Read Gore Vidal’s Caligula for Free Online Page A

buttocks urging him deeper into her. With one furious thrust, he broke through the barrier. He was in, all of him, and it was ecstasy such as he’d never known!
    Drusilla uttered one shrill cry of pain, and then there were only moans of pleasure as they rocked together, joined into one. How long it went on, neither could tell. Who can define eternity? But they made love again that night, and yet again.
    After that night they were never apart. Once the household had gone to its slumbers, they schooled each other, becoming expert, learning every way there was of pleasuring themselves. They experimented with positions, some so impossible to maintain that they collapsed in laughter. One night, not many after the first one, Drusilla’s lips, mouth and tongue drove her brother near to insanity; from the first, she liked the salty taste of him and swallowed it all. And one night, after licking and sucking at his sister’s anus, he managed to insert himself there and found a new joy. She liked it much less than he did.
    And, one night, just as Drusilla had feared, their grandmother Antonia found them together. Unable to sleep because of the heat, she wandered into the atrium in search of a vagrant garden breeze. All the small bedrooms opened onto this indoor garden, and Antonia could hear whispers coming from Caligula’s room, although she could not make out the words. Silently, she stole forward and stood in the doorway, which was merely curtained, as was the custom in the older houses of the nobility.
    Her grandchildren were lying together—naked, whispering and giggling—when the shadow fell across the bed. They looked up in terror to meet Antonia’s merciless stare. How they screamed and cried and begged! They were only talking! They were doing nothing wrong! They were naked only because of the heat! Grandmother, please listen! Please! But Antonia was made of stone. Besides, she could smell the sex-odor still lingering in the air, and she knew guilt when it was written all over childish faces.
    From that moment Drusilla and Caligula were kept apart until an event which Antonia arranged to occur soon. Drusilla was married to Lucius Cassius.
    It was the first time that Gaius Caligula had felt murder in his heart, that day when he stood in the wedding party and saw the only love he’d ever known bestowed on a pompous gray-haired old Roman. But Drusilla’s first husband had turned out to be impotent, and he never found out that his bride was no virgin. Instead, Drusilla gained a measure of freedom as a matron that she had never known as a girl. Caligula was able to spend many, many afternoons in her marriage chambers, avoiding his tutors, learning from his sister everything he wanted or needed. They grew closer together than ever before, with one important difference.
    Now, when the Dream came at night, there was no one to hold him, nobody to make it go away. Only a slave answered when he called; there was only a slave to bring him a cup of wine with a sleeping draught in it, juice of the poppy which sent him stumbling around bleary-eyed all the next day.
    But now his younger sisters were beginning to grow up, especially Julia Livilla, whose plump thirteen-year-old body matured early and sprouted a pair of luscious breasts. Julia Livilla adored her big brother Caligula; she responded to his first kisses and fondling with delight, especially when he accompanied them with bribes of figs dipped in honey. At first she was too tight and small, and Caligula had to content himself with munching on her, but she was a fresh, delicious morsel and loved nothing better than Caligula’s sixteen-year-old tongue sucking her hairless clit (unless it was the figs; perhaps she loved them just a tiny bit better). But after a few weeks of his caresses, Julia Livilla had grown hot enough, loose enough, under his hands for him to penetrate her, at least part way. It took him several days more to stretch her enough so that he could ram himself