скачать книгу бесплатно
Severina lay still, listening intently. Did she imagine stealthy movements? Deliberate footsteps? Should she scream and wake her slaves? Should she hide?
Her heart pounded. She seemed unable to breathe. In the void of air, she heard a noise. The bump of a leather shoe against a table leg, followed by muffled sound as the intruder bit back a curse.
A stranger was in her home, not far from her bedroom. Anger surged through her, accompanied by a strong impulse to act. It occurred to her that this intrusion might be related to the censor’s visit. Somebody somewhere wanted this inn badly enough to frighten her. Or worse.
The moon was a mere sliver outside her window, giving scant light. It was difficult to see the objects in the room. She mentally scanned each wall, every corner, the tabletop on the other side of the room, the cupboard above it.
The cupboard. The household gods were inside it. Made of silver and bronze, they were heavy. She’d need something substantial to lay a man out cold, but any of those statuettes could do that, given her strength and training as a gladiatrix. She knew where to strike to kill.
She eased across the room, her bare feet twitching against the cold, smooth stone. The cupboard creaked open. It sounded loud, but so did her own heartbeat.
She had little time to choose and so was relieved when her hand closed around an idol of the perfect size and weight. She grabbed it and retreated soundlessly to a protected area behind the door to await the intruder.
As if summoned by her thoughts alone, the door to her bedroom pushed open and a man materialised, tall and muscular and garbed in a dark cloak.
He didn’t see her. His attention was focused on the bed. In another moment, he’d move closer to it and realise that no one lay there. She hefted her weapon and rushed forwards to crush his skull.
The man caught movement from the corner of his eye, gave a shout and threw up one hand. Severina realised who the attacker was the moment the bronze statuette in her hand fell forwards.
She couldn’t alter gravity, but she managed to twist, jerking her hand backwards enough to avoid killing Lucan. Or at least, she hoped she had.
He dropped hard and fast, blood spurting from the gash on his head. Her gorge rose in Severina’s throat at the thought of what she’d done.
‘Gods, be merciful,’ she prayed. She looked down at the idol she held, feeling strangely betrayed. She tossed it to the bed with a shudder, then hurried to light a lamp with shaking hands. She knelt beside Lucan, biting her lip as she tested the rapidly swelling lump on his skull. She bent and put her ear to his face. He was breathing.
‘What were you doing, sneaking into my bedroom like this?’ she murmured. ‘And you smell like wine! Are you drunk?’
The prone figure didn’t respond. She jumped up and ran out, across the atrium and up a stairway to the small room Ariadne shared with the cook.
By the time she and Ariadne returned with cool compresses, Lucan was beginning to stir and to groan.
She ran to him in utter relief. ‘Oh, Lucan. Oh, Lucan.’ She kept saying the words, making little sense and not caring that she didn’t.
‘Severina,’ he breathed. ‘You hit me?’
‘I thought you were an intruder.’
He made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan. ‘Just help me to a bed, will you? My head hurts like hell.’
Ariadne caught Severina’s hand. ‘He mustn’t go to sleep. I’m no physician, but I know that much. A head injury like this…he shouldn’t sleep.’
‘Don’t go to sleep, Lucan,’ Severina said. She helped him move to the bed.
He fell heavily on to the mattress. ‘Only if you’ll stay and talk to me.’ His lids half-lowered, his gaze slid to the slave. ‘None will accuse me of compromising your virtue, will they?’
‘Of course not,’ Ariadne said, tucking a pillow beneath his head. She didn’t seem to question Lucan’s presence in the room in the first place.
‘Then stay, Severina. Please.’
Severina nodded, suddenly aware that she stood barefoot in her thin nightclothes in a dimly lit room, with Lucan’s long body in the bed a few short feet away.
Ariadne placed the compress on Lucan’s brow. He winced at the slight pressure.
‘Don’t get up for a while,’ Ariadne ordered. ‘Don’t exert yourself, but don’t go to sleep, either. I’ll be back shortly with something for the pain.’
Lucan muttered assent. Severina stood rooted in place, suddenly unsure as Ariadne departed. Lucan lay against her pillows with his eyes closed, the wet compress plastered against his hair. He looked slightly pale, his hair damp, but otherwise he seemed strong and manly. Utterly attractive. She swallowed hard.
As if he sensed her indecision, he lifted a hand and beckoned her closer.
She stepped forwards. He opened his eyes. ‘I need to talk to you,’ he said. ‘That’s why I came. I couldn’t sleep and hoped maybe you’d still be awake.’
