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Forbidden To The Gladiator
Greta Gilbert
He’ll fight to the deathShe’ll fight to save him!When her father wagers her hard-earned money on a gladiator battle—and loses!—Arria is forced into slavery…just as trapped as the gladiator she blames for her downfall, rugged Cal. She’s furious, yet also captivated by their burning attraction. Cal’s past has made him determined to die in combat, but can Arria give her forbidden warrior something to live for…and a reason to fight for their freedom?
He’ll fight to the death
She’ll fight to save him!
When her father wagers her hard-earned money on a gladiator battle—and loses!—Arria is forced into slavery, just as trapped as the gladiator she blames for her downfall, rugged Cal. She’s furious, yet also captivated by their burning attraction.
Cal’s past has made him determined to die in combat, but can Arria give her forbidden warrior something to live for…and a reason to fight for their freedom?
“The engaging characters, impossible situation, and the power exchange between master and slave will have readers up past their bedtime.”
—RT Book Reviews on In Thrall to the Enemy Commander
“Singing with atmosphere and with scholarship, In Thrall to the Enemy Commander gives us an enigmatic heroine who fascinates at every turn, and immerses us fully in a world long-gone, but wonderfully-conjured.”
—Romantic Intentions Quarterly on In Thrall to the Enemy Commander
GRETA GILBERT’s passion for ancient history began with a teenage crush on Indiana Jones. As an adult she landed a dream job at National Geographic Learning, where her colleagues—former archaeologists—helped her learn to keep her facts straight. Now she lives in South Baja, Mexico, where she continues to study the ancients. She is especially intrigued by ancient mysteries, and always keeps a little Indiana Jones inside her heart.
Also by Greta Gilbert (#u0da4ebb0-04cf-5d50-8d9f-ad872c2b14ee)
Mastered by Her Slave
Enslaved by the Desert Trader
The Spaniard’s Innocent Maiden
In Thrall to the Enemy Commander
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.
Forbidden to the Gladiator
Greta Gilbert
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-07432-2
FORBIDDEN TO THE GLADIATOR
© 2018 Greta Gilbert
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For my beautiful sister,
who has finally found her happily-ever-after.
Contents
Cover (#ue892bb8e-f453-5423-a468-87f3add88300)
Back Cover Text (#u8a76030e-1740-5583-aca2-c9fd4748fbaf)
About the Author (#u66c282d5-e7cd-5ab3-a8bb-d6420a3625bd)
Booklist (#u55359c8e-c852-5a61-b297-a2e2778b02d8)
Title Page (#u04a065ab-6328-5c15-8dfb-2c38ad790587)
Copyright (#u9b48d955-ddf4-5858-baa1-1f977d983327)
Dedication (#u59a2ec53-89d4-587e-ba27-95be23bb04ba)
Chapter One (#u2b226df9-0d18-5a03-bdaa-aab58489ea16)
Chapter Two (#ua501a328-f018-5401-930d-6be5d0839e0e)
Chapter Three (#u853df155-bf04-5a79-9b8f-72dac37eeb62)
Chapter Four (#ue05ee9b1-e495-5370-96d0-ec3f28703c55)
Chapter Five (#u0ace3bc4-e36e-5c9c-aebc-1a06bf5bffcb)
Chapter Six (#u90a81f5d-5c5e-54dd-9394-5cf1ec9cb6cf)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#u0da4ebb0-04cf-5d50-8d9f-ad872c2b14ee)
City of Ephesus—west coast of modern Turkey—Roman Empire—AD 99
There were two kinds of Roman men: the ones who lived in search of Gloria and the ones who lived in search of bona fortuna. Arria’s father was the second kind. No matter what family crisis or holy ritual, what call of duty or act of the gods, nothing could keep him from the fighting pits and that was where she found him the night he sold her freedom.
‘No women allowed,’ growled the guard, standing at the entrance to the pit-viewing area. ‘Unless you want to do me a favour?’ He gave himself a rude scratch, then flashed Arria a wine-stained grin.
‘Go to Hades,’ she told him, and in the split second of his astonishment she slipped past him into the rollicking crowd. There must have been two hundred men gathered on the slope before her—portly merchants and seafaring traders, oily-haired plebeians and watchful freedmen, even a smattering of patricians—all vying for position around the large gladiator training pit known as the Chasm of Death.
