Virginia Henley (11 page)

Kell thought it such a little thing. Even the great Roman himself put no value upon virginity. When she closed her eyes she could see his magnificent body, hard with bulging, rippling muscle. She could see his eagle’s face, so strong, so proud, with the slash of scar from temple to cheekbone making his deeply bronzed face almost irresistible.

She saw the black eyes glittering with lust, the coal black hair curling upon the thick column of his neck, the powerful shoulders and the arms bulging above and below his golden amulets. Diana often lied, but never to herself. As she lay there, she admitted that she lusted for him. She wanted this magnificent Roman general to initiate her into
the mystical rites of womanhood. All she had to do was place her hand in his.

And acknowledge that I am his slave,
a voice inside her said.
Only think,
another voice said.
No other woman of your time will have an opportunity such as this. Diana, if you are suddenly swept back to your own time and you have not shared his bed, you will regret it for the rest of your life! But how could I return no longer a virgin?

Sleep finally claimed her. After an hour she began to dream. She dreamed that someone had tied her hands to the head of the bed. She struggled in vain against her bonds. The wrought iron symbol of the sun on the bed’s headpiece laughed down at her.
Dear God, even in my dreams I am a slave in bondage!

Marcus Magnus lay naked atop the furs of his great pedestal bed. His massive arms were folded behind his head, his black eyes staring up at nothing. His body was still aroused from his encounter with his new slave. He was a man of great self-control and he willed his body to be quiet.

The trouble was he had been lying here for the best part of an hour, and if anything, his rampant male member grew harder by the minute. Even his sac and testes were taut and aching.

Impatiently he threw his legs over the edge of the bed and stood up. His erection stood up too, all the way to his navel. He cursed and reached for the bell pull to summon a female slave who would ease his body’s lust. He cursed again and let his hand fall. He had no taste for a quick in and out. Tonight he had no desire for any female save one.

He took the small torch that still burned and lit all the lamps in the chamber. His eyes fell upon the wall fresco depicting the gods. They widened as he realized the female’s likeness was painted on the wall of his sleeping chamber. The other goddesses were almost grotesque when compared to this one. Diana of the Grove. Her delicate hand rested upon the neck of a stag. The two females were identical from the golden hair to the long bare legs. Even their name was the same: Diana.

He felt her hand upon his neck; it turned him into a rutting stag. Diana of the Grove wore a tunic that bared one breast. He would order Kell to adorn his Diana in such a garment. He wanted her company at the evening meal each night when his day’s duty was done. Until he tamed her, he would have her seated on the floor beside his dining couch, close under his hand.

Once she accepted her role, he would have her recline upon her own dining couch opposite his, so that she could entertain him with civilized conversation. When she became his concubine, she would share his dining couch, so they could recline together, intimately touching and tasting.

His marble-hard phallus jerked and bucked. He knew if he touched himself at that moment, his seed would spurt forth simply from thinking of her, Diana the Huntress? No. Diana of the Grove? Doubtful. He dismissed the idea that she was a goddess, but the idea that she might be a gift from the gods lingered in his thoughts. Diana the Virgin? He almost spilled!

Had he really been gifted with a virgin? It was highly doubtful. Marcus laughed at himself. It was nothing more than wishful thinking. However, he must thank the gods for this gift! He would make them a sacrifice. He took a small cake of salt from a silver casket and broke it into-the shallow bronze dish. He sprinkled the salt with frankincense and myrrh, then lit the incense in the brazier beneath the dish.

Marcus poured himself a flagon of bloodred wine and lifted it high. Then he rubbed the gold coin, bearing the head of Caesar, that he always wore about his neck. “Jupiter Optimus Maximus, best and greatest, I offer thanks for the gift of the female slave.” Marcus then thanked the Greek god Eros, silently, so that he would not offend the Roman gods.

He quaffed the wine, then splashed some into the bronze dish. “I ask a boon. I ask that she be virgin.” Then
he drained the goblet. His blood was on fire, but it was not wine that affected him, it was woman!

Smoldering, aromatic scents filled the air, yet all Marcus could smell was Egyptian musk. She had saturated his senses. He paced about sacrificing his sleep time for visions of her. He gave no thought to the heavy day ahead of him, to the endless hours of training men before their fighting skills were honed enough to send them into the dark wilds of the savage west country. All he thought of was Diana.

