Love's Blazing Ecstasy (32 page)

“No,” she moaned, writhing against him in an effort to be free.

Burrus was aware of nothing but his powerful driving need for her. He tightened his arms around her, and his kiss deepened in intensity as he explored the moist sweetness of her mouth, muffling her protests. Overwhelmed with desire, he kept up his assault, caressing her breasts, and lifting the stola up at the hem so as to be close to her bare flesh.

Wynne was stunned to feel warm seeking fingers on her naked breast. Please…please let me go,” she mumbled but again her words were muffled by his kiss. Would he never stop? She wondered, feeling panic take hold of her soul.

Burrus pushed her down on the pillows, covering her body with his own. It was then that the images of the pain and the horror of that day sent Wynne over the edge and she screamed in terror.

As if he had been doused with ice water, Burrus drew away from her, confused as he saw how she cringed from him, sobbing, holding up her hands to fend him off.

“Wynne, what’s wrong?”  He was perplexed..mystified by her reaction. “I only want to love you….want to be inside you. Let me, please let me,” he whispered, reaching out to her. 

“I can’t…I just can’t…” She shuddered, pulling her stola up to cover her bare skin. “I can’t bear to be touched like that.”  Breathlessly she told him all that had happened to her and to Isolde the day of the soldiers’ attack, how the
Romans had torn at her clothes, bruised and pinched her flesh, touched her intimately, and come so close to violating her body.  “If not for Edan.....”

“Edan?”

“The son of my chieftain, Cedric, and my friend…..”

Burris listened to her story, feeling ashamed of himself for forcing himself upon her when she trusted him. “I didn’t know, Wynne. I swear it. I’m sorry. I’ll never touch you again.  Never. I promise.”

Burrus had put a comforting arm around Wynne’s shoulders to make up for what he had done but when Meghan came back into the tent she misunderstood. Wynne’s head was bent, her eyes were closed in thought. But for Meghan one look at the two of them shattered all of her dreams. It was true, then, that Burrus loved Wynne. Feeling as if her heart was breaking, Meghan again went out in to the cool air of the dawn.

Chapter Forty-Seven

After the incident in Wynne’s tent, Burrus avoided both the young women.
He was ashamed of his behavior with Wynne and haunted by Meghan’s sad eyes. Yet he did not know what he had done to harm the girl. Hadn’t he always kept a distance from her, treated her respectfully, like a sister?

No doubt she is as disgusted with me as Wynne is, and as I am with myself
, he thought, with self-loathing. Compounding his shame were the images of Meghan that kept coming to him unbidden—Meghan opening herself to him like a flower. Meghan in his arms. Meghan loving him.

“Damn you, Valerian, for putting such temptation in my path,” he swore. “How did you have the strength to turn away from this sweet and lovely woman? Was it because of the Celtic woman you spoke of whom you loved?”

Perhaps, then, another woman would be the answer for him as well. A tall young Egyptian camp follower had been giving him the eye lately. He would take her to his bed.

Wynne too noticed the sad look in Meghan’s eyes, but she suspected the cause. It was painful to love and not have that love returned.  She didn’t hear Meghan’s laughter about the camp now, missed her presence in her tent, noticed the frown that marred her face.  After Burrus let it be known that he had taken a concubine to his bed, Meghan’s spells of moodiness grew even worse.

I’m certain that he cares for Meghan as much as she cares for him,
Wynne thought, so why was Burrus avoiding the young woman? 
Sometime I just do not understand men
.

But Wynne did not have much time to ponder male perfidy, as she had her own problems. A messenger sent  from the South came to inform them that Severus was on his way and would be at the camp the next evening. The news struck Wynne right between the eyes.

I will never let him bed me
, she vowed.
Let him punish me as he will and kill me if he so desires. It is better to let the vultures pick the flesh off my bones than let such as him defile me.

Frantically she sought to lay hands on a knife or a dagger, anything that could protect her virtue from his grasping hands, but she was carefully guarded against just such an intent.
She would have only her own bare hands with which to fight him off. That and her pride.

The sun seemed to fly across the sky that day as she waited with dread for the tribune’s return. She tried to keep busy, but there was very little to do except try to still the beating of her panicked heart.

When at last the legion was spotted, Wynne fought against the urge to run away into the wilderness. She would have it out with this Severus. She was no weakling, no coward to run away. She was a Celt, and she was proud of her heritage. She would face him like a warrior.

When Meghan came to fetch her, her face ashen with her fear for her friend, Wynne held her head high.

“He is here. Severus is here,” Meghan cried. “And he is asking for you. You are to meet him in his tent right away. Come.”

On trembling legs Wynne followed Meghan to meet her fate.

It was a greatly aged Severus who met her at the entrance of the tent which they would now share. The days spent among the Celts, the worry over the escape of his prisoner, all had taken their toll. But Wynne could find no sympathy in her heart for this man. He was and always would be her enemy.

He had filled the tent with his personal belongings. No longer would this be a safe haven for her, her home. It now would be a place of horror to her, where she would have to suffer this madman’s touch.

Severus forced a smile in an effort to win her affection, but it seemed to her nothing more than a sinister leer. He was sitting on the pil
lowed couch and now gestured for her to come forward. Little did he know the effort it took for her to do so. Her mouth was so dry that she could not speak. She glared at him with defiance.

“So I see that the weeks you have spent here have not softened you. You will no doubt fight me to the end. Well, so be it. I am used to fighting.” He gestured for her to sit beside him. She did so, warily. The first sign that he was going to touch her would send her fleeing from this tent.

“I have thought of you often these long weeks,” he said softly. “You do not know how I have longed for a woman’s softness—a willing woman’s that is.”

