by Hazel Hunter
Liona laughed.
“You are more generous than I would be by far. I was upset that he was so cold. Truly, it was a terrifying thing to see. He was a man who made killing his business, and when one of them looks like that, it’s frightening. Don’t misunderstand, though, I was furious as well. I was angry at the people who had put us on the run, and harmed all of those innocent people of course. However, I couldn’t wring their necks, and well, my temper has always burned a little hot. I couldn’t reach them, but I could reach him.”
Liona chuckled, even if there was something sad about it.
“You exploded at him?” Hailey guessed.
“Not right away. We knew we had to get out of Rome immediately. We needed to go somewhere where they couldn’t reach us. What might seem strange to someone so young as yourself is that while news traveled slowly, it would always catch up with you in the end. We couldn’t go to Hispania, and we couldn’t go south towards Sardinia. There were too many who would find us and betray us for a pat on the head and a letter of recognition from Rome. Instead, we found a captain who was indifferent to Rome and willing to take us to the edge of the world.”
“Where was that?”
Liona smiled.
“To Gaul. It was the land of my mother’s people, but to me, it was only a place of barbarism and painted savages. I was very young, after all.”
For a long moment, Liona was silent, stroking Hailey’s hair. Hailey closed her eyes, trying to take it all in. To someone who had not yet had the immortality of the Wiccan people awakened in her, Liona’s life was unbelievable. This woman had watched empires fall. She had seen the end of cities. She had spoken to people that history only remembered as myths. Still there was something so fragile and human about her. History seemed very large, and in her convalescent bed, the two of them seemed very small.
Hailey ducked her head under Liona’s chin. Her honey-scented perfume was warm and real, surrounding her like a haven. History could wait.
“You don’t have to tell me more if you don’t want to,” Hailey murmured.
Liona shifted, drawing her close, entwining her arms around her. Hailey relaxed into her tender embrace.
“You should hear the rest. As I said before, it is your story, just as it the story of everyone who chooses to live in a coven. Will you listen?”
Hailey nodded, aware of what an honor she had been offered. Liona di Orsini was a woman out of time. She hid in the cracks of the centuries, and once she disappeared, there was no telling when she would resurface again.
“The journey to Gaul was terrible. It was just on the end of the season where such a crossing would be possible. We were cutting things close indeed. We had a small cabin to ourselves, thank all the gods, but there was nothing in it but a bed. Lucius did not speak to me for a solid two weeks of our journey. After he made arrangements with the captain for our board, he didn’t speak at all.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE DAY WAS dark and gray, but still Liona made her way to the deck. At least the air up there was fresh, and if she was quiet, she could stay out of the way of the harried crew. There were mutters of it being foul luck to bring a woman on the ship. She hid as much as she could, but she couldn’t stay for days below the decks.
At the very least, she had to go to the galley for the food that had been promised them. The fare was a little bit better that day. They had been able to put in at a nameless little port. Now there was at least some relief from the mealy bread and the salt fish that they had been eating before.
The cook grumbled at her when she came for their fair share, but she got it readily enough. It was a skewer of lamb, tough and gray, but better than that were the four oranges that were part of their portion. They were a dash of color in a world gone dim.
She took the food to the small cabin that she shared with Lucius. She was unsurprised to see him sitting in the bed, staring out the tiny window like a man obsessed. She set the food down next to him. She watched as he wordlessly ate from it. He didn’t look at her. He didn’t speak.
Liona ate the lamb, chewing until her jaws ached because the meat was so tough. The oranges were what she wanted, however, and she made them last. They were old, but still full of juice. The sweetness stung her mouth even as it made her body feel alive again. She chewed on one of the rinds before putting them on the plate to be borne up and dumped again.
“You cannot continue like this,” she said.
The words surprised her. He had been silent. For weeks now, she had been silent as well. There was something in the air between them, something cruel and crackling.
They had bartered the fine dress she had worn in Rome for something warmer. In her dull red wool dress and in bare feet, she faced him across the tiny room.
“You know that we needed to leave Rome. You would have accomplished nothing by standing in front of the Senate. You would have been executed.”
He glanced at her. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she could see a spark there. It might have been anger. It might become rage. Liona didn’t care. She only cared that it was more than what she had seen in the last few weeks.
“Is that what you are angry about?” she asked cuttingly. “Are you angry that you must live as a fugitive rather than dying as a legatus of the legion? Are you that foolish?”
His lips skimmed back from his teeth briefly, revealing sharp white teeth. Liona felt a dull satisfaction at seeing that. It was better than nothing. It was far better than the apathy she had seen. It was so much better than the dark day when she thought he might actually fling himself into the choppy waves.
“There is a whole world of people out there who didn’t march in the legion, Lucius. There are many, many people even in Rome who never had a family name and who don’t care how great the Empire grows. Do you hear me? So just because you are now one of them doesn’t mean that it’s some great tragedy. You don’t get to be ashamed because you are simply just like me now!”
