His hand splayed over the slick skin at the small of my back, rested there for a moment before falling away. I heard him stand, heard the brush of cloth over skin as he cleaned himself.
Then the padding of bare feet on stone as he walked away.
I was full of seed, full of the potential for a child, but I was very much alone.
CHAPTER FOUR
My body ached, and my heart even more so.
The sheets beneath me were bunched uncomfortably, but I could not find the energy to move. I was more conflicted than I could ever remember being.
My body was limp with satisfaction. My mind was not. My thoughts trailed, one after another, in a circle that rotated with ever-increasing speed.
How could I have found pleasure tonight? I should have found only embarrassment. Before Marcus, the only other man that I had been with was my husband, and he was the very person who had betrayed me, had sold me out.
I knew that he thought he was justified in his actions. I was more inclined to think that perhaps he should have just pursued the patronage of another, though finding another man of such high patrician status who would give us any attention was indeed unlikely. Though we were of the highest class of plebeians, plebeians we still were.
There was not anything to be done about that. A person was born to his class—it was simply dependent upon the whims of the gods.
Still. I felt slightly akin to a common whore. My body was being used as an instrument for financial gain. And yet I also felt a wild, terrible hope that even now a new life was forming in my belly.
To add to all of this, I still felt shame over my encounter with Marcus days earlier. Shame, and yet the strong feelings that my heart held for him would not wane. I still prayed that, should I become with child, it would be his. The thought of bearing a child that would be half of some man that I did not know, much less cared for, was unappealing in its strangeness.
Oh, this was such a mess.
Lucius chose the moment in which my thoughts had sunk the lowest in which to push aside the curtain to my chamber and make his appearance. He did not even announce his presence before entering, and it made me angry.
“Well done, Alba.” His jovial persona suggested that I had done something to earn his favor in the manner of performing well at a dinner full of politicians. I found it slightly incredible that he would not come to me with his head bowed and guilt hanging over him like a shroud.
I did not reply, simply stared at him balefully from eyes that stung with dry tears and a mouth pinched in upset.
“Oh, come now, do not be like that.” He reached out a hand to stroke it down my arm. I flinched back, away from his touch, and could not believe that he looked affronted.
He switched tactics. “I have something for you.” Holding out his palm, I saw a small silk sack, tied closed with a drawstring, resting on the damp flesh. “To thank you for tonight.”
At these words I sat straight up. I could not ignore them. “Do you think my forgiveness can be bought?” I swatted at his hand, and amazement colored his features, exaggerated comically by drink, though I could not tell if it was because I had raised a hand to him, or because I thought he needed forgiveness.
“Alba. This is for our family.” I let my lips curve upward, just the slightest bit, in bitter distaste. He again held out the pouch, shaking it a little with impatience. “Go on, take it.”
“I will not.” If he had chosen to come to me after I had had some more time in which to arrange my thoughts, or even when they had not been so dark and depressing, I might have been more receptive to his overtures. Instead I was filled with rage, rage that all of my confusion, my upset, was due to him, the man who had promised to love and cherish me for all time.
Another slight astonishment appeared on his face, then regret. Then the tiniest flash of calculation, before he released an exaggerated, comical sigh, one that spoke of a beleaguered husband dealing with his shrew of a wife.
“Very well. I will open it for you.” I turned away, not caring what was in the sack, but he dangled the contents in front of my face. It was a necklace, a beautiful one with a cluster of shining indigo sapphires dripping from a thick gold chain.
It was lovely, and at any other time I would have been thrilled with the gift.
At that moment, it enraged me instead of pleasing.
“Again, husband. What makes you think that my forgiveness can be bought?” I felt sick to my stomach that this was what my husband thought of me, that I was the kind of woman who could be placated by shiny baubles.
“It cost thirty denarii.” His words were proud as he thrust his chest forward. “I am certain that we will well be able to afford it, soon enough.”
After I had been impregnated by the gladiator who had made me weak in the knees and overcome my resistance to the situation. Yes, then we would have plenty of money, and all I had to sacrifice was my pride and my morality—though I supposed that I had already thrust my morals into question the second that I had ordered Marcus to remove his leathers. Still, that had been my own choice. In my coupling with the masked warrior, the gods would be frowning down upon me for a decision that had had nothing to do with me.
“You had best save the coin.” I turned away from the empty enticement of gleaming blue. “If you are to gift me every time I fuck one of your men, we will be on the streets within a month.”
He waved away my words like an insect, revealing still more about his feelings toward me compared with his feelings for the ludus. He would not, perhaps could not, acknowledge my anger, for it was inconsequential to him when compared with the prospect of losing his familial legacy.
“I am confident that this man will sow his seed.” His grin then became a bit silly, and my suspicions that he had been into the cups with Justinus were confirmed. “And you will be mother to a champion.” He all but licked his lips as he spoke the last word, and I wondered briefly if he felt a sexual pleasure from the thought of his “child” being of such prestigious stock.
