‘Wine?’ he asked.
‘Mmm,’ she mumbled, quickly filling her mouth with more honey cake. She was hardly tasting it, though, for all of her attention was consumed by the sight of shoulder muscles—more specifically, the small, sinewy threads of strength that flitted and twitched as he lifted the heavy wine vessel.
He handed her a cup and took the other in his hand. What was he doing? She forced her gaze to the ground. Think, Arria.
The realisation hit her like a blast of steam. ‘I know what you’re about!’ she proclaimed. ‘You are showering me with your generosity so that I will lift the curse.’
He drank from his cup, ignoring her comment. ‘Drink,’ he urged her. ‘It is Pontic wine. Lusty and sweet...perhaps a bit naive.’
It seemed an unusual way to describe wine, but she carefully lifted the overfull cup to her lips, telling herself that this was perfectly normal—to be sharing a drink with a deadly gladiator inside his dark, locked cell. She drank deeply and warmth flooded her body.
How long had it been since she’d enjoyed a cup of wine?
Not since the earliest days of her womanhood, when she was young and desirable and life seemed to spread out before her like a grand, silken carpet.
She drank and drank until she had drained the entire cup. He was watching her closely, his eyes like twin torches pouring their heat into her limbs. She began to feel dizzy, warm, careless. ‘I do not plan to stay in Ephesus for ever,’ she said.
He raised a brow. ‘Is that so?’
‘In ten years, when my indenture is complete, I shall go with my family north. My brother has been allotted land in one of the barbarian...’ She paused. ‘In one of the northern provinces. We plan to make a homestead there.’ She was careful not to mention that the province was Britannia, the man’s very homeland, and that the dream was hers alone, not one necessarily shared by any other member of her family. She realised that it was the first time that she had confessed the dream to anyone.
‘It is a fine dream,’ he said. ‘I had a similar dream once.’
‘Oh?’
‘I had been allotted a homestead by my father on land our ancestors have farmed and grazed for generations. Until the Romans took it from us, that is.’
She closed her eyes. Of all the shadowy depths of Tartarus. She should have known better than to speak of the northern provinces. She plastered on a smile and searched for something cheerful to say. ‘You are fortunate,’ she said at last.
‘Fortunate?’
She motioned across the cell to his raised bed, the pillows and blankets, the table full of delicacies. ‘Such bounty.’
His smile disappeared. ‘Brutus rewards us for our kills. Ten kills, you get a bed. Twenty gets you a supply of wine and honey cakes.’
Arria paused. The dizziness remained, but the carelessness had been replaced with contrition.
‘Apologies,’ she muttered. She had not meant to remind him of his misery. She had only wanted... What had she wanted? To invoke a time when they both stood in well-appointed rooms enjoying wine and sweets? And when had that been, exactly? Perhaps she only wished to pretend for a moment that they were human again.
A lump of honey cake was clogging her throat. She coughed and the offending piece of cake went flying on to the floor. ‘Forgive me!’ she breathed in horror. She lunged to retrieve the crumb and a terrible pain seized her back. She closed her eyes, trying to breathe through it.
‘What is wrong?’
‘Nothing.’ She felt the warmth of blood oozing beneath her tunic. Just a wound I have managed to rip open. She recovered her grin and stood slowly, hoping the wound would not bleed through the fabric.
‘You are injured,’ he said. He stepped behind her. ‘You are bleeding.’
‘It is nothing.’ She drank down her cup. ‘Please, may I have more wine?’
Ignoring her request, he pulled off his red tunic and plunged it into a pitcher of water, then straight down the back of her tunic.
‘Ah!’ she shrieked. The dripping water poured down her back, followed by a large, groping hand that was brushing painfully against the already leaking wound. ‘Not there,’ she gasped, feeling him press hard against a particularly tender spot. ‘A little lower.’
He grumbled, then contorted his arm into a different position. ‘Oh!’ she cried.
He stopped moving and sighed. ‘This would be much easier if you took off your tunic.’
Chapter Nine
She uttered not a single word of protest. She simply gathered the skirt of her tunic and lifted it, turning to reveal a confluence of deep, oozing wounds in the shape of an X across her back.
She had been beaten: there was no doubt of it. Perhaps over several days. No wonder she did not wear her breast strap.
Some of the wounds had healed. Their crusted red lines were like ancient reeds growing in a field of reddened flesh. But other wounds continued to fester, including the one currently leaking a steady stream of blood down her back.
He squeezed his tunic over the gash for a second time, then a third. ‘Have you always been this enthusiastic about cleaning wounds?’ she jested through the discomfort. ‘Or just until I taught you?’
He smiled as he attempted to absorb the still-leaking blood. ‘I have long been aware of the importance of cleaning a wound. You should count yourself fortunate that we have water.’
‘And what if we did not?’
‘Then I would have no choice but to flush it with my own urine,’ he pronounced. Arria cringed, then laughed. She punched him softly on the arm.
‘You laugh, but I have done it many times in the chaos of battle. There, I think the blood has stopped.’ He stepped back and surveyed the collection of wounds.
