Love of the Gladiator (Affairs of the Arena Book 2) (16 page)

Her smile was soft and warm. “I have a few bruises from one myself.”

He pushed his hand onto the bare skin of her thigh, turned yellow and brown. “Yes, you do.”

She had soft, warm flesh too—an easy thing indeed to hold tighter and pull against his body.

Upon entering her cell, he'd had no intention to do this.

No intention, yes, but every desire.

His guilt from his history with her faded deep to the background, drowned by a torrent of lust from feeling her lovely, warrior body with such ease and intimacy.

They had said it was a terrible idea to do this with one another, but those words faded from his mind. He forgot why they made sense.

All he knew is that he wanted her more than he had ever wanted any woman.

One hand sank behind her hair and pulled her close to his mouth. She smiled—gods, how she smiled!—and he kissed her deep. Their lips melded eagerly, tasting one another with the fruitful precision of long-time lovers. Her tongue was sweet, tasting of the citrus-filled water she kept at her bed.

Her hand sank down beneath his loincloth. She found his stiff member there, already leaking wetness from his arousal at her touch.

“Oh my.” Her voice was soft. “It appears somehow you have a spear left in you as well.”

Whatever witty response he had planned left him in a long, needy grunt as her hand slid upward on the shaft. He lost himself in her kiss again, jockeying his own hands for position at her thighs.

His fingers found her moist entrance and sank inside. A thumb remained on the mound in her folds, pressing with firm, gentle pressure.

He had been with hundreds of women if he’d been with one. Over his years, he had acquired some expertise with what a woman wanted from a man’s fingers. She moaned from his touch—an open approval.

Training with a sword or a spear all day made a man’s fingers tireless and strong. He had perfect muscle control as he slowly began to ease in and out of her entrance, all the while rotating his thumb on her clitoris.

She gasped for air, urging her hips forward against his body. Her strokes had not ceased or slowed—in fact, the increased pleasure seemed only to drive her to stroke faster on his shaft as he pleased her.

“Oh...oh, L-Lucius!”

His smile was dense with arousal. He liked making her cry out like that—making her forget all that composure. His other hand ran through the dense blanket of her hair, so red and thick, tugging her head back as he pushed inside her.

They could not remain at such foreplay for long. Their need had been too long denied.

Soon, he had her on her back on the cot. He dropped to his knees, wrapping her legs over his shoulder and around his head.

“Here’s something else I can train you in,” he said wryly.

“I’m dying to know.”

The strong muscles of her thighs squeezed his head, urging him forward. His mouth landed soft against her folds, and for a few moments his tongue probed—searching for that perfect center. Her sudden cry confirmed his finding, and he maintained in that spot with his tongue.

He rotated one direction, then another, and then flicked up and down. It was important to find what she liked the most.

The up-and-down motion was what did it for her. Finding that pattern, he kept steady at it. On a gladiator, every muscle was strong and filled with endurance—even the tongue. Her thighs squeezed so hard that he almost could not hear her soft little cries any longer as she told him to keep going.

Every thought left him. There was no past, no future. Only the beautiful now, with his mouth pressed to her, his tongue sliding against her most sacred part. His cock strained for release—every new lick seemed to double his arousal—but he controlled himself. This, now, was for her.

Her cries increased, and she moaned a warning he could not entirely hear.

Suddenly, the pleasure vibrated through her, exploding from her pelvis through her legs and then doubling back up to her head. She contorted with ecstasy beneath him.

He got on the cot with her, perched at her thighs, intending to lay himself next to her.

“No,” she said, pointing at his obvious hardness beneath his loin cloth. “I want that. I want you. Now.”

“But you just...didn’t you?”

“I did.” She smiled, almost leisurely. Her hands tugged at his cloth. “But that means I’m more ready than ever. Give it to me, Lucius. It’s mine and I want it.”

It felt impossible to refuse, and he had no desire to in the first place. Her entrance was slick, and his cock was as ready as it had ever felt in his life.

