by Harley James
She had a plan to get Niketas to come around to the marriage.
He’d need to forgive her first, however.
She tried to walk beside Alexios, but it was difficult because his legs were so much longer than hers, and his steps, more confident. “Now, stop changing the subject. Marrying me is not displeasing to you. I can sense it in you.”
He looked to the skies above the tree boughs with the same helpless exasperation she’d seen on her brother’s face for as long as she could remember. She grabbed Alexios’s free hand, drawing it between both of her own as she tried to split her focus between her much-rehearsed words and the tree-shadowed, forest floor.
If only he’d taken the well-traveled path! To trip now would be disastrous.
“Would you have me marry Lysander?”
He spared her a brief glare without slowing his pace. “Your father pledged you to him.”
He didn’t answer the question. That fluttery feeling returned. “I can hear what you’re not saying. You have thought of me…as I have thought of y—”
Her foot snagged on a root, and she pitched forward with a cry.
Alexios cursed just before her forward momentum stopped, and she was jerked back the other way. She landed with a jar against a solid wall of muscle. His shield came around her, wrapping her so tightly against him his heart beat against her cheek, his manhood pressing like honed bronze against her belly.
And Just. Like. That. fire licked across her skin, her breasts growing heavy with a deep stirring in her sex.
She’d never felt as vibrant. As safe.
As alive!
Even from afar, he’d had this effect on her, but now, touching him, being in his strong arms, was...
Elysium!
She closed her eyes, snuck her hands about his waist, and squeezed. Gods, he smelled so good. Like strength and security, hardy olive trees and leather, midnight secrets and soulful sighs.
She nuzzled his chest and bit her lip to stifle the passion that swelled within. Mother had always scolded her for being emotional, but mayhap she could achieve her dream and be happy?
Alexios groaned deep in his throat before disentangling her arms and setting her away from him. “Do not conjure affection where there is none. Warriors are incapable of such weakness, Sophia.”
Of course, he would consider joy a weakness. Her mother had said as much. Still, hope–the silly, ridiculous flare of hope–stayed lit within.
She laid a hand on her belly where his phallus had pressed into her so insistently, the memory so vivid she knew sleep would not find her for hours and hours.
“I like it when you say my name,” she said softly. “And I love your voice. It makes me want to sit at your side and listen to you all through the night.”
“Well, apparently your plan has worked as it will soon be dawn. Do all Spartan maidens have such love of idle chatter?”
She forced her lips to tilt, though the rebuke stung and a bit of her hope flagged. “Oh, I think not. My mother despairs over it, but every time I try to change, I feel miserable.”
“Zeus save us. Let us go. Now, Sophia.”
She sighed. Her shoulders slumped in temporary defeat. “As you wish.”
On their walk, she took pity on him and held her tongue for two whole prayers to Athena. Oh, how she needed the help of the goddess of wisdom, war, and diplomacy to achieve her purpose.
There were no torches flickering in Sparta when they approached their famed city without walls. The soldiers were expected to be as comfortable in darkness as they were in daylight.
Alexios guided them along the moon-shadowed Assembly buildings as they drew closer to the palace, grasping her hand at times to shift her course. But as quickly as he took her in hand, he released her. She was growing desperate to convince him—the next Krypteia is only five moons away and we have so much to accomplish before then!–but really, really…
What had she expected?
That this soldier, famed for his ruthlessness in combat, would bend to her will and see the value of her revolutionary proposition within one turn of the hourglass?
Perhaps I am as much a daydreamer as they say. “Will you call on me tomorrow?” She cringed inwardly even as she asked the question.
“No. I’ve used up all my words for the next fortnight.”
She grasped his bicep to arrest his forward movement, his skin warm steel against her palm. “Please, Alexios. Lysander is a decent man and a fine soldier, but he is not for me. I want you.”
He scowled as he faced her. “You are a fool then because he is the better choice for you.” He turned away again and continued walking toward the palace.
Anger built inside her chest at his easy dismissal. “You’re wrong! For what I want accomplished, I need a lion at my side, not a kitten.” She stilled—physically and metaphysically—feeling the truth of her plight in her soul.
Feeling so much.
She was tired of feeling guilty about feeling.
Why did people always have to hide the emotions that rolled through them? It took so much energy to bury it down, pretend like it wasn’t there. She was sick of it!
“You are that lion I need. And warrior, I so much liked what I felt when I was in your arms.”
Alexios stopped abruptly, swung around, and stalked toward her, his movements full of grace and menace, coming so close she had to tilt her head back to look at him.
His beautiful eyes were dark, pupils swallowing up his stormy copper and gold irises, his nostrils flaring like he was barely containing something wild within. Her pulse throbbed. Her voice scraped out, huskier than she’d ever heard it. “Don’t you dare hold back on me.”
With a low growl that made her go weak in the knees, he grabbed her hand and pulled her along so effortlessly that her feet seemed to fly over the paved tiles. As they rounded the final corner before the palace grounds came into view, he pushed her roughly up against the well-shadowed Council building. His large thigh slipped between her legs, pushing the short skirt of her peplos aside to rub against her in the most exquisite way.