If he was not careful, she would become an obsession. Were the gods playing with him, laughing at him? Finally he knew he would have no peace until he learned her secret. Marcus knew he must learn if she was indeed a virgin. There was only one way to find out.

At a certain point in her dream, Diana’s eyes flew open. Perhaps she was not dreaming! All she could see was darkness, but she sensed that someone was there in the room with her. She tried to hit out, but her hands had been tightly secured. So, it was no dream, she was bound in very truth!

She closed her eyes tightly as the sudden flare of a torch blinded her. Instinctively, she used the only defense she had and kicked out wildly to keep her predator at bay. Her ankles were suddenly seized in a viselike grip. When she opened her eyes to see who attacked her, she was frozen with fear. It was the all-powerful Roman general who towered before her at the foot of her bed!

The hands gripping her ankles felt like iron manacles. His gigantic shadow loomed up the wall, making him appear even more massive. And he was naked.

Diana tried to swallow, but she could not. She tried to breathe, but found it impossible. She had always wondered what a man’s parts looked like. Now she saw. She saw, but she did not believe. Parts like these could not be concealed in the satin breeches of Regency men!

His sex organ was far too big, far too hard, rising like a Roman column from a nest of blue-black curls. A nest that held two swan’s eggs! He had obviously come to rape her and she knew that when he impaled her, he would kill her.

Diana found her voice. It was a low, breathless whisper. “Please, do not do this thing.”

His black eyes caressed the curves and mounds of her alabaster beauty spread before him. She was totally different from other women. She was so much finer. It was as if she had been refined, then re-refined for eons until she had reached perfection. She had soft down upon her belly, giving her skin the texture of velvet. The skin that covered her luscious breasts, however, was almost transparent, revealing delicate blue veins. She looked ethereal as an angel. Her mons was domed high like an arch crowned with a hundred pale gold tendrils. When he finally opened the petals of her female center, he hoped the color would be the same rose pink as her soft mouth and the aureoles that crowned the tips of her breasts. With her wrists tied above her head, her breasts thrust up like luscious fruit, ripe for tasting.

As he stood transfixed, drinking in her loveliness, drowning in desire, she found the courage to beg him again. “Please, Marcus, do not do this thing.”

“I am riven with need,” he said low.

“If you rape me, you will kill me,” she whispered.

“I have not come to rape you,” he said hoarsely.

“Then why are you here?”

“I seek only the truth.”

“What do you mean?” she cried, desperately trying to understand.

“I would know if you are truly virgin,” he said huskily.

Suddenly she understood. It was like a revelation. “My God, you wouldn’t!” Yet incredibly, she knew that he would. He wanted proof of her virginity. A blazing anger dispelled her fear. “You Roman swine! I thought virginity meant nothing to you. You said it served no purpose to
preserve a hymen. You said there was no logic in such a thing, no benefit!”

“I want the truth.”

Diana knew he was a man of his word. In that moment he had more determination than any man alive. No plea on earth would sway him from his intent. And then she had another revelation. He was doing this because he didn’t believe her!

She lay before him completely helpless and yet somehow she possessed all the power. She held the power because she was still in possession of her maidenhead. Diana began to tremble. Though he perceived each tremor, it did not stop him.

Her fear stemmed from being hurt and Marcus had no desire to hurt her. He wrapped one arm about her legs above the ankles and lifted her knees. The fingers of his other hand reached out to touch her woman’s center.

Diana flinched, then swallowing hard, she fixed her attention on the golden coin that hung about his neck.

She was so hot and dry to the touch, he wished he had lubrication so he would not hurt her. His eyes fell to the swollen head of his phallus where he saw a huge drop of glistening clear body fluid. He caught it on his fingertip, raised her knees higher and slowly, carefully, slipped his finger up into her sheath.

He heard her gasp. It was a delicious feminine sound. She was extremely tight, but still he doubted she was intact. And then, suddenly, there it was. The barrier. Marcus was exultant!

Diana, too, experienced exultation. Then with the power that only a beautiful woman possesses she said, “I shall never gift you with it.”