Lucius had always been attracted to power. It fed him in ways that I was only now beginning to see.
Still, my heart leapt at his words. We had no champion, not since Quintus the Large had been put to his honorable death in the arena. Rather, we had three men who were considered to have the potential to become champions.
Three men. Caius. Appius.
And Marcus.
Lucius mistook the change in my mood, and I was shocked with just how he took it. With one fumbling yet quick movement, the chain of sapphires was around my neck, the largest stone hanging heavily beneath my breasts, and those very same breasts were being roughly massaged with wine-fueled hands.
“Lucius!” My breasts had not felt the touch of my husband’s hands in recent memory, and I was appalled that he would think to touch me now. Now, when the scent of sex with another man seeped from my skin, and that same man’s semen stained my thighs.
“I will touch you, Alba.” The scent of fermented grape was heavy on the hot breath that grazed my cheek from behind. “I will touch you everywhere he touched you, and brand you again as my own.”
For a moment I was too shocked to even breathe. To brand me as his own? He may have been the head of my family, of the house in which I lived, but I was not a slave. I belonged to no one but myself.
I told him so, and tried to wrench out of the tight squeeze of his arms. He merely laughed, though his laugh sounded hollow, and raked his hands lower over my flesh.
“If I fuck you now, if I place my cock in your cunt, it will be as if I am the one impregnating you. In fact, we will never know whose child it actually is.” The wine was loosening his tongue, for never would my reserved husband make such an admission under normal circumstances.
I writhed in his arms, but not in pleasure. A trickle of fear began to make its presence known, drugging me and stealing my strength.
Yes, this was my husband, but I did not want this. Not like this, and not now.
“I will have my wife.” I was shoved unceremoniously toward the bed. “For you are my wife, and it is your duty.”
“And it is your duty to honor that wife!” I fought to wrest the lace of my tunic, which still smelled of the musk of sex, from his clumsy fingers. “If you persist in this, I will scream!”
I felt as if I had received a blow to the stomach when he merely laughed. “Who would come to your aid? I am the head of this house.” The fear came in a potent dose then. I did not know this man at all, had never seen this side of him.
I screamed anyway. It made him start, and I saw confusion, shame, and bitterness swim through his eyes. I thought for a moment that I had finally broken through to him, but then he continued his fumbling ministrations regardless. Tears began to leak down my cheeks, burning the tender skin that lay there.
Had I not suffered enough humiliation for one night?
“Apologies, Dominus, Domina.”
I screamed again, this time because I was startled. Justinus stood in the entrance to my bed chamber, his face unreadable from that distance.
“Get gone.” Lucius struggled still to rake my skirts up to my hips. “I want to fuck my wife.”
I had never been happier to see Justinus, though I was appalled that he had the audacity to enter my room uninvited. Though perhaps he had taken my scream as an invitation, which I supposed that it in fact was.
“Apologies, Dominus.” The words were repeated. “But I suspect that you will be unhappy in the morning if you follow this course of action.” He mimed a cup lifted to his lips, and though I could not believe that Justinus would dare to advise my husband such, I was again grateful.
And it was also as I had suspected. Lucius was drunk. But I had never believed that drunkenness changed one’s personality. It merely allowed inhibitions to fall away.
I thought that Lucius would ignore Justinus, or would send him away. But given the softness at the front of his tunic, one caused by the excess of drink, I suspected that he welcomed the excuse to back down.
“Very well.” The full effects of the wine seemed to be hitting my husband only now. His words slurred, and he had trouble righting himself after removing his unwanted flesh from my own. “I’ll go fuck someone else.” The words were sharp and pierced my heart, even though I knew that that was exactly what he did most nights, and though I knew that he was in no condition to fuck anyone at all that night.
Or perhaps he already had. Even though I was shaking and still blinking back the salty sting of tears, I smelled the unmistakable scent of sex wafting off his garments with his abrupt movement.
It did not come from me, that much I knew. I had run a sponge with water that smelled of herbs over my skin before I had left the chamber in which I had rutted with the gladiator. I could still smell the oils that had coated the wash basin, transferred to my skin and masking the scent of sex.
So that same smell was coming from Lucius, and not myself. This told me even more about his current state of mind. He had not been wanting me for release, not when he had clearly had one so very recently. No, he had wanted just what he had admitted. To mix his seed with that of the masked man, so that we might not know who the child belonged to. For though the doctor had indicated that he thought Lucius unable to spawn a child, we had no way of knowing for sure.
I did not think I could feel any worse. Justinus cast me a guarded look that I took as a warning.
“We all do what we must to get through.” He muttered the words as he took Lucius by the arm and helped him from my room. I merely blinked at him—was the man I despised offering me comfort? I decided that I did not care as I sat, frozen with shock, on the edge of my bed. His face was unreadable, unreadable with perhaps the slightest hint of anger, and he looked as if he wanted to say something to me but either could not or would not.
