Lionslayer's Woman

by Nhys Glover

  When the men returned and Nexus and Appius had collected their belongings and headed down the hall, her breath became difficult to find. Staring up at her lion as he closed and bolted the door was enticing. If she hadn’t already known how much she wanted him, in that moment it would have been obvious, even to her. He hadn’t even touched her yet and already her body wept for him.

  When he turned to face her, his eyes and other parts of him told her that he was ready and as desperate for her as she was for him. He tore off his tunic and loincloth and sprawled across her, pinning her to the pallet. It wasn’t really wide enough for two people but neither of them cared.

  ‘You have too many clothes on woman,’ he said with a growl as he ran his hand up under her tunic to find the skin beneath.

  ‘Then get off me so I can remove them,’ she said with mock annoyance. He chuckled as he turned onto his side so she could do just that.

  In a few moments, she was naked and lying next to him. She felt almost no discomfort as his eyes followed the slow movement of his hand across her belly and up over her flat chest to her neck.

  ‘I have missed you, my wildcat. Being like this with you… touching you like this… has been the only thing on my mind since we left Isthmia.’

  ‘I know. I saw it in your eyes every time you looked at me. Probably every man on the ship saw it, too. You’re not very discrete.’

  ‘Do I need to be? I desire you. I’m unattached and so are you. What man aboard that ship doesn’t know what it is to want a woman as I want you?’ He paused and glanced at the ceiling and then smiled. ‘On second thought, I doubt any of them have ever wanted a woman as much as I want you. This has been like… starvation… being away from you.’

  ‘Then stop talking and let’s feast on each other. I’ve also been starving for the taste of you…’ She tried to discount his flowery words, tried to convince herself that he was just saying what he thought she wanted to hear, but that didn’t work anymore. With each passing day, she’d become more and more convinced that Leonis cared deeply for her. It was more than just words.

  His lips kissed her shoulder, then her neck. Then he found the sensitive spot behind her ear. The sound of his breath as he moved his smooth damp lips over her skin was scintillating. Gasping, she buried her fingers in his freshly cut hair. The colour of it, as always, fascinated her, and it looked so much paler against her dark olive skin.

  ‘You missed this as much as I did?’ he asked as he let out a tortured groan of his own.

  ‘As much. I never thought I’d feel this… this pleasure. I thought…’ She couldn’t find the words, and they didn’t seem to matter anyway as he bit into her neck and had her arching up to meet that blissful pain.

  His calloused hand was sliding along her stomach and down between her legs. She opened for him, anxious for the feel of him there at her core. His finger slid between the petals of her womanhood and he moaned again.

  ‘So hot and wet for me, wildcat.’ And then he was pressing inside her with two fingers and she couldn’t believe the pleasure that shot through her at the invasion. This was not the first time but it felt like it. It felt like she had never been claimed like this by anyone. Something had shifted in the last week… she didn’t know what… but this was no longer just a pleasurable dalliance. On either side. This was something much more.

  This golden lion was touching her heart as well as her body and it dizzied her to know it. She lifted her hips up off the bed, demanding more of him, grinding her mons pubis against the heel of his palm. It wasn’t enough. This possession wasn’t enough.

  Reaching between them, she closed her hand around his wide girth, feeling him throb at her touch. His swore loudly and claimed her mouth in a hungry possession that left her panting, breathless for more. She tore her mouth from his so she could speak.

  ‘I can’t wait, please… take your time later… this time… just…’ She used her hands to indicate where she wanted him. He kissed her one more time, invading her mouth with his thrusting tongue. Then he drew back and took himself in hand, guiding the ruddy, blunt head of his sex against her opening. Hard. He was so hard!

  And as that hard, pulsing head pushed into her, she moaned her delight. This was what she wanted. Not just the pleasure of it, but the total sense of possession that came with it. She held him inside her. He was part of her. They were joined in a way that was as primal and as basic as two people could be, and that joining made them one.