‘I was. That’s how I heard you. You’d be a terrible thief, you know that? You bumped around and made enough noise to wake the dead.’
Lucan’s low laughter warmed her. She realised suddenly how much she’d missed his wicked sense of humour.
‘I’d have been quieter if I’d known what lay in wait for me. God help me, I keep forgetting you were a gladiatrix. What did you hit me with, anyway?’
She picked up the bronze statuette and handed it to him. He studied it, fingering the distinctive diadem on the head of the idol, with its full sun hung between two tall horns of a cow.
‘Isis. I should’ve guessed. Protector of women. The irony does not escape me.’
His eyes found Severina’s again. ‘I didn’t know you worshipped the Egyptian goddess.’
‘I don’t. She was already in the house when I took—I mean, when you took—possession of it.’
‘This property is yours and you know it.’
‘But one slip like that in front of the wrong person and I’ll lose it for both of us, won’t I?’ Severina’s voice held a sharp edge.
Lucan struggled to sit up. ‘That’s what I came to talk to you about.’ He settled himself into a comfortable position higher against the pillows. ‘The hearing’s in three weeks, but I think we can do something in the meantime to strengthen our case.’
He smiled, and the smile reached all the way to his beautiful, fiery eyes. ‘Let’s get married.’
‘You can’t be serious.’
‘I’m completely serious. You need to save the inn. I need a wife before my father chooses one for me.’
‘But we’ve already…Lucan, we’ve been through this before.’
‘No. It’s not the same offer as before.’
Severina eyed him suspiciously. ‘It’s not?’
‘No. I’m not offering a true marriage. This would be in name only. A business relationship between you and me to solve both our problems.
‘A business relationship. No…?’
‘Business only, Severina. Without obligation to fulfil those embarrassingly intimate conjugal duties.’
Severina drew in a long breath.
‘Unless you want to,’ he added hopefully.
Severina snorted and crossed her arms. Lucan grinned at her. That grin made her stomach flutter.
Dear gods. She could hardly control her physical response to him. She certainly shouldn’t be considering marriage to him, even one made for convenience. But desperation did strange things to people, and she was desperate.
‘In name only. And only for a short time?’
‘Till divorce do us part.’
Severina’s frown deepened. She wanted to trust Lucan, but there was much to consider. And here alone with him in a dimly lit room, with his tall body stretched out in her bed, was hardly the time or place to consider all the implications.
‘I’ll give you your freedom the minute you ask for it,’ he said quietly. ‘When you want to leave, I’ll let go. But who can know the future? Maybe you’ll be happy with me. Maybe you’ll never ask to go. Maybe we’ll fall in love and make a dozen pretty little babies.’
Without thinking, Severina uttered a word she’d not even heard since her days in gladiatorial training. It was something no gently bred woman should have said.
Lucan’s laughter was genuine, and it held a quality that was almost sensual. Her body clenched at the sound, hot and burning. For a moment, Severina could only stare at him. He was washed in warm, golden lamplight that turned his tawny hair to a richer hue and softened the chiselled planes of his face. His pulse beat strong at the base of his neck and she suddenly wanted to feel its throb against her lips, mingling with the taste of his skin.
She knew in that moment there was no way she could marry him as a business arrangement, no way she could be near him and not want him as she wanted him now.
He didn’t seem to notice that she couldn’t breathe.
‘Let me sweeten the pot a little more,’ he said, his gaze becoming intent. ‘You know those improvements you’ve been wanting to make to the inn?’
She nodded.
‘Marry me, and I’ll see them done. My wedding gift to you.’
‘No.’ Severina shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Why not? This is a business arrangement…with very agreeable terms.’
‘It feels more like a bribe.’
Lucan spread his hands in supplication. ‘Maybe it is a bribe, but I need a wife and I don’t want anyone but you.’
‘Lucan—’
‘Severina, be logical. The censor can’t take your inn if we’re married. And those improvements would still be there for you long after I’m gone. Divorce me whenever you want, but keep the new and improved inn. You gain much and lose nothing. Think of that.’
Damn him. He’d known exactly which lure to dangle before her.
Silence stretched between them, tension mounting as each second ticked by.
Lucan stood and came to her. He raised a hand, but stopped just short of touching her as if he, too, sensed the power that would be unleashed with the contact. ‘Severina…’ he whispered into the hushed air.
‘Don’t touch me,’ she murmured, licking dry lips. She closed her eyes against the hard pulse of her drumming blood.