Wynne thought that this creature had no doubt forced himself upon many of the unfortunate girls of her tribe, and her eyes flashed at him. If he expected her to be compliant, to let him have his way without a fight, then he did not know much about the Celts after all.

“I will never come to your bed willingly,” she finally answered with a voice filled with scorn.

A wicked smile lit his face. “Willingly or unwilling, you will do as I want. You are my most cherished possession.” He reached for her hand but she scrambled away.

“I am not your possession. I do not belong to anyone!” she hissed at him.

He stood up then and roughly grabbed her. “You are mine,” he said, holding her wrists so tightly that she feared they would snap in two. Suddenly his hold on her loosened
as he again tried to be genial. “It won’t be so bad. You might even find you like it. You look to me to be a passionate woman in spite of your words.”

She took a step backward. “I loathe your touch. You are vile. I hate you and all your kind.”

“Do you indeed?” Suddenly his hand whipped out and grabbed her hair, pulling it savagely. “I am sorry for your sake that you feel this way, for I intend to have you, whenever I desire you. All your pleading will do you no good!”

Pulling her to him, he kissed her roughly, heedless of her struggles. In spite of his skinny build, he was a very strong man. He kissed her as if putting upon her his seal of ownership. Wynne could not escape his grasp or his mouth.

Savagely he ripped at her stola, pulling it from her body and leaving her in  near-nakedness. She sprang at him, kicking, biting, scratching, but he finally managed to pull her close to him, pinning her arms to her sides and holding her still.

“Oh, little lioness, if you only knew that your struggles only add to my desire!” With a final tug he had stripped even her
strophium
from her, so that she was completely naked. His hand roamed freely over her body, caressing her full breasts and traveling down.  Wynne gasped at the intimacy of his touch. Her hatred for him was even deeper than before. She tried to protect herself, but her arms were firmly held at her sides. With his free hand, he disrobed, his bony body pressed against her own. In revulsion Wynne looked down and was amazed to see only a small limp organ.

So he is among the men who cannot please a woman,
she thought with relief. Indeed the tribune was no threat to her after all.

Noticing the direction of her eyes he whispered, “Touch me..there….”

“No….”  Her lips trembled as she suppressed a smile.

In anger and frustration, Severus seemed to sense her thoughts.  He repeated his request.  “Touch me…fondle me…let me put it between your breasts….”

Grabbing her hand he forced the contact of skin against skin, but still remained limp.  As if it were her fault that he could not become hard, he pushed her violently away from him. 

“Damn you, woman.  Damn you for your insolence.” Reaching for his tunic, Severus dressed himself and called for the guard. “Take this woman out and give her twelve lashes, but be careful not to mar her skin. Whip her with her clothes on.”

Wynne was encircled with the guard’s strong arms and pulled from the tent, her eyes resting upon Severus as she went. He was a pitiable creature, this
Roman. Let him whip her. Let him kill her. She knew in her heart that he would never have victory over her. The victory was hers.

Chapter Forty-Eight

Lying facedown on the pillows, Wynne cursed Severus. She could not believe what he had done to her these last few days. She had been whipped and beaten and starved and made to endure all sorts of degradations in an effort to break her spirit.

The welts from her whipping still burned a trail of pain across her shoulders, but she had refused to cry out and give the
Romans the satisfaction of seeing her agony. Her bravery would have made Adair proud of her.

“Father, wherever you are, hear me. These
Romans will pay for what happened to you and for their treatment of me,” she said aloud.  And to her mind it was no idle promise.

Wynne’s stomach growled with hunger. Severus had refused her all food except for bread and water until she agreed to do his bidding. He expected her to pretend that he was a great lover, to writhe and moan under him in the throes of make-believe passion. The man was perverse and insane and what he asked of her was degrading.

I thank the gods that he is unable to function as a man
, she thought. At least she was spared that abhorrent indignity.

Wynne had worried that he would turn her over to another of his soldiers since he could not pleasure himself with her, but it seemed that his pride would not let him admit his inadequacies. He wanted the others to think that he was plunging into her body.  Part of his satisfaction, it seemed, was in pretense and make-believe; that merged with cruelty.

She hated the Romans more and more each day, except for Burrus, sweet kind Burrus. He had comforted her with his eyes, with soft words, and had smuggled food to her more than once.

“Someday I will kill him for what he has done to you,” Burrus had said with such hate in his voice that Wynne was taken aback. Such violent avowals were rare in the centurion.

Tomorrow
she would again be called before Severus. He no doubt thought she would now do his will—stroke him and pleasure him in unnatural ways—but he was wrong. She would die first.

“Pssst….lady…beautiful lady,” she heard a voice rasp from behind her. She tried to get up to see from whom the voice came, but she was weak with hunger and instead fell back among the pillows.

“Who is there?” she asked in a voice tinged with anxiety. Had Severus thought of another torture for her?

“It is I, Ibu,” the voice answered.

She had heard about Ibu from Meghan. He was the slave boy who had befriended Meghan, although she had never seen him in all the time she had been in camp.

“Ibu….”

She heard the rustle of footsteps moving closer to her and saw the faint glow of an oil lamp. Turning her head, she saw him and drew in her breath at the vision he made. His teeth were gleaming like pearls as he smiled; his skin was the same black as Sloan’s coat. He was beautiful! Wynne had never seen a black person before and he fascinated her.  She couldn’t keep from staring as he moved with such supple grace.

“I brought this to help soothe and heal your back,” he said, brin
ging forth a bottle from inside his tunic. “It is an herbal salve used by my people.”  Shyly he stepped toward her, knelt beside the pillows, and pushed down the fabric of her gown.