The Gladiator’s Master

by Fae Sutherland

  “You have not, Caelius! Give to me. This is what you want. We both know it.” He gave Caelius’s lip a sharp bite, eyes fierce. “Are you mine?”

  “Yes!”

  Gaidres groaned under his breath and circled his hips. “Then place yourself in my hands,” he insisted, shuddering as Caelius clenched so tightly around him he saw stars. “Give to me.” Caelius drew a sharp breath, eyes widening, and in the next instant he did exactly what Gaidres had told him to. The tension eased from him, and though he still writhed it was with Gaidres instead of against. Though he still moved his hips in desperate need, it was in the rhythm Gaidres had set, not an attempt to set his own or snatch more and more and more for himself. His brow smoothed, his lips went pliant and Gaidres lifted his head to look down at him, possessiveness charging through him.

  “Now you are mine.”

  It was like being caught up in a storm, power crackling around them in thunderbolts. Gaidres drove hard into Caelius, hearing his own words echo in his head over and over. His. Gaidres hadn’t sought it, but there it was and the truth of the statement echoed, as well. In the midst of the storm, Gaidres wasn’t able to be frightened by the possessive feelings, the raw instinct that spurred him to claim this man.

  He felt Caelius’s cock throb between their bodies and Gaidres pulled back, releasing Caelius’s wrist to guide his hand down. “Stroke yourself, Caelius. I want you ready with me.”

  Caelius obeyed, moaning from the extra stimulus. “Gaidres, please…I’m already there. I’m just waiting for you,” he said in a husky whisper.

  Gaidres’s heart pounded as he wondered if those words had more than one meaning. Caelius tightened his legs around Gaidres’s waist, rocking with him. “Please, Gaidres, by the gods…please.”

  He released Caelius’s other wrist and held him closer. Their faces were so close that Gaidres could feel Caelius’s hot breath against his lips.

  Part of Gaidres wanted to hold out, to keep going, to get more and more of that delicious begging from his lover. But his body had other ideas and the burning in Caelius’s eyes led him like a moth to his own demise.

  He didn’t try to hold off. It was an unrelenting need to lose his mind, to fuck until they both collapsed and couldn’t draw a breath, let alone think the troublesome thoughts that consumed him of late. Harder, faster, over and over the pleasure swelled and crested only to surge higher on the next wave. Until they hovered on a frantic precipice and strained for the blessed oblivion just over the edge.

  Before he could utter a warning, or a demand that Caelius join him, his orgasm was upon him and Gaidres shouted, hips bucking. Like a spark to tinder, his lit Caelius’s and the other man came apart beneath him, clinging to him as Gaidres spilled deep inside him and Caelius once again slicked their skin with his own orgasm.

  He didn’t move for a long moment, just let his forehead rest against Caelius’s and tried to gather his senses. By the gods, he had never in his lifetime felt anything so overpowering as the pleasure, the sensations and confusing tangle of emotions Caelius spurred within him every time they touched. With Kerses there had never been any confusion, any doubt that they were right together.

  There was one thing he did know without a single hesitation, however. He could never harm this man. Not for revenge, not for a vow he’d made years ago in the darkest moment of his life, not for anything. Caelius was many things, deserving of many things, but death was not one of them.

  Gaidres was surprised at his own lack of anger over the revelation. Perhaps because part of him had known it for months, though he hadn’t acknowledged it. It was an odd sense of almost relief to admit it now. The guilt was there, the feeling of betraying Kerses’s memory, of failing him again, but nowhere near as strong as it used to be. Was he forgetting Kerses? No, but somehow the pain of the thought of him did not cut as deeply as before. Before what? he wondered. Before Caelius.

  He opened his eyes and lifted his head, staring down at Caelius. He did his best not to reveal to his lover the tumbling thoughts racing through his mind just then. Instead he smiled. “You should have gone to your chamber and called me there.”

  Caelius shook his head, still clinging to him. “No. I needed to see you, touch you, to be sure you were well.”

  “It is naught but a scratch. Fucking you is more a danger, I think. You threaten to stop my heart.”

