Endymion

by Leem

This story has of course no connection with the novel of the same name by Dan Simmons, which forms part of his acclaimed Hyperion Cantos tetralogy.

No gods were harmed in the writing of this story.

You've heard the legend, of course. She has made sure everybody is familiar with her version of events. It goes something like this...

'ENDYMION was a beautiful youth who fed his flock on Mount Latmos. One calm, clear night Diana, the moon (Selene), looked down and saw him sleeping. The cold heart of the virgin goddess was warmed by his surpassing beauty, and she came down to him, kissed him, and watched over him while he slept.
Another story was that Jupiter (Zeus) bestowed on him the gift of perpetual youth united with perpetual sleep (Hypnos). Of one so gifted we can have but few adventures to record. Diana, it was said, took care that his fortunes should not suffer by his inactive life, for she made his flock increase, and guarded his sheep and lambs from the wild beasts.'

- Bullfinch's Mythology <http://www.webcom.com/shownet/medea/bulfinch/bull26.html>

As for my version, she's made quite certain there's no way for me to tell anybody, except myself. 'You' can't really hear me at all. You're just my fantasy. As for me, I've heard it all many times before, but there's no one else to hear it....

I was only looking, that's all. I wasn't even as if I'd tried to touch her or anything.

'You should count yourself lucky,' she told me. 'The last time a man cast lustful eyes upon my body, I turned him into a stag and let his own hounds tear him to pieces.'

Sometimes I think he was the lucky one.

So here I am. The moonlight washes over my body, tingling and caressing wherever it touches. Her moonlight - she is the Moon-Goddess, after all - maintaining and reinforcing the spell so that there is no possibility of it leaking away on a moonless night, or being washed away by the light of the sun. I often think the shafts of moonlight are like the bars of a cage, a cage that has no key, nor needs one, because it has no door.

My self-account is interrupted by a flurry of wings. The boy is here again, laughing and jumping for joy at the sight of my beautiful body. He calls himself the God of Love, but Lust would be more accurate. What I'd love, is to take one of those arrows of his and shove it right up him, just to see how he likes it for a change.

The boy yawns and stretches. Once he is done, his body has grown taller and more mature. Even his wings are now broader and more colourful.

'There,' he says, turning slowly before my eyes. 'I didn't really feel like having prepubescent sex - at least, not today - but the beauty of being a god is that I don't actually have to go through puberty. What do you think? Do you like me as an eighteen-year-old? Or should that be, an eighteen-aeons-old?'

I want to tell him no, I don't feel anything for him. But as he continues to dance before me I can't take my eyes off of his beautiful body, and as he turns, displaying his winged back, firm buttocks, long legs, muscular stomach and broad chest, I cannot prevent my body from betraying its feelings.

'Ah,' he laughs, 'now aren't you glad there's one part of the body that remains awake even while the rest of you is asleep?'

As he speaks he kneels beside me and tenderly curls his fingers about my stone-hard phallus. I had thought that it couldn't possibly get any harder, but in his grasp my manhood becomes a rod of iron.

The winged youth caresses my solid penis with one hand and his own with the other, bringing us both to an endless plateau of ecstasy that lasts and lasts and lasts while the moon slowly sails across the sky.

In my earlier existence - I'm tempted to say, 'when I was alive' - I was tolerant of men who loved men, but I never felt any desire toward those of my own sex. Now, though, I can do nothing to prevent the youth from having his way with me, whether I want to or not.

'Ah, yes' says the boy-god, as if reading my mind - and who is to say that he cannot? - 'Your sex is wide awake - 'wide' indeed! - while your body reclines in peaceful sleep. But only you and I know the truth, save for she who did this to you. Behind those sleeping eyes your mind remains wide awake, forever incapable of rousing your sleeping limbs to action.'

With that, he rolls me onto my stomach, eases my legs apart, and lowers himself onto and into me.

'You can't run away,' he whispers, caressing my chest and stomach as he thrusts slowly and rhythmically, back and forth. 'You cannot leave this place. You will always be here for me, whenever I want you. You can't move. You...can't...move. You...can't...move!'

