One With the Darkness (17 page)

He rose with one small gilt sandal in each hand, their leather laces dangling, and placed them in a niche. She put the folded fabric of her
palla
in another. Her nipples were indeed outlined clearly against the fine fabric of her midnight blue tunic.

He knew what he wanted to have happen here, in the heat of the bath with the rain pattering on the flagstones outside the door and against the tiles of the roof. She had refused to indulge her own attraction for three days because he was her slave. He wasn’t going to allow that to get in the way tonight. He’d find a way around it.

“Disrobe, Jergan.” Her voice was husky. In the dim light cast by the lamps she seemed exotic as well as beautiful.

He unbuckled his belt and pulled his tunic over his head. She surprised him by kneeling before him to unlace his boots in reciprocation. He sat and pulled them off. She unwound the linen from his feet and examined his soles.

“The unguent helped.”

“Thank you for your care.”

“My responsibility.” She set his boots aside and bundled up the linen strips.

“Would other Roman women have bothered?”

“Many would,” she said, and looked away. She must know that wasn’t true. She gently untied the bandage that bound the poultice to the wound in his shoulder. He peered to look. The wound had sealed itself even further in the last days. It no longer seeped fluid. It was only a jagged, rough line of pink flesh.

“The astringent leached out the fluid,” she said with a satisfied smile.

“Is that why it burned so?”

She nodded.

He stood, dressed only in his loincloth, and watched her pull off her own tunic and chemise. She was naked. The lamplight of the changing room flickered on her breasts, the flare of her hips. She looked at him and did not cover herself. Brid and her handmaidens—he had a chance. He saw it in Livia’s eyes. She moved past him
into the hot room. His erection was almost painful. He kept his loincloth. He didn’t want to frighten her with his too-obvious desire.

She sat on a bench against a wall and closed her eyes. He took the bench on the opposite wall. But he had no desire to close his eyes. He watched as her breathing slowed and her skin began to glow with perspiration. She had delicate ankles and wrists. He liked that in a woman. Her breasts were perfectly formed. The way they rose and fell with her breathing was torture. They didn’t look like they had been suckled by children. Too bad. Wise, generous, caring, she would raise strong sons with a moral core as deep as her own.

Catia came in and quietly left bath supplies—the tray of salt and herbs, giant linen towels. She glanced to Jergan as she left and smiled. It was not a smile of desire but … but of … gratitude? Oh, the story of him saving Livia had gotten about. They were grateful she had not been hurt. Little as it had been due to him. They must not know exactly how strong she was. Still, could she have vanquished all nine? He wasn’t certain. She must have limitations. He couldn’t bear to think of a sword cleaving that lovely flesh. The question was not why she had bought him, but why she didn’t have a dozen bodyguards.

It was perhaps half an hour before Livia opened her eyes. She looked more herself. He rose and hefted the amphora of oil over his elbow. She lifted her hair. He poured it in a thin stream and she rubbed it with one hand over her shoulders and arms, across her breasts, her belly, Brid help him.

“Can you do my back?” she whispered, half-turning.

His hands seemed coarse as he rubbed oil across the ridge of her spine, the delicate wings of her shoulder blades. Touching her sent fire straight to his loins. She
twisted her hair into a knot to keep it out of the oil. He set down the amphora and knelt to offer her the tray of salt and crumbled sage. She took a handful in silence and rubbed it over her body. He bowed his head. He couldn’t watch her rub her thighs or he would spill his seed right here and now. But he couldn’t master his eyes for long. They glanced back to her and were held transfixed.

She didn’t look at him, but she felt him watching her, he could tell. She was only doing a ritual she had probably done a thousand times. Yet it was so much more to him. She could not help but know she roused him. He could smell her woman’s musk beneath the scent of oil, salt, and sage. Was this more than a ritual to her as well?

