For a Roman's Heart (20 page)

He closed the door behind him, his gaze sharp with worry, and a haunted expression she hadn’t seen on his face before.

She expected him to launch into a tirade about the chair blocking his entrance. Instead, he cupped her face in both his hands and lowered his mouth to hers in a gentle kiss. Sweet need grew in her stomach, and she responded.

He gathered her hands into his palms. “You’re shaking. Are you cold?”

“No.” Nerva had provided her with a huge
tunica
. Her own mud-splattered clothes stank of smoke and fear. “I woke up and these images popped into my head. I can’t get them out.” Words rushed from her. “The smoke, the flames...my mother screaming...”

He brushed his fingers over her cheek. “That is normal.”

She broke away from him and opened one of the shutters. Weak sunlight filtered in through a new flurry of snowflakes. She gazed upon the bleak world. “Normal. How can you say that? Am I supposed to continue as if nothing happened?”

He came up behind her and squeezed her shoulders. “Of course not. What you saw...no man or woman should ever have to see.”

The genuine sympathy in his voice gave her strength, and she enjoyed his touch like a lifeline. She turned to him. “Like you did when you were sixteen when your family was killed?”

He nodded. “But what you saw was worse. Far worse than what I experienced.”

“Listen, I need to tell you a few things.” He explained that her sisters and their husbands had fled the area in disgrace and fear for their lives. “Victor returned to the villa awhile ago to let me know.”

“I expected little else from them,” she said. “They’ve never been strong, and their husbands are looking out for their own interests.”

He pressed her shoulders, then drew her against his body. She flattened her palms against his shoulders, seeking more connection, more warmth from the cold world.

Deep inside she trembled with a nameless fear that threatened to override all her senses. “Everything I owned was destroyed last night. My loom and spindle, my clothes. All are gone.”

He managed a small smile and retrieved a small leather bag from under his cap. “Not everything. The money you buried was right where you said it would be near the longhouse.” He handed her the bag.

Adrenia’s heart lightened somewhat. “Thank you.” When he didn’t speak, she blurted, “You saved my life last night. If it had not been for you...thank you.”

The tenseness eased from his features. “I wish I could have done more.”

“What more could you do? You saved me from certain death.”

“I didn’t save you from that horrible scene. But in one sense, I can’t regret their deaths. You’re free from their tyranny.”

She nodded. “The enormity of that is...well, it will take a while to feel. To understand.”

“When you are under someone’s thumb for years you continue to obey their rules long after they are gone.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’ve served under men, under commanders as brutal as they were merciful. Some weren’t even merciful. Men often broke under their punishments.”

“Broke?”

“Went stark raving mad. That is one thing I admire about you, Adrenia.”

She smiled weakly. “That I’m mad?”

“Of course not. That you’ve survived your parents’ torture. It makes me shake with rage to think they would marry you to Sulla.”

She’d forgotten that last night she’d told Terentius about her conversation with her mother. She gazed at a realistic scene that graced the wall. A nubile woman knelt on all fours on a bed, her nakedness bared as a man entered her from behind. She felt that naked now, exposed to the world, to Terentius, to anyone. Her secrets, her family treachery and evil lay plain as a scar on the face of a gladiator.

But despite all that had happened, she had new hope. She would stay at the villa and earn her living, and she had Terentius’s affection. “I’ve never known anyone like you before.”

His gaze turned warmer. “Nor I you.”

Heaviness returned to her heart. “What if my parents did everything people say? That they provided Sulla with women to kill. If they did something to my brother and sister.” Tears swiftly returned to her eyes and flooded over. “If I suspected, then I should have told someone. Maybe I could have saved others.”

“No.” He drew her into his arms again, rocking her back and forth until her tears began to dry. “You couldn’t have been certain.” He tilted her face upward. “Even if you had confronted them, they might have killed you.”

She wiped at her nose, trying to force back tears. “Perhaps. Maybe that is why I didn’t challenge them enough. Because I feared what they’d do to me.”

She sniffed and wiped at her face, and he released her. For the first time she felt the warm stone beneath her feet. Ah, yes. The under-floor heating...the hypocaust as she’d heard people call it, warmed her as nothing else could. Except, maybe, for affection in Terentius’s eyes. His encircling, strong arms heated her in ways she couldn’t deny.

He edged closer, towering like a sentinel, like the warrior within him. She backed up against one wall to place distance between them. Terentius’s gaze toured her from head to toe, lingering with undeniable hunger on her breasts. She should feel repulsion for the inappropriateness of her excitement, but it burst upward inside her like a great wave crashing on a shore. She needed a release. She craved something to erase the ugly images in her brain that she felt might haunt her forever.

“I didn’t tell you,” she said softly. “I didn’t tell you what they threatened before you came. They started to drag me toward the fire. They were going throw me inside the house while it was on fire, Terentius.” Her voice strangled, memories of fighting for freedom bursting forth in a searing pain.

“Shh.” He placed his hands down on either side of her head and caged her to the wall. His body didn’t touch hers. “I know, little one. It will take time to banish that fear. Give yourself time.” His jaw clenched. “On my life, I am so sorry you had to go through that. People go mad when they’re together in a group. You saw what happened when we were at the festival. They don’t know their own minds. They have no minds at all.”

She nodded, her breath coming in staccato bursts as she calmed the raging horror threatening to overtake her. “If I let what they did to me define me, I will die, Terentius. I’ll hide from the world. I’ll stay in this villa or in another shelter and become one of those crazy old women everyone hates.”

He whispered quietly, his deep voice soothing. “Don’t, little one. Don’t let them destroy you this way. Hold on to me. I won’t let you fall.”

