by Lisa Henry
Petronius had cut his wrists, bound them, and opened an amphora of wine with his friends. He laughed and drank the evening away as he slowly bled to death. Lucan, they said, had recited some lines about a dying soldier. And Senna, sitting in a fort in Syria, hadn’t fucking believed it when he’d heard.
He’d cried, and he hadn’t cried in years. For his dead friends, for Nero, not understanding who was the betrayer and who was the betrayed—even now he didn’t understand where it had all gone so fucking wrong—for Junia and her heartbreak, and for every single happy memory now ruined forever.
He wasn’t prepared for the place inside him that made room for thoughts of Aenor. It wasn’t happiness—how could it be?—but it was something he hadn’t expected. Jupiter, the pleasure he’d felt when he’d watched Aenor come! It had been about more than getting his cock into a warm body. He’d wanted to make it good for Aenor as well. Like Aenor somehow mattered. That could have been something worth exploring. Too bad they were both going to die.
Another wispy little wraith of regret wrapped itself around him.
Did the Bructeri believe in the afterlife?
Senna smiled wryly at his own dumb sentimentality. It didn’t matter what awaited either of them in the next world. The only thing that mattered was ridding this one of Nero.
“Find Canis,” he said to a passing slave. “Send him to the grove.”
He didn’t bother waiting for the slave to acknowledge the command.
He was Lucius Novius Senna, friend to Nero. Of course he would be obeyed.
Aenor did not like the grove. He still had nightmares about this place, about claws that ripped through his flesh. About bears and gods and madmen. About the stench of his own blood. But Senna was there, waiting, so Aenor had come.
He stood before Senna, flushed from the memory of the night before. Please, fuck me! he’d cried. Aenor had thought he’d had no pride left, but he must have because his face burned when he thought of how he’d begged a Roman to use him like that.
He shivered at the ache in his ass and the memory of how Senna had taken him on the bathhouse floor. Gently at first, then roughly. By the end, the pace had been punishing, but Aenor had been with him every step of the way.
The priestess Veleda said the Bructeri would never submit to Rome. Aenor had, and would again. Last night, he’d even wanted it. He was too small to stand alone against Rome, but with Senna he was strong. Maybe he could hate all Romans except this one. And maybe nobody else had to understand, just them.
Aenor searched for the connection from last night, that moment when Senna had looked him in the eye and everything else—Roman, Bructeri, patrician, slave, enemy—had fallen away and left nothing but their heartbeats behind. Maybe that had been a trick of the night. In the daylight, Aenor was a slave again.
“Here is good,” Senna said. He fixed his gaze on Aenor. “The space is small. The audience will be small.”
“Yes.” Aenor lifted his hand and touched one of the metal leaves. It spun on its wire, tinkling against the others, catching the sunlight. Aenor was very close to death now. He could feel it. He could almost touch it, and he didn’t need to be afraid.
Strange.
He would have preferred to die in a real forest, but fate had decided differently. Fate, or the Roman goddess Fortuna. She could write his end how she needed, Aenor decided, if she let him have his triumph first. He might die in this forest made of gold and silver leaves, but he would die dreaming of the Teutoburg Forest, of the way the light filtered down through the whispering leaves. Of the cold, clear waters of the Rinez. Of secret places where the Bructeri were strong, where they walked on the bones of the Roman dead. Where Aenor had.
This metal grove of trees was nothing more than a cold reflection in a bronze mirror.
Senna scowled at him. “Would you rather the stage of his theater? A larger audience?”
Aenor dropped his gaze, wondering at the sudden hostility in Senna’s voice. His stomach clenched. “No.”
Through the shining marble trunks of the trees, Aenor could see down the slope of the Palatine Hill into the city: red-roofed, sprawling, massive. From here he could even see the bottom turn of the track at the Circus Maximus where the chariots raced. The Tiber twisted through the city. On the other side of it, the sprawl of buildings continued past the Servian Wall, past any effort to contain it. The city was vast. A million people or more, one of the other slaves had told him, and Aenor couldn’t comprehend a number so large. The Romans believed each man’s fate was written in the stars. Aenor had glimpsed faint stars outshone by the brilliant river of light that spread across the sky, subsumed. Maybe it was true. Maybe those invisible stars belonged to the boatmen who plied their trade on the twisting Tiber, to the beggars and the poor who lived in crowded insulae in the Subura and the Aventine, to the nameless slaves. He wondered if Novius Senna had a star to call his own, or would, after this.