As he continues to repeat these words like a litany, in time with his hip-thrusts, they begin to have their effect. For the more I am reminded of my immobile condition the more I try to move, and the more I try to move the more rigid my body seems to become, and the more my arousal grows.

Eventually there comes a point when I can no longer hold back and my entire body explodes into climax. I can see nothing, hear nothing, as ecstasy flares through me again and again and again. I feel as if I have been thrown from the solar chariot into the heart of the sun, to light the world with the fire of my agonised ecstasy forever.

At last it ends, in a series of liquid spasms, and he slides out of me and rolls me onto my back. Then with a little kiss and a pat and another brief flurry of wings he is gone, leaving me to spend the rest of the night alone with a sore bottom and a sticky crotch.

I hate him for using and abandoning me.

(I love him for the incredible pleasure he gives me.)

Is this how women feel about men? It's what we're always doing to them, after all.

When the sun finally rises my senses fade. This is the irony of my situation: I can only experience true sleep by day, while being condemned to waking sleep at night.

I cannot dream. But sometimes I can remember...

I was only looking, that's all. I wasn't even as if I'd tried to touch her or anything.

Or have I said that before?

No, no, I've gone too far ahead. I left out the beginning...

The beginning was a day like any other, in the hills near my home town where I was peacefully grazing my flock. I could never have dreamed that by that evening my destiny would have been changed forever by divine intervention.

She just looked like a girl, that's all. An incredibly sexy girl, it's true, but even so there was no way I could have known she was a goddess.

It's just so unfair, what she did to me.

But I'm getting ahead again.

I had just led the flock down to the stream to drink when I saw her bathing nearby. That was unusual enough, not that I was complaining. None of the local girls would dare to bathe unchaperoned, and in any case there was a perfectly good bath-house in town with strictly segregated hot and cold pools for each sex.

It was a warm day and I'd stripped to the waist, and I'll admit that when I saw her staring at me I flattered myself that she was doing so in order to get a good look at my manly physique. I prayed that it was true. To see a naked girl appear out of the blue would have been a treat in itself, but this girl was the culmination of every sexual fantasy I had ever had. Now if only, if only I could persuade her to make love to me, my life would be complete.

I approached and introduced myself.

'Oh, not again,' she muttered under her breath.

I don't remember exactly what I said next. Nothing very original, I suppose, although at the time I must have thought it was irresistably charming and witty.

'Don't you know who I am?' she demanded. I suppose she was staring at me coldly, but I didn't notice. I was looking at her through the eyes of lust.

'I'm sure I should have remembered seeing you if you had been here before,' I cooed, still trying to be charming and seductive. 'Are you from the village over the hill?'

'I am from a very long way beyond the hill,' she said, crossing her arms beneath her breasts. (Oh, those breasts! Those petite but firm and perfectly formed orbs! At that moment I wanted to...)

'I know what you want to do,' she snapped, seeming to read my mind, 'and you can forget all about it!'.

'Oh, but beautiful maiden,' I crooned, 'how could I ever forget the sight of your wondrous body, though I had seen it for only a moment?'

'Yes, that is a problem, isn't it?' she muttered.

'It is a problem you could cure with a single kiss,' I purred, ' and then perhaps another, and then -'

'Don't you ever give it a rest?' she said. 'Look here. What do you see?'

It was hard to tear my eyes away from her gorgeous nakedness - which she had, I noticed, made no effort to conceal from me, despite her protests - but somehow I managed to do so. Lying on the streambank was a pile of clothing, on top of which sat a bow and a quiver of arrows. Nearby was a silver circlet decorated with a crescent moon.

'Ah, you're a huntress,' I said. 'Very good exercise. Running for the legs and hips...archery for the arms and...upper torso...'

'I am not just a huntress,' she told me. 'I am The Huntress. I am the Goddess of the Moon. The Goddess of Chastity, if that word has the slightest meaning to someone like you.'

All right, I thought, so she's crazy. She has delusions of godhood. She's still the sexiest madwoman I'm ever likely to meet.

