The Rose
by Tiffany Reisz
Published by 8th Circle Press
Book 2 in the Godwicks Series
On the day of Lia’s university graduation party, her parents—wealthy art collectors with friends in high places—gift her a beautiful wine cup, a rare artifact decorated with roses.
It’s a stunning gift, and one that August Bowman, a friend of her parents and a guest at Lia’s party, also has his eye on. The cup, August tells her, is known as the Rose kylix, and it’s no ordinary cup. It was used in the temple ceremonies of Eros, Greek god of erotic love, and has the power to bring the most intimate sexual fantasies to life.
But Lia is skeptical of August’s claims of the cup’s mythology and magic—after all, he’s a collector himself, and she suspects he just wants to get his hands on this impressive piece of art. So he dares her to try it for herself, and when Lia drinks from the Rose kylix she is suddenly immersed in an erotic myth so vivid it seems real—as though she’s living out the most sensual fantasy with August by her side…
Realizing the true power of this ancient and dangerous relic, Lia is even more wary of giving it up, though August insists it is only safe with him. He’s willing to pay the full value of the cup, but Lia has another type of trade in mind. One that finds them more tangled up in each other—and in fantasy—than either was prepared for.
RATED: 18+ CATEGORY: MOOD:
Steamy #Erotica Interesting
The Rose is the second book in Tiffany Reisz's Godwick's series, and centers around Lia Godwick, daughter of The Red's Mona St. James (now Godwick), and her husband Spencer Godwick (Lord Malcolm's great-grandson from the Red). Lia, who is obsessed with Greek mythology, is gifted a beautiful kylix as a graduation gift, and with it seems to come August Bowman, a thirty year old Greek mythology enthusiast who was outbid for the kylix himself. Why does he want it? Because it's not just any kylix, but a magical one, one that can immerse the ones who drink from it into their sexual fantasies. August is willing to buy it from her ... but Lia has another idea, one that gets them more entangled than either ever imagined.
I enjoyed The Rose. In fact, I enjoyed it more than I did The Red. I think it all comes down to something The Red doesn't have: chemistry. Where The Red is pure erotica, The Rose has a touch of romance to it. It doesn't skip of the erotica though. Tiffany Reisz's bread and butter is sex, and lots of it. The Rose doesn't disappoint. Much like how in The Red, Mona re-enacts famous controversial paintings with what I think is a ghost ... not sure ... The Rose's couple re-enacts some of greek's most famous myth's. Another reason why I enjoyed it more, actually. Who doesn't love Greek mythology?
Another reason I enjoyed The Rose more than the Red: the characters. Lia has a bit more substance than her mother's character did in The Red. And how could you not be enchanted by August? Highly sexual, sure ... but he falls for Lia, and, spoiler -----------> when Lia tells him she would be okay if he continued having sex with other people, as long as he came back to her, he pretty much said he has already done a lot of that. <----------------. Since Lia is the daughter of The Red's Mona, and Spencer, who we meet at the end of The Red, we get an update on them as well. While I like them as parents ... I'm still not warmed to their characters. I love that they love each other deeply. I do. And I am an open minded woman. BUT, I like monogamy. Their openness about their wild and free sex lives have obviously impacted their children.
If you enjoyed The Red, I believe you will also enjoy The Rose. It has a bit more fleshy bits to this one, and doesn't skimp on the sex ... and just like The Red, there is some rather ... unbelievable and unrealistic sex -----------> Like that scene with Poseidon? Come on. I know all writers love writing about huge dicks, but that one sounds like it would have quite literally killed her, and there is no way in hell that it is enjoyable to have ANYTHING go farther that your cervix, and into your womb. Just no. No no no no. <----------.
Lia: "Aphrodite, goddess of love, lust and badly behaved women, please protect your daughters tonight - Georgy, Jane and Rani. And me, too, I suppose, if you don't mind. If you run into my great-grandfather Malcolm in the afterworld, please tell him he's a bad influence."
She needed to find something about him to loathe and quickly, or she'd be staring at him all night.
Lia: "Do you think he beats his servants?"
Mona: "If they ask him nicely enough."
Lia: "Mother."
Mona: "You should show him the tapestry you're working on, dear. I hear he loves Green mythology as much as you do."
Lia: "I am not going to show him my tapestry. Or anything else."
Mona: "Sex really is very fun, darling."
Lia: "My kingdom for a normal mother."
Lia: "You're flirting."
August: "Oh, you noticed."
Spencer: Thank you all so much for coming to Lia's graduation party tonight. Lia hates me right now for throwing her such a large party when she would have been happy with an extra chocolate bisquit at tea and a gentle pat on the back."