He risked a glance at Senna.
Senna frowned. “You agree to everything.”
“You don’t like it?” Aenor asked.
“I don’t trust it.”
Aenor fought not to step back. He held Senna’s gaze. “I know your name. I know what you tell me to do. I agree. You want me not to?”
Senna’s frown deepened. He reached up and tapped his fingers against Aenor’s temple. “I want to know what’s in here. I want to understand what you’re thinking.”
Aenor shook his head. “You want me talk to you? Latin is not good. I say yes, no, placet, dominus. I think, always I think in my head, but sometimes cannot say.”
Senna held his palm against Aenor’s cheek. “I want you to try.”
“Yes.” Aenor chewed his bottom lip for a moment. A hundred words swirled in his head, a thousand, but they were all Bructeri. He could paint pictures with words in Bructeri, but Latin reduced him to something less than a man. He frowned as he found the one Latin word that should have counted for something: “Innocent.”
Senna raised his eyebrows.
“I tell them,” Aenor said. His throat ached. He swallowed. “I am Bructeri, I am innocent.”
Sacred Tuisto, it was an old wound now, but he had just gone and ripped the scab off. The thing he desperately needed then, still needed now: he needed a Roman to listen. To stop laughing, stop sneering, and just fucking listen. He clenched his fists as Senna’s face swam behind stinging tears.
“Innocent,” Aenor said again. “We did not kill the man. Just went to sell cloth, yes?”
“Yes,” Senna said, his fingers trailing down Aenor’s cheek.
Aenor pulled away, scrubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Innocent, but doesn’t matter.”
Senna’s mouth quirked into a smile. “No, it doesn’t.”
Aenor wondered if that smile should have angered him—he was sick of Romans smiling at his humiliation—but it didn’t. Senna’s smile was rueful, self-aware. They were both fucked one way or the other, weren’t they? Strange, but Aenor took some comfort in that.
“Sacred Veleda says the Bructeri will rise,” he said. “Maybe me too.”
Senna’s smile grew. “Maybe you will.”
“We both die.”
“Together,” Senna said. “And we take him with us.”
A pleasurable shiver slid down Aenor’s spine. Yes. He’d been a dead man since the moment the First Spear had brought him down on the banks of the Rinez and dragged him weeping in front of that stone-faced Roman magistrate. He was a dead man. Rome had stripped him of his freedom, his pride, and his life. He had nothing else to lose. Maybe there was nothing more dangerous than a dead man.
He could do this. With Senna, he could.
With Senna, he wasn’t alone.
“Tell me,” he said.
Senna drew him over toward the shallow steps where the audience had sat and watched the last time Aenor had been in the grove. Laughed and applauded while the beast devoured him. Aenor shivered again. There was no pleasure in it this
time.
They sat.
Senna put an arm around Aenor’s shoulder and drew him closer. “There will be a chair for Julius Caesar. After you lose a fight to the legionaries, you’ll kneel before it. Nero will be Caesar.”
Aenor turned his face to catch Senna’s scent. His cock stirred under his thin tunic. “The knife?”
“Under the chair.” Senna’s lips brushed his ear. “There is a panel with an eagle on it. Push it; it retracts.”
“You sure?” Aenor frowned.
“I’m sure. I’ve tried it a hundred times. You won’t have long to act. I will try to keep the Praetorians back, but you have to be fast. Aim for an artery. Do you know where to strike?”
“Neck,” Aenor said. That’s how the First Spear had killed Bana: a quick, sharp downward thrust between the neck and the collarbone when Bana had been on his knees. The legionary had been cold, methodical. The suddenness of it had shocked Aenor.
“You’ll be kneeling,” Senna said. He placed his hand on Aenor’s knee. “Relax.”
Aenor’s breath caught in his throat as Senna slid his hand up his leg to his inner thigh. He widened his legs, his cock stiffening in anticipation.