His hand could not be called steady as he rubbed the salt over her back and down over the swell of her hips and buttocks. He wanted to turn her around, spread her thighs wide, and bury himself inside her. But one must go carefully with a woman like this. A woman who still owned him. He couldn’t quite hate her for that anymore. Perhaps he never had, no matter what he told himself. She’d saved him from a brothel and treated him kindly. He still wanted to repay her in the next hours in a coin that only he could deliver, make her open herself to him, moan with her desire, and acknowledge him as a man. Not exactly revenge. Somehow revenge was not as important as it had been. But he wanted … he wanted, in some sense, the same power over her she had over him.

A dangerous mission, not only to his body but likely to his soul.

L
IVIA FELT WEAK.
Not physically. Physically she felt fine. Her wounds had healed almost immediately, as was the habit of her kind. She’d been a bit disoriented by the whole attack, or perhaps it was by the feelings of urgency
and familiarity that plagued her, but she was better now. Still, the feel of Jergan’s hands on her naked body had made her weak with desire for him.

Jergan was reaching for a
strigil
to scrape away the salt and oil. She must have the strength not to command the use of his body.

He was aroused. That was why she had not asked him to remove his loincloth. What if he offered himself? What if he
chose
to make love to her? Would she have the strength to refuse?

He scraped in silence, her back, her shoulders. She did not take the
strigil
from him, but leaned back against the wall so he could do the same for the front side of her. He swallowed and continued without instruction. He held out her wrists and ran the ivory-handled blade along her arms. Then he did her chest, slid the tool seductively along the curves of her breast, lifted it gently with his other hand to scrape her ribs. Was it an accident that he brushed her nipple? Sensation jolted toward her loins. Venus, be merciful. She hadn’t felt this much desire for a man for … for forever.

What was it about him? (The
strigil
was moving over her belly.) She trusted him with her life and the lives of her friends and servants. He would not betray her plot to assassinate Caligula. She didn’t know how she knew that. But she did. She had trusted Jergan with at least part of her secret. He thought her a witch. Some part of her whispered that she should tell him that she was called vampire and that she had what amounted to immortality. She should tell him about translocation, and all the secrets of her state, including the fact that he could become vampire, too. The thrill of unease that accompanied that thought coursed through her and was carried away by the heat and the sensation of his hands on her thighs. Of
course she couldn’t make him vampire. That was against the cardinal Rule of her kind. The very thought of telling him anything frightened her. Not allowed. Not allowed!

She pushed that thought away. She had been on edge lately, what with the dreams and the feeling of urgency. She let fear gush out of her along with the sweat. This moment was heat, and oil and the scent of a man and a woman together. All else could wait.

She opened her eyes. He crouched before her, his knees touching hers, his body all hard planes and the bulge of heavy muscle. His eyes were hotter than the
calidarium.
“Your turn,” she breathed. “Remove your loincloth.”

He swallowed. “I … I would not offend you, my lady.”

She smiled. “How could I be offended?”

He stood, and untied the simple cloth strip that bound his loincloth in place. His erection, freed, was as impressive as she remembered it. Thick and straight. He was a lucky man.

She stood. “Sit, so I can reach to pour the oil.”

He sat on the bench in her place.

“Pull up your hair.” How she loved the bulge of the muscle in his upper arm when he reached behind his neck. She poured the oil over his back and chest. He rubbed it across his belly with one hand. “Let me.” She smoothed the oil across his thighs, his knees, around his calves, his feet, carefully ignoring the organ that strained between his legs. There was certainly no question that he was willing. She retrieved the tray of salt and slipped behind him. “I promise not to open any welts with this.”

“Do as you will,” he growled.

Carefully she rubbed the salt between his welts, over his hips. Men were so wonderfully constructed. So hard, with so many corded places, and yet their skin was smooth
and fine. He took handfuls of salt and rubbed it over his chest and belly, his thighs, as though he was in a terrible hurry. That didn’t offend her, either. She knew why.

Would she do this? She knew she did not have the will to resist the pull inside her that told her it was right to make love with this man, in spite of the fact that he was her slave. She was so wet between her legs that the throbbing seemed to have gotten into her blood. He handed her a
strigil
and took one himself. Again, she worked carefully, he quickly. He stood. She worked the
strigil
over his buttocks. They clenched in response. Livia felt faint with desire. How those buttocks would clench as they drove his rod into a woman! Into her.