'All I wanted,' she continued, 'was a little peace and quiet, a chance to bathe in private without a gaggle of handmaidens fussing over me. And then you come along, just like that other idiot, and start ogling my body. Now what am I supposed to do with you?'

'Um...with all due respect...your goddessness...' I said, 'you are still naked, and you haven't made any attempt to cover yourself.'

'What's the point? Even if I were to dress, you'd still be seeing me naked. Just like that damned hunter. Huh. Literally damned, by the time I'd finished with him.'

I had no idea what she was talking about, but it was finally getting through even to my lust-addled mind that she wasn't interested in me. Oh, well, I thought, it's her loss. Aloud, I said, 'Well, ah, goddess, it has been pleasant enough meeting you - although under other circumstances it could have been even more pleasant - but I must go now. I can't keep my flock waiting all day.'

'I can't just let you leave,' she said.

'What's that supposed to mean?' I demanded.

'If I let you walk away you'll soon be boasting to all your friends about how you found me. No doubt you'll tell them I begged you to fuck me because you're such an irresistible hunk. Or maybe you'll just fantasise about me while you're fucking your favourite sheep. As Goddess of Chastity, I cannot allow my reputation be sullied by a mere mortal.'

'Oh, this is ridiculous,' I said. 'What would a real goddess be doing in this secluded little valley?'

'I told you. Seeking privacy. A forlorn hope, as I now realise. And don't try and walk away from me! I told you I can't allow that!'

'And how exactly are you going to stop me...goddess?' I chuckled, walking away.

The girl spoke to my retreating back.

'I am going to stop you,' she said, 'by stopping you!'

Between one footstep and the next my legs stopped dead, as if turned to stone.

I tried to turn, to confront the girl, to demand to know what she had done to me, and immediately discovered that the rest of my body was in the same condition. I couldn't move a muscle. I was completely helpless.

The girl walked in front of me and gestured. I remained motionless while my clothing and sandals dissolved into air.

'Now do you believe I'm a goddess?' she said, vigorously spanking my rigid buttocks.

I was beginning to suspect that I might have been mistaken about her after all.

For the next few minutes she slowly walked around me, examining my body from every angle while I stood paralysed under her spell.

'Now here's my problem,' she said. 'You do have the most gorgeous masculine body I have ever seen. There is nothing I would like more than to fuck you blind from now until the end of time. Believe me, I could do it too, if it weren't for one little thing.'

Slowly stroking my bottom, easing the sting of her slap, she continued. 'I am, as I have mentioned, the Goddess of Chastity. I didn't ask to be Goddess of Chastity. I have as astronomical a sexual appetite as any god. But the Powers that Be decreed that chastity was to be my attribute, and there's nothing I can do to change that.'

She sighed. 'It always drives me mad watching all the other gods and goddesses getting it off with each other and every mortal they happen across, while I am required to stand aloof from the pleasures of the flesh.

'The Goddess of Love helped a bit. She pointed out that I was only supposed to be chaste with men, which meant there was no reason I couldn't have sex with her, or any other female. Looking back, of course, I can see that she was just seducing me, the same way she seduced just about everybody else before dropping them like bricks, but we had a lot of fun while it lasted.

'But then of course she dumped me like the rest of them, and I went through a bit of a bad patch. For a long while, anyone who even dared to look at me in a certain way would find themselves with one of my arrows where they least expected them. And my arrows hurt a lot more than Loverboy's, believe me.

'I like to thnk I've mellowed a bit since then. Anyway, like I said, you're too pretty to just shoot. Not like that hunter. Huh. Thought he was the gods' gift to womankind. By the time I'd finished with him he was a dog's dinner. Literally.

'So the question remains: what am I to do with you? I'd like to take advantage of that body of yours, but I'd have to do it in a way that somehow manages to avoid compromising my integrity as Goddess of Chastity. That's going to present quite a challenge.'

The proximity of her naked body, combined with the strange sense of arousal I felt from being helpless in her presence, was driving me mad with lust. At some point I had developed a stone-hard erection, that almost seemed to be reaching out for her, stretching further forward with each passing minute. But she simply ignored my plight and turned away for a moment. Her back (that firm, sleekly-muscled back, those shapely buttocks, and long legs that seemed perfectly shaped as well for running as for embracing a man's thighs) was every bit as arousing as her front.

