Mark of the Gladiator

by Heidi Belleau

  Soon they were naked and sliding over smooth sheets, touching each other. That delightful shivering sense of rightness returned as he welcomed Felix’s warmth into his arms.

  He let Felix take the lead, not knowing what else to do, feeling a little lost. His ever-mounting arousal drove him to crave direction, orders, but Felix never gave any.

  Instead, he traced Anazâr’s body. Ran fingers down the lines of one collarbone, then the other. Leaned in, pressing his thigh against Anazâr’s erect flesh, then slid away, offering no release, leaving him in ardent torment. Kissed and tongued Anazâr’s heaving throat.

  “Do you want me to touch you in a like manner?” asked Anazâr in a voice as steady as he could make it. “So light?”

  Felix’s eyes had subtly changed. They were darker, warmer—less of that cold gray. They absorbed Anazâr’s gaze, holding pure promise with no hint of threat. “Only if you want. I know this leisure, this freedom, must feel rare. Or you can lie there and attend on feeling. No duties, no expectations, I swear.”

  “I’ll try that.” He put his hands behind his head and settled down into the bed’s luxurious softness. And speaking of luxury . . . Felix’s hands parted his thighs, petting the sensitive skin. And then Felix pressed a wet, breathy kiss into the juncture of groin and thigh, setting Anazâr’s skin alight with pleasure.

  There were grapevines painted across the vaulted ceiling, barely visible by the warm candlelight, and Anazâr imagined that they sheltered the bed, concealing their lovemaking from the punishment of an angry god. We’re safe here. I can allow him anything.

  A melodious clink sounded, almost like the ringing of a bell.

  Felix rose, grinning. “Look at these beauties. Should we try one?”

  He made an expansive merchant’s gesture, encouraging Anazâr to take in the sight: an assortment of false phalli of different sizes and shapes and materials, even one attached to some kind of complex harness.

  Felix’s grin widened considerably. “Like that one, do you? Me too. It’s a rare fine woman who’ll use that on me. Not much use for us though. And maybe not this one, either.” He tossed an imposingly thick cock sewn from stuffed leather to the floor. “Don’t remember where that one’s been. This one, on the other hand, looks fucking pristine.” He held up a white marble dildo shot with glittering mineral veins that mimicked the other kind of vein. “But still too big.”

  Thank the gods he thinks so too. Anazâr gulped, his remote, peaceful sense of acceptance quickly fading. “Why would you use . . .”

  “Oh, I still want to end with my hot prick inside you, but we have plenty of time to play first. The problem with fucking a man is the angle. You can’t quite see the stretch, and even if you can, you’re too distracted chasing your own pleasure to really appreciate it. This way, I get to enjoy every moment, and you get the benefit of my absolute attention. Trust me.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “This one?”

  Translucent, blue-tinted glass, shaped by some masterfully perverted craft into a cylinder curved like a bow. One end was smoothly rounded, the other flared into a wider, bulbous base. And it wasn’t much longer than Felix’s palm. Certainly the least imposing of the collection, but for Anazâr it was rather like trying to choose the safest beast out of a pride of lions.

  Not so for Felix, apparently. Thus decided, he rolled back from the edge of the bed and pressed his body to Anazâr’s again, sweeping his hand over Anazâr’s stomach in soothing circles. But despite the gentling touch, and even though Felix’s lips had returned to his throat again, wet and fluttering and insistent, Anazâr could focus on nothing but the cool glass resting against his thigh. Waiting.

  Felix huffed out a sigh. “Is it that much of a distraction for you? Look, it’s not an instrument of torture. What if I let you hold it? Will you be able to focus on the present, then?”

  It hadn’t looked large in Felix’s hand, but it weighed heavy in Anazâr’s palm, and caught the candlelight like a jewel. Which he supposed it was, really, being not much less precious than the sapphire it resembled. And it was warm, having already leeched heat from Felix’s body.

  “Just think how beautiful it’ll look inside you.” Felix had propped himself up on one elbow and was now observing Anazâr intently, all the while smiling with the refined hunger of a connoisseur of flesh. His fingernails scratched leisurely down Anazâr’s chest and up again, seeking out one nipple to pinch and roll between finger and thumb.