The pattern was sickening. It was as if her punisher thought himself clever, as if he were some twisted artist and her tender back his canvas. Cal felt the familiar bubbling of rage. ‘How did you receive these?’
She shook her head in shame.
‘How? Tell me.’
‘I fear my master does not speak in the language of rewards, only punishments.’
‘This is no punishment. This is savagery.’ Cal tried to imagine what possible transgression could have warranted such butchery. ‘Did you attempt escape? Harm him in some way?’
‘I wove a carpet that did not please him.’
‘A carpet?’ Cal drew a breath of air through his teeth. ‘Why did the carpet displease him?’
‘It was the image that I wove. It was...unusual. May I have more wine?’
She had covered her naked breasts with one of her arms. With the other, she held out her cup.
She looked so vulnerable standing there—her back a bloodied wasteland, her front a hidden temple. He had a powerful desire to gather her into his arms.
‘I would like to relieve your master of his limbs,’ Cal said.
She gave a grateful smile. ‘It is of no matter. I am weaving a new carpet now.’
‘May I ask, what was the nature of the design he so despised?’
He could see the flush of embarrassment rising in her cheeks. ‘It is difficult to describe.’
He poured her another cup. ‘Try.’
‘It would be easier to show.’
‘Then show me,’ he said.
She squatted to retrieve her tunic. In one fleeting second, she reached out, giving him a view of her naked chest. If her back was a scorched field, then her front was a garden of loveliness. Two mounds of tender abundance floated before his eyes, then disappeared, and he realised that she was speaking to him.
‘In order for me to show you the design that resulted in my beating, I must ask you to sit,’ she said, pointing to the end of his bed.
Obediently, he crossed to the bed and took his seat. He expected her to produce a tiny sketch, or to find a dusty piece of floor o
n which to draw the offending design. Instead, she stepped towards him, moving closer and closer until the only distance between his head and her stomach was the range of his breath.
And he was breathing quite heavily now, despite the fact that she was once again clothed. I am an honourable man, he reminded himself as his desire bubbled. He was not going to touch her. Of course not. He liked her far too much to ever do that.
It was she who touched him, however. She reached out her hands and touched his head, gently guiding it forward until his forehead was pressing against her stomach. His bubbling desire suddenly turned to steam. It clouded his eyes, his ears, his thoughts.
He had no idea what she was doing, but curses if he did not follow willingly as she lifted his hands from his sides and guided them to her hips. ‘Hold them in this position,’ she told him, as if he needed prompting.
Steam. Hot and opaque. Wet and hissing. Blurring his vision. Soaking his wits.
He pretended to adjust his grip, feeling the shape of her. He laced his speech with calm uninterest. ‘And then?’ he asked. His palms were hot, his desire growing like a shoot. Experimentally, he pulled her closer, feeling the soft give of her stomach against his forehead. By the gods, she felt good.
She settled her soft fingers atop his head and he felt that he might die of lust. ‘This is it. Do you see what I mean?’
‘What?’ He addressed his question to the floor. He had already forgotten what they had been discussing. He only knew he did not wish to move a single digitus.
‘We are positioned in the shape of the image that I wove into the carpet,’ she explained.
She must have been waiting for him to affirm his understanding, but all he understood was that he wanted her more than the world’s most delicious honey cake.
‘Here, let me trace it for you.’
Gently, she lifted his hand from her hip and guided his fingers down the length of her arm. ‘This is one line of the design,’ she said. Had she no idea how aroused she was making him? ‘And here is the other line.’ She guided his fingers up the length of her own stomach, brushing them lightly around the curve of one of her breasts.
‘Oh, by the gods,’ he muttered. The steam was denser now. A thick, hot cloud of it, swirling inside him. He could barely see her through it.
‘You can picture it then? The image of a man’s head pressing against a woman’s stomach?’
‘Ah...’ He could picture more than that. He could see his hands cupping her breasts, his lips caressing her nipples.
She returned his hand to her hip and placed her own hands atop his head.
‘It is the outline of our bodies in the position they are now. Do you see?’
‘I see,’ he said, though his eyes were closed and he did not wish to open them ever again.
‘What is this?’ said the guard, turning to discover them. Arria jumped back.
‘Touching is forbidden,’ the guard said. He unsheathed his gladius and rattled it between the bars at Cal. ‘Fooling in the bushes costs more, do you hear? No touching unless your lanista pays first.’
May you die a thousand deaths, Cal thought, bowing his acknowledgement.
The moment was gone, the mist cleared. Arria had retreated to the other end of the cell. She had got as far away from him as she could get—and was once again studying the honey cakes.
Come back, he thought. His eyes feasted on her shape, imagining the curves that he had touched only moments ago. The memory of her nearness made him ache.
She was shaking her head, obviously distraught. ‘I admit that it was an unusual design for a carpet, though not completely novel. I have heard that in Rome such designs are sought after in patrician circles. They seek the unusual, you see...’
So she had felt it, too—that outrageous pull between their bodies—because she was chattering on as if to erase it. ‘...in the end I really had no choice but to weave it.’