I wanted her. I wanted more than any woman I had ever met. Goddess or no, if I could have moved I would have pounced upon her there and then.

But I couldn't move...

After a while she turned back toward me and said: 'I can't decide just now. And I can't leave you standing here in the open.'

Then let me go! I screamed within my mind.

But she did not. Instead she gestured and the stream, the fields and my sheep all vanished. In their place I saw a circle of snowy sky surrounded by rough grey rock. A freezing draught embraced my naked flesh.

'There,' she said. 'I have brought you to a cave, high in the mountains, where no one can find you. Now I can leave you here in peace while I consider what to do with you.'

With those words she gestured, and began to vanish.

'Oh, and don't worry about your sheep,' she said. 'I'm sure one of your neighbours will find them. Or a wolf. In any case, you'll never see them again whatever happens.'

By now she had almost disappeared. Her last words were a fading whisper.

'I will be back in a moment.'

Then she was gone.

After I had waited for some time it began to dawn on me that what seemed but a moment to a god might be a great deal longer to a mortal.

I believe I stood in that cave, never moving, never eating, never drinking, never experiencing an orgasm, while the ice-cold winds swirled around my body, for more than a year. Perhaps it was two years, or a hundred. How could I tell? I tried to count the days, but I lost count, and there was never any hint of warmth to indicate the presence of summer.

I couldn't even escape into madness. Her spell kept me horribly sane throughout my ordeal.

Once again my tale is interrupted. The old man with the robe, the scythe and the hourglass is here. Naturally enough, I didn't see him arrive: one moment he simply wasn't there, and the next moment he was. That's just one of his many tricks.

Inwardly I groan. His visits are always the worst, because there's no telling how long they will last. At least from my point of view.

The old man slips out of his robe, revealing a revoltingly wizened, ancient body. But then he makes a gesture over his hourglass and its sands begin to flow upward. As they do so the years fall away from his face and body until he is handsome, muscular, superbly-endowed and in his prime.

(Hourglasses have not yet been invented, at least not by mortals, but the past and future are as one to this god, and his presence somehow imparts knowledge of what his glass is for. Of course, no mortal will ever invent an hourglass that can do all the things that his can.)

My body stretches slightly and rolls half onto its left side - all without the slightest control on my part. The now-youthful god smiles and lays down beside me, kissing my face and gently stroking my chest. This soon arouses me, and he spends some time slowly kneading my hardened phallus before carefully rolling me onto my stomach.

'Ah, my friend,' he says, tenderly caressing my arms and back, 'if only you were awake to enjoy this.'

If only you knew, I think.

He slides forward a little, holding my chest tightly in his arms, and I feel his phallus - no less hard and thick than my own - pressing, gently at first and then with ever-increasing pressure, at the gateway of my anus. At first the gateway puts up a token resistance, but it can only be a matter of time before that resistance is broken.

His movements, as always, are slow and unhurried. He knows he doesn't need to rush. He has all the time in the world...literally.

And in time the barricade is broken, and the fortress of my body stormed. Now my anus embraces its invader in a firm grip as it slowly and rhythmically probes more deeply, while my own phallus throbs and pulsates against the ground.

If I could move, would I be trying to resist him, or would I be helping him? I don't know. All I know is that I would be moaning aloud with the intensity of these feelings.

He has settled into a rhythm now, slowly rocking back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, sending regular bursts of pleasure through me, each one just that little bit stronger than the last. Slowly he is pushing me up the hill, but the summit is still a long way off.

Legend has it that he devoured his own children and regurgitated them as the hours and days, forcing them to dance in their endless circles for eternity. I can almost see the hours dancing unhurriedly before my eyes as the god continues to rock against me, all the while caressing my chest and stomach, gently licking my ears and neck....