  Seeking, finding—evoking surprising twinges of pleasure. Anazâr had to remind himself to breathe again.

  “I’m not sure I want to,” he still said, although perhaps not so passionately this time.

  A light touch, trailing down Anazâr’s arm until Felix had wrapped his hand around Anazâr’s and both of them held the dildo together. Together, they raised it to Felix’s chin. Felix’s mouth. Holding Anazâr’s gaze, Felix swirled a clever tongue across the glass. Sucked the narrow tip into his mouth, his soft lips molding around its hard surface, yielding so perfectly Anazâr could barely breathe.

  “You’ve decided me, you satyr,” said Anazâr. His rock-hard prick had softened during the moment of uncertainty, but that was no longer a concern; the blood and heat and desire came rushing back.

  “Oh, have I?” Even if Anazâr hadn’t already fully changed his mind, seeing the unmasked pleasure on Felix’s face now would have convinced him. “Well, then. I’ll have to take advantage of this change of heart before you lose your nerve. Or maybe I’ll make you beg for it?”

  He slunk backward off the bed, down to his knees on the floor, where he insinuated himself between Anazâr’s spread legs. He leaned in, nosing at Anazâr’s balls. Inhaled. Exhaled. Just the damp air of his breath made Anazâr’s sac tighten and alter in texture—he’d never been so achingly aware of how his body changed under desire’s rule. And then the wet flat of Felix’s tongue lapped the sensitive hardness behind his groin.

  Anazâr bucked and groaned, Felix’s strong-boned hands wrapping around his thighs to hold him firmly—nearly painfully—in place. Beads of saliva trailed down the crevice between his legs, down to tickle at his hole, which twitched in a response he could neither anticipate nor control. Control. He didn’t need it anymore. Had lost it. Lost that need. All he needed was to fuck and feel something inside him.

  What followed was an absolutely debauched assault, tongue and lips and so much wet spit, and all the while Felix moaned and hummed and murmured wonderful nonsense.

  Let me please you. Let me take care of you. Let me show you every last thing you’ve missed or denied yourself.

  He was helpless to his own pleasure.

  The glass was still clenched in his hand, slick with sweat now.

  The glass was still clenched in his hand.

  He looked down at it, vision hazy, trying to understand it, remember why it was there, what it meant, and it was as impossible and magical as letters, but with none of their attendant shame or frustration.

  Only one thing to do. He lifted it, glinting, to his mouth and sucked it in greedily, imagining it was Felix’s cock, except it was so ruthlessly hard, so impenetrably beautiful. He sucked and sucked and sucked, fucking his own mouth with it, relishing the feel of it dragging across his teeth and crushing his tongue.

  “Magnificent.”

  Felix’s ministrations had stopped. He was draped over Anazâr’s thigh, watching him in quiet awe.

  I please him. And the knowledge of that sank into him sweet and rich, touching a strange depth that being a satisfactory soldier or slave had never breached. “Do it,” gasped Anazâr. He reached down, holding out the glass in offering. Felix kissed each of his fingers in turn as he opened Anazâr’s grip around the toy’s curved shaft and took it into his own hands.

  Oh. There’d been oil in the cache, too—Felix glazed his fingers, rubbed them over the glass and, deft as a conjurer, nudged it into Anazâr. Just the tip, shallow and painless, and then it was out again, so quickly that Ana
zâr felt the lack more than the presence. Anazâr’s hips rose and fell back in swift response, shifting the weight of his erection against his drum-taut stomach. He gasped again. “Yes, more. I’m ready. Yes.”

  Felix laughed against his inner thigh, pressing kisses there as he toyed the tip back and forth across Anazâr’s entrance, never pushing it inside.

  Anazâr, torn between irritation, admiration, and raw teeth-clenching need, begged at last. “Please.”

  Felix slid it into him so smoothly, opened him so effortlessly, that Anazâr shuddered with relief. That rigid thickness inside him, inexorable and alien, became part of him. Flesh of his flesh.

  Usually the invasion of penetration made his cock shrivel with the effort and the pain, but now it only further inflamed his straining shaft. Throbbing. It was throbbing like a bruise. Touch me. Touch me please. He couldn’t say anything, too focused on the way his channel shifted around the solid intrusion, clenching and yielding in a rhythm he could only vaguely control. He lifted his hips in entreaty—

  —his nerves ran with liquid fire, the pressure, fucking gods the pressure—“No!”—it’s too much, it’s too good—“No, don’t stop. Yes. Felix. I’ll spend . . .”

