Mark of the Gladiator

by Heidi Belleau

  “Oh, you are soft on him. You’re as bad as Cassia, mooning after—”

  “You make it extraordinarily hard to be grateful to you, Sarmatian.”

  “You told Rhakshna you heard Enyo talking in her sleep. Plotting to kill her master in her sleep. No wonder she only halfway believed you. I don’t believe you at all. In what fucking language did she happen to disclose?”

  Amanikhabale adjusted her cuffs and shrugged, meeting his stare without fully meeting it, giving away absolutely nothing. “It’s true. She mumbled in a dialect of Lepontic that I recently learned.”

  “I think you had some part in this, but didn’t trust that you’d survive the attempt, and covered yourself. If I find out this death is on your shoulders—”

  “Someone got her that knife.” Amanikhabale’s counteroffer.

  “Come to me with a better story. One that makes the outside influence obvious. I will expect that your memory becomes clearer by morning.”

  Amanikhabale nodded.

  Gods willing, he’d find out the truth eventually. Until then, a half-truth would serve best to keep them all alive. He was a loyal man, but not to the point of suicide.

  In the privacy of his spacious storeroom quarters, he finally stripped his armor. Though he wanted to throw it aside in frustration, years of instinct took over, and he arranged it carefully over a chair instead. He poured himself water from a tapped amphora, and kept the tap running after he’d drunk his fill, enough to splash his face and chest and wash away any last traces of blood.

  The water darkened the stone floor, then ran into cracks and disappeared. Beyond the beam of sunlight from the one high window, the whole storeroom was darkening with the twilight, and the bolts of cloth muffled sound.

  They didn’t muffle quite enough.

  “Step forward,” said Anazâr quietly. His mind was already turning to tactics. He could rip off the chair’s crossbar, use the jagged point as a weapon . . .

  “You don’t miss much, do you?”

  That voice.

  Felix stepped out of the shadows, his face strangely blotchy and his gray eyes wide and blinking.

  “Why are you here?”

  He’s behind it. He’s behind the attack. He could have visited the warehouse months ago, before my time, and offered to retrieve Enyo’s daughter in return for his brother’s murder. Maybe he’d met the daughter himself on one of his trips to the whorehouses. Seen his opportunity. Orchestrated it all.

  It was as if Felix sensed his accusation, or maybe he saw it written across Anazâr’s face, because he immediately leapt to his own defense. “My brother made sure I stood beside him today. I’m a fool and I’ve been playing a fool’s game, but I never thought it would come to this.”

  Not a defense. Not a denial. Only a maddening riddle. Anazâr kept his fists lowered. He wouldn’t strike, not yet. Felix was a fit young man, but he could easily be taken down. Anazâr had the size and the strength and the skill. Marianus would reward him. All his problems, solved. But he needed a confession first.

  “You tried to kill him. To free yourself from his punishments.”

  Felix’s brow crumpled, the tension in his mouth snapping apart a heartbeat later. “Do you truly believe that? I’m damned beyond all hope, then.” He strode to a nearby column of cloth and leaned against it, slumping almost drunkenly. “Fortune’s rags. If not for you, I’d be dead twice over, and now I find that even you have turned against me. Well, if that’s the case, you may as well kill me yourself now. Spare me the indignity of dying at the hands of the next cutthroat.”

  “More acting. More drama.” And why did he even care? The melodrama of his petty Roman masters . . . he should only be as involved as his prescribed loyalty to Marianus demanded. No more. Yet he couldn’t help the hurt in his voice.

  “This is the first in a very long time that I speak with no artifice. The fucking words fail me, the ungrateful bastards. I need your help, gl— Cyrenaicus.” He turned the name over in his mouth, like it was too large to fit. “Cyrenaicus. No tricks. No games.”

  “Tell me then,” said Anazâr, crossing his arms. “No tricks. Before, you said you fainted at the sight of blood, but at the first so-called attempt on your life, you did not.”

  “It’s a lie, it’s a lie, lie, lie. I find gladiator games . . . repugnant. The fact that my feigned weakness embarrassed my brother was simply an added benefit.”

  Repugnant.

  “You think I’m a barbarian,” Anazâr accused. The Romans called his people that. Bar bar bar bar. Of course Felix was no different.

