by Aidan, Nadia
She jerked in surprise at the gentle touch of a calloused hand lifting her hair to caress the back of her neck, but she did not pull away. It was a touch of reassurance, of tenderness.
She knew immediately it was Titus. Already she could discern the smell of him from Cassius, the touch of him. But it was simply because he touched her that revealed it was him.
Cassius still fought his desire for her, even after what had transpired in the stables earlier.
Titus did not fight his desire, he welcomed it, embraced it. She sensed he was the gentle soul to Cassius’ brutish dominance, but she did not mistake Titus’ gentleness for weakness. He was equally brutal, equally dominant, only he was capable of a tenderness, a softness that Cassius either lacked or like so much between them, he fought to deny.
At the sound of footsteps she rose from the couch and leaned into Titus for a brief instant before pulling away. She’d welcomed his strength moments ago, when it was just the three of them. But before her stepson she could not appear weak, for Quintus was a predator who would seize upon any weakness to gain his advantage.
“Dearest stepmother,” Quintus crooned, his voice as sweet as honey and full of artifice.
With a beautiful mass of raven black hair and fathomless sea green eyes, he was a handsome man of slight build, his entire body corded with lean, hard muscle. He held out his arms and she allowed him to embrace her in a hug that was stiff and cold, at least it was on her part. He was the illegitimate son of the man she’d been married to for fifteen years, and every time she looked at Quintus she could see nothing else but many nights of loneliness spent in a cold bed. It did not help her opinion of him that he was an arrogant Roman with no regard for others, especially the people he wielded power over.
“Quintus,” she greeted when their embrace came to an end and she drew away. “How is Maia?” she asked, truly not caring how the deceitful woman who had borne him fared, but nonetheless, Anan strove for some semblance of cordiality.
“My mother is well,” he replied with a nod, his smile still in place, but not for long. It soon disappeared, to be replaced by a shadowed frown.
“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded, for the first time noticing the presence of Cassius and Titus. “You bring your own pair of guards into my home as if you do not trust me? As if I would ever harm you?”
“This is my home,” she blurted before she could temper her anger. “And these are the guards whom you requested because of the raids.”
He glanced warily between her and the centurions behind her. “If they are here because of the raids then why are they with you? Why was I not notified of their arrival?”
“Consider yourself duly notified. And as to why they are with me, I don’t know, stepson,” she said icily. “Could this have something to do with your report that I am the one behind these raids, hmm?”
His stunned gaze told her he did not expect her to be aware of such information, but he was a fool if he did not realize her people still remained loyal to her, not these foreigners. There was much that went on inside his household she was aware of, although there was still a great deal that remained shrouded in secrecy.
She praised Quintus for how quickly he recovered, the surprise of her statement so effortlessly replaced by the façade of charm and civility.
“Let us not dwell upon rumors, shall we?” He took her hands in his and guided her over to one of the couches where they sat down together. “Tell me, why have you honored me with your presence?”
She would have rolled her eyes at his words so full of guile, but she reminded herself she needed him.
“I require a favor,” she said directly, getting straight to the matter. “I have suffered an unexpected and regrettable misfortune.” She cleared her throat because the next words seemed to be lodged there. “I would ask, as your stepmother, as your family, that you would consider waiving the tax this harvest, or giving me a loan.” The last words came out on a rush. To ask that he waive the taxes was far easier than having to grovel before him and ask for coins.
For all Quintus’ faults, he was not as foolish as he pretended to be. Actually, quite the opposite. He was cunning—not the fool at all.
The room was suddenly chilly as he sharpened his gaze upon her. The smug smile that tugged at his lips made her want to pummel him.
“So you come to me only when you want something. What is this misfortune that has befallen you?”
She remained quiet. To tell him the truth would give him power over her. She’d hoped he wouldn’t ask, but all the while she knew he would.
“If you do not tell me then I cannot help you,” he said.
She bit back a long sigh. She had no other choice.
“For months someone has been poisoning my livestock. Earlier today they killed nearly half of my goats and swine.”
If Quintus had had anything to do with all of this then her stepson belonged on the stage, in a theater performing a Greek drama because his expression was openly shocked and full of horror.
“For months you say? Someone has been poisoning your livestock? Why did you not tell me?”
She shrugged. “Because I thought it would stop.”
“You thought it would stop?” His expression gave her a glimpse of the inner workings of his mind. He thought it unwise that she’d waited so long to tell him.
His next statement said as much.
“I wish you would have told me sooner.” He seemed so earnest and as she peered up at him she could almost feel the concern and affection he harbored for her. Knowing her stepson as she did, she should have also realized such a feeling was to be fleeting.
“Unfortunately you have waited too late to come to me. The tax is due in a week and with my own debts due, and the last harvest so poor, I am afraid I cannot extend myself on such short notice.”