“Here,” Senna said, his fingers sliding along the sensitive skin where Aenor’s thigh met his groin. His knuckles bumped against Aenor’s rising cock. “Stab a man here, and he’ll bleed out in moments.”
Aenor leaned back, his eyes closing. “Senna . . .”
“Do you think you can remember this, Aenor?” Senna’s voice was low with amusement. Maybe desire as well.
Aenor nodded. “Yes,” he gasped. “I remember.”
“If not here, go for the gut.” Senna withdrew his touch. “It won’t be as quick, but it should be fatal.”
Aenor opened his eyes. Sunlight dazzled him. “Show me the other place again.”
Senna laughed. His palm slid up the prickling flesh of Aenor’s inner thigh. “Here?”
“Yes.” Aenor jerked as Senna curled his fingers around his cock. Tuisto! He shifted, the lip of the step behind him digging into his spine. He would bruise. He didn’t care. “Please!”
“Wait.” Senna pressed his lips against Aenor’s throat, his breath hot. “Up. Lean back against me.”
Aenor obeyed, his heart thumping and his cock already leaking. He settled into Senna’s arms, leaning his head back against the man’s shoulder. He moaned as Senna gripped his cock again, his other hand splayed against Aenor’s chest.
Aenor felt lightheaded, wanton. He wasn’t bound now, wasn’t under anyone, wasn’t being used. He was in Senna’s arms because he wanted it, because they both did. Because he trusted the Roman not to hurt him.
Senna was one of the most feared men in Rome, but Aenor wasn’t afraid. Tuisto, he didn’t care if the man was the god of the Roman underworld himself; he trusted him, trusted this. He frowned at the glittering gold and silver leaves as they shivered in the breeze. How had that happened?
Senna began to stroke Aenor’s cock, gently pulling the foreskin back.
Aenor moaned and rocked his hips. “Other Romans are afraid of you.”
Senna didn’t break his rhythm. “Yes, I tell them they no longer have the friendship of the emperor.”
“Why?”
“Because he tells me to.” Senna’s voice was steady. “Because I’m a coward.”
Aenor sucked in a ragged breath, arching into Senna’s touch. “No. Not that.”
“Because I came home after Lucan died, and Tigellinus asked me if my sister was well. Do you understand?”
Aenor nodded. He had knelt at Tigellinus’s feet for long enough to know how dangerous the man’s smile and soft words were.
He reached back and hooked an arm around Senna’s neck, drew Senna’s head down and turned his own to meet it. They kissed, and Aenor let the Roman push his tongue into his mouth. It was the strangest sensation: heat and warmth and the same back and forth rhythm of fucking. While they kissed, Senna’s hand kept slowly pumping Aenor’s leaking cock, and Aenor writhed under his touch.
Aenor tilted his head back as Senna’s mouth found his jaw. “He killed your friend Lucien?”
“Lucan,” Senna told him. “The poet. Yes.”
Aenor raked his fingers through Senna’s dark curls. “You want to kill him because he killed your friend?”
Senna bit down gently on Aenor’s jaw. “No. Lucan was guilty. I thought he was reckless, stupid.” He exhaled slowly. “I’d been away. I didn’t see what they saw. Corbulo though, Corbulo’s only crime was his success.”
Aenor’s balls drew up. He pushed back into Senna, opening his legs wider. He arched his spine, groaning as he felt the hard length of the Roman’s cock pressing against the small of his back. Aenor pulled at the neck of his tunic, trying to hitch it up. He wanted skin on skin. He wanted to feel Senna’s cock leave hot trails across his flesh.
Senna held Aenor tighter, one hand on his chest and the other one curled around his aching cock. “Don’t move.”
“You want to rub on me like a, a—” Aenor’s breath left his body in a whuff as Senna tightened his grip. His voice was pitched higher when he spoke again. “Like a dog?”
“I want you a hundred different ways,” Senna growled in his ear. “But I’ll take what I can in the time we have left.”
“Yes.” Aenor bit his lip.
The gold and silver leaves glittered in the sun, speckling them with light. Light danced, shadows flickered, and Aenor gasped as Senna worked his cock. He arched his neck and stared up at the brilliant sky. A flock of birds wheeled across it. Aenor felt the earth drop away underneath him, and squeezed his eyes shut.