  She realised she’d had her eyes closed while he sunk deep into her, enjoying the growing sense of fullness that replaced the emptiness inside her. But now she wanted to see him, see his face as it tightened with barely restrained power. She looked at him in all his raw beauty and was reminded again of the lion that was his namesake; so wild, so regal and so powerful. And hers. In this moment, he was hers completely.

  As if he were aware of her eyes on him, his gaze lifted to meet hers. Those blue pools were indigo, like the night sky, and they were fiercely tender, as if he, too, saw this as more than pleasure, more than just a physical act. Those dark pools told her he adored her and that she was precious… so precious to him.

  Tears pricked at the back of her eyes. All she seemed to do in these last weeks was cry. But these tears weren’t of sadness. These tears were of joy. She smiled, and his beautiful lips, that had been so tightly drawn only moments before, turned up at the ends. The corners of his eyes crinkled.

  ‘Love,’ he said on a sigh.

  Her heart rose to her throat making it almost impossible to speak, but she needed to. She needed to say it, too.

  ‘Love,’ she replied, putting a name to what they were doing. What they were sharing. And the old Cyra, the hard-bitten cynical Cyra fought to deny what they said and what they were doing with their bodies. The new Cyra, the vulnerable, wondrous Cyra, accepted their declarations as simple truths.

  Then his eyes closed and his body took over. He began to thrust harder and faster inside her and her body responded with escalating excitement. She lifted her hips so their joining was as deep as it could possibly get, and she gloried in the way he pounded into her flesh, quaking her body from the inside out.

  The release came out of nowhere. One minute she was climbing the highest mountain, desperate to reach the summit. The next she was flying to the top and careening off into the void. He took her scream with his mouth. Then he let go, too. His body arched, hard and still for a long, long moment, the guttural cry filling the small room.

  She felt his heat shooting into her womb. Felt it bowling along her nerve endings from core to heart. White light flashed before her eyes, bringing with it the most incredible feeling. It blinded her. It scoured her clean and refilled her with awe.

  She felt Leonis jerk and tighten his arms around her. What was happening? What was this?

  And then, before she could grow fearful of the sublime ecstasy that seemed to have no end, the light began to fade, her body was able to relax and she could breathe once more. Tears, she realised in bemusement, were pouring down her face.

  Leonis fell limply on top of her gasping for breath, his body slick with sweat. He was trembling uncontrollably.

  ‘What was that?’ he said against her neck, his voice a harsh, gasping whisper of awe.

  ‘The blinding light? You saw it too?’

  He nodded, too exhausted to say more; too overawed to find words.

  Before his weight became too much for her, he shifted to the side and pulled her with him, keeping them joined, flesh to flesh. He nuzzled into her damp hair as his heartbeat began to slow.

  ‘I’m going to find a way for us to stay together after this is all over. You’re mine now. You know it finally. And I won’t lose you.’ The old Cyra would have resented his arrogant assumptions that he could own her, but the new Cyra loved the possessiveness in his voice, the certainty that he knew her heart now.

  ‘You make it sound as if I were tardy getting to this realisation. We have barely known each other two week
s.’ She smiled against his damp chest, delighted when his skin twitched as her hot breath fanned it.

  ‘You took a lot longer than I did to see it. I knew from that first night.’ He stopped for a moment to draw a few much needed breathes before he went on.

  She felt too stunned to move. All she could do was stay frozen to his chest and listen to a confession she could hardly believe was true.

  ‘Up until then, I’d never understood my father’s weakness where my mother was concerned. How could a man love a woman so much it literally destroyed him when he lost her? And when I met Nexus and saw what the death of Niobe had done to him, I wanted to see him as a weak, pathetic fool for allowing himself to become vulnerable like that. But no one can see Nexus as pathetic or a fool. And even courting death, as he was back then, he wasn’t weak.

  ‘But I didn’t understand… never considered it possible that I could feel my life turn totally around like that. One minute my only focus was me and my need to get back to Dacia somehow. My duty was paramount. Then it was you, only you. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else will ever matter as much as you to me now.’