Arria scanned the men’s torchlit faces, searching for her father. She told herself that it was possible he was not here at all. There was a chance that he had been on his way to the fighting pit that evening and been struck by a bolt of reason.
I am an honourable pater familias, Arria imagined him realising. I should not continue risking my family’s survival on the uncertainties of bets.
Arria almost laughed. As if her father were capable of such Aristotelian logic! No, he was here, as was every other corrupt gambler in the province. The fighting pits of Ephesus were as popular as they were bloody and the Chasm of Death was the largest and bloodiest of them all. The only hope now was for Arria to find her father and seize his purse before the damage was done.
A shell horn moaned. A ringmaster’s voice resounded from below. He was introducing the next set of gladiators—a Dacian and a Berber, whose heights and weights he announced first in Latin, then in Greek. Nearby, a Jewish man echoed the information in Aramaic and Arria thought she heard someone say it again in the Armenian tongue. Second only to Alexandria in influence, Ephesus was the most important commercial centre outside of Rome—a place where people from every corner of the world gathered to live and trade. They spoke different languages and worshipped different gods, though Arria doubted any kind of god was present in this bloody place.
Keeping out of the torchlight, she stalked along the edge of the crowd in search of her father’s stooped form.
The fight below commenced. Arria could hear the metallic clang of weapons and the grunts of effort as the gladiators began their bloody brawl. The Chasm of Death was the training ground of Ephesus’s largest gladiator school and several times a year its owner, Brutus, would invite spectators to place their bets on fights between old or unpromising gladiators in an effort to clean out his stock.
It was a twisted, bloody business and one which the idle and desperate men of Ephesus looked forward to with perverse joy. Arria calculated that her father had lost enough denarii at the pits over the years to equal the cost of a herd of goats, or a fine fishing vessel.
But tonight he had reached a new low. He had seized a purse full of denarii that did not belong to him: Arria’s purse, the purse that contained the denarii that would see their family through the winter.
Arria pushed deeper into the crowd and nearer to the pit’s perimeter. ‘First blood to the Dacian!’ someone shouted. Men cheered and grumbled. Coins changed hands. Someone smashed a wine flagon against a slab of stone.
‘Where are you, Father?’ Arria mumbled, feeling a little dizzy.
She felt a large hand push against her back. ‘Move yourself, boy.’ A man in a purple-trimmed toga brushed past Arria, his eyes sliding to the small bump of her bosom. He paused. ‘What is this?’ He yanked her braid out from beneath her tunic. ‘A woman? At a fighting pit?’
Arria stared into his kohl-rimmed eyes, too stunned to speak. She knew the man’s face: the bent nose, the high cheeks, the oil-soaked hair, combed into perfect rows. She had seen it carved on statues and sketched on walls from the cities of Miletus to Pergamon. ‘Proconsul Governor Secundus?’
‘You are under arrest, woman. Your presence here is an affront to Mars and a disgrace to feminine honour. Lictor!’ He motioned to a bodyguard somewhere behind her.
The governor of the province? At a fighting pit? How was it possible? More importantly, what was she to do? She needed to find her father. It was September already. Fortuna alone would not keep Arria’s family warm and alive through the cold, bleak months to come.
She lurched her braid free from the governor’s grasp and attempted to run, but he caught her by the arm. His bodyguard drew closer.
‘I must go!’ Arria burst out. There was no time to explain. There was no time to even think. There was only her heel slamming down atop the governor’s foot and her teeth burying themselves into the flesh of his gripping hand.
‘Ow!’ the governor howled.
Oh, gods, what had she done? She unlocked her jaws and, as he recoiled in pain, she was able to detach herself from the most powerful man in Ephesus.
‘Little asp!’ he shouted behind her. ‘Lictors!’
A death bellow resonated from the pit below and the crowd erupted in celebration. Seizing on the chaos, Arria tucked her braid beneath her tunic and ducked low, losing herself in the crush of bodies.
Horror rioted through her. Had she really just bitten into the flesh of Proconsul Quintus Vibius Secundus, the venerable governor of the Roman province of Asia?
‘Prepare yourselves my fellow Romans,’ chimed the ringmaster, ‘for in this next bout, limbs will be hewn and innards strewn. I give you the Ox of Germania versus…’
Arria was caught in a sudden rush of movement. She was pulled, then pushed, then pressed backwards. Dizzy and fumbling for balance, she turned to find herself staring down at the blood-spattered sand at a bald, muscle-bound man in a rabbit-skin kilt.
