Talos: An Ancient Roman Reverse Harem Romance (Gladiator Book 3)

by Nhys Glover

  “Talos... no! Gods, I am not clean...”

  I growled in frustration. “Is that your only concern?”

  She teetered.

  “Because if it is, it doesn’t matter to me. All I want is to taste you there.”

  Her body, which had stiffened to fend me off, relaxed. I had won. I took my prize.

  Gods, her taste! It was like ambrosia. I wanted to coat myself in it and keep it with me forever. I caressed the little pea with my tongue and it hardened under my ministrations. She came apart again on a piercing scream, her body arching up to meet me. I breathed her in, sharing her bliss. I thrust a finger deep, wanting to be inside her in whatever way I could. She cried out again, and I felt her tighten around my finger.

  Then she jerked away as if I’d done something wrong. But before I could ask, her head was at my waist and her mouth was closing around my cock. All thoughts evaporated.

  I wanted to last. I wanted the pleasure she was giving me to last. But the wet heat of her sucking on me, her small hands drawing down on my balls, sent me over the edge so ferociously that I feared I might hurt her.

  As I came on a roar, she sucked harder, taking me deep and swallowing hard. By the time I finished I felt as weak as a babe and as blissfully complete as I’d ever been in my life.

  Accalia slid back up my body to rest her head on my shoulder. Her arms came around me, as if she wanted to surround me as I had surrounded her with my body not long ago.

  “I... I did not think I could enjoy pleasure so... completely with anyone but Asterius. I was wrong. That was... so very, very good,” she told me a little reluctantly, as if comparing me to Asterius would wound my male pride. It didn’t. I was just happy I gave her what she deserved.

  “You didn’t wish I was Asterius?” I asked tentatively, worrying at the only spot I felt vulnerable. I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer.

  “Gods, no! I did not think of him the whole time we were... taking pleasure from each other. I do not know what it makes me, but I am drawn to you all. I want you all, each in a slightly different way. And I feel guilty because I have... or I seem to have... all of your love. Maybe one day you will love someone else. Thinking of that possibility is the only way I can handle the guilt I feel over my greed.”

  “Greed?” I asked in confusion.

  “Yes. It is greedy to want so much, and to get it.”

  I couldn’t hold back my amusement. “Accalia, you’re the only woman I know who’d say such a thing. You don’t make us love you... and yes, we do love you with all our hearts. We have talked about it often enough. How can you be greedy when you have never tried to take our hearts. We have given them freely. It is not greedy to appreciate what you have been given and to love in return. I don’t think any of us minds that we’re not the only one. It would become an issue if you decided you preferred one of us over the rest. That might end up destroying our bond, though we wouldn’t want to let it. But men are men. If we feel we have to compete for what we want then we will.”

  She rose up on her hands as if to look me in the eye. But it was impossible to see more than a general outline in the darkness.

  “I doubt I could prefer any one of you over the others. I have known you all for what feels like my whole life. Saying I prefer one of you over the others is like saying I prefer my left leg over my right, or over my right or left arms. I need all my limbs and each is a little different. You each give me something unique and necessary.”

  I laughed again, feeling mellow and content. “What am I then, a leg or an arm? I could be the third leg. It’s nearly long enough,” I bragged playfully.

  I felt her confusion and realised she didn’t understand the coarse joke. “A cock is sometimes called a third leg.”

  “Oh,” was all she said.

  After a moment, she went on. “I do not have much experience with aroused cocks, so I do not know. Are you considered... substantial?”

  I almost swallowed my tongue in shocked amusement. “I am not lacking in that department. Although my pack-mates aren’t lacking either. We measured ourselves once, and I came out a finger’s width longer than the others.”

  She burst into laughter, and I felt her double over with it. I joined in, feeling like a boy again, all worries and loneliness gone. It was as if we were back beside the fire again, telling outrageous stories to entertain our girl.