At last the summit draws near. When we do arrive we will do so together - that is one gift that all the gods share - but he does not want to arrive too soon and so slows his pace even further. I am feverish with anticipation. If only I could move I would be trying to escape, struggling desperately for release from my overwhelming sensations, but I cannot. The only escape is via the summit. And finally, after what seems like years, I find myself rushing headlong toward the summit. Suddenly my skin is aflame, my phallus a shaft of lightning. Agony and ecstasy have become one, and in this state I remain imprisoned for hours. Surely this is the summit. Surely nothing can possibly surpass this.

But I am wrong.

As the hours pass the fire that consumes me burns hotter and brighter. I am the sun, blinding myself with ecstasy and agony. My phallus is a gargantuan lightning bolt, burning even brighter than that sun. I feel as if I will be turned to ash at any moment, but somehow I endure.

Please, I am thinking, no more. Let it end now. Please let me experience merely mortal sensations once more.

But it does not end there, but continues and continues and continues. If I had a voice I would be hoarse from screaming.

At long last there is one final explosion of ecstasy that threatens to tear my body apart, followed by a series of lesser - though still unbelievably intense - explosions as my seed pours out of me and his pours into me. If the amount of semen were commensurate with the strength of our sensations, it would have swept us away in a great wave and drowned the earth.

Instead, as the God of Time lies exhausted upon my back I find to my relief that my unbearable ecstasy is fading, my senses slowly returning to normal.

But then the god slowly sits up and begins to chant rhythmically. I cannot turn to look, but I know that he must be making another gesture over his hourglass.

Oh, no, I think, not this...

My body stretches slightly and rolls half onto its left side - all without the slightest control on my part. The now-youthful god smiles and lays down beside me, kissing my face and gently stroking my chest. This soon arouses me, and he spends some time slowly kneading my hardened phallus before carefully rolling me onto my stomach.

(It's happening again. The God of Time has made time go back, so that he can experience the same sensations all over again. And I too will be forced to experience the whole thing exactly as before, except that this time I know exactly what is going to happen, and know also that I cannot change any of it, even if I could move. I can even hear what I was thinking the first time around, even while I am able to think new thoughts. I cannot explain it. He is a god.

(And so events repeat themselves exactly as before, until...)

At long last there is one final explosion of ecstasy that threatens to tear my body apart, followed by a series of lesser - though still unbelievably intense - explosions as my seed pours out of me and his pours into me. If the amount of semen were commensurate with the strength of our sensations, it would have swept us away in a great wave and drowned the earth....

But then the god slowly sits up and begins to chant rhythmically. I cannot turn to look, but I know that he must be making another gesture over his hourglass.

Oh, no, I think, not this...

My body stretches slightly and rolls half onto its left side - all without the slightest control on my part. The now-youthful god smiles and lays down beside me, kissing my face and gently stroking my chest. This soon arouses me, and he spends some time slowly kneading my hardened phallus before carefully rolling me onto my stomach.

(It's happening again. The God of Time has made time go back, so that he can experience the same sensations all over again.)

((And now it is happening yet again, and this time I can hear what I was thinking on both previous occasions...!

((But this time is slightly different. Time is slowing down. Every sensation is becoming more prolonged. Perhaps this time when we climax he will make time stop altogether, and I will burn in ecstasy for a thousand years, or a million....

((This is the way it is with the God of Time. During his night's visits it seems he can only ever manage to climax once. But his powers can make one night seem to last forever, and that one orgasm may be multiplied a millionfold.

((After this I will never feel bad about the Love God's taunts again. At least when he stays for one night that night never outlasts its proper season.

((Slower and slower...longer and longer...more and more intense...it's too much, it's too much, I can't endure it...and yet, in this weird, spellbound existence there is nothing I can ever do except endure.......))

Aatt... lloonngg... llaasstt... tthheerree... iiss... oonnee... ffiinnaall... eeexxx... ppplllooo... sssiiiooonnn...... ooooffff... eeeee... cccccc... sssssss... tttttttt... aaaaaaaaa... ssssssssss...... yyyyyyyyyyy...... yyyyyyyyyyy...... yyyyyyyyyyy...... yyyyyyyyyyy...... yyyyyyyyyyy...... yyyyyyyyyyy...... yyyyyyyyyyy...... yyyyyyyyyyy...... yyyyyyyyyyy...... yyyyyyyyyyy......