Her voice raised up to a shout on the final word, and she stilled. It had always been between them, she realized. A half-barbarian girl and a legatus of the legion. There was always that gap. Now it didn’t exist. Lucius acted like it was the end of his world. For her, it was just another day.
“I never thought there would come a day when a man who had been a legatus would be so afraid of the world.”
The words were diamond-sharp. The wound that they left might have been mortal. Liona didn’t pause to look. She reached for the dish with the food leavings, prepared to leave for a while.
An iron hard hand shot out and grasped her wrist. She stared up into eyes that were as black as the pits of hell. There was one single moment where she was afraid. There was one moment where she thought that she had gone too far, that her words had broken something inside him, that elemental part that held the wolf at bay.
Then he pulled her hard against his body. His lips came crashing down on hers, hard enough that she tasted blood.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, her mind chanted, over and over again.
He was like a man maddened. She was reaching desperately for the hem of her dress, but he simply took two great handfuls of the fabric and tore it from her. Her body called for his, for the desperate wild mating that he demanded.
Lucius threw her down on the bed, pinning her by sheer virtue of superior weight. His hands roamed her curves, squeezing and caressing by turn. There was something savage about him, something wild and uncontrolled. He had lost some weight on their voyage. She could feel his hip bones grind cruelly against her body. It didn’t matter. To have a feast of sensation when she had spent time feeling nothing was a fierce kind of bliss.
“Give it to me,” she whispered. “Give me all of it, now, please…”
He buried his head in her neck, lapping and kissing the sensitive skin until she was squirming underneath him. She could feel his erection hard against her hip. She could feel how much he needed her, how much he wanted her. She tried to spread her legs, t
o bring him closer, but she couldn’t move enough to do it.
She felt the flash of his teeth against her skin, and then she shouted as he bit her. This was no gentle nip. It was a biting and sucking that was meant to leave a dark mark, something that claimed her as his. She welcomed the possession, could feel herself grow wet for it.
He moved over her body, kissing a path down to her breasts and then down to her hips. His breath stirred the fine, dark hair on her mound. She held her breath as he pushed her legs apart. He swiped his tongue hard against her slit, making her moan with the assault on her senses. He wasn’t preparing her, she realized, but tasting her.
The beast was close to the surface in him. She welcomed it. It belonged to her as much as it belonged to him, and this ravaging was what she needed as well. She reached down and clenched her hand in his hair, giving it a hard tug. He looked up at her, and his green eyes were nearly black, though she wouldn’t have been surprised to see that they were tinged with yellow.
“Take me now,” she commanded, her voice hoarse with desire.
That was all he needed to hear. With a strength that took her breath away, he twisted her over on her stomach. She barely propped her elbows up before he lifted her hips high. She groaned, knowing what she must look like to him. Her body was pale in the darkness of the room, and her hindquarters were lifted as if she was an animal ready for mating.
She felt his cock against her thigh, demanding and waiting. With one hand, he guided the blunt head into her slit, and the other knotted in her hair, pulling her back towards him. It was more pleasure than pain, and she cried out as she was pulled back.
He filled her with one swift thrust, and then she did cry out, panicked and hurt. It stilled him, and he froze. For a long moment, all that she could hear in that tiny room was the sound of her own roughened breath as she tried to calm herself. It hurt. It had been too long. She was nearly as tight as she had been when she was a virgin. Their play, though it had awakened her blood and made her yearn for him, hadn’t been enough.
“Liona?”
His voice was hoarse with disuse. Tentatively, he brushed a hand across her back.
“No, don’t stop, please, don’t stop…”
Lucius was still for a long moment. Slowly, still joined intimately, they waited for her body to relax. He stroked her back, slick with sweat. Distantly, she was aware that they were breathing in time with one another.
She took several deep breaths, and she pulled forward a little before easing herself back on his cock. That stroke was smooth, and the one after that was smoother yet. She felt him tremble behind her.
“Beast,” she whispered, and it was full of love. “Beautiful monster.”
He groaned, his hands tightening on her hips before he gentled himself.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Liona drove herself back on him more firmly, wringing another cry from him.
“I don’t want sorry,” she growled raggedly. “I want… I need you. I still need you.”
He thrust into her this time, slowly but fully. When she cried out this time, it was with pleasure. Lucius gave her two long thrusts, and she shook her head.
“No,” she murmured. “I need all of you. I love the beast, and I love the man.”
With a growl that was surely a match for any wolf, he thrust into her harder, and harder still. The sensation was powerful, greater than that of a storm at sea. She cried out and rode it. As he thrust into her savagely, she reached down between her legs to touch her clit, bathing it with her own juices and stroking it in time to the rhythm Lucius set.
Her climax had no more mercy than he did. She tensed and shook like a building under siege. She could feel herself tighten around his cock. She was crying out his name over and over again, and when she fell over the edge, she saw stars.