  “I think that is the way it should be. The gods know you do the same to me.” Caelius touched Gaidres’s jaw, turning it so he could see the livid mark on Gaidres’s cheek.

  “Wounds happen on the sands. It’s a part of the life, Dominus. You know that.” Gaidres brushed his lips over Caelius’s. “You worry overmuch.”

  He hated how Gaidres stopped using his name once their bodies were spent. “Perhaps I do.” Though he might not worry so much if he knew for sure whether or not Gaidres still sought death or not. His hands came up to frame Gaidres’s face, thumbs brushing over the other man’s jaw as his fingers shook. “Will you come with me back to my rooms?”

  Gaidres smiled and it struck Caelius’s heart with a hard aching pang. He opened his mouth to tell Gaidres that he loved him again, but then Gaidres was kissing him and the words were lost. I love you. I love you, Gaidres. The words turned over and over in Caelius’s mind, yet only he could hear them.

  His lover broke the kiss and eased himself from Caelius’s body with a soft groan. “I will.” He rose and helped Caelius to his feet. “Do you suppose we can get to your rooms unseen?”

  “I think anyone who had wished to watch will make themselves scarce and those who didn’t have long since disappeared to another part of the villa.” Caelius spied his tattered robes and scooped them up with a shake of his head. “I’m going to need more garments if we keep doing this,” he murmured, trying not to think of all the things he wanted to say once he knew they were alone.

  Gaidres snickered, grabbing his subligar from the floor as well and glancing around as he followed Caelius through the hall to his chambers. It appeared the villa was deserted, at least in this part. Which was for the best, because they hadn’t been anywhere close to circumspect this evening.

  Once inside Caelius’s chambers, they took a moment to wash at the basin of water on a table near the bed and Caelius drew on another robe as Gaidres rewound his subligar around his hips.

  He tilted his head as Caelius sat on one of the low couches. “What is on your mind, Dominus? I sense the words pricking your tongue.”

  Caelius drew a deep breath, then exhaled, looking up to meet Gaidres’s eyes. “Do you still wish to die in the arena, Gaidres? Months ago you told me as much, and I wonder if anything has changed since then.”

  Gaidres sat as well, pondering the question for a moment. “I do not know. I know it is the likely course. I am resigned to it, I suppose. It is what a gladiator does, Dominus. We die.”

  He frowned, shaking his head. “That is not what I asked. I asked if you still seek it, if you wish it for yourself.”

  Gaidres frowned. “Why do you ask for an answer to that? I am what I am, you told me that yourself once. I am a slave and death in the arena is my fate.”

  “I would have you free, Gaidres.” Caelius took Gaidres’s hands in his. He hated seeing the grin on Gaidres’s face die and a part of him wished that he hadn’t spoken. But the sight of Gaidres in a cage was fresh in his mind and it infuriated him. Gaidres belonged with him, living and loving.

  But if he did not speak now, when? When it was too late and Gaidres’s life spilled out on the sands? “I see you in that cage and it is unnatural to me. Let me free you if you do not seek death anymore.”

  “Why? What else is left for me? Fighting, I know. It is all I know anymore. You saw us tonight, Dominus. You saw the pride we took in our battle.”

  “Tonight was a mock battle, a test of skill. It is different when you fight to the death. How much pleasure is there then?” Caelius rose, agitation forcing him to his feet, before he turned again to face Gaidres. “I
beg of you, Gaidres. I cannot watch you die. You cannot ask me to send you out to a meaningless death.”

  Surely he was the only Roman in the world cursed with a slave who refused to be freed. No doubt if he freed the stubborn man anyway, Gaidres would march himself down to his cell and sit there in defiance. It was maddening. And rather ironic, considering that it was the slave making these rules and the master who found himself helpless. He would laugh if his heart didn’t ache so.

  Gaidres’s expression darkened. “You place too much importance on this notion of freedom. What would freedom do for me?”

  Caelius sat beside him, searching Gaidres’s face. “It would allow you to live the life stolen from you three years ago!”

  Gaidres pushed to his feet. “That life is gone and well you know it, Dominus. There is nothing for me in Thrace, or anywhere else for that matter.” He threw his arms out, gesturing to the villa and the ludus beyond. “This is all there is.”