Lia: "Yes, why couldn't we do that?"
That scored a laugh from the room.
Spencer: "Because I'm a monster. Just ask your brothers."
Another laugh
Spencer: "I'm not joking. They caught Lia's mum and I shagging in the kitchen and for some reason took offense to that."
Lia: "Toast over!"
Spencer: "I'll make it quick, I promise. And no stories about shagging your mum. Other than that one. No, wait, there's one more."
Lia gently banged her head on the table. Mum patted her back to comfort her. It didn't work.
Spencer: "Lia was conceived on our wedding night."
And it was all downhill from there.
Lia: "Daddy used to read that book to me every night. Every summer day when I was little, we'd walk in the woods, looking for Pan's island."
August: "Did you find it?"
Lia: "No. But finding it wasn't so much the point as looking for it with Daddy. Anyway, if I'd found it I wouldn't be here. I'd still be there."
August: "You'll find it someday."
He slapped the base of it once, twice, three times with the palm of his hand. The broken cork wriggled its way to the top of the bottle and, with his fingertips, August pulled it out.
August: "Voila."
Lia: "How did you do that."
He raised his right hand
August: "It's my spanking hand."
August: "Gogo? Is he a club dancer?"
Lia: "Gogo, short for Argos."
August laughed softly, and squatted on his haunches to meet Gogo face-to-face.
August: "Poor lad, named for the most loyal hound in Greek mythology and your mistress calls you Gogo."
Lia: "When I was little, Mum had a cat named for the painter Toulouse-Lautrec. She called him Tou-Tou. Women, right? No respect for the dignity of men and other beasts."
August: "On my honor."
Lia: "Do you have any honor?"
August: "Somewhere ... Left it at home. Probably next to my stack or tart cards."
Perseus: "My wife ..."
Andromeda: "Why does it feel like you have always been my husband?"
Perseus: "Because I will always be your husband, and eternity is a river that runs all ways."
Lia: "Sorry. I don't mean to disappoint you."
Her father took her face in his hands
Spencer: "Are you alive?"
She grinned, rolled her eyes
Lia: "Yes, obviously."
Spencer: "If you want to disappoint me, you'll die before I do. Nothing else will work. An then I'd never forgive you, and you'd be written right out of the will. I'll leave everything to the Virgins just to spite you for dying on me."
Lia: "Daddy, you have to stop calling Art and Charlie ' the Virgins.' They despise you enough as it is."
Spencer: "Ungrateful children, I swear. I'll call those two anything I want. You know what they call me, don't you?"
Lia: "The Sexual Predator."
Spencer: "The Sexual Predator. They don't say, 'Where's Dad gone?' or 'What's our father - who pays all our bills and puts a roof over our heads - want us to do now to show him our gratitude?' It's 'Where's the Sexual Predator? What's ye olde Predator up to now?' All because once, just once, they caught me and your mother ... in our own damn house."
Lia: "They caught you in the kitchen. That we all use."
Spencer: "They were supposed to be out."
Lia: "There are sixty rooms in the house and you picked the kitchen to ..."
She fluttered her hand
Lia: "There are things boys do not need to see their father doing to their mother. Can you blame them for thinking you're a pervert?"
Spencer: "God only knows what they call your mother."
Lia: "Stolkholm Syndrome."
Her father chuckled
Spencer: "Well, it is clever."
Lia: "You're barmy."
Spencer: "And you're my favorite. Don't tell the boys. I want to be the one to tell them."
Lia: "August? Hello?"
August: "Has it passed?"
Lia: "You mean the urge to shag you until bits break off?"
August: "That one."
Lia: "Yes. Was that a side effect of drinking from the cup?"
August: "No. Just a side effect of meeting me."
She glared at him, a glare to melt brick like candle wax.
August: "Yes, it's definitely passed."
August: "I'm falling in love with you already."
Lia: "Well. Stop. Please and thank you."
August: "Phryne of Athens/ The courtesans. When she was charged with impiety and taken before the courts, she bared her breasts to the judges. At the sight of them, they acquitted her. At the sight of your breasts, they would have crowned you empress."
Lia: "You're trying to make me feel something for you. I know all the tricks."
August: "I feel something for you already. And this isn't a trick."
General: "Achilles. Thought you'd like to meet one of the widows you made today. Briseis, meet Achilles, the man who killed your lord and husband."
Achilles: "Your husband died honorably."
Briseis: "Are you sure it was my husband, then?"
Mona: "You broke the cork. How have you managed to father three children when you can't even work a corkscrew?"
Spencer: "I don't follow your logic, spouse, unless you rate all forms of penetration on the same scale. Just push the broken cork into the bottle."