‘I can’t help wanting you,’ he whispered, his breath fanning warmth against the moisture her tongue had left on her lips. ‘I always have. I still do.’
He waited for her to respond, to open her eyes and look at him, but she didn’t dare. She knew what she’d see—Lucan, his eyes dark and intent, hunger in his lean, bronzed face. He would be as beautiful as sin, tempting her towards all the dark glories a man like him could give.
She did not look. Her eyes remained closed, but her other senses heightened, expanding to fill the void. She felt his heat as his body came nearer and heard the whisper of his clothing as he moved. He slid one large, callused hand underneath the fall of her hair to caress the back of her neck. She was aware of the pad of every individual fingertip against her sensitive nape, the elegant curve of his hand as he held her there with the lightest of pressures. His clean scent twined around her, an essence of sunshine and fresh air, of warm and sensual man.
And then his lips came down on hers, gently at first, as if he teased her with softness.
Her answering whimper spoke of hunger as her hands clutched and held in the folds of his cloak, and his kiss deepened to satisfy the subtle urging that he somehow understood.
His mouth was hot and flavoured with wine; Severina’s heart hurt with yearning for the sweet familiarity of him. His tongue licked across the seam of her lips and she opened herself to him, rejoicing in his harsh groan as he took her and filled her with his taste.
It had been too long. She’d missed this, missed him. Her hands moved restlessly over his rough clothing, exulting in the feel of his muscled back beneath her palms, in the powerful strength of his arms and the silk of his tousled hair. His body was lean and hard and towered over her, enveloping her, heating her.
She was glad he’d missed her, too, glad for the powerful hands that moulded her buttocks and lifted her up and against him, glad for the startling friction of his hardened ridge against her core. She couldn’t breathe beneath such an onslaught of sensation.
When she thought she might die in the void of air, his mouth left hers and moved lower, burning a path of wet fire through the hollows of her neck, behind her ear, across her collarbone. He moved slowly, tantalising, tempting, teasing her into gasps and moans.
She was restless now, and needy. Her breasts ached with an unfamiliar heaviness, the peaks hard and thrusting forwards, beseeching his touch, begging for his lips.
The silver fibula that held her stola at the shoulder dropped to the floor near her feet. She barely noted its fall; Lucan’s hand closed around her breast and his mouth found the soft pink pebble of her bare nipple, shocking her with the intense, sweet pull into pleasure.
‘Oh!’ she gasped. ‘Oh, Lucan!’
Her hands left his shoulders and speared into his hair, clenching in the softness, holding him fettered so he couldn’t leave her and stop the laving that made her senseless, mindless, crazed with need.
‘I’m here,’ he murmured against her skin. ‘I won’t leave you.’
She whimpered and mewled, twisting in his arms until he lifted her and carried her the few feet to the bed. He placed her gently against the pillows and covered her with his weight and heat. The sheets were cool against her naked back, and Lucan’s mouth was like flowing lava across the swell and heave of her bosom.
‘You taste good,’ he whispered. ‘So sweet.’ And he circled his tongue around her areola and drew her aching nipple into his mouth again.
She writhed beneath him, her hips jerking and thrusting, her pubis pulsing hard against his. Need ravaged her. It made her wild, eager, beside herself with desire, not caring if he thought her shameless.
She gloried in sheer physical splendour, dizzy with longing, unable to find reason in the deluge of wanting. Her limbs trembled; her womb clenched with strange urgency and wept for more. Because it was Lucan. Because she’d missed him so…
A sound at the door caused Lucan to jerk away from her, flinging himself partially upright with a growled oath. He threw the bedclothes over Severina’s exposed breasts and shook his head when, still befuddled and confused, she tried to rise.
Ariadne coughed again, delicately, and rapped on the door frame before tentatively peering inside. ‘I brought an elixir for your pain, Master Lucan,’ she said. ‘It tastes awful, but works wonders for the headache. And here’s wine to follow it.’
‘Thank you,’ Lucan said, his voice amazingly steady. ‘Put it on the table. I’ll get to it in a minute.’
Ariadne slipped in and hurriedly did as directed, studiously keeping her eyes away from Lucan and from Severina, who lay rigid in the bed. Lucan kept his back to the slave, not wanting to shock her with his arousal. He raked one hand through his hair and rubbed tension from the back of his neck.
He exhaled deeply when Ariadne pulled the door closed behind her.
Severina left the bed immediately, retrieving her silver fibula from the floor so she could cover her nakedness.
‘Severina…’ Lucan’s voice was soft.