Were they still talking about the carpet? Come back. Let me put my hands on your hips again. Slide your soft fingers over my head.
‘Why did you have no choice?’ he asked.
‘The image would not leave my mind.’ She was lingering beside the table, puzzling over a plate of olives. ‘Weaving it was the only way to purge it.’
‘Where did the image come from?’ He wanted to keep her talking. The more she could distract him with her words, the less he would think about how she had just made him feel.
‘It was a memory.’
‘A memory of two lovers?’
‘Yes.’
An unfamiliar pang of jealousy twisted in his stomach. ‘A memory of you and another, then? A lost love?’
‘I am afraid that would be impossible,’ she said, her eyes searching for a new object to study. She absently picked up a cucumber, then set it down in apparent alarm. ‘I have never had a lover.’
‘A woman as lovely as you?’
Her dismissal of the compliment was so automatic that it made him wonder if she had ever been paid such a one. It was enough to confirm his suspicion that she was an innocent; her virginity worth a price. No wonder the guard had scolded them apart.
Not that he would even think of bedding her. No, his carnal indulgences were limited to women he loathed—namely, the bored patrician matrons who pursued him after his victories. They flung themselves at him like rose petals. They salivated over him like hungry dogs—tiresome, vapid women who caressed his battle-hardened chest and believed they were touching gloria.
He never kissed them and tried not to look them in the eye. The women used him and he was perfectly happy to use them in return. They meant nothing.
But a woman he cared for? He would never even dream of bedding a woman he cared for. That would be too much like making love. Even now he puzzled at his own desire and scolded himself for it. He would never betray the memory of his wife by making love to another. Cal had made a vow, after all—to love his wife all his life.
And that was what he intended to do.
‘I have had the pleasure of witnessing lovers,’ the woman was saying.
Cal gazed down the hallway, his breaths slowing. ‘I see,’ he said absently.
‘I do not think you do see.’
Cal shook his head. ‘I am sorry, what were we talking about?’
‘About the image I wove that earned me the beating. It is an image of two lovers set in wool.’
‘Did you not already explain—?’
‘The image is a memory of you and the flaxen-haired woman.’
‘What? But how did you—?’
‘I was here the night she came to you.’
Cal stiffened. ‘You were here?’
‘I saw you press your head to her stomach. That is how I got the idea for the design.’
She had spied on him? She had watched him in the act? He did not know how to feel. He pictured her lurking in the shadows, watching him caress the German woman. He should have been incensed, but his curiosity reigned. Why had she spied on him? Had she done so out of curiosity? Desire, perhaps? For him?
‘I thought you had escaped,’ he managed to say.
‘I saw little, I assure you.’
He thought back to the moment he had pressed his head against the German woman’s stomach. Then he remembered the moment just after, when he had slid his tongue into her folds. ‘I believe you saw quite a bit.’
She returned her attention to the olives. ‘It was not my intention to intrude. It was the closest I ever believed I would get to—’
‘To what exactly?’
She shook her head. ‘I should go.’
Chapter Ten
She had offended him for certain. She cursed herself for telling him the truth. What man wished to learn that he had been spied on? She stepped towards the gate and prepared to call the guard.
‘Stay,’ Ca
l commanded. His expression was cool. He gestured to the chair behind her. ‘We have not yet even discussed the reason I sent for you.’
He was walking towards her now. There was nowhere to retreat. Was he finally going to berate her? He certainly had cause. She had refused to lift the curse, then all but admitted to spying on him. She stepped backwards and folded herself into the chair.
The position gave her a remarkably good view of his naked chest. She tried not to stare. It was just a naked chest. It was like any other naked chest of any other fearsome gladiator or towering Greek god wandering among mortals. Just the usual massive twin planks, the predictable rows of rippling muscle, the swathes of sinewy strength. The generalised magnificence.
She almost choked. That was it—the word she had been searching for to describe him. He was...magnificent.
He stopped before the table and exhaled loudly, angling his body away from her as he lifted the wine flagon. ‘I fear we have little time left and I have much to tell you, but first I will pour us more wine, for I find myself in need of it, though in truth I prefer beer. I am a barbarian after all, or so they tell me...’
Now he was the one who was chattering and he seemed to have completely dismissed her confession. ‘And what I would not give for a taste of butter! Why do Romans not use butter? Have you ever tried it on bread? It is quite delicious...’
She nodded absently. It was almost as if he were trying to distract her attention. She pretended to watch him pour, but he was so close and her neck was starting to ache. She let her gaze slide down his rippling chest. That was when she discovered the reason for his chatter. It was a large bulging reason that stretched the bounds of her comprehension—along with all the threads of his loincloth.
She had seen plenty of naked male bodies in her life. The statues outside the Harbour Baths gave eye-popping lessons in the details of the male form. Inside, the mosaic that decorated the bottom of the caldarium pool transformed that form into something even more...enthusiastic.
But this was something altogether different. This was not an image hewn from rock or glazed in tile. This was flesh. It was a man’s desire, fully discharged, larger and realer than she had ever imagined. And she had somehow awakened it.
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