  “I... I cannot believe you did that!” she finally got out between gasps of laughter. “What, did you stand there with your cocks fully erect and use a piece of string to measure them?”

  I shrugged, a little embarrassed now. “Pretty much. You have to understand that there isn’t much about our bodies we could’ve kept private. We’ve shared a room for ten years, and it’d be hard to hide anything when you’re with each other day and night. We’ve even shared whores...I could tell you what Typhon prefers done to him or what Orion likes to do... That’s just the way it is with us. And none of us thinks it odd that we all love you. It would have been odder if any of us didn’t. We do everything together. Well... that makes it sound like we’re... like Marcus. It’s not. We’re not,” I added hastily, suddenly realising that I made us sound like we were into each other.

  For a long time Accalia was silent, pressing her head more firmly into the crook of my neck. “I envy you that closeness. I have always felt like I was on the periphery, a welcome guest to your world, but a guest, nevertheless.”

  I grabbed her shoulders and dragged her up so we were nose to nose. “Periphery? You are the centre. You are the core of us! How can you not know that? If we ever lost one of us, it would be hard. If we ever lost you, we wouldn’t survive it. And if we could have added another pallet to our room and moved you in with us we would have. You have never been anything less than a full member of our pack since that first night.”

  Chapter Ten

  TALOS

  Accalia leaned in and kissed my lips gratefully, tenderly, wholeheartedly after my declaration. I kissed her back with equal passion. I still reeled at the thought she considered herself an outsider. How could she ever have believed such a thing?

  The kiss led to more shared pleasure. By the time we collapsed again my stomach was grumbling loudly. Accalia laughed at me and I groused back, but with a lightness of heart that was hard to comprehend. I’d never felt like this before.

  I wasn’t a serious man. Not like Orion. But I wasn’t light-hearted like Asterius, either. For me life was just life. You made the best of what you had, enjoyed what came your way, and then got back to the tedious, difficult parts. Because there were always plenty of those. I rarely contemplated the future. Not seriously. If I did, it was to think of Accalia at my side. But I’d always known it was wishful thinking and been content with that. I just got on with life.

  But now I felt... different. Maybe it was because in the last months I had achieved several dreams I had never taken seriously before. It had been wishful thinking to see myself singled out for the emperor’s praise while the rest of Rome called our name. It had been wishful thinking to believe I could ever share pleasure as profound as what I had done with Accalia here in this cool sanctuary. Though my pragmatic mind fought to keep me grounded, my heart and soul took to the skies. And I was blissful, blindly and completely happy for the first time in my life.

  My belly growled yet again reminding that I needed to be grounded for some things. I still needed to eat.

  I’d found my small pack hanging from a ragged beam when I was working on the holes above us. Now I produced it with a flourish that went unappreciated, because Accalia couldn’t see me playing. I rummaged around in the bag before holding a chunk of bread out in front of her nose. Or where I sensed her nose to be.

  Accalia sniffed it appreciatively. I listened with contentment as she began chewing and swallowing. When I felt she was half way through it, I put a hand out to hold her back.

  “It would be better to leave some until later. We don’t know how long we’ll be down here.”

>   She handed me the bread without complaint, and I put it away. After taking only a few bites from my own piece, I put it away as well. I would save as much of my bread as I could for Accalia. She was almost starving already. If she didn’t eat she would die long before I would.

  Though my stomach still complained, I contentedly settled back down with Accalia in my arms. Time didn’t exist without light and dark to mark its passing. It could be one long night or a whole day and night that had passed since we fell into this little haven. I didn’t care. When the food ran out, it would be soon enough to worry about getting us out of here. By then the fire would be out and our pack would be looking for us. I hadn’t lied to her when I said the others would not stop until they found her. I wouldn’t have, and I knew they were no different.

  Time slid by like a dream. We slept, we drank the water that had proved pure enough—washing with what we didn’t drink—we nibbled on our bread, and we took pleasure as often as I was up to it. Which was often.