“Good boy.” Senna breathed hard against his ear. “Come, Aenor!”
Shuddering, shaking, Aenor cried out as his cock fountained over Senna’s hand. He fell back against Senna, weak, spent. Senna kept pumping his over-sensitized cock until more hot seed bubbled from the slit and Aenor gasped for breath. “Senna!”
Senna laughed and released Aenor’s cock at last. He gripped his chin and turned his face for a kiss.
“You?” Aenor asked, aware of Senna’s cock prodding against his lower back, trapped behind too many layers of clothing. He didn’t wait for an answer. He twisted in Senna’s embrace, wriggling down between the Roman’s legs. He put his hands on Senna’s knees, and looked up for permission.
Senna, his eyes hooded, nodded.
Aenor moistened his lips with his tongue as he pushed Senna’s tunic up his legs. A tunic, an undershirt, and no underwear. Aenor knew Roman fashion now. He could find his way through the maze of folds on a heavy woolen toga. Senna’s casual daywear was no challenge at all.
Senna’s cock was long and full, dark with blood and jutting up from a nest of curls. The foreskin had retracted, revealing the glans already shining with pre-cum. Aenor wasted no time leaning down to take the bulbous head in his mouth. He’d done this a hundred times since arriving in the Golden House, but this was the first time he wanted to.
Senna gasped and reached down to twine his fingers in Aenor’s hair.
Aenor ran his tongue over the head of Senna’s cock. It tasted salty, bitter. He dipped his tongue into the slit in the head. Senna’s hands tightened in his hair. Aenor opened his mouth, drawing Senna’s cock inside. He pressed his tongue against the throbbing vein on the underside, sealed his lips along the shaft, and sucked. He curled one hand around the rest of Senna’s shaft, and cradled his balls with the other.
He wanted to make this good for Senna. Wanted to give him something he hadn’t given anyone else, something more than just a slave’s passive acquiescence. Wanted it to matter.
Aenor closed his eyes and concentrated on the suction, on making Senna squirm. Senna twisted his fingers through Aenor’s hair, tugging gently but not forcing. Aenor moved forward, opening his jaw and feeling the head of Senna’s cock at the back of his throat. He’d been afraid at this point before with other men, but not now. Not with Senna. He filled his lungs with
air, opened his throat, and swallowed.
“Jupiter!”
Aenor bobbed his head back and forth as Senna began to thrust into his throat.
“Jupiter, Aenor!” Senna moaned, and the sound sent a shiver of pleasure through Aenor, and brought him out in gooseflesh.
Senna’s balls drew up in Aenor’s hand, and his cock jerked. Aenor swallowed as Senna came, flooding his mouth with heat. He swallowed until there was nothing else to swallow and, flushed with exertion, leaned back on his knees to look up at Senna sprawled on the steps in front of him.
“Was good?” he asked breathlessly.
“Jupiter,” Senna said again, his gaze flicking to Aenor’s mouth.
Aenor swiped his tongue over his lips, savoring the taste. He blinked in the light.
Senna smiled suddenly, a crooked grin that made him look almost boyish. “You and me, Aenor, we’re going to save the empire.”
Aenor wrinkled his nose.
“What?”
“Fuck your empire. I just want to kill Nero.”
Senna’s smile vanished. His jaw tightened.
Aenor’s heartbeat quickened and his blood ran cold. Had he gone too far?
Then Senna laughed, relaxing, and the sound rang through the sunlit glade. He patted the step beside him, and Aenor climbed up and sat beside him. They gazed out over the sprawling city and Aenor thought of the home he’d never see again. The ache wasn’t as sharp with Senna beside him.
Around them, the wind made music in the gold and silver leaves.
Aenor knew to take food and sleep as he found it. There were cells over by the washhouse where the pleasure slaves slept during the day. The doors were left open, unguarded. It was pointless to lock them when the walls surrounding the grounds were insurmountable and the Praetorians kept the exits to the vast city secure.
Since being brought to the Golden House, Aenor hadn’t left it. He knew Tigellinus was his master, but he had never seen where the man lived or worked. Aenor was kept at the Golden House for his master to use whenever he dined there, and for Nero’s use whenever the urge took him. And now for Senna’s.
