The Barbarian's Mistress (17 page)

‘Gods, you’re killing me,’ he said as he stroked his cheek against her skin, his nose separating her folds.

‘More…’ she said, desperate for that intimate touch again.

‘Greedy girl,’ he said with approval, as he brought his tongue to her again and slipped his finger inside her.

She climaxed again and again, until she could take no more. Then he moved up her body, sliding his skin and his rod along her damp flesh until he nestled his arousal at her entrance.

‘I want this so much,’ he said huskily, flexing his hips so she could feel his need.

Lara wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him as he had kissed her, deeply, fully, letting her tongue invade his mouth in a frenzy of desire, squirming to get him closer, inside her.

He kissed her back with rough ardour, riding his own self-control so hard it seemed to be closer to agony than pleasure. Then he threw himself off the bed and sat on the floor, panting in sobbing gasps.

‘No,’ she moaned, leaning over the side of the bed to get to him, trying to find his mouth. Past the point of sanity, she pressed her thumb into his mouth. He sucked on her thumb, stroking it with his tongue as she edged further off the bed so that she could reach his lips with her own. When she was close enough, she took her finger from him and replaced it with her tongue, nipping at his bottom lip until she tasted blood. The pain was exquisite.

That bite seemed to shock her back into sanity. Touching his lips with her finger tips she patted them. ‘Sorry sorry, I don’t know what I’m… I hurt you…’

His teeth closed over her fingers and bit down, not as hard as she had him, but hard enough to get the message across that he didn’t care. He was past caring.

‘Take me into your mouth,’ he pleaded brokenly. ‘It’s the only way I’ll stop. I need …’

‘Show me what to do,’ she said immediately.

He was standing in front of her in an instant. ‘Open your mouth and let me feel your lips on me,’ he croaked, taking his hard rod in his hands and guiding it toward her mouth. The sheer thrill of watching her lips pout in readiness, nearly undid him. He was so close. All he wanted to do was bury himself in her. But he couldn’t do that. This was all he could have.

She opened her lips and let them slide down over his soft head. The wet, slick heat of her mouth drove him wild. Desperately, he pulled her closer, only partly conscious that she couldn’t take all of him. That she could choke if he went too deep.

Her hands seemed to know what they needed to do. She drew the balls down while she sucked him in. His hips thrust so that his rod moved in and out of her mouth. Her innocent ministrations were as perfect as any experienced whore’s.

He was so close. Desperate to stop before he released, he dragged his arousal from her mouth. Then he threw her down on the bed so he could wedge his climaxing member between their bodies, before he gave in to the overwhelming pressure.

When he collapsed on top of her, his body cradled by her hips, she felt shocked to the core by what had happened. Her body still hummed, but she felt languid and satiated. Oddly flat, after the intensity of the moments before. She could never have imagined what he’d done to her. What he had asked her to do to him. And yet it had been wonderful. Having him in her mouth was so much better than just holding him in her hands. And the expression on his face was enough to tell her that he had enjoyed every part of what they did together.

She shuddered, remembering the feel of his tongue inside her. How had she never known that such pleasure existed before? No wonder Vali had wanted her to do that to him night after night. Had she known… she blushed, just thinking about it.

When he made to roll off her, she held him in place.

‘I’m too heavy,’ he mumbled into her hair.

‘No, not yet. I need… not yet.’

‘You need me inside you, like I need to be inside you…’ He sounded defeated.

‘I don’t know … I feel replete but… empty.’

He swore again and nuzzled into her neck. ‘This was a bad idea. We’re not going to stop this until... I should have known I didn’t have the decency to control myself once we started.’

‘You controlled yourself. You didn’t take me. I was the one out of control.’

‘Only because I taught you things you shouldn’t know. What a good virgin shouldn’t know.’

She drew his head up so she could meet his eyes. ‘I’m not sorry. Don’t spoil this by being sorry.’

He shifted position so she was once more at his side while he lay on his back. They were both sticky with his fluid. ‘Go to sleep, sweetling. We’ll figure out what’s to be done tomorrow.’

1 September 79 CE Paestum LUCANIA

As the sun shone in through their window next morning, Vali lay with his sweetling cradled in his arms. He had given up the fight to keep his distance somewhere in the night. Not the physical distance, because with Lara there could be no physical distance. She curled herself around him like a vine the moment she sensed him near.

It was the emotional distance he had given up on. After the way she had responded to him the night before, how could he ever consider not loving her? Her spirit and courage awed him; the way she embraced every challenge, the way she trusted him with every decision, especially in the bedroom.

When she’d asked what he was doing several nights ago he’d thought he’d lost her. He expected her to be disgusted with him and his dirty, self-indulgent habits. Instead, she’d wanted to give him the release he so needed. And then asked to do it again! His little virgin mouse had sat on his thighs completely naked, her core revealed to him, and did what most other good women would think twice about.

And last night he’d learned that all their sex play had been causing her discomfort. When he’d wanted to ease her she’d gone along with it, even though it was more confronting than anything else he had asked of her. And watching her come was the wildest aphrodisiac he’d ever known. So natural, so uninhibited, once she let herself go. The way she took her pleasure was awe inspiring.

And finally, when he’d been so far gone he thought he’d go crazy if he didn’t get away from her, or into her, she took him into her mouth and pleasured him as he’d never known. Yes, she was inexperienced; yes, he’d known better technique. But none had been as world shattering as Lara, because she gave with her heart, gave with all that she was. And if she was already giving him better sex than he’d ever known, and they hadn’t even consummated their bond, then he was unable to envisage what it would be like with her, if and when they did.

