Seduced by the Gladiator (3 page)

The man whom I had killed.

I had killed before, and would again—at least, I would if I wanted to stay alive. Once the very idea had made me sick, but the life of a gladiator was what I had been given, and I had chosen to make the best of it.

As I patted myself dry with a rough linen towel, however, I whispered a soft prayer to Pluto, god of the underworld, asking him to grant the slain man’s soul safe passage. Before I slept, I would also place a coin in the small clay vase that I kept for this exact purpose, a bribe to the god for the same.

I knew that, had my circumstances been only slightly different, I could have been the one killed on the sands. Or I could have been killed long before I ever became a gladiator.

Sometimes I wondered if the price that I had paid for my life was too high.

I
stood in a line in a narrow stone alley, my hands and feet bound in chains. Six others stood along with me, their hair matted into snarled nests, their skin caked with filth. I knew that this was a reflection of what I myself looked like, and shame flooded through me to be seen as such.

I had stood in a line like this once before, mere hours after my father—my
pater familias
—had sold me to a slave trader. That had been years earlier, and I had been purchased by a higher-classed plebeian, one who had behaved as if I did not exist, which was much better than many alternatives that were whispered among slaves.

Now my dominus had sold me to the slave trader who was flicking the long, polished rope of a whip at our feet, and I did not know why. I would never know why—in the eyes of the world, I did not deserve to.

I was not a person. I was a slave. An animal. And now, after days of travel with no food, little water, and filthy living conditions, my life had been thrust back into the uncertainty that I had felt all those years ago, when I was but a small child.

Who was going to purchase me? Where was I going to go?

“Slaves for sale!” As the slave trader called out, his voice swallowed by the cacophony of sounds in the marketplace, he cracked the whip carelessly, and it fell across my shins. I cried out, and no one turned—no one cared.

Peering down, I studied the brilliant red that now striped my shins. Blood trickled from the wound, bright as a jewel against the dusty white of my skin.

Anger began to simmer inside of me. I knew that I had no rights—I was a slave, a commodity to be bought and sold. But no matter how often I was told that I was worthless, I still knew that I was a person, even if no one knew that but me.

“Clean this one off so that I can see her.”

A man had wandered up, a rich one, judging by the size of the ruby that adorned his finger. I was not supposed to look at his face, and so I kept my eyes trained straight ahead of me. This meant that I looked straight at his great belly, which strained the cloth of his toga.

Though a man dressed as he was likely had a private bath in his home, he smelled. I ground my teeth as a bucket of icy water was dumped over my head, causing the grime to run in rivulets over my skin.

Shame mixed with the anger that was percolating inside of me. I hated being dirty. I hated all of this.

“This one’s tits are too small.” The rotund man reached out, fat fingers pawing greedily at my breasts. I wanted to spit in his face, to shy away from the touch, but knew that my disobedience would result in a beating from the slave trader.

“Let’s see how tight her cunt is.” Panic snaked through me as those hands dropped from my breasts to the area between my legs. I was not a virgin—I had had a lover, another slave, in the house from which I had just been outed. But the thought of strange fingers touching me there was abhorrent, causing nausea to roll in my gut.

And if he wanted to test the tightness of my cunt, I knew what he wanted a new slave for.

I could not be purchased by this man.

Screeching with bloody vengeance as my sudden fury washed away my panic, I flew toward him. The fat man cried out, backing away, but I had lifted my arms, my muscles quivering under the weight of my chains, and had my hands around his throat.

I would surely be killed for this, but I would rather die here in this alley than to be taken to the home of a man who would abuse me for his own pleasure.

“Release him! Slave!” The whip cracked over my shoulders, my back, wielded by the slave trader. I heard other voices, cheers and jeers from the crowd that quickly gathered.

Romans loved nothing more than violence.

As if in a dream, I shook the man, not sure of where I drew the strength from. I did not mean to kill him, merely to convince him that purchasing me would be unwise.

He gurgled, spittle dripping from his mouth grotesquely. Caught up as I was in the moment, a movement in the crowd caught my eye—one man in particular.

Dressed in a toga that told me he was a patrician, the man exuded intelligence as he studied me. I had the distinct sensation that here, finally, was someone who saw me as a person, an individual, not just one of a herd of filthy slaves.

Fascinated by the thought, I allowed my hands to fall from the fat man’s neck. He fell away from me, clutching his throat and shouting, but I paid him no heed, my attention focused on the strange man who continued to watch me.

I snarled at him, simply to see what he would do. Rather than chastising me for looking him in the eye, he allowed his lips to curl into a slight smile, nodding with satisfaction.

“You worthless cunt!”

Old, gnarled hands shoved me into the ground. The slave trader’s breath was hot and bitter on my face as he stood over me, straddling my legs, the whip raised in one hand. “You’ve made a fool of me, girl! Because of you, no one will buy my slaves today. You are more trouble than you are worth!” Behind him, the fat man still clutched at his throat, a look of righteous indignation on his face.

A frenzy lit his eyes as I curled into a ball to protect myself from the angry kick of his feet.

I knew that my time had come. He was going to kill me.

“How much do you want for this one?”

My body tensed as the words were spoken directly above me. When the expected blows did not come, I dared to sneak a glance upward.

The man who had truly seen me was staring calmly at the slave trader, a small leather pouch of coin in his hand.

Surely he could not be . . .

Was he . . .

Was he offering to purchase me?

As the men haggled, I rolled to the side, hindered from moving very far because of my chains. Though I did not know this strange man at all—for all that he could be purchasing me to beat me and rape me every day of the rest of my life—I still felt something that I had not felt since I was a young, innocent child.