“You shall! You shall!” It was a vow. Deliberately, he found the tiny bud of her woman’s center and traced a circle about it with his fingertip.

Diana’s eyes widened in shock as she felt a delicious frisson shoot up inside her. Then her sheath gripped his
finger with a tiny convulsive shudder. When he withdrew it, he did so slowly, drawing his finger along her pink cleft with a sensual caress that made her pulsate. Up inside she suddenly felt hot and wet. At all costs she must not let him know that fondling her had excited her body, making her feel deliciously wanton.

He stood up from the bed and removed the thongs that bound her wrists. Diana resisted the impulse to rub them. Instead, she locked her gaze with his. “I would like some sleep, General. I have many floors to scrub tomorrow.”

The fact that she chose the work of a menial slave over him enraged him. Only his iron self-control prevented him from slapping her, hard. Perhaps the
lady
did not believe that he would actually order her to do such hard, demeaning work. When dawn arrived, she would learn otherwise!

A female house slave awakened her before dawn. She brought a jug of cold water for laving, then picked up the brown toga and head cloth and stood waiting patiently.

“I will not wear those,” Diana said haughtily.

“It is all you have to cover yourself. Kell will not relent,” the slave informed her quietly.

After a moment’s reflection, Diana reluctantly used the cold water, then donned the ugly garment. A young boy of perhaps eleven or twelve brought in a small loaf of bread and a cup of drinking water. Diana almost flung the offering at the wall, but a small voice inside her told her it might be all the food she would see that day.

The youth was on the thin side and had obviously not yet reached puberty. His dark eyes seemed far too large for his small face. “You must hurry,” he urged.

“I shall do just the opposite,” Diana informed him.

His thin shoulders sagged.

“If you do not hurry, Sim will be flogged,” the female slave told her.

Diana’s anger flared. “Take me to Kell!” she ordered.

The trio made their way to the first-floor kitchens, then into a rear kitchen with a huge hearth, big black ovens, and an enormous cistern with steaming water. When Kell saw her coming, he ordered a slave to fill a bucket with hot water. “You are late. You may start with the bathing rooms. First you scrub the tile with the lye soap, then you rinse thoroughly, and wipe dry with a chamois cloth.”

“And if I refuse?” Diana demanded.

“Let me introduce you to Sim. He is to be your whipping boy.”

For a moment she thought Kell had given the boy permission to whip her if she did not obey, then the terrible truth dawned upon her. If she did not do exactly as she was told, the boy would be flogged instead of her!

Her eyes flew to Sim, to his thin shoulders and large, sad eyes. “That is monstrous!” In an accusing tone she demanded, “Is he a Briton?”

Kell raised his eyebrows. “Do you suppose they let me flog Romans?” he asked dryly.

Diana took the wooden bowl of lye soap and bucket of steaming water and took them through to the rooms where she had bathed last evening.

When Kell was sure she was out of earshot, he winked at Sim and said, “You evoke pathos so well. Go to the kitchen and get your reward.”

“That was a devious trick,” a woman’s voice accused.

“Mind your own business,” Kell said coldly.

“What happens in the general’s household is my business,” replied Nola, a freedwoman the general had brought with him from Gaul while she was still a slave. These two were ever at odds regarding the running of the household. When Kell had first arrived, Nola was in charge, but once Marcus had freed her for good service, Kell had been appointed to her post. He had authority over everyone in the household, save Nola, and womanlike, she delighted in her ascendency over a male.

“You are only happy when you are poking your nose
into men’s affairs. Women, whether they are slaves or not, should be seen and not heard!”

Nola laughed in his face. “Are we such a threat to you, Briton? If I were you, I would treat the new female with a little more respect. Once she gains favor with Marcus, she could make your life a living hell.”

“You already do that, woman of Gaul!”

“Really?” Nola drawled. “I had no idea my barbs pierced your thick hide. Be so good as to have my breakfast sent up to my chamber.”

Diana worked off her fury scrubbing the tiles, then as her anger began to dissipate and she moved on to the floors of other chambers, the beauty of the mosaics caught her imagination. She took pride in her work, making the vibrant colors spring back to life, rinsing off the lye soap until they were spotless, then polishing them with the chamois cloth until they gleamed.