She’d expected as much from him, so she pinched her lips to stop the snappish retort that threatened to come out. She pulled her hands from his and stood. “It would seem then that my visit is at an end—”
“Possibly.” She did not mistake the deadly purpose in his gaze. “Or if maybe you would be willing to discuss the elevation of my position here as I have tried to discuss with you many times before, I could perhaps be persuaded to search other accounts for another source of funds.”
By elevating his position, Quintus meant to say, she would relinquish any claim she had as regent, because she was the only person who stood in his way of ruling the province with absolute authority. But Anan could never, she would never do such a thing. Siga was her home, and no matter the hard times that had been set upon her, she would never abandon her homeland to Quintus’ absolute rule.
Her hands fisted at her sides, angry that he would even suggest such a thing at a time like this, and the growl of fury that ripped through the room could have been hers, but when Quintus stole a quick, wary look over the top of her head, she suspected it was one of the centurions behind her. The deep, feral sound made her think it was Cassius, for certain.
“I already knew my suggestion would be met with resistance from you, but now it would seem your guards are in agreement as well. How interesting.” Quintus’ eyes hardened as his attention remained riveted on the soldiers at her back.
In her mind, Anan regarded Quintus as a feeble, sniveling coward, but in truth he was none of those things. His father had been a soldier and he’d been reared with discipline, the ferocity of a true Roman soldier.
Anan liked to make him out to be weak and foolish, but Quintus was neither.
She simply hated him because of who he was and because he’d won. He’d vowed to rule over a domain that was rightfully hers and now he did.
He regarded Cassius and Titus from over her shoulder before settling his contemptuous gaze on her once again. “It all makes sense now, why they are so protective of you.” She tensed at the smug gleam in his knowing eyes. “You would let common soldiers touch you? How beneath you, stepmother.”
The de
rision hung heavy in Quintus’ voice and she recognized the dark look in his eyes. She’d hurled insults at his mother for so easily lying with the enemy to advance her position, while Anan herself had resisted to the very end to even agree to wed Maximinius. Her disdain for Romans was well known, but now it would seem she welcomed the touch of not one but two of them. And Quintus’ loathing gaze called her the hypocrite that she was.
Anan did not answer to Quintus and she refused to entertain such a discussion with him, so she tried to sidestep him, but he grasped her arm before she could pass. Titus and Cassius immediately closed in, but they would only intervene if he sought to harm her.
That was not Quintus’ intent, at least, not physically. Quintus sought to injure her with words.
“Have you fucked them?”
She jerked against him, her glare hard. “That is none of your business.”
He lifted his nose and sniffed the air. “You’ve fucked them.” He flung her arm away. “You smell of sweat and dirty sex.”
Before she could stop herself, she struck him with her open palm, the sharp crack ripping through the air.
She stared at him, horrified. Since Quintus had matured into manhood, their exchanges were always tinged with bitterness and anger. Anan closed her eyes with a heavy sigh. How she wished their encounters did not always degenerate to such a low place.
“I am sorry,” she said quietly.
His sea green eyes were now as hard and dark as a jade stone.
“I am not my father. How long will you punish me for his sins?”
“I cannot help it. Every time I look at you, I see him.”
“I am not my father,” he repeated, his voice quieter though no less emphatic.
“And yet you look just like him,” Anan snapped, unable to stem the bitterness that filled her suddenly.
She turned to leave. It was not fair to Quintus that she blamed him for the sins he’d committed and the sins he hadn’t but she could not help it. His father had been an unending source of emotional pain. Quintus was the living, breathing embodiment of that pain. She knew he was not the same as Maximinius. Truthfully, he was a better man than his father. Truthfully, when she gazed upon him, she wished she could see him for the man he was, but truthfully, she could not. She could not help what she felt, the bitterness, the resentment. She was only human.
She sighed. “I only came because I thought you would help me,” Anan said finally. “But now I see that was a mistake.”
She’d given him one last chance to extend to her the offer of aid, but he didn’t. Instead he remained rooted to his spot, his eyes narrowed, his expression cold.
Anan would not beg for what was rightfully hers, she decided, as she drew up her skirts and swept out of Quintus’ chambers, her chin high.
Chapter Five
After leaving Quintus’ home, the journey back to her villa was fraught with far more tension and was plagued by a heavier silence than its predecessor.
She’d just entered the outskirts of her estate when the weight of their questions, their furtive stares became too heavy to bear. Without Quintus’ help, she stood to lose everything. She could weather many of the financial storms that came from running an estate, but this was different. At first there had been tiny fires, missing livestock, before they were poisoned altogether. From the spies still loyal to her within her stepson’s house, she knew Quintus’ own holdings had been subject to the same happenings. That was truly why the Roman soldiers were here. Not knowing of her own troubles, Quintus believed she was behind everything and had insisted on having Roman soldiers sent to guard her. Of course, she hadn’t welcomed the presence of Cassius and Titus and their men, especially given the real reason they were there, but now she was almost grateful. She seemed to face one calamity after another. And if this continued…
She did not cry. She refused to and so she simply brought her horse to a halt and sat there atop her mount, blinking at the moisture that burned the backs of her eyes.