  The pressure shifted, the pleasure faded. “Shhh, it’s all right.” Felix smoothed his hand up and down Anazâr’s twitching thigh. It gave Anazâr something to focus on, something to ground him amid the wash of intense sensations. “Would you like to come with it inside you? It’s an exquisite experience, I must say. I could suck you. That big thick cock . . .” He licked his lips, enthralled. “You’ll tighten around the glass. I can’t promise that will be entirely pleasant. I like it, but then again, my tastes can be—”

  “Suck me.”

  “Mmm. As you command.”

  As you command. It echoed in Anazâr’s head, crowding out every other thought. Lucius Marianus Felix, master of men, saying to him, As you command. The most dizzying height he’d ever reached. That was, until Felix’s hot, slippery mouth enveloped the head of his cock and then swallowed the whole length down in one practiced dip of his head.

  Anazâr seized up, his hole clenching hard around the glass. It shook. Or perhaps his body shook around it. He didn’t know anymore. Cause and effect, flesh and glass, all merged, all distinctions erased by the surge of molten ecstasy. His prick was a heated bar of iron plunged into water at the forge. He howled because it hurt, too, howled even as he spilled his seed down Felix’s tight throat and was swallowed, swallowed, swallowed.

  Once Felix drew him to glorious satisfaction—Felix’s mouth was fucking irresistible, no matter what use he put it to—Anazâr let his mind drift as his body relaxed, muscle by aching muscle. He’d been renewed.

  Cleaned. Emptied . . .

  No, that was Felix delicately sliding the glass out. Though his vision wavered in the bliss that followed release, he watched. It was amazing. He’d never forget this as long as he lived.

  Which would probably not be long, but what did that matter? Death made the act of love all the more urgent. He didn’t know many poems, but the ones he did, well, they all agreed.

  “I’d like to fuck you,” said Felix. “Once you’re ready again.”

  “Yes,” he murmured. Not just a polite acquiescence, not this time. He wanted it too. Wanted to feel Felix inside him, stretching him until they fit together perfectly.

  “You don’t have to move much. Shift on to your side. There, that’s it.”

  Felix gently guided him, then lay cradling him from behind. Unlike any master, Felix was in no rush to take his pleasure, not forcing his way into Anazâr, not just yet. Instead he rocked his hips, his body swaying against Anazâr’s, and they could have been dancing except for his hard smooth cock gliding up and down, parting the slick cleft of Anazâr’s ass. Held close like this, it was so . . . so . . . He didn’t have any name for it, any bar to measure it by.

  Gentle, undemanding kisses marked the dreamlike passage of time. Anazâr lay on his left side; Felix kissed his right shoulder, his cheek, the curve of his throat, the side of his lips. Resting together in this position, Anazâr couldn’t really see him, couldn’t look into his perturbing eyes, but he could feel Felix watching him. And that was good, too.

  Felix stroked his thigh. Crooned in his ear. Guided Anazâr’s right knee forward, straightened the left, pushed inside him, first with fingers, then with his prick.

  Anazâr moaned, because Felix’s heat was better than the dildo, better than any of the cocks he’d taken before. Slow and courteous, but insistent, and gods, Anazâr was more than happy to accept it.

  “I love the voice you speak with when—when you abandon yourself,” said Felix. “Let it speak. Speak through you. I’ve been so eager for this. You’re perfect. A strong man, a good man . . . oh gods, I don’t want to lose you—”

  Something trembled and broke in Felix’s voice, and Anazâr was unable to reply, unable to give voice to the filthy words he’d been in the midst of summoning up for Felix’s pleasure.

  “Felix,” he said instead. “Felix, Felix.” Over and over again, a chanting invocation, urging his lover onward, willing him the strength to continue. Clutched tight in Felix’s embrace, Anazâr’s body heaved and his eyes burned.

  He didn’t cry.

  He wouldn’t cry.

  Although he thought, judging by the slight erraticness in his thrusts, that Felix might be.