  He took a deep breath and shook his head. “Freedom for you is a dream I will never experience. For you to be a free man means a villa in Caere, one here, slaves to do your bidding and your pick of lovers to fulfill your every desire.”

  He reared back as if Gaidres had struck him. In truth it felt as if he had. “You insult me, Gaidres, that you think my thoughts are so shallow.”

  “No, Dominus. I merely point out the very grave differences between you and I. Freedom for me means nothing. My family is gone. My home is gone. My friends and my neighbors. I doubt even the remains of my village were left standing by the time your uncle’s men were through. Here…” He sighed, as if he found some of what he said hard to admit. “Here I have a purpose. Here I fight, I win, I bed you…I would sooner stay and have that and die a quick death than spend any number of long, empty years out there as your glorified ‘free man.’”

  “Would being free with me be such an empty existence? It can be how it was in Caere all the time.” It could be more than that, so much more if Gaidres would but take it. Only the incredulous look that crossed Gaidres’s face told Caelius that he didn’t see such a future.

  “You are mad, Dominus.” Gaidres barked a laugh, shaking his head. “You have no idea what you are saying. You’re a dreamer and a fool.”

  Kerses was a dreamer. Caelius remembered Gaidres telling him that and his eyes stung. How could he compete against a memory? “Kerses was a dreamer.” He said it without thinking and Gaidres straightened, a furious mask falling over his face.

  “And it got him nowhere but an early death. Your kind of dreaming is dangerous. Do you think what you do here with your slaves makes a difference? You do not think anyone would notice if you freed a gladiator and gave him rights and privileges that they know he should not have? Sometimes I do not think your mind is in the same world as your body. You have an image of harmony in your head that doesn’t exist in this world.”

  “Why can’t it?” Caelius jutted out his chin, even as his heart was breaking. “Gaidres, don’t you see? I love you.”

  Gaidres shook his head, taking a step backward. “You speak of what you do not understand! You love me? You love a fantasy! You love a slave who will do your bidding and whom you can control!”

  Caelius’s eyes flashed and he surged to his feet with a harsh laugh that held no humor. “My bidding? Control? Of whom do you speak, Gaidres, because it is not yourself!” Caelius strode forward, glaring at Gaidres in challenge. “Who is this slave who bends to my will? Whom I can control? You? You, who at every turn shakes the bars of the cage he is within and yet cowers when I would open the door for him? What control do you speak of, then?”

  Gaidres glared back at him, shaking his head. “I do not cower! I live in the real world, the one all around us, Caelius, and you live in some dream where…what? Where you think there could be more than what exists between us? Where love rules and the world bends to become something it is not and will never be?” He scowled. “You are a fool!”

  “Perhaps I am, but if so then I am not a fool alone! You, my gladiator, are the greatest fool I have ever known!” Caelius threw his hands up and turned away, pacing for a second before spinning to glare at Gaidres again. “If I have such control, then this is me asserting it, by the gods. You will not fight in the Lupercalia! I forbid it!”

  Gaidres’s eyes widened and he stalked forward, but Caelius held his ground, unintimidated by his lover’s fury. “You forbid it?” Gaidres clenched his fists. “And then what, Dominus? And then what?” He shouted the last. “You will not turn me into a laughingstock, nothing but your personal whore, by the gods you will not, do you hear me?”

  “You are not my whore. And I refuse to live by others’ dictates about what is right and wrong. I’ll follow my own heart and conscience as I’ve always done,” Caelius replied, his roiling emotions eating at him. “Don’t you find it ludicrous that you, of all people, are worried what Romans might say behind your back?”

  “You damned blind, arrogant bastard. You’re so besotted with your dream you cannot even see the danger to yourself. Your career will mean nothing if the right people take offense.” He stabbed a finger at Caelius’s chest. “I will fight in the Lupercalia. You swore to let me make my own decision in that regard. Do not act like every other Roman now.”