Mona: "Then we'll have cork bits in our wine. Unacceptable."
Lia shook her head, sighed, and stepped out of the shadows and into the kitchen.
Spencer: "Lia. Where have you been all evening?"
Lia: "I was kidnapped and forced to have a threesome with Greek soldiers."
Mona: "Hope you had a nice time."
Lia picked up the wine bottle and slapped the base of it twice, and hard. The cork popped out.
Spencer: "How did you do that?"
Lia: "That was my spanking hand."
August: "Let's go to bed."
Lia: 'Bed? My bed?"
August: "Your bed. Us. In it. Now."
Lia: "No."
August: "Why not?"
Lia: "Many good reasons. Starting with ... no."
Lia: "There is absolutely no reason for you to like me."
August: "Why not?"
Lia: "I'm surly."
August: "You're charmingly surly."
Lia: 'I'm bitter."
August: "Not bitter. Just tart."
Lia: "I have a heart of ice."
August: "A heart of ice cream/ You're like a kitten with a switchblade."
Lia: "Are you trying to shag me?"
August: "I'm kissing. Just kissing."
Lia: "You have an erection, and I can feel it. It's poking me."
August: "Just because someone knocks on your door, doesn't mean you have to answer."
Lia: "Don't you dare!"
August: "What?"
Lia: "You're naked. We do not put our balls on my dead grandmother's favorite chair."
August: "Morning, Lord Godwick."
August leaned back in his chair and raised his coffee cup in a salute.
Spencer: "Bowman? What are you doing here?"
Lia: "He wanted to ask you some questions about the kylix you bought me. SO I invited him to breakfast."
Mona: 'He spent the night, Spencer. Coffee?"
Daddy went silent. Lia mentally committed matricide.
Spencer: "What was that?"
August: "I spent the night. Thanks for breakfast. Wonderful spread."
Spencer: "You spent the night?"
Her father walked to the table and stood across from where August sat.
August: "With Lia. And Gogo. He was there, too."
Lia: "Daddy, don't -"
Spencer: "I didn't catch your age, Bowman. Aren't you a little old to be dating my twenty-one-year-old daughter?"
August: "I'm much too old to be dating your twenty-one-year-old daughter."
Spencer: "That's it."
Daddy slapped the table
Mona: "Spencer. Sit down and eat your breakfast."
Spencer: "But -"
Mona: "But nothing. You will let your daughter have her own life or you will be sleeping alone from tonight until Christmas."
Spencer: "Mona, I will not stand here and let -"
Mona: "You won't stand. You will sit. You will sit and eat breakfast, and that is your penance and you will take it like a man. You have been the scourge of mothers and fathers and brothers and boyfriends since you were fourteen, you hypocritical whore."
Lia: "Mum, please don't call Daddy a whore in front of me. It makes my mouth feel horrid - like when I taste perfume."
Mona: "Sorry, darling. Get your breakfast. Sit and eat. We're all friends here."
August: "Don't feel bad, Lord Godwick. I'm a whore, too."
Spencer: "I'd night, I'd stand over your cradle and pray every new father's prayer - 'Whatever god is out there listening, please make my baby immortal.' Has it come true yet?"
Lia: "Yes. I'm immortal."
Spencer: "Good. That's a relief."
August: "Breakfast went well."
Lia: "You practically told my father you and I were shagging. At breakfast,"
August: "Should I have saved that conversation for lunch?"
She glared at him.
Lia: "Your father's not the sort of man who gives up dark family secrets just by asking nicely. I needed him feeling vulnerable. Saying 'Good morning, old chap, I are your daughter's cunt under your roof last night, and there's nothing you can do about it' tends to get a man off his game. And it worked."
Lia: "What if the house caught on fire and you were trapped here while I'm off in Narnia shagging Mr, Tumnus?"
August: "Are we doing Narnia tonight? I thought we were doing Eros and Psyche?"
Psyche: "You don't want my hands on your body?"
Eros: "I do. Always. But we have all our lives to play all our games together. And it pleases me to see you there, like a gift tied up with ribbons and bows."
Psyche: "A gift for you alone."
Eros: "Yes. And no better gift have I ever been given ..."
Psyche: "I wish I knew who you were."
Eros: "I can't tell you. It's against the rules."
Psyche: "Tell me something, then. Tell me something that tells me who you are."
Eros: "I am she who loves you. My Prince."
Psyche: "Ah. That tells me all I need to know."
August: "I'm going to make you fall in love with me. I don't know how, but I am. Before this week is over, you'll tell me you love me in this world."
Mona: "How's Mr. Augustine Bowman?"