  Well, let him. Let at least one of them be free enough to mourn this for the tragedy it was.

  After what seemed like half a night of fitful half-sleep, Anazâr rolled Felix onto his back and took him. They petted and kissed their way through the slow, deep strokes of his cock, neither making much sound except for the occasional soft whine from Felix when Anazâr plunged into him just right.

  When they’d both spent for the second time that night, Anazâr lay back among wrecked sheets with Felix cradled to his chest, pretending not to notice the sound of ragged breathing and the small tremor in his lover’s shoulders.

  He thought, when Felix finally stilled, that he’d fallen asleep. But then Felix’s tentative voice broke the silence of the night. “There was another before you. Another slave I proclaimed to love—who I did love.”

  “Your own?” Anazâr’s sexual desire was quite sated, but the prospect of comprehending the truth of Felix, why he hated and loved—well, that woke another kind of fierce desire.

  “She belonged to my father’s household.” A rare fine woman, Anazâr’s memory supplied. “Her work was to serve food and entertain, at times, with music. And she was . . . she was perfect. Beautiful. Poised. Talented. Funny. That was the thing I loved most, her sense of humor. She’d even laugh at my wretched attempts at poetry, and fix my stumbling lines.”

  “She could read.”

  “Very well. And when I got to know her more, and she learned to trust me, she brought out a wicked edge to her wit that stung and aroused as much as being spanked. Of course, nobody pays any mind when a young Roman boy dallies with a slave or two for practice, but she wasn’t just a hole to me, and . . . well. My father forbade me to spend so much time in her company. It was unseemly. But he wasn’t cruel. He’d manumit her in his will, he promised, and I could set her up as a freedwoman and keep her as a mistress, quietly, until I married a woman of good family. He was ailing, by then. I couldn’t imagine any life without Alexandra, but I promised him my most dignified conduct.”

  Alexandra. Her name. “The daughter of Alexandros, then?”

  “They had something as close to family as slaves are allowed, his position and education being so high. Alexandra and I passed love notes in code and played at Pyramus and Thisbe, though we believed our affair would have a happier end. It did not. When my father died and my brother assumed his position as paterfamilias, Lucius had all our father’s small mercies burned to ashes with his body. When I didn’t immediately fall into line, he . . . he . . .”

  Alexandros’s words filled the space Felix’s couldn’t.
I had a daughter, now gone to the afterlife. Horrible recognition, so cold it turned his skin to ice. “By his own hand, he took—?”

  “Oh gods, no. He’s too practical. We’re a mercantile family with plebeian origins, after all. He simply sold her. I scrambled to find her price—there’s a kind of refined whoring available to boys of the right set—but after a few weeks under a new, harsh master she decided not to wait. They saw her going down to the Tiber.”

  “They captured her? Tortured her for running away?” The tattoo on Anazâr’s forehead seemed to tingle in sympathy.

  Felix shook his head. He let out a broken laugh through gritted teeth, took a long pause to gather breath, and then spoke again, in a much smaller voice. “No, she outwitted the whole world in the end. Drowned herself before they could seize her. Her owner threw out her body like garbage.”

  “And it’s all your brother’s fault.” No wonder so much venom seethed between them.

  “No. It’s mine. My brother’s a horrid man, but he only does what’s correct by Roman custom. That’s all he ever does, and I hate him for it. But blaming him for her death would be like blaming the fucking tide for washing in. It’s my fault. I knew my attentions endangered her, but I plowed forward anyway. Make no mistake, I hate my brother, but I hate myself even more.”

  There was no arguing with that. Anazâr was a slave and a gladiator, and he carried a slave’s and a gladiator’s weight of responsibility. Felix had been born a master, and now he carried a master’s weight. Fortune’s wheel—it was what it was.

  After a time, Felix sniffed. “What, no platitudes?”

  “Would they change anything?” He remembered the quiet acceptance among his gladiator brothers when they’d had to kill one of their own, or watch one of their own be killed. Each carried his guilt willingly, as much a part of him as the hands that performed the act.

  “Damn you,” said Felix, but already his voice sounded brighter, the knife’s edge of memory dulled again by the distance of time. “After her death, I swore not to endanger another in the same way. I kept my affairs brief, and never within my brother’s house. And then you arrived.”