Both men brought their horses to a halt on either side of her and then dismounted.
Silence still hovered between them as she let Titus help her down, even as she refused to look at him, either of them.
With her arms folded across her chest, she turned her back to both men.
“For some reason, Quintus seeks some type of acceptance from you, some type of acknowledgement from you that he is different from his father. He wants your forgiveness and desires a closeness with you, but I fear he has gone about it the wrong way,” Cassius said finally, quietly.
She stiffened. Of all the things she’d expected him to say, that had been the last. “Acceptance, forgiveness, are not so easily won when you have not earned them. Besides, it is his father I blame, not him. There is nothing for me to forgive of Quintus, but I doubt we shall ever be close. I simply do not have it in me to desire such a relationship with him, because every time I see him I reminded he is the son who should have been mine, and yet he is not.”
“I understand such feelings, but Quintus is young still and does not. He knows only that you reject him because of who he is and that rejection has hurt him, it has made him bitter.”
She regarded Cassius as she spoke. “It has, and sometimes I do wonder if I am undue in my own anger and bitterness toward him,” she began quietly. “I wonder if I lash out at him because I could not hurt his father. I wonder if out of some perversion I punish him for the pain Maximinius caused me. And that now that I need him he cannot fathom helping me given how badly I have treated him.”
“Have you really treated him that badly?” Cassius asked.
She thought hard on his question. “My actions were never cruel. Yet I was distant, cold even. Of course, he is not my relation, nor was he raised in his father’s home, but his mother’s. I knew of him, but I barely saw him. So for all his time, I ignored him mostly, because I simply wanted to pretend as if he did not exist. But now that he is regent, I cannot ignore him, and he seems to now relish the power he has over me.”
“That is because he is a spurned man, one who is clinging to a grudge,” Cassius said. “And a spurned man is a dangerous foe, Anan.”
“Do you think it is him who is behind these strange things happening on my land? Quintus has never been given to violence. I would not expect such a thing from him.”
He shrugged. “I would not put it past him. He stands everything to gain if you lose your holdings.”
Anan sighed at that. What Cassius said was true—without her wealth, she would have no influence within the province. Quintus’ power would be virtually unrivaled and unchecked. Anan worried then, without someone to balance Quintus’ power, what would that mean for her people, her homeland?
Titus must have glimpsed her inner turmoil from the expression on her face because he came to stand before her, his hand gentle as it cupped her cheek, forcing her to meet his concerned gaze.
“All will be well,” Titus said, his thumb absently stroking her chin. “Cassius and I will see to it.”
She wanted to believe him, the strength of his words, but never had she depended on others, least of all those whom she considered her enemy. And when her gaze flickered over to Cassius and she caught sight of his frown, she became certain that putting her faith in these two centurions would be foolish. Titus may have offered her his support, but it was obvious Cassius was there not out of choice but out of duty, and he was not as eager as his comrade to extend himself.
Anan started to pull away, but Titus held firm, forcing the full weight of her gaze to his face, where she glimpsed tiny embers of desire flaring to life.
She shook her head but Titus halted her with his words. “You can depend on us, Anan, if you would but only trust us.”
She glanced between the two men, a knot of uncertainty tightening in her belly. They had crossed some invisible threshold after what had happened in the stables and she knew now that there was no turning back. Even Cassius had spoken of taking her to his bed, and she knew witho
ut doubt that if she invited these centurions into her bed, they would not so easily leave.
It had been so long since she’d had a lover, and never had she had an affair. But it was more than that. In Titus’ eyes, he promised to offer her not just the pleasures of the flesh but his strength, his support. How she longed, just for once, to give her burdens to another, to have a lover, a companion, to turn her troubles over to and have him shoulder them with her, but she could not, or at least she dared not. And it was the look in Cassius’ eyes that stayed her.
“I may be able to depend on you, Titus,” she said quietly, for his ears only. “Maybe I can even trust you, but not the both of you.”
She’d spoken so quietly, surely only Titus could have heard her, but that was not the case.
“You know nothing of me to make such claims as to whether I am trustworthy, as to whether I am dependable.”
The hard edge to Cassius’ voice was unmistakable, and she looked over at him, assessing him with cool eyes, even as her insides churned wildly.
“You are right. I know nothing of you. I can only glean understanding from what is revealed on your face.”
“And what is it that I reveal on my face?”
She hesitated because Cassius had drawn closer, and he now raked her with eyes that she could only describe as hungry, predatory.
Anan swallowed deeply before speaking. “That you resent me, that you resent being here. That you are frustrated with Titus for offering undue support to my cause, when all you wish is to be done with this place, these duties, and with me.”
“All that in one expression.” His smile was mocking. “How is it that you think I wish to be done with this place and with you, given what happened earlier, what almost happened last night?”
She could not answer that so she remained quiet, which Cassius seized upon.