  Caelius stared at Gaidres, torn between anger and an aching heart. He cursed himself for agreeing in the first place and cursed himself even more now for not being able to be so autocratic as to continue to forbid Gaidres. “Gaidres, please, I beg you, please, don’t fight.”

  “Then you will allow me this?” Gaidres demanded with an intent look. Caelius pressed his lips together, his heart breaking even more.

  “I’ll allow it.” He conceded when Gaidres’s stare wouldn’t relent.

  “Gratitude. May I return to my cell, Dominus?” Gaidres asked in a way that made a mockery of the request.

  “Do what you will, Gaidres,” Caelius replied, his voice turning to ice. “You find a way to do it anyway. Hide away from me if that is what gives you comfort. May you sleep well tonight.”

  Gaidres cast him a hard look and then turned, striding from the room and leaving the slave who waited outside to scurry to catch up with him. Caelius sank down on his couch and dropped his head in his hands as he listened to the sounds of Gaidres storming toward the ludus and away from him.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Caelius glanced up as the guard brought in the doctoré and Hierocles. He almost wished he had arranged for this confrontation to happen later on. He was exhausted from a sleepless night after his fight with Gaidres. His frustration over his lover had him on edge and it didn’t help matters that he was still angry over the accident at the exhibition.

  Still, making the two of them wait would not be fair either. Caelius knew that the rumors of his displeasure had already circulated among the servants and slaves. They would worry overmuch if he delayed matters. The doctoré looked calm, standing straight with his hands clasped behind his back while Hierocles shifted from foot to foot with an uneasy expression. That was hardly new. The former gladiator always seemed uneasy in his presence.

  “Gratitude.” Caelius gestured to the guard. “You may wait outside. I’ll call for you when I’m ready.”

  Caelius rose and whisked away the cloth on the table, revealing the shattered remnants of Gaidres’s weapon. Hierocles glanced at the shards of steel uneasily and the doctoré scowled.

  Felix had found the merchant who had sold the blades, but the trail to the blacksmith had died there unless Caelius wished to send guards to question other merchants several days away from Fidena.

  His scribe had spoken to several other blacksmiths in the area. Men renowned for their skill and they had examined what they could of what remained. The only thing they could say for certain was that the blade did not appear to have any rust damage. Their opinion had been that either the weapon had a flaw or it had been badly tempered.

  Caelius hated unanswered questions.

  “Docto
ré, Hierocles.” He sounded calm, but every time he looked at that shattered blade he remembered the terror of that moment. He saw the blood on Gaidres’s cheek. And felt the same acute sorrow when his lover refused to withdraw from the Lupercalia. “I want to know what went wrong.”

  “Accidents happen, Dominus.” The doctoré threw Hierocles a sharp glance at his words. “It is the way of things.”

  Gaidres could have been killed. He wanted to scream it. He wanted to shake them both until they felt the same urgency that he did. “I do not care for your careless demeanor,” he said in a cold voice. “I want answers, not excuses.”

  “I do not understand how it happened, Dominus.” The doctoré picked up one of the shattered pieces. “I tested all the weapons myself when they arrived. I would have sworn they all were sound.”

  Caelius’s lips tightened as another thought occurred to him. Petronius had known of his plans for the exhibition. Perhaps he had not been as cozened as he appeared. He could not imagine the man being able to do any tampering in Caere, but here in Fidena…Caelius still didn’t know every one of the slaves as well as he would’ve liked to. He had not had a chance to earn their loyalty.

  Nor did his people from Caere know the people here very well or the other way around. Not everyone. Perhaps by sight, but possibly enough to challenge someone who seemed strange. If Petronius had managed to slip someone in to wreak havoc, one of his people wouldn’t have needed to help them on purpose.

  No…he could not picture that either. The villa itself may be a hive of activity but not the ludus and he had not increased it by many men either. If a stranger had been spotted where no stranger should be there would have been an outcry. It was a ludicrous thought and only showed how tired he was. If someone had ruined one of the weapons in an attempt to harm the ludus, they would have ruined more.

  Caelius resisted rubbing a hand over his face. “I want them all tested again, just to be sure. The Lupercalia is only a month away and I’ll not have the same thing happening again.”