((can't move can't think can't move can't think can't move can't think can't move can't think can't move can't think can't move can't think............))

At long, long, long, long last it is finally over. The God of Time reverts to his former aged appearance, dons his robe, takes up his scythe, and with a gesture at his hourglass is gone.

The next few nights are a relief. My visitors - always one per night, as if by rota - are all minor deities:demi-gods, nymphs, satyrs, nature sprites and the like. Some of them are rough with my 'sleeping' body, others gentle. The satyrs' fur tickles my legs, and their goat-like scent makes me nostalgic for my lost sheep. The nymphs are playful and inventive. The demi-gods and demi-goddesses whisper the latest gossip about their fellow deities in my ears. They don't believe I can really hear their secrets, of course, but they are rightly secure in the knowledge that I will never repeat any of them.

One night the King of the Gods comes to me. With his reputation for promiscuity with either sex, one might expect him to be the greatest lover amongst all the immortals. In my experience, though, he's just boring. As always, he just shoves me onto my stomach, bear-hugs my chest - hard enough to squeeze the life out of me if I hadn't become immortal - and starts ramming and thrusting away without the slightest preamble. And all the while he mutters and grumbles about his slut of a wife - as if it wasn't he who had so often been unfaithful to her! - and his lazy good-for-nothing Cup-bearer, and about all of the trials and tribulations that being the ruler of a successful modern pantheon entails.

He does not lack for endurance, I'll give him that; he's bumping, grinding, pumping and thrusting away without let-up, all night long.

Nor does he lack when it comes to size. I had thought that 'hung like a horse' was only an expression. If I wasn't immortal I feel sure I would have been split asunder by his almighty tool. By morning I'm so sore I wonder why his wife ever complains about his desertions. I'd have thought she'd welcome a break from his attentions.

Soon afterward the 'good-for-nothing Cup-bearer' himself arrives, laying down beside me and entwining one leg about mine. It is said that he was once a mortal youth, but smitten by his godlike beauty the God-King flew down in the shape of an eagle and carried him to the heavens. I must admit, the lad does have a kind of girlish prettiness about him. He is also a far more considerate lover, gently caressing and kissing me all over before taking my manhood in his fingers and slowly, sensuously, coaxing it toward a state of bliss, while the fingers of his other hand attend to his own needs.

He too complains about his lot, but his grievances are more wistful than resentful. Why does the God-King have to blame him every time one little wine mug is misplaced? Why does he get so jealous if his Cup-bearer so much as glances in the direction of a young nymph or goddess? And why, oh why, does he always insist on making love in the shape of an eagle? His feathers always make the Cup-bearer sneeze.

That's one question I can't answer. The God-King always visits me in human form.

If I were still mortal, still fully alive, I might have been put off by a lover who constantly talked during the act. But the boy's voice has a pleasant ring, no matter what he may be speaking of; and in any case my body can no longer resist any kind of sexual stimulation.

There is also this: since he was once mortal, his lovemaking is of a mortal order. I am never overwhelmed by it, as I often am by the other gods'.

And so it is that when his tender hands at last take my body to a crescendo of pleasure, it is pleasure on a human scale, pleasure that I can understand and savour.

The Cup-bearer of the Gods washes the semen from my body and his with a damp rag, thanks me for this night's pleasure and excuses himself politely. Some might think him naive for allowing his Master to exploit him the way he does, but of all the gods the Cup-bearer is the only one whose visits I actually enjoy. In fact I could go so far as to say, he is the only one that I could fall in love with, male or not.

No, that's not quite true. I realise that now.

Of all the gods, he is the only one that I do truly love.

If only I could tell him so.

But I am forgetting...my story, my story. Have I come to the frozen cave yet? Yes, the cave...I believe I stood in that cave, never moving, never eating, never drinking, never experiencing an orgasm, while the ice-cold winds swirled around my body, for more than a year. Perhaps it was two years, or a hundred.