  But it grew harder and harder to find the strength to stop myself claiming her virginity. I truly wondered if I might end up being the one who proved incapable of protecting our girl. Yet if Asterius had been able to do it, so could I. Or that was what I told myself every time my body urged me to take what Accalia seemed more and more desperate to give me.

  And when we weren’t sleeping or loving, we talked, which was almost as good as sharing pleasure with her. This was the first time we had ever spent time alone, and it was precious to me. We talked about all that had happened since we left for our trial. And I stored every morsel of information away for another time, a lonely time, much as Asterius had probably done.

  “Was it hard for you, your initiation?” she asked once.

  “Hard enough. Harder than I expected, to be honest. I think that was part of your father’s plan. We lads were cocky, thinking we knew it all, just because we had survived and overcome all obstacles in our path in our small world. When we found ourselves in that bigger world it was jarringly different from what I expected. Alien.” I paused to consider my next words.

  “As I was being taken to Armenia, the only thing I was worried about was you. The rest was like a holiday. I was hungry for every new sight, sound and smell. When I found I was being dropped in a spot where Rome was celebrating a great victory, I had to stay to witness it. I thought...” I stopped to laugh a little when realisation hit me. “I thought it was likely to be the most important historical event I’d ever witness. Now I have to wonder whether this will turn out to be even more important.”

  “This? I do not understand,” Accalia said tiredly. I had noticed she had begun to lose focus sometimes. I ignored it because in the next instant she was always fine again.

  “This fire. Unless it rains—which it hasn’t so far, because I think we would have heard it—those flames won’t stop until there’s nothing left of Rome. This catastrophe will likely be remembered for thousands of years to come.”

  I felt her shake her head. “No, you are making too much of it. The wooden structures might go, but Rome is more than just wood. It is stone, and stone does not burn. It will be bad, but not bad enough to be remembered past our lifetimes.”

  I shrugged. Why argue about something that I couldn’t win in this moment. And neither of us wanted to waste our energy on conflict.

  She questioned me like a child asking for a bedtime story. “Then what happened, after you saw the victory celebration?”

  “Then I joined a camel-train heading for the coast. No one questioned me or asked for papers. I expected it, but as long as I seemed purposeful and confident, no one doubted I was who I said I was, a freedman trader who lost everything to robbers. I was heading home to Rome where I hoped my patron would restock me for another journey.

  “I worked hard for my place among them, and I experienced what it was like to live in that part of the world. It is so different to here. So raw and uncivilized. I sound like a Roman, don’t I? But here there are few threats. There—threats were everywhere—including the reptiles and insects that could kill you.

  “When I reached the coast I had a harder time. A man needs to show documents to travel, and I had none. More than one soldier looked at me suspiciously. I think they suspected I was a deserter from the army. Only my colour gave them pause.

  “After a lot of trouble I found a galley that was willing to turn a blind eye to my suspicious identity. Of course they did, because most of their galley slaves were kidnapped freedmen off the streets of one city or another. And though they told me they were heading to Rome, it turned out they weren’t. When we reached Rhegium at the very south of Italia, I knew we wouldn’t be turning north for Rome. So I had to do something.

  “On the night we were to set sail I started a fight, tore my shackles free of the wormy wood during the distraction and jumped overboard.”

  “Into the sea? But you cannot swim!” Accalia exclaimed in terror.

  I patted her hand, enjoying the reaction she gave me. It had been the most reckless thing I’d ever done, and if I hadn’t been desperate by then I would never have tried it. But I knew those sailors were never going to let me go. It was jump overboard or die a long, slow death as a galley slave.

  “I was lucky the ship wasn’t large and we hadn’t gone far from the shore. It was dark, and I doubt they expected me to survive—weighed down with shackles and chains as I was—so they didn’t take much time looking for me. But I knew what I had to do to swim, even if I’d never done it before, and pushed up to the surface and managed to stay afloat until the current carried me to shore. The shackles would have dragged an ordinary man down, but for me they were just an inconvenience.