  He kissed the top of her head fiercely, his voice clogged with emotion.

  She was staggered by his revelation. It seemed unreal. How could he have felt like that and she hadn’t seen it? To her, back then, he was just another lusty male looking for another conquest. Even when he’d held her close and looked at the moon, she’d just thought his words were those of a bard: honey sweet, but meaningless. That he’d meant every word seemed implausible.

  ‘Why? Why would you feel like that about a flat-chested “wildcat”? I… I did nothing to attract you. I was wet, salt-covered and bedraggled, my face twisted with fury. How could…’

  ‘You were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen,’ he interrupted with a little laugh. ‘When you writhed in my arms after skewering Nexus with that sword that was twice your size, I was hard for you in an instant. I’ve never felt such lust. Never wanted anything more than to be inside you.’ He moved so she could feel that he was hardening again inside her even now.

  ‘I thought you were going to do just that. You reminded me of the man…’ She didn’t want to remember that would-be rapist.

  ‘What man?’ His body was suddenly rock-hard under her, his voice harsh with fury.

  She didn’t want to tell him, but she knew him well enough by now to know he wouldn’t allow her to keep this from him.

  ‘My master sold me after my chest healed, and I found myself back in the Roman territories. Eventually the traders brought me to Rhodos. I think they didn’t try to sell me before then because I was still raw… and ugly. I think they thought that I’d fetch more when it was healed. By Rhodos, they knew it wasn’t going to look any better anytime soon, so they sold me there for next to nothing as a dancer to a mime. And when I wouldn’t dance for his audience, he sold my services to one of the men, thinking to keep them all entertained that way.’

  For a moment she stopped, the memories too painful to relive. Leonis stroked her hair but didn’t interrupt. The fullness inside her was gone but his muscles were still taut, his breathing shallow. He wanted to hear it all, wanted to slay her enemies for her.

  And suddenly she wanted to tell it all.

  ‘The man tried to take me from behind, but I fought him… you have no idea what it was like to be ridiculed and lusted after by all those men like that. More than the fear of the pain he’d give me, I… I felt dirty. Ugly and dirty and beneath contempt. I’d been degraded and tortured before, but that moment… it was the worst. Or the culmination of all that had happened to me in that year.’ She shuddered. ‘But before he got a chance to enter me, Galeria stormed in, cutting a path between those lecherous, ogling men. She was magnificent. Her slave had a sword, which kept the men in line, but I doubt Galeria even registered that. She would have done exactly the same thing had she been all alone.

  ‘She saved me that day, and I’ve owed her my loyalty and my life ever since. For a highly intelligent, logical woman, she can do stupidly brave things when her heart takes over… and I for one am grateful for that trait in her. I would have died that day. It would have been the straw that broke me…’

  She buried her face in his damp neck, breathing in the dear, familiar scent of him. He was no longer hard and their bodies had separated, but his arms were wrapped still tightly around her, keeping her safe, claiming her as his.

  ‘I won’t stop until Galeria is returned to you. Up until now, I’ve done what I have to please you. Now I will save the Roman because I owe her my life for saving yours.’ His words were fierce. The oath of a warrior. And once more, she was humbled by his commitment to her. She still couldn’t understand why. Nor did she know what the white light had been that had suffused them in their peak moment. It had been almost otherworldly, but she guessed it didn’t matter why. All that mattered was that it had happened.

  ‘Thank you.’ She could think of nothing else to say. Those two words said it all.

  ‘No, thank the Goddess. This is her work. After what we just experienced can you doubt her part in this?’

  She shook her head. Was Astarte, Bendis or Artemis, whatever name she went by, interested in lovers? She was the virgin huntress who thought little of men, and yet she seemed to have claimed this man as her own. Cyra didn’t understand it any more than the rest of it, but she was willing to acknowledge that her Goddess did seem to have been with her through all of this. In fact, it almost felt now as if Galeria had been brought to her that day. She and Leonis had been drawn inexplicably together from two separate and divergent paths. Yet they’d converged, drawn together like metal to a lodestone.

