He made to remove himself from the bed, to take away the glorious sensation of his feverishly hot skin pressed against my own. I clutched at the huge, hard mass of his upper arms with suddenly clammy fingers, urging him to stay with a nearly frantic grip.
“No! No.” I licked suddenly dry lips as he hesitated. “I . . . I just . . .” I sounded like a half-wit. Closing my eyes momentarily, I tried to solidify my thoughts.
“I merely do not wish you to do this, to be here, with me, if it is not what you want. I would not impose my will upon yours.” I eyed him cautiously. This was not the normal way one treated a slave, that I well knew. But I no longer cared how “one” was to treat slaves. It was not how I would treat mine.
Marcus smiled then, just the barest ghost of a smile that curled the corners of his mouth. I had never seen him smile before, and it warmed me to the core.
“I think you would find it difficult to make me do something I truly did not wish to do, Domina.” And then he placed his hands again at my waist, tugging me down until my silk-covered center pressed against the heat of him, heat that seeped through his thin leathers.
I wanted to ask him about Caius, about their relationship. I wanted to know if he was my masked warrior, and if he was not, if he knew who was.
Instead my powers of rational thought were swept away, licked away in a hot, open-mouthed kiss.
I groaned. I had convinced myself that our first time together had been the only time. That I could not call upon him to be with me again. That I did not want to be, not when I knew in my deepest self that he would likely be forced to be with Hilaria.
I was wrong, so wrong, on all counts. This, this felt more right than anything I had ever felt before.
Though I writhed beneath him, desperate to feel him, all of him, all at once, he did no more than kiss.
But oh, how he kissed.
Soft presses of the mouth turned to long, slow licks with his tongue after he teased my own mouth open. The soft sucking sound of mouth on mouth became frantic faster than I had ever thought that it could, and it was not simply from my own urging.
The heat between my legs was unbearable. My breasts felt swollen, and they ached. My skin was so sensitive that the merest brush against it made me moan out loud, into the moistness of Marcus’ mouth.
He pulled back to look at me. I frowned at the loss of his lips.
“I would be gentle with you, Domina.” His words were solemn, and I detected a meaning slightly deeper than surface value. “I have no wish to hurt you, to degrade you. No man ever should.”
Those night-sky eyes searched my face, as if he was trying to impart some deep meaning to me that he would not speak aloud. My memory flashed to the day earlier, and the odd expressions that I had found on his face and on Caius’. The ones that had appeared after Lucius had dug his fingers into my skin so hard that I had nearly cried out.
Understanding dawned. I was in awe that this man, this big, glorious warrior, would care to be so gentle.
To show him that I understood his meaning, I reached up and entwined my fingers with his. He settled his weight on the elbow of his free hand, which allowed him to look down my body, to look where I was leading him.
Our entwined fingers found the jagged rip down the middle of my tunic. I tugged it aside, slowly, and brought our touch to the bruises on the gentle curves of my hips, saying nothing.
Loosening his grip on my hand, he traced his fingers over the marks, which did not hurt all that much, but which were an ugly blemish on my otherwise smooth skin. After tracing each one, he looked back into my face, and I saw anger in his eyes.
Whatever this was between us, and however forbidden it might have been, it gave me deep pleasure to know, to understand that I had a champion. With both arms I hugged his head with its prickles of pure spun gold, and pulled him down to rest against my breast.
And then I pulled my tunic, rent down the front, wide open, and pressed my hips against his pelvis in a manner that could not be interpreted as anything other than what it was.
I knew that my champion would not hurt me. And so I did not want him to be gentle. I could have gentle, had had it before. I wanted rough hands upon me. Large fingers in me. An unschooled mouth between my legs. I told him so.
In a moment of bravery, I told him the secret fantasy that I had had for years, that I had never dreamed of broaching with my husband.
“Will you . . . will you bind me?” My face suffused with heat as the words escaped my lips, and I buried my face against the weave of my sheet. I wished that I could take back the request as soon as I had said it.
Marcus would now think me strange, perverse, much as Lucius would have if I had asked the same thing. I would not have a chance to explain that my desire had nothing to do with perversion. No, it was concerned only with the relief of the pressure to please being stripped from me, so that all I had to do was enjoy.
When I had been with Lucius, I had never been permitted to just enjoy. A wife was responsible for her husband’s pleasure. This was my duty.
Marcus inhaled sharply at my words, and I felt shame wash over me, assuming that I had shocked him. I could not turn and meet his eyes, but when he drew me in his arms and rolled me I had no choice but to move where he put me.
Still, I avoided his stare, but he tucked a finger under my chin and turned my face until I was forced to look straight at him.
“You truly wish for me to bind you?” He did not ask why, which puzzled me momentarily. But I saw no judgment in his stare, only . . . could it truly be excitement?
I nodded, again trying to turn away. His grip on me held firm.
“You trust me this much?” There was wonder on his face, and I cocked my head as best I could while in his grip.
He answered my silent question. “I am a gladiator. My life is death. And yet you trust me.”
Slowly I nodded, then, simply because I felt moved to, leaned forward until our lips met in a tender kiss.