Her neck arched as she tilted her head back. His lips were a liquid brand on her jaw, the hollow of her neck, her mouth. His teeth bit down on her lower lip, and her fingers wound in his silky hair that waved so appealingly at the nape of his neck.
His shield clattered as it dropped upon the stones. Then his hands, those magnificent hands—large, strong, callused—were upon her, cupping her breasts and ‘twas like standing atop the Delphic Oracle with Zeus’s thunderbolts jolting through her.
Her fingers reached under the edge of his above-the-knee chiton, finding his phallus hot, hard, and slippery. He pressed his mouth into her hair behind her ear and groaned long and low.
Eros and Aphrodite themselves could not emit a more erotic sound.
Her muscles went lax in wonderful surrender. She hadn’t engaged in much back alley fondling over the years, but what experience she had couldn’t come close to what she felt now. This warrior was hers, and no one was going to get in her way. “Take me to wife, Alexios.”
His fingertips eased down her spine, fingernails curling into the weave of her peplon above her buttocks. “You are testing the limits of my control, princess.”
“Good. I’ve never been a fan of moderation,” she managed breathlessly.
His other hand pulled her hair, his breath hot—
Suddenly, he straightened, spun around to hoist his shield, and, with the span of his back, pressed her into the building to block her from whatever threat he’d detected.
A dark shape approached from the direction of the agora. “Identify yourself and your purpose, Spartan,” came a sentry’s unfamiliar voice.
“Alexios, enomotarch in the Heraklid Company. On my way home after a late-night swim, I became…detained.”
The watchman laughed bawdily. “Lucky you. Now you, lady behind the shield, how do you fare?”
Alexios’ muscles were strung so tight. Sophia ran her pal
ms up the sides of his thighs and around, down the yolk of his pelvis to cup his scrotum, safely hidden from the sentry’s gaze by the shield.
Alexios pressed his rump harder against her in response. He couldn’t think that was a reprimand? She made sure her smile was in her voice when she answered the watchman. “I am right where I want to be, soldier.”
“Very well. But take your…interlude off the streets, or I shall take you both to the stocks where you’ll wait out the night,” the sentry replied.
After he’d moved on, Alexios grabbed both of her hands in his right and pinned them to his chest. “You are very familiar with a man’s body.”
Her heart pounded at the unspoken accusation. “I have never touched another the way my hands seek to know you. I can’t stop myself, and I won’t apologize for loving the shape and look of you.”
He shook his head, his eyes as soft as she’d ever seen them. “I don’t understand you.”
She swallowed convulsively. It was the most vulnerable statement he’d ever made.
Tread carefully, Sophie. “Most people don’t. Sometimes I don’t even understand myself. What I do know is that something about you grips me and won’t let me go. It hasn’t changed in seven years. That more than anything shows me that I can’t do this for Sparta without you.”
He stared at her for a long moment. She didn’t dare breathe. It all hinged on him. Privately, they might make a horrible match. Maybe he would use her—her body, her naïveté, her desire to leave a stronger legacy for Sparta—but she would gladly sacrifice a love match for the chance—the only viable one she had—to make her dream come true for her beloved city-state.
This is it. He would either accept or reject her.
He blinked, once, twice, and that softness in his eyes was gone. No!
“You are wildly dramatic,” he said tonelessly. As he stepped away, he seemed to withdraw into himself. “How do you propose to get inside without the guards raising a fuss?”
Her chest rose and fell with her struggle to contain a flush of emotion. “That’s all you have to say when I’ve just poured my heart out to you?”
“Yes.”
She made a rude sound her mother would probably faint upon hearing. “Well, be advised then, I am nothing if not persistent.”
“You have rainbows in your eyes, girl.” He inspected their surroundings as they drew nearer to the palace grounds. “How will you get into the palace undetected?”
He would not dismiss her that easily! “There’s a difference between optimism and idealism, you know.”
“How. Will. You. Get. Inside?”
“Oh, may the sun not be warm for thee, you irritating man! The stables will be my gateway.”
He kept walking, but by the sparkle in his eyes, she got the sense he was withholding a smile. “Elaborate,” he said, mildly.
Cursed warrior! “Herodion showed me a passage that leads from the second story loft to the roof around the peristyle. From there I can get to my bedroom unseen. Now, you really must—”
“Princess, I beg you stop. You’re wounding my ears.”
Oooo, he was just…ooooo!
Neither of them spoke the rest of the way to the stables as she stewed over his rejection. What could he be thinking? Had she influenced him in any way? Was he even considering her proposal? She’d risked everything tonight.
This isn’t over. It was too important.
She opened the stable door and poured as much sincerity into her gaze as she could when she looked at him standing in the shadows. “You are everything I need in a husband.”
“Then you have set your expectations too low.”
“You’re wrong.”
His teeth flashed in the gloomy interior of the stables, but there was darkness in his voice. “You are grossly misled and naïve. I have cut men down because I can. I have taken life, lied, and cheated. I have used people in the two worlds I straddle. Few trust me, fewer still like me. I would do nothing but hinder your campaign.”
