by Lydia Pax
Chapter 23
There was some time left before Conall was required to be back inside his cell block and Leda sat with him at a small bench next to the watering trough. The gladiators training sands lay before them. The trough was inside of a small shed buried into the earth next to the long stairwell up to the estate house.
Without knowing why, she had walked with Conall, her arm in his; and when he sat down in the shed, she sat next to him.
“That was an intense day,” he said.
“Yes.”
She noticed for the first time all day, really, how close their bodies had been. It felt good. Natural. She liked touching him, and she really liked him touching her. In the quiet space of the oncoming evening, she could feel how his touch sent a heavy heat throbbing through her body. Her hand rested on his naked thigh, tracing the thick muscles there. Emboldened by this, his own arm came across her shoulders, resting lightly on her shoulder.
She wished he would dare for more.
“Thank you for speaking up for me,” he said. “But I would rather you not do it again. You wanted that letter. I could see how you wanted it. You could have had it and I the lashings.”
She shrugged. “Publius will give it to me eventually. His honor won’t allow anything else.”
“Are you sure about that? Honor is a peculiar disease. It justifies all sorts of things.”
“He’s too stubborn about his word to keep it from me forever.”
“Then I should expect a lashing sometime soon.”
Her face twitched. She hadn’t quite thought of that.
“I’ve made it worse, haven’t I?”
Conall made a small gesture with his hand—he didn’t know. But she could read his face, and she knew that she was right. The apology was on her tongue, trying to come out, and she let out a long breath. Why did it have to be so very difficult to apologize to this good man?
But before she could, he changed the subject. “Do you know why that man wanted to kill you?”
Her hand squeezed on his thigh in reflex. His breath let out softly.
“I don’t have any idea.”
She wished she did. Her mind had only recently slowed down enough to even think of what might be happening. Were she in Armenia, such an episode would immediately bring assassins to mind. But no one knew where she was. Did they? Could they?
Was it an assassin sent to kill her for being a princess?
“I thought perhaps it was some angry creditor,” suggested Conall. “Taking revenge on Publius by acting upon you.”
“Yes.” Leda nodded. “Yes, that makes sense. But which one? He’s got quite a few at the moment.”
“It’s a big pool. And they’re not even angry at him, really. But they can’t take revenge on a dead woman.”
“If any of us could,” said Leda, “then Publius would be first in line. You should hear him swear her name when he looks over the numbers at night. He’s had to cut the clients of House Varinius in half.”
Clients and patrons were the lifeblood of Rome. Almost every freedman was a client, and everyone above a freedman a patron. Equestrians and nobles patronized clients to get them to vote this way or that in any local elections, or to ensure that they had manpower if they needed it. It was a system of favors that favored thuggish behavior and heavy, regular donatives from patron to client. A strange way to live a life, Leda thought, but there was little in questioning the fact that it all certainly made sense to Romans.
“Are you all right?”
He took her arm and looked at its bruised surface. There was a scrape up her shoulder. The touch made her feet soar high into the air, and the fact that Leda was looking at them firmly planted on the ground only generated confusion. Her heart thumped heavily. It would be very easy, she realized, to simply grab his head and bring his lips to hers.
Very easy.
“You know very well I am all right. You’ve suffered worse, I’m sure.”
He shrugged. “Pain is relative. What is fine for me perhaps is insufferable for another.”
His grip remained steady on her arm, and she did not pull away. His fingers were rough, yes, calloused all over. But there was a gentle firmness to his touch. Slowly, his fingers slid down to her hand.
She didn’t understand what was happening. Her heart beat very fast. Some terribly sensible part of her wanted to run away and slide back into the safety of her cell back in the house. But there was no force in the world that could have pulled her away at that moment.
“You acted bravely,” she said, and found she couldn’t help herself from adding, “for a slave.”
“I forgot you are not a slave also, but a very clever nymph in disguise.” He smiled. “Or is it a dryad?”
“There are no trees here,” she gestured. “And no streams either. I’m a very poor spirit if I am either.”
“But certainly, you’re not a slave.”
“No.” She smiled. “You’re right. I am a slave. So.” Her hand drew his in to her waist. His eyes widened. “Let us act how slaves do in the darkness.”
Chapter 24
Conall found it difficult to believe what was happening.
Kissing Leda.
Kissing her mouth. Kissing her with his tongue and hers intermingling hotly, his hands running up the smooth curves of her side. She gripped at his shoulders and his neck, tugging at his skin like she needed more of it to touch.
After months of wanting, months of waiting, somehow the world finally felt right. He did not know what he had done to deserve this sweet, lovely, gift, and it was far too enjoyable to spend time wondering about it.
He knew he had saved her life, of course. That wasn’t lost on him. And that she kissed him now out of some sense of heavy attraction spurred forward by her gratitude was not lost on him either.