  “It’s just a word. We’re all the same, bags of bones and guts and brilliance. Me, you, and every other slave, and I can’t stand to watch you die like dogs. That’s all.”

  He asked me my real name. To know me as a man and not as a slave.

  No. To have compromising information he can humiliate and control me with, like he controls everyone else around him. A spider at the center of a web, and when he couldn’t seize my name, he seized my body—my desire—in its place.

  “Why did you come to me that night? Did you hope to taunt me, the way you did in the baths?” Is this all a manipulation?

  Felix covered half his face with one hand and laughed, a broken, rueful sound. “I was afraid. I knew I’d cheated death once, but it could come again. Would come again. Whoever wanted me dead wouldn’t give up so easily.” More blinking, wetter now. He barked out another laugh. “And coming to that conclusion, I realized . . . I realized that after all my fucking games . . . there was no one—no one I could trust. No one I could turn to.”

  No one but me. He’d faced his death, and then he came to shelter by my side.

  “I’m a slave. I’m not even your slave, I bear no sword, and you come to me—”

  Felix pushed off his leaning post and lunged for Anazâr, who flinched but didn’t shy back. Felix’s white-knuckled hands gripped the rough fabric of Anazâr’s tunic and wrenched at it in useless protest. “This isn’t about your skills with a sword. How do I— You—” He thumped the heel of his curled hand against Anazâr’s chest. Once, twice, three times, each blow more ineffectual and flailing than the last. His disheveled toga slipped farther off his shoulder. “You think a man like me can’t find some fucking brute to follow me around, kill anyone who crosses me? You don’t strike me as an egotistical man, Cyrenaicus. You must know your skills aren’t exactly unique.”

  Another strike against his chest, but this time Anazâr grabbed Felix around both wrists, clutching hard enough that Felix hissed in pain and twisted on his heels, trapped. “Then what. What do you want me for?” Anazâr pressed their foreheads together, boring his glare into Felix’s wide, startled gaze, those eyes that shone gray like his brother’s. “Why are you here?”

  “I shouldn’t have come. I don’t mean to endanger you.” More ridiculous hysteria. Now Felix’s knees gave out from under him, his entire body sinking downward, held upright only by Anazâr’s punishing grip on his slim wrists. He’s right. I could be killed for this.

  “Stand up. Please, Felix.” I have to see your eyes again. Anazâr ran his hands down, nearly to Felix’s elbows now, softening his grip until it was enough to anchor Felix but not enough to hurt.

  Felix staggered, and his clammy hands clasped Anazâr’s elbows in turn, linking them both together. Then he took a deep breath and raised his eyes, and oh gods, he looked nothing like his brother—everything he was, every tortuous contradiction, was right there on the surface of his face. No barriers, no masks. “Love’s a crazy whore,” he said. “That’s all there is, really.”

  Anazâr couldn’t reply. He couldn’t even breathe.

  Felix gathered his composure, setting his shoulders and lifting his chin. A hastily drawn curtain fell lopsided over his features. “But I’ll go. Maybe it’s better that way. A rope out the window and I—”

  Anazâr pulled him roughly closer. I’ll have the truth from you yet. But the truth had undergone a metamorphosis into so
mething embodied, held warm in his arms. Felix, already here for him. Stripped of everything. Everything except . . .

  A quick pull was enough to send the toga sliding to the floor. A few more sufficed for his loincloth and tunic. Felix’s body was fine and smooth, even in places where Anazâr usually hungered for musk and hair, but somehow it only increased Felix’s appeal. Noticing Anazâr’s hungry interest, Felix smiled softly, canting his hips to draw Anazâr’s attention to his flushed, slowly rising erection. But he didn’t act. This Roman master of men, waiting on Anazâr’s will.

  Anazâr would take this offering, take Felix, seize this moment even if he died on the cross for it later. He was tired of worrying about later. He’d live like he did in the arena, one passionate horrible glorious moment at a time.

  “My name is Anazâr,” he said, so close that his mouth brushed Felix’s ear. It was the first time he’d heard his own name aloud in years, and it was like a spell, transforming Felix again. Earlier he’d gone from the trickster to a fearful, lonely boy seeking solace and now, again, he changed, this time into a minor god. The only man in this universe who knew—would ever know—Anazâr as his complete self. Now he had that man pressed against him, shivering, but not with fear.