  “Luckily, men forced onto galleys were a common sight along that coast. I was found washed up on a beach by a fisherman. His family cared for me until I was well enough to travel. I owe those kind fisherfolk a debt I can never repay.

  “They even found me a place on a ship heading north, where I worked for my passage and was then free to go when I got to Rome. From there it was nothing to get home.”

  Accalia rubbed at my arms soothingly. “I think you downplay the experience. You nearly died, didn’t you?”

  I shrugged. “I won’t lie, there were moments there when I thought I was done for. But I survived, just as we’ll survive this. Though I doubt I’ll ever compare this experience with that in my mind. This has been... as close to the Elysium Plains as I’ll ever get.”

  She laughed then, a contagious thing that left me breathless and lightheaded.

  Another time she told me about standing up for us with the manager and her uncle. She made a joke of it, but I knew her well enough to know it had not been as easy as she painted it. Nor was her escape from the predatory patrician. If I ever came across that bastard, he would die a slow death, I vowed to myself when she finished the tale.

  “What is it like, going into the arena to fight for your life?” she asked me another time.

  “I don’t think I think of it that way. I know death’s always a possibility, but I’m more worried about being badly injured than killed. What would my life be like if I lived without a limb? I’d be no use to anyone.”

  She kissed my cheek. “You would be of use to me. I would keep you close.”

  “Don’t make offers like that, or I might intentionally get myself injured so I can be with you,” I joked, although in the back of my mind I knew it wasn’t complete nonsense. I could live without a limb. I didn’t think I could live without Accalia.

  “No, you would not do such a thing. But I want you to know you would never be homeless or left to beg on a street corner. Pater never allows such things to happen to his men.”

  I nodded. We all knew that. It made fighting for the Master that much more appealing.

  “Go on, tell me more. Does it thrill you to have all of Rome at your feet, cheering for you?”

  “I thought it would. Back when I was young, I dreamed about such a moment. But even in my wildest dre
ams I never saw myself having my name called out by Nero himself. It was exciting and intoxicating at first. It felt like I’d reached every goal I’d ever set myself and more.

  “But the fame and glory... it doesn’t interest me. It doesn’t make me feel as I expected to feel. It seems... temporary and superficial. The crowd calls our name today and someone else’s tomorrow. So I fight for my pack, for the Master and for you, and that means something to me. I’m not sure how long I’ll want to fight. Not that I have a say in it. But I can’t see myself wanting to fight year in and year out. Frankly, it becomes boring. After ten years in the barracks and then almost a year in the ludus... I grow weary of it.”

  I shouldn’t have admitted such a thing to her. After all, it was her father who had raised me for this glorious path. Yet lying to Accalia was beyond me.

  She snuggled in against my side and kissed my naked chest, stirring my cock once more. “When it grows too much for you, just say. I will get Pater to retire you. You have already proven your worth. Maybe a few years away from the arena might return your zest. A bored man is a dead man. Remember that.”

  I nodded. It had never entered my head that I could step away from this path chosen for me. What would I do? Act as a bodyguard to the Master? Tour with him in the warmer months, fighting the captives to test their worth? That might be a better life to the one I now had. But any life where I could not see Accalia regularly would feel worthless to me now.

  I dreaded leaving here and losing her. This must have been how Asterius felt when he had to return her to her home after their three weeks together. I envied him that time. All I had was a few days buried beneath a burned-out building. But I supposed it was more than Typhon and Orion had had. I should count my blessings.

  “I am heartily bored with my life at my uncle’s domus. All I want is my own bed and to be helping Pater or Ariaratus. Anything that is purposeful! My aunt and my cousins live such a meaningless existence. My aunt is only interested in finding her daughters good husbands and keeping up appearances.”