A horse three stalls down nickered as though in agreement. Even the damned animals oppose me. Fine. “Show me a soldier who’s made it through the agoge who hasn’t done all that and more. It’s what the system forces you to do to survive. It’s where your heart lies that makes you the better man, and I happen to believe you also want a Sparta where no man or woman is called slave.”
He laughed harshly. “You are as foolish as they say. Yet I am more the fool for letting this absurd conversation carry on as long as it has.”
That really stung.
Stay the course, Sophie. She should be used to criticism by now. Much worse would come her way before her vision became reality. “Be forewarned, I will seek you out again.”
“I do not doubt it. Only know that I chart my own path, princess.” He smacked her rump as she ascended the ladder. “And I refuse to tie myself to a crusader who plans to fight an impossible battle.”
Her eyes blurred with sudden tears. At the top of the ladder, she looked down.
He was still there.
He waited until she made it across the walkway to the second story stoa. Two more steps and she knew he could no longer see her from his vantage point. But she could see him. She watched him fade into the shadows beyond the stables.
He’d waited until she was safe before he took his leave. It made her eyes tear up even more. Why did he say one thing, but his actions said something else entirely?
He was so much better than he believed.
“I will find a way to convince you, warrior,” she whispered.
Chapter 7
Sweat rolled down Alexios’s back and slicked his temples. His muscles ached and his lungs burned, heart pumping at a breath-stealing rate as he sprinted the final few hundred yards back home. He’d pushed himself harder—gone miles farther and over more broken terrain—than he had in a long, long time.
And he still couldn’t drive the princess from his mind.
Her beautiful face. Her bold, impossible dreams.
Her made-for-love body.
He wanted to lose himself in the soft iron of her soul.
Impossible. He gritted his teeth and ran harder, opening himself to the phantoms that stalked his nightmares, spirits of the hundreds of men he’d cut down. Unleashing the wraiths to fight the dangerous temptation of her. Replacing her sweet voice with echoing screams from the battlefield, her soothing almond and citrus scent vanishing amid the metallic tang of blood. Visions of her shining hair and honeyed lips too tender to survive the horror in his enemies’ eyes.
She is life, and I am death.
His feet were bloody, his eyesight blurred, by the time he stepped onto his property. Mantes, his helot attendant, met him with thinned lips, a brown-eyed glare, and a cup of watered wine.
“You are courting your own death with these punishing exercises. I wish you would just kill someone and get it out of your system.”
Alexios accepted the cup with a grunt and walked into the cool, dark interior of his kleros. He downed the wine, set the cup on the table, and laid his hands upon the stone mantle of his fireplace, stretching his tired back and shoulder muscles.
Mantes hovered near the table. He only hovered when something was wrong.
Like the day Sophia’s father was bitten by the snake.
Alexios sighed and closed his eyes, stretching farther, relishing the pain. “Out with it, brother. I am too tired to pry it out of you.”
Mantes refilled Alexios’s cup. “Calliope brought information from Queen Theodora’s inner chambers this morning.”
There was always news about his father’s wife. She was as calculating as she was beautiful. As mean as she was elegant. She despised him. Alexios didn’t blame her—he was a thorn in her sandal. She’d failed to give the king a son, but thought one of their daughters should be the new Eurypontid heir instead of the bastard son.
Unfortunately for everyone, King Davos disagreed with his queen.
“I care not for gossip from
that malicious goat.”
“You care not for gossip from any quarter.” Mantes muttered it like it was a bad thing.
Alexios squelched a smile, sparing a glance at his high-strung, wiry attendant before drinking the second cup of wine. A bath was in order, but first, he needed food. Drill tonight was going to be brutal. “I’m sure your friends would be a much more accommodating audience for royal gossip.”
“Calli said the queen had a colossal tantrum this morning,” Mantes continued like he hadn’t even heard Alexios. “Broken furniture, food on the ceiling, wine on the carpets, and slaves running for their lives.”
Alexios shook his head. “I don’t care.”
“It was about Princess Sophia.”
Alexios froze, then closed the distance between them. He towered over the young man, a sliver of guilt running through him when Mantes shrunk back. “Stop that. You know I’d never hurt you. Now tell me everything Calliope said.”
Mantes nodded rapidly, his good hand massaging his palsied arm. “Yes, I know, I know. You’re just so fucking big. And I hate when you get that look on your face like you’re going to eat me. Can’t you just—”
“Mantes,” Alexios growled.
He put his good hand up, placatingly. “Okay, okay. Calli said she was brushing the queen’s hair when the brush caught on a tangle. The queen screamed at her, and when she snatched the brush, she apparently saw a few gray hairs.” Mantes leaned forward, eyes wide. “The queen lost her mind, yelling and cursing at the top her lungs. She went after Calli and everyone else in the room. If she could lift it, it was her weapon—the brush, her combs, her breakfast tray, chairs, wine, the water pitcher, anything she could get her hands on. Calli said the queen’s eyes were absolutely crazed. Like she was Cerberus or something.”
Likening Theodora to the three-headed hound who keep the Dead from escaping the Underworld was an apt comparison. Still, Alexios put a hand on Mantes’s slim, but deceptively strong shoulder and tried to keep his voice even.