Their joining was hot, simple, and sure. He drove all the way up to the hilt in his first thrust—a good gladiator to his core—both of them gasping at the sudden ease of the movement.

The contortions of her lovely face as he backed out and thrust in again were hypnotizing to watch. He lasted for minutes more than he thought he would have otherwise, all to see her face contort like that again and again.

His hands marveled across her warrior body. The scars across her back from a lifetime of hardship had never been ugly to him. Now they were beautiful, a landscape of unique, warm flesh held just for him. Lucius had always been unable to help himself from biting during lovemaking. Now he bit her shoulders where her tattoos made their beautiful pattern, giving her his own possessive mark.

But over time, with thrust after thrust, his composure began to slip. He'd never had sex like this before. Never so passionate, so pure—so focused entirely on his partner. Her hips drove upward to meet his every thrust, urging his release onward to its inevitable climax.

“Oh,” he grunted, pushing urgently. “Gwenn. I’m going to...I have to...”

“On my belly. Please.”

He nodded against her neck. They were both in agreement there. Just in time, with a great shuddering of his hips, he emptied out onto her belly, spreading out his seed there on her eager torso.

She made it clear with her hands that she enjoyed the sticky, pleasant warmth there very much.

Many moments passed and he thought that perhaps they were done speaking with one another. His mind emptied of all cares, all worries. His last partner had ever been Porcia—for years now, that was how it had been—and so he had forgotten about the sweet reward of relaxation after a lovemaking well done.

Free association took a deep hold of his brain, leading him from one thought to another. Images of Gwenn led to the arena led to sands led to the city of his birth led to large bowls of pasta arranged on anniversaries, so big that he felt he could drown in them.

Her touch woke him. He realized, after a moment, that she had been nudging and touching him for several seconds now.

“What about this one?” She drew a finger across his back.

There was a long scar there from his spine to his right butt cheek. That blow had almost killed him. It had been against a murmillo. It had been against...

Gods.

The reality of what just happened sank in for him.

“Just some fighter,” he said, pulling her arm across him. He could have tonight, at least—tonight, and no more. “Go to sleep.”

––––––––

H
ours later, Lucius still had not slept. He did his best at pretending. Gwenn was wrapped in his arms still, holding him as tight as she could. Her embrace was bliss, if bittersweet.

As hard as any knowledge he’d ever had—and Lucius had killed men for years, had known the ends of their lives at his fingers—was knowing that he did not deserve her.

Outside, cicadas sang their song. Their merry chorus irked him.

To have an insect’s brain, to be oblivious, blameless...wouldn’t that be something?

He would tell her, he realized. He would have to—there was no way around it. He closed his eyes, trying as best he could to treasure the last few moments alone with this beautiful, amazing creature.

She trusted him. She had placed her whole into him. It felt amazing. But he did not think he could move forward in his life with even one single more deception. Not after what they had been through.

It had been lies that had gotten him into the hole where he was at with the drink. Lies that had allowed him to hide from his friends, to tell himself that they didn’t matter, that being free of wine didn’t matter, that his life didn’t matter, that honesty and friendship and honor didn’t matter.

But all of those things mattered—or at least, they mattered to him. And he did not want to piss them all away again because he wasn’t strong enough to tell the truth to this woman who he loved.

Loved?

Was that the way of it? Was that even possible?

He tried to shake the idea—loving Gwenn, loving the daughter of a man he’d slain in the arena. But it was stuck now, that idea. It gnawed into the base of his skull, drumming there like a mad tribesman calling for battle.

Lucius loved Gwenn.

He loved her for her fire. For her spirit. For her exuberance and her passion. Unleashed now, the reasons would not stop. He loved her for her ability to listen to him. He loved how she could talk sense. He loved how she saw sense and made it work in her life.

He loved her in all these ways, and she would never, ever be with him. Because what woman could or would after what he had done?

She would never be with him because he had killed her father in the arena—because he was commanded to kill or be killed himself by a terrible crowd stirred to a bloody frenzy by the display he gave them in the sands.