And then I was alone, as I had been before my husband had so very nearly raped me. There were no words to describe my feelings, no thoughts that could assimilate what had just happened with the reality of my life.
I only knew that, though I had not been perfectly happy before any of this week’s events had occurred, I had never dreamed of leaving my husband.
Now, it was a possibility foremost in mind.
I refused to ponder the impossibility of it. I needed the dream to get me through the horrific reality of the moment. And as I fingered the heavy stones that still dangled around my neck—my payment for fucking, just like a whore—I allowed myself to dream.
The necklace had cost thirty denarii. That was no small sum, assuming it could be resold for a similar value.
The thought took root and began to sprout, and I slid off of my bed and to the floor, where I stretched out a hand for the polished wooden box that was stored beneath.
It contained my jewelry, every piece that I owned.
The wood felt cold and smooth under my fevered fingertips, and I focused on the sensation, letting it take precedence over everything else that wanted to float to the surface.
The interior of the box was lined with heavy velvet, velvet that matched the curtains that had separated myself and the gladiator from Justinus tonight. It contained a dream of freedom, though it was not something that I could seriously consider. But a dream might be enough to help me through the horror, and so I let go and dreamed away.
The ring with a sanguine ruby the size of a bird’s egg had been my gift from Lucius after our vows. I remembered his boast that it had cost him sixty denarii, an unheard-of sum—and really, it had cost his father that amount, for his father had still been alive and in charge of the ludus at the time. I rarely wore it, as it caught on things with ridiculous ease, but its price could support a woman in good style for months.
Then there was a bracelet, gold with a stone of pale green, the type I didn’t know. And another ring, one ringed around with sparkles of all different hues.
My lips curved in bittersweet remembrance when my fingers found my childhood bulla. A locket given to every Roman child at birth, it contained an amulet intended to ward off evil. I had worn it until the eve of my vows with Lucius, and then had set it aside, in this very chest.
I would not sell this. Likely I could not, as they were common as rats and worth nearly nothing, but even had it contained diamonds, I’d have kept this reminder of my childhood, a more innocent time in my life.
Shaking my head to clear it of such whimsical thoughts, I returned my attention to the task at hand. There were hair combs carved from pure gold, a necklace with opals the color of cream. Even clamps for my nipples, which dangled with strings of onyx beads.
All of these could be sold at the market, or sold to a jeweler, and I knew a few. They would not support me forever, not in the style in which I was accustomed, but they could allow me freedom.
But at what cost would that freedom come? I would have to go far away, would have to change my name if I did not wish to be found. A husband had a legal right to forcibly keep his wife at home, or to retrieve her from elsewhere. That was if he did not divorce me.
And where would I go? My birth family had no obligation to take me in, and I could be found there too easily. And what of my life after the money from my jewels ran out? Even if I lived modestly, it would not last me forever. I would be forced into slavery myself, for I had no skills from which I could earn a living. I knew of no business but gladiators, and a woman could not open a ludus.
I knew, deep in my gut, that I would never be able to leave on my own. I would have to find a way to bear my circumstances here, the forced relations that I so shamefully reveled in, the unpredictable husband who saw me as a possession, the man whom I longed for and needed to forget.
If only I knew what that way was.
CHAPTER FIVE
It seemed to be just my luck that the nex
t day, one in which I wanted nothing more than to hide in some shadowy recess of the house, I had to put on a bright smile, extend a loving hand, and support my husband in public.
I had risen early, or rather I had not slept much, and Drusilla had entered my chambers that morning to find me tucked into a small ball on the cold, hard floor, glittery baubles all around me. I had heard the gasp that had escaped her lips as she ran across the floor toward me, and had felt her arms around me as I buried my head into her lap and cried a river of bitter tears. She had held me wordlessly—what was there to say, after all? But she offered comfort where I needed it most, and I was grateful.
I had never considered that she would take any of my jewels, as I might with another slave. I trusted her completely, not needing to watch as she tidied them quickly, placing each back in its box with a reverence that showed she had never owned anything so expensive.
No, I hadn’t needed to watch, but I had, again calculating the worth of each as her fingers touched it. The baubles were my insurance, my hope, and my mind was full of them as the girl all but dragged me to the baths to wash away the stripes of my tears and to clean me for the games.
I knew she had heard of the events of the evening before, of Lucius’ visit to my room, and of what had transpired. There were no secrets in a house with slaves. It was almost a relief to not have to share, to not have to formulate those words on the tongue to explain my tired eyes, my swollen face, my ragged appearance.
She already knew why I had difficulty walking. The area between my thighs had not been so tender since the night I lost my virginity.
I had urged her to rush through the bath, for it still brought memories of Marcus, of what I wanted so desperately and yet could not have. Then I sat with a poultice of chilled herbs and extracts on my eyes while she dressed my hair and fussed with the tunic that I would wear that day.
I made certain to fasten the golden necklace with its heavy eggs of sapphire around my neck. It was my payment for becoming a whore, and I would announce it to the world.
My Wicked Gladiators Page 6