This great man made me feel as if I had given him a gift, even as I felt relief as his acceptance of me, of the true me.
What had I done to deserve such wonder?
Clasping his face in both hands, I continued to kiss the man, my lips slanting over his until we were both panting.
Slowly, slowly he lowered his frame overtop of me, then sucked in a breath when the centers of our heat met. Then, with that bare hint of a smile again appearing on his lips, he loosened his subligaculum as quickly as a man was able, and pressed against me with bare skin.
I closed my eyes against the sensation, the indescribable sensation of that hottest, softest skin on skin. The feel of his coarse lower hair against the tender folds of my sex.
Wrapping my legs tightly around his waist, I rocked my hips.
He hissed through his teeth, then reached down and guided his cock inside of me.
As he hilted I cried out, then bit my lip. With Justinus gone with my husband, there was no one in the house who would tell tales on me, but still, there were no secrets in a house with slaves. So I bit down upon my tongue until I tasted blood, and all the while I ground myself frantically on the shaft that was imbedded in my hot, wet flesh.
It felt better than anything I had ever experienced. I was full, and the heat burnt away all traces of residual guilt.
And still it was not enough. Though Marcus began to move within me at a slow, steady pace, slamming against the wall of my womb with every thrust, it was not fast enough, was not hard enough or deep enough.
I writhed beneath him, caught in a frenzy born of too many nights alone and untouched while my husband fucked a slave girl in the other room.
I wanted more.
I had no idea how to ask for it.
As if amused by my impatience, Marcus slowed his movements, deliberately, I knew. I cried out again, another stifled sound, and fisted my
hands in the sheets.
He chuckled then, and I found myself astounded, even through the heady cloud of arousal. I had never seen a gladiator laugh before, had never seen any sign of mirth from one—and rightly so, for their lives and deaths were so very closely linked.
But I apparently amused this one, and though I was agitated at the removal of his cock from my cunt, I was somewhat gratified that I had been the one to make him smile.
But I could not wait much longer, and I communicated that without words. Slowly, agonizingly so, Marcus slid his hands from my knees to my inner thighs, then moved them apart, far apart, with his rough palms. Pushing me back farther on the bed at the same time, he placed one of my knees on his shoulder, and then the other on his other, until my legs were wrapped around his neck and my center was open for him to drink like honeyed wine.
Supporting himself on impossibly strong arms, he dipped his head and nuzzled at my amber curls. They were wet, I knew they were wet, and he inhaled their scent, his hot breath tickling the tender skin. His tongue stroked through those curls then, just as it had stroked my mouth earlier. He murmured as if he had tasted something especially fine before tasting again.
My world became centered on the sensation of his rough tongue sliding through my lower lips. Occasionally he would stray from the rhythmic licks to rasp his teeth against the swollen nub of my clitoris, or to push his tongue inside of me, but always he returned to the tasting.
I felt the heavens begin to descend, and forgot to keep quiet as the swirling sensation began.
Before I could shatter like pottery dashed on the ground, he stopped. I nearly screamed aloud with the sudden sensory deprivation, but then found myself straddling the big man’s lap, his cock delving deeper even than it had before.
When I overcame the shock of sitting astride a man—something I had never before done—I saw with dazed eyes that my slickness shone on his mouth.
It seemed to me a mark of possession, and I adored seeing it on him.
With my juices on his lips, it seemed silly to be embarrassed at the position that I was in. But it seemed so exposed, sitting astride him, with him able to see every inch of me as I moved.
Yet it felt so good to let him thrust so deep. When he placed his hands on my hips and urged me to ride him, I was unsure of how to go about it.
He solved the problem by taking the length of my tattered tunic, which lay tangled beneath us on the bedding, and wrapping it around my hips like a scarf. With an end in both hands, he pulled, forcing my hips to move as well.
His cock rubbed inside of me, and my clitoris pressed down against him with a pressure I had never felt before.
I was still stiff and unsure, so he pulled again, then released, and again. Once I had been shown the exquisite sensations that the position wrought, he no longer needed to pull with the silk—I moved on my own.
But nonetheless, he wrapped the length of fabric around his hands once, and then twice, forcing me to lean down over his chest, bracing my weight on either side of him.
He kissed me then, our mouths perfectly aligned. Pulled tight against his body, anchored by his cock and his tongue, I was the happiest that I thought I had ever been.
When he tangled one of his hands in my hair and pulled, emitting a hoarse, guttural sound from his throat that told me his end was near, it made my own ending come into sharp focus.
“Do not hold back. You are safe with me.” His words pushed me over the edge as together we moved, skin glued together by sweat and sex, and I felt ripples beginning in my toes and fingers and moving inward to my very center.
I shattered, and moments later he yelled, though he tried to smother the noise in the inky ribbons of my hair. And as the bliss washed over me, I nearly forgot that this was not real, could not be real.
We might steal moments from time to time, but this could never be my life.
Though the thoughts swirling through my mind when Marcus bade his farewell were dark and depressing, they lifted as a bubble blown in water, comforting me as I luxuriated on the sheets that contained the smell of our lovemaking.
