could not. I arched my back and bent my knees so that he could thrust deeper still, my breasts bouncing. Before my mind caught up my body had spun pain into pleasure. I wanted more. I wanted all he would give me. I met his eyes with a silent challenge, and he rose to it, grabbing a pillar so he could get more leverage.

Ecstasy bloomed and spread, making me tremble. I seized up, not knowing whether to contain it or yield to it. Then it became too much to contain, and I cried out as I came.

Dilios thrust harder still, and then he too seized up, snarling. He then collapsed on me, his face buried within my shoulder. Time seemed to stop as we lay together, spent, in silence. He rose on his arms and looked down at me, his blue eyes intense. "Such strength in you." He unbound me, sat up, and looked down at me, running a single finger down my belly. "If you break, you die. Understand?"

I was far too dazed and sore to say naught but "Yes, Master."

He rose and left.