And probably too, she kissed because she’d had a brush with death. A knife had been pulled on her—a knife that had already killed one person and would have killed at least two more in the alley if Conall hadn’t acted. Perhaps she felt it time to live life to its fullest.
Conall did not care. He loved Leda, with his entire heart, and he had saved her life and now she kissed him for it.
All thoughts faded away. Her lips brushed against his chin, hungry, and worries about Publius vanished. His hand reached to the small of her back, tugging her halfway onto his lap, and all memories of his bloody past evaporated. Her fingers raked across his skull, lost in a thick tangle of his hair, and pulled herself ever closer to him. All of this became little more than background noise to the concert of joy playing in tune with their long, heavy kissing.
She smelled like rain and tasted like gentle spices. He wanted everything of her that he could taste, that he could feel.
Such lust took hold of him that his senses nearly left completely. His hands roamed far, farther still than perhaps he should have let them. Her breasts were right there, full and beautiful, the subject of more dreams than he could count. There was no more restraining his hands than there was chaining a whirlwind.
And yet as he pushed them upward, arching her back, she did not protest. Instead a deep moan of arousal left her mouth, sweet vibrations pushing across his lips.
She wanted more. Her breasts filled his big hands, the nipples erect and hard as they slid through his fingers. Slowly she pushed onto his lap, whipping her hair to one side and straddling his leg.
Her heated center pressed hard on the muscles of his thigh and he could feel well how intense her desire was. His own erection pressed upward into that center, and it took all of his self-control not to rip her clothes off and take her on the training sands.
Instead he occupied himself with the gentle curvature of her spine, the flesh of her thighs. It all felt amazing, and there was plenty to feel. Her willingness under his touch made him ever bolder. Soft moans exited her mouth, and he realized that he moaned too. Words sat on the edge of his mouth, aching to invite her to some dark corner of the ludus where they could have a
s much privacy as a slave might.
This was everything he had wanted since the moment he had seen her. He loved this woman, this beautiful woman.
Chapter 25
Whether from the events of the day or the force of Conall’s affection, Leda’s mind drifted far, far away as their heated embrace continued. The pulsing pleasure of her entrance continued to rub slowly on Conall’s clear erection, sending thrills through her body such as she had never felt in her life.
She imagined a place where she was no longer a slave. Where she was no longer even a princess. Where she was beyond the labels of stations and represented only within the bounds of what she, as an individual, wanted for herself.
The kiss moved with the fantasy, in every new tiny world that she imagined. They were in a cottage somewhere in the middle of a deep, fertile green valley, and Conall kissed her madly, gripping at her thighs and holding her tighter against the stiff rod of his want.
They moved North and she lived with him in a cabin somewhere snowy and cold, though their home was always warm, and he kissed her wildly, sliding her hips on top of his, with her breasts crushed against the full strength of his chest.
She waited in a small house by the ocean catching fish, and when he returned home from his own job she pounced on him with all her desire, and she kissed Conall furiously, hands finding ever new wonders of heavy muscle across his sturdy limbs and back.
As her teeth raked against his chin, Leda started to develop some very bad ideas about what was to happen next. Her want was too much. She wanted this man, and she wanted to feel him inside her—and soon. Now.
Biology took over, and only urgency remained. Her lips slipped up to his ear, the whisper for her need forming in her mouth.
A throat cleared.
They both turned, disengaging slowly. It was Septus—a doctore who Leda had only passing reference to.
“Stupidity takes many forms,” he said, “but public stupidity is one of the very worst. I would advise you on several fronts, the first and foremost of these to have some discretion.” He stepped aside and showed them the grounds behind him. The gate to the front of the ludus was in plain view. A guard turning his head could have seen directly to where they were with only a little effort.
“You are directly out in the open, flagrantly violating the bounds of class.”
“We are both slaves,” said Leda. “Are slaves not allowed to show one another affection when their owner does not require their presence?”
Septus raised an eyebrow. “You are hardly a slave in the truest sense of the word. You are a very strange hostage.”
Conall stood up, setting Leda off his lap. “Why don’t you walk some place where you’re wanted, Septus?”
“That is doctore to you.”
“Once upon a time I called you friend, Doctore.”
“And I call you friend still.” Septus’s face was lined with articulate annoyance. “And it is because I call you friend that I insist that you remember where you are and what you are. She may be a slave now, but no royalty has ever remained a slave for long. Either her family will free her or some noble hoping to raise his status will learn of her status here and free her to be able to spin a story to his high society. You are a gladiator—”
“—I know.” He held up a hand. “And not a very good one at that.”
Septus shook his head. “I never said you weren’t good, Conall. Only that you were too stubborn to realize exactly how good you are.”
Leda gripped Conall’s hand as hard as she could. It did not seem as if she could let it go.
“Leave us be,” said Leda.
“You can be left however you like. For your own sakes, I ask that you do not fool yourselves.”
He pointed to a guard patrolling near the wall. In a few minutes, he would walk by the trough.
