Gore Vidal’s Caligula Read Free Page A

him.
    Drusilla shook her lovely head. “He’s too young. Tiberius is too old.” She lowered her satiny lips to her brother’s ear. “You will be Emperor . . . soon,” she promised.
    Caligula allowed himself to relax against her velvet breasts. As usual, Drusilla had the power to make him feel better. “I will make you queen, wife, consort . . .” he vowed huskily, sliding his hand up the long, smooth surface of her inner thigh. His mouth opened and his tongue flicked out toward her right nipple.
    But Drusilla pulled away, as though refusing to nurse a crying baby. “You can’t. I’m your sister.”
    Swinging her legs off the side of the bed, she reached out to the heavy chest that stood close by and picked up her comb and mirror. The mirror was of heavy, polished silver, with a pair of intertwined naked figures on the backing; it was very old, Etruscan work, and very valuable. Frowning at her image, she began to drag the ivory teeth of the comb through her tangled hair. Her nose wrinkled in discomfort as she yanked at the knots.
    Amused, Caligula rolled over on his belly to watch her. She was so very beautiful, his Drusilla, his other self. His eyes devoured her nakedness; she had the only body of which he never tired. He had made love to so many . . . women . . . men . . . even children. A few times he had thrashed happily in pain under the merciless sexual punishment of his seven-foot African slaves. But only she, his sister, his Drusilla, had the magic that drew him back again and again, to slake his thirst at the fountain between her silken thighs.
    “The Pharaohs of Egypt always married their sisters,” he reminded her.
    “Well, we’re not Egyptians, I’m happy to say,” Drusilla retorted with a toss of her head. “We are proper Romans.”
    Caligula gave a shout of laughter. “Not so very proper.” He grinned lewdly at her. “What’s it like with your husband?” he inquired maliciously.
    “What’s what like?” Drusilla threw him an arch glance over one naked shoulder.
    Like a fox pouncing on a chicken, Caligula threw himself upon her and pressed her back on the bed. Then he mounted her and, huffing and puffing, waggled his buttocks back and forth in a grotesque parody of the sexual act.
    “Stop being such a child.” Half annoyed, half amused, Drusilla tried to push him away.
    “He’s terribly fat,” sneered Caligula. Pinning her shoulders to the bed with one hand, he used the other to tickle and tease her, rolling the hairs of her pubis between his fingers, parting her nether lips, slipping inside . . .
    “He’s not fat,” protested his sister. “He’s just large.”
    “But tiny where it counts,” Caligula hissed, his voice dripping with contempt.
    Drusilla’s legs had relaxed slightly, enough to let his hand wander where it willed, and he slipped two more fingers into her, making her gasp with sudden lust.
    “How do you know?” she asked, her eyes staring deeply into his.
    “I saw him at the baths,” he whispered.
    That carcass of lard, Marcus Lepidus, who dared to hold his, Caligula’s, own sister in his arms, dared to use her . . . some day I’ll kill him too, he thought. I’ll melt the fat right off his bones, the son of a whore’s dog.
    “I felt so sorry for you . . .” he murmured. Then he stuck his tongue deep into Drusilla’s ear, licking, making her shudder.
    By now he was hard again. His penis, long and thick, jutted from his narrow torso. He was so thin that it seemed grossly out of proportion to the rest of him. Slyly, he drew his organ along his sister’s belly, letting her feel the length and strength of it, daring her to make comparisons with the puny flesh of his obese brother-in-law.
    Drusilla gasped as she felt his hardness. “You are vile . . .” She sighed and gave a husky laugh.
    Light from the silver lamp played over the lovers like reflections in water, and they watched each other closely as they made love, noting every tiny mark of advancing