  Gasping. “Thank you. Gods, yes, yes—”

  A spell, yes. More powerful than anything you could buy at a temple, more powerful than anything you could conjure up even with baths of blood. It transformed them both.

  And it was terrifying.

  “Quiet.” Anazâr pushed, edging Felix’s legs open with his thigh. Rocked him backward and up against the bolt of cloth. A low laugh sounded, and then a soft growl in the back of Felix’s alluringly tipped-back throat. “I said quiet.” Anazâr silenced him with a hand over his mouth. Felix’s freed hand went straight to Anazâr’s cock, and his eyes were wicked as they peered out over Anazâr’s fingers.

  Anazâr wanted to groan out, to praise Felix’s skillful hand, but long years taking pleasure quickly and silently, in crowded barracks or cells, had given him a discipline that Felix no doubt lacked.

  He bit off the words and pinned Felix harder against the bolt of cloth. Rough use, but he’ll like it. He let go of Felix’s other arm and rubbed his palm down Felix’s hipbone, down into the whorishly smooth area around his cock and sac, exploring the fascinating contrast between feminine-soft skin and jutting hard shaft. Felix moaned, a strangled sound that Anazâr felt against his fingers more than heard.

  “I’m going to kiss you now,” he warned in a whisper, transfixed by Felix’s smothered, glassy expression. “Make a sound, and I’ll stuff my cock down your throat to silence you, and then your pretty hole won’t get fucked at all.” He’d never used words this way with a lover, but Felix inspired him—Felix was his muse, better than any of the nine the poets called on.

  Felix nodded, the motion quick and eager, and, satisfied, Anazâr slowly released his grip. Felix’s lips were swollen and red, halfway to bruised by Anazâr’s crushing hold on his face. Mine. All he had to do was complete his claim. He covered Felix’s mouth with his own. Opened him and tasted him. Those same poets always spoke of kisses sweeter than wine—untrue, but the taste sent him halfway to madness anyway, so perhaps they were right after all.

  He wanted to growl when Felix’s hand left off his cock, but feeling them entangle in his short-cropped hair, combing and tugging lightly, almost made up for it.

  And then Felix leapt up, wrapping his legs tight around Anazâr’s hips and settling Anazâr’s shaft against the cleft of his ass with one of his trickster’s smiles. So athletic, and as light as he was, they could fuck just like this, standing, Anazâr spearing into that tight heat every time Felix inevitably fell toward earth. The thought nearly unmanned him, so he bit Felix’s lips as punishment for being so fucking tempting.

  When his gasping became less ragged and he could trust himself again, he finally pulled away from the dizzying kiss to spit on his hand.

  He didn’t ask permission. Didn’t worry that what they were doing—gods, what they were doing—was the exact opposite of everything good and proper. That he was overstepping every conceivable bound that ought to govern him. Just for now it didn’t matter.

  Felix’s lips twisted into a snarl. Having to silence his own clever mouth must have been sheer torture. What quips waited on his tongue, what praises and outcries and filthy fucking lines? Anazâr took mercy on him and kissed him again, swallowing his moan. And then he slid his fingers between Felix’s legs, pushed two spit-wet fingers up into his tight hole. Felix’s entire body convulsed and Anazâr had to press him harder against the bolt of cloth to keep him still. But he yielded. Just ready enough for Anazâr’s cock.

  Taking the base of his cock in hand, Anazâr worked into Felix methodically, probing the limits of his so-called better’s body at the pace of his own desire. Inch by excruciating inch, Felix opened around Anazâr’s shaft. The power he felt, stretching that willing body, taking it, made Anazâr feel more animal—or god—than man, enough that he had to press his mouth to Felix’s pulsing throat to smother the growls that rose unbidden from deep in his chest. As he sank down, Felix threw his head back hard a few times, thudding against the cloth, but Anazâr was too close to determine whether the look on his face was pleasure or pain or some chimeric state in between.

  Seated at last. For a moment, each kept perfectly still, and Anazâr let himself savor the tight clench and the warmth of being buried so deeply and completely in another man in a way he’d never known before. Felix’s hands swept down from Anazâr’s hair until he’d wrapped both arms around the back of Anazâr’s neck, pulling his face close enough that their cheeks brushed. Gods, the sounds they made together . . . the sawing rasp of Anazâr’s evening stubble against Felix’s smooth skin, the pounding of their hearts. “Such a marvelous prick,” Felix whispered, his voice broken but still somehow teasing. “Ever since I saw it rise in service of my brother, I said I’d have it for my own. It’s wasted on him. You’re wasted on him.”