As morning came closer, she still had not stirred. He could not bring himself to wake her to tell her the news. He would tell her, he would.

He just did not wish to ruin her peaceful sleep by his own hand.

It was easy to imagine her point of view in such a time. She had won her first fight in the arena, overcoming incredible odds to do so. She swore the solemn oath of the gladiator, forever attaching herself to her brothers and sisters-in-arms in House Varinius. And on top of all of that, her steadily-improving bond with her trainer had culminated in a night of unrelentingly hot lovemaking.

What he would tell her would be devastating. The realization hit him slowly that there would never be a good time for the news—and with that realization came the certainty that he had known that all along.

He had kept the information to himself not to hide from her, but to protect her. He did not want her to train, knowing he had done what he did, because she might have trained less hard. Training less hard meant death in the arena, and that he could not tolerate.

But there would not be a better time than now—right after a victory, when she would not have a fight for perhaps another month or more. Maybe she could use her hate for him, mold it into something during training to keep herself alive on the sands...that would be good, wouldn’t it?

So long as she lived.

He could bear her hating him so long as she lived.

Lucius sat up, scheduling the decision. He would visit the toilet and empty himself, wake up his mind a little. And then he would return and tell her the truth.

The toilet was not far. The guards said nothing to him. A doctore went where he pleased on the grounds, beyond suspicion until he had earned it.

He stopped for water at the trough on his way back, wanting his words to be clear. Often in the mornings, his voice was gravelly until he had said a few sentences and had some water to wet his throat. As he drank, the front gates to the ludus opened.

He turned with some surprise—it was early in the morning after all—and the surprise heightened when he saw Porcia entering. Her bodyguards, Karro and Brutillus, accompanied her with torches in their hands. She looked rather harried.

“And now
you’re
waiting for me.” She put a hand to her face. “Wonderful. What
is
it, Lucius?”

“Good morning, Domina,” he said, trying to smile.

“Are you to berate me for enjoying my winnings of the day?” She sounded a bit drunk. “What is it to you if I might have bought a princess?”

“No concern of mine, Domina.”

“That’s right!” She tittered. “A princess from Armenia, can you imagine it? Sold as a slave because her family angered the wrong Roman ambassador. She’ll be here within the week. Oh, the parties will be absolutely
throbbing
with jealousy. I can’t wait. Congratulate me, Lucius.”

“Congratulations, Domina.”

He knew, as soon as he said it, that his tone was a mistake. It wasn’t that he was trying to be rude. But building up the requisite amount of caring for Porcia’s perceived coup was just beyond him that particular morning.

Slowly, her smile faded. The familiar look of her disdain returned, marring the loveliness of her face. She examined him, guiding the torch of a guard over his face. The pain in his expression must have been obvious, though she mistook the reason.

“What is it, Lucius? I expect you want to complain about the gladiatrices receiving the oath, as some
others
have?” She sniffed. “Don’t trouble yourself. It’s theirs to earn, and they earned it. I’ll tell you what I told that
stubborn
Otho, when someone wins in the arena it is a
sacred
thing. He and I had the most awful fight about it, but only because he's
such
a stubborn ass. We must honor the Gods with their victory, and if we
fail
to do that—”

“I do not disagree with you, Domina. I am glad they took the oath. I agree that they deserved it.”

“Then...” she sniffed again. Her nose came close, and the sniffs continued. “Oh. Oh, I
see
.”

“Do you?”

“You’ve been sleeping with someone. Who? Is it Sabiana? She favors me in her looks. I suspect you miss my embrace. But...hmm. Gwenn?” Her expression turned to one of cold delight. “I see. Artemis and Orion. I should have guessed. Very clever, you picking that name for her.”

“Thank you, Domina.”

“But in my recollection of the myth, Artemis remained a virgin, did she not?”

He supposed someone was going to figure that out eventually.

“Myths are strange things, Domina, with a great many meanings.”