Because, that was the problem. He loved her. He wanted her more than he thought possible -- like a fever, like a storm. But that didn’t mean he could have her. It didn’t mean she was his, or could ever be truly his.

Theirs wasn’t simply an issue of an insignificant gap in status like Daria and Darius, there’s was patrician and slave; the highest and the lowest of social strata. And, though he may no longer be a slave, that didn’t change his status in the minds of Roman Society. Patricians married patricians. There were no exceptions. Her father might entrust her safety to him, but he wouldn’t entrust her future. He wouldn’t want her children fathered by a barbarian sex slave. 

And Anniana loved her father too much to go against his wishes. He would never force her to choose between them. She deserved to live in luxury, the spoiled, beloved pet of a wealthy and powerful man. Not as a liberti, with no people, no place in the world, and no future.

So the question was how to get away from her before it was too late. Not because that was what he wanted, but because it was what was right. But he couldn’t just walk away from his obligation to her. If he didn’t care for her until her father worked out another solution, then he truly was a coward. He couldn’t leave her. And if he couldn’t leave her, and he couldn’t keep his distance, then what was the alternative, especially as they were supposed to be a married couple?

‘Stop worrying. I can hear it from here,’ she said in her sexy, sleepy voice that had him hard the instant he heard it.

‘How do you know I’m worrying? I could be thinking of putting your mouth to good use again.’ He tried to keep his voice light with humour.

‘If you were thinking about that your rod would have been hard. And it wasn’t.’  She placed her small hand on his hardening arousal.

‘When did you get so good at identifying my sexual interest?’

‘Since I was given excellent training. I did do it right didn’t I?’ Her voice was suddenly anxious.

He drew her up so that he could look her in the eye; those big, golden, doe-eyes that drove him crazy when they looked at him with innocent seduction.

Her hair fell down around the two of them, like a golden wall, keeping out the world, making it just them.

‘You were perfect. You’re always perfect. If I had my way I’d never let you out of this bed.’

‘You can have your way,’ she said, as she touched his face with the back of her hand.

‘I can’t. And the sooner we both realise that, the better.’

‘I love you.’

He closed his eyes and tried not to let those words lift his heart. He’d known this was how she felt. But having her say the words… it humbled him. Unmanned him.

‘I love you too. But that doesn’t change anything. This world doesn’t operate from love, it operates from power. And I have none, and you have the potential to have more than any woman in the world. Love doesn’t factor into that.’

She leaned in and kissed his lips. ‘At least you have admitted it, finally. If I’d known, all I had to do was put you in my mouth to get you to admit it, I would have done it long ago.’ She was trying for humour, but it fell flat.

‘Me loving you has nothing to do with the sex. Well, only as much as
one of the traits I love about you is your easy acceptance of my needs and willingness to embrace them.’

‘So it’s not that I’m good at it?’ She slid her leg over him and eased back onto his thighs.

He couldn’t help smiling at her impudence. ‘No, not because you’re good at it. If “being good at it” was all it took to be loved, then I’d be loved from one end of Rome to the other.’

‘Ouch!
I don’t want to hear that.’ She covered her ears with her hands, shifting her legs so that she sat astride him, her damp hot centre pressed against his arousal. She was going to send him into an early grave from sexual excess and frustration.

He shifted his hips so that he could feel more of her, and her expression changed immediately. Suddenly, she was looking at him with such longing, he had to turn away.

‘Come on, time to get up and see what the day holds for us. I’m starving!’ He eased her off him and slid his feet to the floor.

‘You’re always hungry. Can we go down and fish off the rocks at the point. That’s fun!’

He laughed. ‘You don’t fish; you pull funny faces, and tell me to throw the fish back when I catch them.’

‘Well, it must hurt them, to be out of the water.’

‘We kill to eat. You can’t be soft hearted about such things.’

‘I can.’

He groaned and rubbed his sleep-tousled hair with his palms, frustrated and amused by her, in turn.

‘Whatever you want. Come on, the day’s a’wasting.’

For most of the day Appius joined them, playing in the water while they caught fish that Lara made Vali throw back. Then, as the afternoon shadows lengthened, they headed back to the house, content and happy.

‘We should have kept that last one. It was big enough for all of us to share,’ Appius complained, for the fourth time.

‘Lara would have made us all feel guilty for eating it,’ Vali said, with a laugh.

‘Well, it probably had a family relying on it for food. You couldn’t kill it,’ she said defensively.

‘Instead, we have a family relying on us for food, and we haven’t got any,’ Vali countered.

‘Daria will have bought our food from the market.’

‘You mean fish that a fisherman caught?’

‘My father was a fisherman. He used to bring us fish home every day. Mother had a dozen different ways to cook it,’ Appius said with enthusiasm, as he pushed open the door to his home.

‘She’ll have to teach me,’ Lara smiled, as she entered the little back room next to the kitchen where they all shared their meals.

Daria came out of the kitchen with a scroll in her hands. Her face was red with excitement. ‘This came for me today. Do you think it’s what you’ve been waiting for? I can’t read, so I don’t know what it is.’

Vali took the scroll from her outstretched hands, and looked at the name on the outside. Then he removed the seal and read what was written there.

‘What?’ Lara said, seeing the blank expression that had come onto her lover’s face. It made her feel suddenly sick.

‘Your father is dead. Someone called Silus wrote this. He says we have to come back to Rome.’

‘Silus is my father’s scribe and assistant,’ she said numbly. Her father was dead? But how could he be dead? She had only left him a few days ago.

Vali reached for her, and she went eagerly into his arms. It was the only place left where she felt safe. She tried to think, tried to process what she’d been told.