He was still slamming into her. He was doing it so hard that she was nearly flat on the mattress. Liona’s climax left her drained and floating, but she came back to herself when Lucius’s thrusts became faster and more erratic. Finally, with a deep groan, he spilled inside her. She gloried in the warmth of it, the way that they were so connected.
He collapsed on top of her, but remembering himself, he pulled out of her and rolled to one side. His rough hand stroked along her back. The gentleness of his hand touched something inside her that all of the fierce lovemaking had not.
Liona tried to keep the tears back, but they came anyway, running down her face. They were silent at first, but when she sobbed, Lucius froze. He gathered her into his arms, apologizing over and over until she finally got enough control to shake her head.
“Lucius, no, stop. It’s fine.”
“I hurt you,” he said tensely. “You’re… You’re in pain.”
She shook her head.
“That pain, the kind you’re talking about, I don’t care. I asked for all of it, and I would ask again. It’s just…oh Lucius, we’re so far from home.”
He held her as she cried out the stress and pain of the last few weeks. She was finally able to let some of that tension go. When it did, she was left limp and tired on the bed.
She was aware of him rising and leaving briefly. He returned with a small pitcher of water and cloth. She lay quietly as he stroked the damped cloth along her limbs, leaving her with a feeling of cleanliness and care. She made a noise of protest when he reached between her legs. Lucius laughed, leaning down to kiss her, stroking the fabric over her thighs again and again.
Finally, she surrendered with a sigh, letting him clean her there as well. The sensations were at once soft and arousing. She shifted her hips against his touch, making him laugh.
“Aren’t you too sore?” he murmured. She thought it was rather unfair that he could ask when he was stroking her so gently.
“No,” Liona whimpered, her voice just a breath of sound. “Please, Lucius?”
She could see the hesitation on his face. Then she grabbed his wrist and made him look at her.
“Can’t you see how much I want you?”
Instead of entering her again, however, he lay down by her side. He ran the damp cloth over her body, making her sigh with pleasure. Then he replaced it with his bare hands. There was something beautiful about it. This man who had fought and ended lives, he was being so soft and gentle with her. There was nothing of the savagery from before. This was nothing but endless care and sweetness.
His fingers parted her slick folds gently. Her eyes fluttered closed as he soothed the slightly swollen flesh there.
“You’re gorgeous,” he whispered. “So sweet and pink and soft.”
She murmured as he slipped first one finger inside her and then another. His thumb came up to circle her clit. It was just the right amount of pressure, firm enough to avoid maddening her, light enough that he brought her no pain.
This time, her climax built up gently. She could feel it coming. She was open to it, and longing. The trembles started low in her body. Almost by accident, she opened her eyes and locked gazes with him. As her climax overcame her, she looked deep into his eyes and saw love there. She shuddered in his arms, burying her face into his chest.
“Are you crying, little lioness?”
“A little,” she whispered. “Hold me?”
“As long as you like.”
She rested in his arms for some timeless space. She could have lain there forever, but she knew that they needed to speak.
“I still see no future for us,” she said finally, pulling back. “I have searched since we left Rome. I can see every detail I care to see about the captain’s bad end, or the ship boy’s good one, but for us, there is nothing.”
Lucius breath was even and steady. He held her a little closer.
“All I know is that we must find our family, and that I want to do it together. Beyond that, the world can take care of itself.”
She sighed softly against him. Her hand drifted down to her belly. She frowned as she calculated the weeks. She should be safe, according to
what the midwife had told her, but she did not have access to silphium, a tincture of which could prevent birth.
“Are you worried about a baby?” Lucius asked her.
“Women always are,” she said wryly. “It is not so simple for us as it is for you.”
“There may be more to concern us than a child.”
Liona stiffened.
“What do you mean?”
“I have heard rumors, only rumors, mind you. It was told to me by a traveler from the east that when two people of power lie together fully as we have done, that strange things can happen.”
“Are our children to be born with horns or hooves?” asked Liona scornfully. “I’ve heard those stories too, and I don’t believe them.”
“No, even stranger. It is said that when two people of power lie together that they lose their way to the underworld.”
Liona stared. “You mean we can’t die?”
“Yes. The man who told it to me, he could move the earth with only a stomp of his foot. He looked a bare handful of years older than me, but he claimed to have been alive for a full two centuries.”
Liona wanted to be scornful, but instead her question came out in a small voice. “Do you believe him?”
“I don’t disbelieve him,” Lucius said hesitantly. “The way he spoke, the things he knew, they could very well come from a man who had lived for two hundred years.”
She shook her head.
“So what we did, here, together… It could mean that we’re going to live forever?”
“Who’s to know? I’m certainly not going to fall on my sword to test it.”
Liona felt a welter of hysteria bubble up inside her. Living forever sounded absurd. It sounded unbelievable, like a story told to keep children quiet.
“I’ll make you a deal,” she said, a sharp edge in her voice. “In one hundred years time, if we are indeed still alive, I’ll meet you in Rome. Those who wanted us dead will be long gone, and we can drink wine in the boarding house where we hid that last night.”
Lucius’s laugh was light.