  Cyra shivered at the significance of that. Leonis kissed the top of her head once again.

  ‘Whatever happens from here on, we can be assured of the Goddess’ support, Cyra.’

  ‘Yes… I’m starting to believe you. About everything.’

  ‘They met up with a big Nubian and I followed them until they eventually went to a tavern. I was able to get close enough to hear their conversation.’ The spy said, his nondescript face alive with excitement. He shifted from one foot to the other as he stood in front of the patrician, his new patron, giving his news.

  Antoninus forgot the stuffed quail’s egg he was about to pop into his mouth. This news was too fascinating. He’d been following the Parthian’s trail since Isthmia, with little to report. Now, suddenly matters had become interesting.

  It was a pleasurable twist of fate to now find himself with the kind of money that bought him the best. Financially compromised and at his wit’s end after he found Xerxes had been murdered, he’d fallen on his sword and approached his father’s old friend, Aulus Varius Excingus, for help.

  Excingus was the current Legate of Corinthus, and had been visiting Isthmia at the time. When Antoninus had seen the Legate riding toward the military barracks, he’d followed behind and sought an interview. He’d told the man the entire sorry tale, and instead of condemning him as he’d expected, Excingus had immediately come to his aid with the kind of support only money and influence could provide.

  ‘You have to track these Imperial renegades down, Antoninus,’ Excingus had said fiercely. ‘They know too much. You must find and silence all of them, even this woman you desire. If you can, find a way to silence her without killing her if you still want her warming your bed, but she must be kept from spreading word of Caesar’s involvement in this purge. If his enemies were to find out, they could use it against him. The senate is rife with unrest right now, so my spies tell me. News like this is just what they want. Find them and protect your Imperator.’

  And so, his new network of spies had quickly discovered the Parthian had taken ship with Galeria’s brother, young Donicus, for Seleucia Pieria, where he knew the Praetorians had taken Papia to be sold.

  His new spy network had also found out where the child had been taken, but he’d decided to leave her there for the time being. She would still
be his carrot to get Galeria to cooperate. But first he had to get to Galeria, and the little nest of “renegades”, as Excingus called them, needed to be exterminated. Like rats. When Galeria had no more supporters and he had her sister again, she would have no other recourse but to become his very silent bride. He grinned to himself as he stuffed the egg into his mouth.

  ‘Tell me more!’ he demanded as he chewed, enjoying his position of power. He’d been following behind the three renegades with his small contingent of spies and assassins on the legate’s own private vessel ever since Isthmia. They were the best that Excingus had at his disposal.

  Excingus’ first thought had been to send some of his own legionaries with Antoninus but then decided a more circumspect approach was called for. Had Caesar chosen such a path instead of sending his Praetorians, the man confided in Antoninus, this matter might have been kept quiet more easily.

  The spy cleared his throat to get Antoninus’ full attention and then went on. ‘The Nubian, Nexus, rescued the mother but lost the daughter to slavers who are now heading for Ephesus to sell her to you. The renegades know you aren’t in Ephesus, so they think they can negotiate for the girl once the slavers discover they no longer have a market.’

  Antoninus felt as if his turn of fortune was complete. This was the best news of all. So, someone other than her protectors had his Galeria and they were going to be looking for him in Ephesus. All he had to do was get to Ephesus first, make himself known to these Syrian slavers and he’d have want he wanted. When the others arrived, he’d have them dispatched by his very able assassins.

  He grinned at the spy. ‘This is good. Ready the vessel for departure. We head for Ephesus immediately.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  25 June 82 CE, Ephesus, ASIA

  It was late afternoon when their merchant vessel edged into port. For Cyra, it felt like she was in a memory loop. Two days ago, they’d taken ship on the same vessel that had taken them to Ephesus the last time, and now they were heading into the same port weeks later. The city looked just as magnificent as it had back then.