She gazed up into his eyes and felt an awesome power filling her up. His protection gathered Adrenia close in a cocoon of safety. In awe, she could almost believe what he said. She touched his face, and the stubble on his cheek prickled her fingers. Though the shadow of fear still tugged and pulled at her defenses, Terentius brought comfort and strength. The evil she’d experienced last night, through much of her life, might just lose its hold.

His gaze glittered with renewed attraction, and she recognized desire rebuilding inside her. No man had ever stirred her this way, made her feel as feminine, as protected...as free.

“You give so much to me,” she said. “The only way I could be destroyed was if you didn’t like me. If you believed the villagers who attacked me.”

“I would never believe them.” He smiled gently.

He leaned in and his lips possessed hers with an aggressive devouring kiss.

If she’d thought his other kisses held hunger, this one asked for more, tasted more, took more. Terentius’s tongue plunged deep, stroking, enticing, asking for a response. She plastered her hands against the stone wall behind her, not daring to touch him for fear she would cling and never let go. Her mouth, coaxed by his kiss, started its own response. Her tongue mated with his, loving and feeling his textures, taking his clean taste into her with ravenous need. One hand cupped her waist and slid relentlessly upward until he touched near her left breast. She gasped into his mouth, the moan of pleasure taking even her by surprise. He pressed his body to hers, his thighs hard, his chest wide and stalwart, a sheltering presence. One hand plunged into the tangled, roughly cut hair at the back of her neck so he could tug her closer. His hips bumped hers, pressed, and his cock went hard. He bent his knees slightly and wedged his cock between her thighs just enough.

She gasped as he tore his lips from hers, and savored the delicious sensation of long, hard cock pressing her clit. His hips moved, and she gasped in sharp pleasure. Undulating gently, he thrust again and again with a heady rhythm that brought her closer and closer to a sweet pleasure. She closed her eyes and her head tilted slightly back. A feathery touch brushed over her nipple, and as she moaned, he pinched her nipple once. Twice. All the while his hips moved, his breath a hot, hard rasp in her ear.

“A man has never touched me like this,” she whispered.

“Never kissed you like this?” He touched his lips to hers tenderly. Then his mouth savored hers with deep, delicious kisses that devoured and tasted. “Or this?”

“No,” she managed to mumble.

She rubbed against him, stimulated and hot for a new touch. He cradled her left breast. She moaned at the exquisite sensation, and he slipped his touch upward to pinch her nipple. Both nipples ached for his attention, tingling and drawing tight.

He tore his lips from hers long enough to whisper in her ear. “Let me give you this pleasure.”

As his mouth smothered hers once more in long, delicious kisses. Adrenia arched her hips in rhythm. He reached under her
tunica
and found her naked buttocks. As his hands squeezed and stroked her flesh, he rocked his hips faster. Moisture gathered between her legs. She writhed in his powerful hold. Terentius lifted the front of her
tunica
, and though he clasped her butt in one hand, his other hand slipped between her legs. As his tongue plunged in and out of her mouth, he eased two big fingers slowly into her tightness. She moaned as bright, hot pleasure rose higher and faster. Amazement and delight swept aside all her bad dreams and memories as exotic sensations took over. He only pushed his fingers in a little ways, then he drew out. Embarrassment edged past her passion, and she drew away from his kiss. His wet fingers caressed a spot at the top of her sex.

“Oh.” Her breath exclamation of pleasure took even her by surprise. “Oh, that feels...”

“Yes.” Low and guttural, his answer didn’t stop him from touching her again. Again. His touch dancing, flicking, caressing the bud that ached and burned with pleasure.

“Oh, please.”

“Tell me what you want, Adrenia.”

She whimpered, her gaze latching onto his fierce expression. Trembling, she reached for the pleasure, panting for air. It felt so good. She needed...she needed...

She rose higher, reaching for it, wanting it—

His mouth closed over hers, his tongue plunged deep as the ecstasy swallowed her whole. She screamed into his mouth, shaking as she burst into the most glorious pleasure she could have imagined in a million days and nights.

Adrenia panted against his lips as Terentius removed his touch. His cock pressed her thigh, and her heat clenched and released.

“My sisters were wrong.”

While his eyes still blazed with need, his muscles flexed with tension, he gazed down at her with barely leashed tension. “About what?”

“They said sex was dull and to be avoided as much as possible unless their husbands demanded it.”

His eyebrows speared up, then he kissed her forehead. “You don’t believe them now?”

“What we just did...you wouldn’t need to demand it from me.”

He chuckled and pressed his forehead to hers. His touch flowed over her, continuing a searching caress that reawakened and heightened her senses.

“That’s not all of it.” His palms skated over her buttocks. “There is far more.”

He looked her directly in the eye, his intensity mesmerizing. Adrenia inched her hand over his hard arms, exploring him almost as much as his restless touch toured her body.

His gaze held pure admiration. “You are a remarkable woman, Adrenia.”

His praise diminished the hot wire of pain threatening to return if she thought about last night. No, she wouldn’t think of that. “A man’s never treated me with such respect and kindness as you, Terentius.”

He shook his head. “The men of Durovigutum must be idiots.”

“Why?”

He traced her jaw with his index finger. “They haven’t seen you the way I have. Your passion. Your fight. The way you shiver when pleasured. If they could see that, they would worship at your feet.”

Open-mouthed and astonished, she stared at him. “I don’t know what to say.”

When he spoke, it was reverent and filled with conviction. “Think of it and know it’s true.” Terentius kissed her forehead. “I must go back to the fort, but I will come for you tonight.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “Tonight?”

His gaze stayed warm and hungry. “I want you with me tonight, and I know just where we can go for some peace.”

She brushed at his armor, marveling in the sculpted, hot strength beneath fabric and covering stalwart bone.