“It’s lights out soon,” said Septus. “Say your good nights and get to bed.”
Chapter 26
From that point forward, Conall was no longer allowed to work as a bodyguard.
He explained to Leda that it did not matter that much. She was actually impressed to find that he had taken the job purely to try to gain Publius’s favor.
For some idiot reason, she couldn’t stop herself from thinking that if she hadn’t been the target of an assassination attempt, he very well may have impressed the lanista. It was a stupid, self-blaming thought, and yet still it floated in her head from time to time.
And so Conall returned to training. Leda did not make a habit of watching the men train, but she started to. She took long errands for other slaves around the grounds, taking deliberately obtuse paths to her destinations so she might trail by the sands and see Conall, shirtless and sweaty with his muscles rippling in the sunlight.
It was a sight that drove her breath away, every time.
In the nights, they met and they kissed—and that was as far as it went. After being no longer emotionally and physically drained from the ordeal in the market, it was simpler for Leda to cut things off well before her desires took such a firm hold of her mind that there was no choice but to give in and make beautiful, urgent love to the gladiator.
She wanted that, of course. And often she wanted it desperately.
But she had been raised as a princess, told her entire life that nothing was more important than keeping herself pure and virginal for her future husband.
And Conall was rugged, and ripped, and recklessly passionate. And, most of all, he could not ever be her husband.
But that did not mean they could not enjoy one another’s presence.
He, repeatedly, told her that he loved her. He did not say it with his mouth, understanding without her ever saying it that it would have made her uncomfortable for her to hear it as often as he meant it. And so he said it in other ways.
He said it in the small arrangements of flowers he gave to her when she arrived in his cell. He said it in the long back rubs he gave to her without ever asking anything in return. He said in the simple, strong way he held her, as if protecting her, and in the way that he did protect her because when she was with him she did not worry or think of anything else but his presence.
But it couldn’t be. She knew it couldn’t be. Septus was right—perfectly so—when he said it couldn’t be.
The day after Septus caught them, she told him exactly how everything was.
“What happened between us simply can’t go on,” she said, entering his cell with her head high in the air. “I can accept that it did. I think you a fine man. But what pleasure passed between us must, regrettably, end.”
And he nodded and smiled, and they talked of other things. She couldn’t stop herself from talking to him. He was interesting, for goodness’ sake, and how many people did she know who were actually interesting?
They compared notes on the same stories and philosophy texts. He challenged her on her knowledge of history, and she regularly had to remind him that everything he had been reading had been written from a Roman point of view, so it wasn’t as if it were unbiased.
And then, somewhere in the midst of all that talking and close-touching (for the cell was small, and the best place to sit was on the cot for the both of them) she ended up kissing him again. Or, he ended up kissing her. Either way was perfectly acceptable, and completely demolished any headway she made in ending their affair.
This happened again and again as the days went on and coalesced into weeks.
The trick was to leave the cell after ending things with the man, she knew. But because she knew that was definitely the way to solve the problem, she absolutely did want to go out of her way to do it.
Each time it happened, they risked Publius’s wrath. Both had little doubt that the Dominus would approve of a coupling between his personal assistant and the gladiator he disliked more than any other. If even Septus disapproved of the heavy implications of their cross-class coupling, they surmised, then Publius would have a fit.
Her schedule was largely static. I
n the mornings she trailed the older house servants, doing whatever they required. Often this was cleaning and arranging. Sometimes she would look after little Marius and ensure that he did not break his neck by climbing a tree in the garden.
One trick she found out was that Marius loved watching the gladiators train, albeit for an entirely different reason than Leda was learning to. He was at the age of many boys where everything that involved fighting was wonderful, and everything that was glorious was even more glorious for the fact of its glory.
Some Romans, judging by the nation’s many wars over the course of their long history, never grew out of this phase in totality. But, because Marius loved to watch the gladiators, that meant that Leda could take him down the steps and encourage the young man to watch as they trained. His favorites were the murmillos. He loved their heavy armor and the wild helmets they wore.
“And what do you think of the dimachaerus?” she had asked him one day.
“They are not as good as the murmillo,” he said. His voice was solemn. Fighting was a serious business. “But they are good. So long as they don’t fight the murmillo.”
She had made no secret to him of her own preference for the dimachaerus. Sweet boy, this was how he tried to keep her included in the list of people that he liked. What he liked was better, but hers was fine so long as it did not interfere.
Another phase, if she knew anything, of which men often did not grow out.
Publius was much the same. Probably it was no secret to him, her affair with Conall. And the second that it became a nuisance to him, he would order it forbidden. Until that point of interference, there was no trouble.
Such was the life of a slave.
Chapter 27
The grand gathering Publius had planned for House Varinius began without a hitch. All the guests arrived on time. As they entered through the gates, the gladiators received them in two columns. They held torches which lit the walkway between their bodies. Every man and woman was greeted with the sight of rippling, masculine muscle as they entered.