No, this could never be my life. I might dream, I might contemplate selling my jewels and running away. But at least I had this to get me through the hell that my life with Lucius had become. And hell it was, for though I knew that if he had a choice, he would not submit me to the indignities that he had, the fact remained that he had chosen money over me.
A temporary respite from time to time would save my sanity. That realization also helped to lift my guilt, which I now realized was not from my lack of loyalty to my husband. No, it had been guilt brought about by the feeling that I had forced Marcus’ hand. Now that I knew he felt the same, a great pressure within me had eased. I also suspected that, strong-willed as he was, there was not much that Marcus did that he did not wish to do.
I had made vows to my husband, yes. But so, too, had he made them to me, and he had not honored them. As I thought of my enforced mating with the gladiator whose identity I still did not know, I realized that Lucius had, in fact, made a mockery of those sacred vows.
So I would do as I needed to pull the shreds of my life together. I smiled, though there was no one there to see, and if the smile held the taint of sadness, I thought that it could be understood.
I wished, more than anything, that my marriage was strong and true, that my husband was noble, embodying those traits of a true Roman.
If that was not to be, however, then I would take my joy where it came.
Stretching hugely, I wished that Marcus had been able to stay longer. The sensation of lying within his arms, a safe cocoon, was one that I wanted to prolong. I had been so comfortable that I once again had passed by the opportunity to question him about Caius, about the masked gladiator.
Did it matter, really? I suspected that I already knew the answer. After the past hours, I was certain that my masked man was not Marcus. And though only days earlier I had longed so very much for the two to be one and the same, I no longer felt that way.
If that other man was not Marcus, then perhaps, just perhaps, he might be Caius. I wondered if I would find the strength to find out for certain in the days after my next courses.
I stretched again, then forced myself to rise from the bed. My lips pursed together tightly as I looked down at the tatters of what had once been my silk tunic.
I should have Drusilla remove it, dispose of it before Lucius could see it and question its condition.
Remembering how Marcus had rent it in two, how he had wrapped it around my body, however, I knew that I would keep it. Bending, I pulled my chest of jewels from beneath my bed and carefully placed the shreds of silk inside, piling the glittering stones on top of them.
It was not the wisest action, I knew, but when things were difficult with Lucius, I would be able to pull them out and remember.
I yawned, a sense of languor and relaxation having fallen over me. I was so rarely free from Lucius’ shadow. Though I had felt abandoned by him for a very long time, he had always been near. He simply had chosen not to be in my immediate vicinity.
What should I do? I could do as I wished with him gone. With Justinus gone, as well, I did not fear any of the slaves telling tales on me.
Pulling a new tunic over my head, this one a simple shift of crisp cloth that I adored for its simplicity and comfort and that Lucius hated for the very same reason, I decided to enter that most sacred of Lucius’ inner sanctums, that place where I had never been alone: his office, that tiny room where I had been informed that I was to lie with a stranger. That room where he entertained politicians and nobles, where he did all of his business, and where he directed my life.
Smoothing the cool cloth of my tunic over skin that was still flushed, I left my room and made my way across the great hall where the celebration had been days earlier. Lucius’ office lay on the other side.
&nbs
p; It was dim in the late afternoon light, and already a fine layer of dust had gathered on the surface of the large wooden desk that had first belonged to his great grandfather, Tiberius. This desk, I knew, was a symbol of Lucius’ duty to honor the traditions of his ancestors, and for a moment my anger lessened.
It was not an easy position that he was in.
Pursing my lips, I shook away the thought, focusing instead on the motes of dust dancing through the air. Lucius had been gone for only a day, but his presence, which normally saturated the very air of our home, seemed to have faded just the barest whisper.
Or perhaps it was that mine was growing stronger, with my decision to please myself as I would. Either way, not feeling as if the walls were drenched with his omnipotence gave me the courage to make my way behind the grand desk, to sit on the plushly cushioned chair.
I saw that the other chairs were still arranged as they had been during our meeting with the doctor, and scowled. The anger that the reminder of that scene brought out in my very core, the memory of the three men sitting here so smugly, knowing that I would do as I was told, knowing that I had no choice, infuriated me.
I had not intended to do more than enter the room, to sit in this very chair. But fueled by resentment, I pulled the meticulously arranged stack of papers that sat nearest to me on the desk closer still.
As the freeborn daughter of a centurion, a Roman soldier, I had been schooled as a child alongside both boys and girls. As such I could read and write as well as my husband, and even had a fair talent for figures, though I was not sure that my husband knew it. So when I opened the heavy, leather-bound book that sat beneath the loose papers on Lucius’ desk, I saw quite quickly that it was a ledger, an accounting of our household.
The numbers seemed very low. Thinking that I had misread, I rubbed at my eyes, attempting to obtain clearer vision in the dim light. But no, the numbers were indeed very low—well, the numbers pertaining to what we had.
Lucius had told me that we needed Baldurus’ patronage to continue to run our ludus, but I had not thought that we were in such a fragile position. We earned a great sum of money every time one of our men won an arena match, and Marcus’ win against Januarius at the munera weeks earlier must have brought a sizeable pile of denarii.
My Wicked Gladiators Page 12