  Some furious, territorial emotion boiled in Anazâr. He shoved Felix harder against the sturdy bolt of cloth. “Don’t speak of him here.”

  Felix rolled his hips, shifting the angle and pressure of Anazâr inside him. “Make me shut up, then.”

  Anazâr ground his heels into the floor and set himself to the task. No more limits, nothing held in reserve. Thrusting, attacking, achieving an effortless brutal perfection of form as he slammed Felix’s smaller body up and down on his cock and fucked up into him at the same time. So hard it even hurt him, but Felix took his punishment nobly, clinging to Anazâr for his life and letting out harsh high whining breaths through clenched teeth.

  To fuck his master’s brother like a whore . . . Anazâr had fantasized about it before, but now that it was happening, he realized no whore could ever love this treatment the way Felix did. The pleasure itself was his only payment. Felix abandoned himself to it.

  Anazâr let himself do the same.

  The friction against the drum-tight skin of his cock was . . . it was ecstasy. Outrageous and fucking unbearable. He fell against Felix, crushed him, drove up into him, held him tight.

  And safe.

  The pulsing of his cock and balls echoed through every single muscle as he clasped Felix to him over and over again. The delight of spending into such a willing lover ever increasing until at last his arms grew weak, his whole body convulsed, and his softening cock slipped away. To submission, to satisfaction. Mine to give, mine to take. Yes, oh yes.

  Felix touched feet to the floor at the exact moment Anazâr’s legs gave out. Anazâr sank, panting, to his knees, and it was so much like kneeling at a shrine except suddenly it meant something—a warm glow of serene happiness. He nuzzled against Felix’s hip in gratitude.

  Felix cupped his cheek, tilting his chin and guiding his gaze upward again. His gray wolf’s eyes were shadowed by heavy, satiated lids, his cheeks were flushed, his mouth as tender-looking as if he’d been struck. “For
get something?” he asked, and gestured to his untouched erection, heavy and sweetly tipped with a drop of precum.

  I’ll suck him. I’ll take that cock and make him forget his own name. Swallow his seed.

  “Mmm, never mind,” Felix said flippantly. “You’ve done enough today, I think.” In illustration, he reached behind himself, probing at what must have been his incredibly abused hole, and proved Anazâr’s suspicions correct when that touch elicited a hissing wince.

  But he didn’t stop. He fingered himself, circling and rubbing. Anazâr caught his breath admiring Felix’s shameless grace, especially when his slow motions caused a hypnotizing trail of cum to trickle down his inner thigh. Anazâr’s cum. He couldn’t help but groan.

  That seemed to please Felix. “Oh yes,” he said, pulling his questing hand free and spreading his fingers, examining the thin strands that webbed between them. “Shall I eat it for you? A Roman eating a slave’s spunk like honey, that would certainly give my br—”

  He cut himself off with a strangely catlike coughing sob and a jagged smile, wrapped his cum-drenched hand around his own shaft, and jerked it hard and fast and in that familiar way that marked him as unselfconsciously devoted to his pleasure. The thing Anazâr had most hated about the man became the thing he most loved, the act inspiring in him a mix of fragile tenderness and fervent lust.

  Felix came without warning, his hips bucking wildly and his head thrown back, but oddly enough, he didn’t make use of Anazâr’s mouth or even obscenely paint his face, as Anazâr would have expected. He covered his cockhead with his palm, filling that instead, mingling their seed. A passing wonder—would he lick it neat and clean with his clever tongue, as catlike as before?

  Yes, yes he did, and grinned at Anazâr all the while.

  When he was done, he slumped down, seating himself on the hard floor with his legs sprawled and Anazâr still kneeling between them.

  They rested.

  After he’d caught his breath, Anazâr stiffly rose again, finding some scrap of cloth to clean them both, tending to the mess on Felix’s inner thighs with a studiousness that would shame the best body slave. When he looked up from his work, Felix’s eyes were closed, his head tilted back to rest against the bolt of fabric. Anazâr laid a gentle, chaste kiss on the point of his chin and then his mouth.