At last the goddess returned, clad in a silver robe with the lunar circlet upon her forehead. It was the first time I had seen her clothed, but despite the icy cold I was no less aroused by her appearance.

'It's a bit cold in here, isn't it?' she muttered, seemingly to herself. Perhaps she was mocking me. But then with a gesture she made the cave vanish, and we were once more standng by the banks of the stream where I first encountered her. It was night, but even the cool breeze felt like a blazing fire after the cold of the cave. After enduring that for so long I would gladly stand as a statue forever, just as long as I was somewhere warm.

'This is now an enchanted glade,' she informed me. 'I have placed a spell upon it to ensure that no mortal comes near - something I should have done in the first place, I suppose, but then a goddess can only think of a thousand things at a time.

'In any case, I have decided what to do with you. As I mentioned before, my reputation as Goddess of Chastity means I cannot allow you to leave and go bragging about how you've seen me naked, so I'm going to make sure you never move again.'

Oh, gods, no! I thought, instantly contradicting my previous thought. She's going to turn me to stone! Oh, please, no, anything but that!

The goddess seemed to read my mind. 'You should count yourself lucky,' she told me. 'The last time a man cast lustful eyes upon my body, I turned him into a stag and let his own hounds tear him to pieces. I forget his name. All I remember is how very angry he made me.

'But, as I believe I mentioned before, I like to think I've mellowed a little since then. In any case, your body wouldn't be much use to me if it was completely inanimate.

'So here is what I intend to do. I have prepared a little deception for my fellow deities. As far as they know, I found you asleep one day and was so enthralled by your masculine beauty that I placed you under a spell of everlasting sleep. They find it a charming and terribly romantic story, and they are all dying - if that's not a completely inappropriate phrase for immortals! - to come and see you.'

Oh, well, I thought, everlasting sleep doesn't sound so very bad....

'I know what you're thinking,' she said, 'but it won't quite be like that. You see, if you were truly asleep you would have no awareness of your fate, and a curse is no good if its victim doesn't know about it.'

While she spoke she gestured with her hands and my body slumped to the ground in an attitude of repose.

'Good,' she said. 'So although you now appear to be sleeping peacefully, you are in reality wide awake. You can feel and hear, and even see normally though your eyes now appear to be permanently closed. Your body will behave just as if you were asleep. You will mumble and grunt and snore and toss and turn, just like a real sleeper, but you'll never be capable of the slightest voluntary movement. Oh, and one more thing: your body will respond sexually to the slightest touch.

'So, from now on I and my fellow gods and goddesses will come to you nightly, and that beautiful body of yours will be our plaything for eternity. Your splendid manhood will respond eagerly to our caresses, and there will be nothing you can do to prevent it. Of course as far as they are concerned, you will be asleep. For them it will seem to be harmless hypnophilia. Only you and I will know the truth - unless I perchance mention it to some of the others. The God of Love, perhaps. He always appreciated a good joke.'

The goddess knelt beside my recumbent body, leaned down and kissed my face.

'You lusted after my flesh,' she said, 'dreamed of holding me in you arms. Well, now your dream is about to come true - only on my terms, not yours. Like most men you saw sex as a means of controlling women. Well, that's too bad, because in all that is to come, you shall be the one who is being controlled.'

And with that she let slip the robe....

She was right. I had dreamed of holding her, fondling those perfect breasts, laying down on top of her...instead of which, she has come out on top - literally. In spite of my earlier feelings, I would resist this if I could. But of course I can't. The Goddess of Chastity she may be, but her behaviour at the moment is decidedly unchaste. And after a long while I am siezed by an inhumanly powerful eruption. For a moment I think I am screaming; but no, it's her, screaming loudly enough for both of us.

Even as my recollection of that first encounter ends, the past seems to merge with the present (is this the Time God's doing? I wonder): she is here again, lowering herself onto my sudden erection just as she did that first time.

'Just think,' she says, and I can't tell if she is speaking in memory or in the present: 'You are the only mortal who can boast all of the gods as his lovers. Surely you are the luckiest man who ever lived.'

And I cannot tell - for who can truly fathom the ways of the gods? - if she really means it....