I felt hope.

“Unchain her.” The slave trader cackled at the man’s words, but the man stared him down, his face a mask of calm.

“You do not want to unchain this one.” Despite his words, the slave trader did as the calm man bade.

The trader muttered words about stupid patricians, words that he could not say any louder, for fear of upsetting someone higher in class than he. When my chains fell away, I stretched hugely, rotating arms that had been weighed down for days.

“Stand up.” This from my new master. Slowly, cautiously, I did as I was told. I stumbled, my legs weak.

I could not have run, even if I’d had a chance of escape.

“You will not run.” The man seemed to know my thoughts without needing me to say them. Seemingly disinterested, he passed the pouch of coin to the slave trader, who seemed amazed at his good fortune.

I wanted to kick him, the bastard who had made us sit in our own shit and piss for days.

“Follow me.” The man turned, expecting fully that I would follow him. I did, curious and trying to suppress my joy at being free of the slave trader. Weaving through the people who crowded the market, we reached the edge of the stalls, where it was a touch quieter. It was here that the man turned to face me, studying me intently, perhaps wondering if he had made a mistake. He had already shown more interest in me than my former dominus had in the entire time in which I had been a part of his household.

“What is your name?”

I tried to speak, and my voice was thick and scratchy.

“I . . . I am just called slave. Or girl.” I wanted to look at my feet with shame, but the man’s stare compelled me to continue looking him in the eye.

“Were you born into slavery?” I shook my head. “Then you must have had a name once. What was it?”

I had once had a name, one that my parents had given me. That name seemed to belong to another person, another life. But I pulled it from my memory to my lips, and when I spoke, it again seemed to fit.

“Lilia. My name is Lilia.”

Satisfied, the man nodded, then gestured with his hand down the road that led to and from the market. “My home is not far away, a short walk down this road.”

I nodded. I did not know what else to do or say.

“I own a school for gladiators. Do you know what gladiators are, Lilia?”

Wide-eyed, I rasped out an agreement. I had never been to a match in the arena, but all Romans knew of gladiators. Those with prowess in the arena were famed in the Empire, worshipped and respected.

I could not imagine being regarded that way by others.

“Female gladiators are very rare, Lilia. Right now there are none in the city, have been none for years.” I cocked my head, that wild hope springing free inside of me again.

The man gestured for me to follow him as he began to walk up that road. I did, my legs stiff with disuse.

His words floated back to me, over his shoulder, and they changed my life forever.

“You will become a gladiator.”

T
he door to my quarters opened into the training area of the ludus. Though I had closed it behind me, I heard noise coming from the stairs that led to the balcony overlooking the area—the voice of my dominus and those of several others.

Suddenly tense, though I knew that my dominus would not allow any harm to come to his top-ranked gladiator, I wished for the lethal metal blade that I was allowed to wield in the arena.

We were allowed nothing in the ludus beyond wooden swords and shields.

“Lilia!” The voice of my dominus was closer now—right outside the door to my quarters, it seemed. “Open.” Though I had been a slave for many years, and though I had respect for my dominus, it still grated to have to follow orders whenever they were issued.

I relaxed when I realized who it was, though not completely. It was not Bavarius or his men. Still, whatever brought the dominus to my chambers so late at night, I knew it would not be something that I would like.

“Yes, Dominus.” I might have been his favorite—a pet, of sorts—but I harbored no delusions about what would happen to me should I refuse. And I enjoyed the benefits that came with being in the favor of my master, benefits that kept me safe when I may not otherwise have been.

Pressing my suddenly clammy palm against the door, I felt the coarse grain of the wood scratching my skin. Inhaling deeply, I pressed, and the unlatched wood opened under the pressure.

Night was falling, the sky the color of the sea. I blinked, my eyes adjusting to the dim light, before being able to make out the figures that stood in front of me.

My dominus stood in front of the group, his face betraying a hint of impatience. To his one side was one of the female slaves from the house above. Her slight frame sagged under the weight of a bedroll, one nearly identical to my own.

I wanted to stride toward her, to relieve her of the burden. My dominus would not have cared if I had, but I hesitated, for something in the air surrounding the small group seemed off.

My dominus stepped aside, and I saw what I had been sensing.

Christus, my would-be savior from earlier in the day, stood on the sand of our training area, his frame colored by the silver of the moonlight. His subligaculum was unfamiliar—a different color, a different material than we used in the house of Philipus Septus Octavius. His hair was as dark as I remembered, and his eyes shone an intense blue, even in the berry-hued twilight.

Those eyes met mine steadily, and I felt my heart lurch in response. Though I did not want to feel this way, I found my entire being become focused on the man who stood in front of me. I was not stupid—I recognized my visceral response for what it was, an attraction the likes of which I had not ever thought possible.

Much as I wanted him, however, it did not change what he had done to me earlier in the day. As he continued to stare at me steadily, I narrowed my own eyes in response. I wanted to see an apology in the depths of his perusal, but I did not.

“This is Christus, formerly of the house of Lucius Quintus Manius.” My dominus spoke of Lucius, the owner of a rival ludus. The man had fallen on ill times of late, since the untimely death of his wife, Alba, and had begun to sell the warriors in his stable, a single man at a time.

It looked as though my dominus had purchased one.

The dominus seemed to be waiting for my reply, so I nodded slowly, to show that I had heard. I did not speak—I did not know what to say. If that day had been any indication, Christus’ presence in this ludus would mean nothing but trouble for me.

My attraction toward him could not be anything good either. While a single fuck with a gladiator of my choice was not of import in the ludus, anything more would invite trouble.