“Let us to the pool,” she whispered, taking his hand. Touching his hand was almost as intimate as rubbing salt over his body. Lovers held hands. Lovers.

They waded into the hot water of the steaming pool. The rain drummed harder outside, but here all was heat and steam, inside their bodies and out. The lamps flickered. The water sluiced the last remnants of tonight’s attack from them. She was glad she could afford to indulge herself with chest-high water. She smoothed the water up over his shoulders as he stood, eyes glowing with want. She touched the scar of an old battle on his chest. Her breasts brushed his ribbed abdomen through the water. He did not touch her, just submitted to her touch. But he was like one of the leopards Caligula so liked to kill in the arena, all coiled muscle, ready to spring. His eyes glowed with his desire. They both ducked themselves into the water and rinsed the sweat from neck and face. Water streamed from them.

“I want you, my lady,” he said, his voice husky. “Of my own free will.”

“I want you, too, Jergan.” She thought she had tired of
lust a long time ago. Apparently not. Doubt assailed her. Lust was enough between two mature people. But this seemed more than simple lust. It was almost mystical in its intensity. How could one resist this feeling that she was meant to make love to him? She should free him first. But she could not sign his name in the registry until tomorrow. That didn’t solve tonight. It didn’t solve tomorrow, either. There was no guarantee he wouldn’t make love to her only out of gratitude for his freedom. Their stations were too unequal. So she should not make love to him ever. And yet … his body confirmed that he would do it of his own free will. What to do?

He saw the doubt in her eyes and gripped her shoulders. “There is only one way I can satisfy the need I see in your eyes tonight, Livia Quintus Lucellus, and the need I feel in return, and that is equal partner to equal partner, just as we fought together tonight. No constraints, no orders, regardless of what we are to each other in the eyes of Rome. Those are my terms.”

It did not feel unnatural that a slave should dictate terms. It was only surprising that they were exactly the terms that would free her to act. He seemed to know her so well. But no, nothing could surprise her about Jergan. She had known him forever.

And he would make her whole. She felt it. That was why this was more than lust.

She turned her face up. He was more than a foot taller than she was. “I accept your terms.”

The water swirled around them. Now that she had accepted, she expected the leopard to pounce upon her and ravage her. She wouldn’t mind that. But he didn’t. He took her shoulders gently and drew her in to him, then bent to kiss her. His lips glided against hers, just touching. It made her shiver. Her breasts brushed his chest
again through the water. Her nipples bathed her in sensation. His tongue slid between her lips and she opened to him as he deepened the kiss. Kissing was the surest sign that this was not a master/slave liaison. Masters never allowed their slaves the intimacy of kissing. He probably didn’t know that. As he wrapped his arms around her, she slid her hands up under his hair, around his neck. His erection lay against her belly and she moved against it, loving the moan that elicited. She had loved men for centuries. She knew what pleased them, even if she was a little rusty. And she wanted to give Jergan pleasure.

One of his hands moved lower, cradling her buttocks. She probed his mouth with her tongue. He tasted sweet. His other hand had found her breast. She pressed herself into his palm, and his thumb rubbed her nipple gently. She lost herself in sensation. Somehow his hand had descended to her mound; he was asking her to spread her legs. She was happy to oblige, pulling him down as she widened her stance. She thought he would lift her onto his cock. But his finger split her nether lips, letting in the hot water. It wasn’t as hot as her flesh. His finger caressed her swollen membranes, wet not only with water but also with the thick slickness her need produced. Most men didn’t know that the tiny nub hidden in a woman’s folds was a secret to her pleasure, or didn’t bother to use that knowledge if they did. Her bud of womanhood strained under his fingers as they slid back and forth. How long had it been? She moaned into his mouth. He deepened his kiss even further, and began to rub her in earnest. She could hardly get her breath. She banged her hips against him, feeling the hard length of his cock between them. It didn’t take long before the sensation ramped up until her head was singing with it, like a glass tapped with a spoon. Then the glass shattered. She leaned back, his arm supporting
her, and shrieked her ecstasy, on and on, until her hips jerked from his hand of their own accord and she collapsed against him.