Lia: "Fine. Dandy. I'm going to bed now."
Mona: "Not a bad idea. I may go back to bed myself."
Lia: "Do that. We'll all just have a lie-in. And none of us will tell Daddy where we were last night."
Mona: "Oh, Daddy knows where I was last night."
Lia: "Ugh, don't call him Daddy. Why do you do this to me?"
Mona: "Because it's so fun to watch you squirm. My own mother used to torture me, too. This is cosmic payback."
Lia: "Can't you please let me complete my walk of shame in peace, Mother?"
Mona: "Walk of fame, darling. Walk of fame. We do not buy into those sexist and outdated notions that girls aren't allowed to have as much fun as boys are."
Lia: "Thank you, Gloria Steinem. I'm going to walk my famous way to bed."
August: "August? Who? No! I'm Dionysus, god of wine, women and song!"
Lia: "You're August and you're adorable."
August: "Are you afraid?"
Lia: "No."
August: "I am."
Lia: "Of Pan?"
August: "Of you."
She laughed
Lia: "Why?"
He stroked her cheek
August: "You know why."
August smiled, and it was a smile to steal a young girl's heart, and as Lia was a young girl, her heart was stolen by it. And that wasn't even the mad part. The mad part was that Lia didn't want it back. He could keep the heart he'd just stolen. He could keep it forever, in a box or on a shelf, though she hoped he'd keep it in his chest, next to his.
Lia: "He got King Aegeus pissed on undiluted wine and sent him to his daughter's bedroom to shag and sleep."
Mona: "Parenting was very different in those days,"
Lia: "Mum, you gve me a vibrator for my eighteenth birthday."
Mona: "There wasn't a drunk King attacked to it."
August: "That's not why I'm helping you."
Lia: "Then why are you?"
August: "You don't know?"
Lia: "No."
August: "I'll t ell you next time I see you."
August: "I would have married you in that grove, built you a palace of god or a cottage of river stone, and we would have lived there and loved there until the end of days."
Lia: "Marry me? Because I got weepy when you put me inside my favorite book?"
August: "Because I love you, Lia. And I'm not afraid to tell you that here and now in this real world with you standing in front of me.
Lia: "You love me?"
August: "Yes. Yes. I love you."
She laughed
Lia: "Why? I'm surly."
August: "Charmingly surly."
Lia: "I'm bitter."
August: "Tart."
Lia: "I'm a kitten with a switchblade."
August: "I like kittens. I'm not afraid of your switchblade."
Lia: "I will remember our trip to Pan's Island as long as I live. I'll remember that beautiful thing you did for me. When I'm so old I don't even remember my own name, I'll remember ..."
August: "What, Lia?"
Lia: "You. I'll remember you, August Bowman. If that is your real name."
August: "It's not."
Lia: "Too bad. It's a very nice name."
Aphrodite: "All I ever wanted, was for someone to love my son as much as I do. You've made me a very happy lady."
Spencer: "She takes after her great - grandfather."
Mona: "No, darling, she takes after me."
Lia: "You have wings."
August: "You like them?"
Lia: "Where did you get them?"
August: "Born with them. Weird, aren't they? You just never know what'll happen when two gods make a new god."
Lia: " do love you. Although I'm so furious at you for not telling me you're bloody Eros."
August: "I tried telling you a, oh, million ways. I mean, come on now, Lia, I named myself August Bowman."
Lia: "I was told August was short for Augustine, not a synonym for 'exalted.'"
Lia: "I love you, August Bowman."
He wrinkled his nose at her
August: "Do you? Tell me how."
Lia: "With all my heart."
August: "And?"
He batted his eyelashes.
Lia: "All my ... soul?"
August: "And?"
He batted his eyelashes harder.
Lia: "And all my ..."
August: "Starts with a C."
Lia: "All my concupiscence?"
August threw her on her back and entered her with stroke.
August: "I'm going to pound that prissiness out of you if it takes eternity."
Lia: "Good. My cunt can't wait."
When August stopped laughing he made passionate love to her.
Aphrodite: "Hello, Ladies. Call me Mrs. V. We're going to fuck beautiful men, make enormous amounts of money, and be worshipped night and day like the goddesses we are. Shall we get started?"
Lia: "What happened to Daphne?"
August: "I turned her back into a nymph."
Lia: "And then you made love to her. Right?"
August: "No. I didn't want to get splinters."
Lia: "If you were going to paint one scene from any Greek myth, what scene would you paint?"
August: "You. You at the feet of Pan, holding a baby otter in your arms."
Lia: 'I'm not in a Greek myth."
He kissed her on the mouth
August: "You are now, my love."
Check out the rest of the Godwick's series below
