One With the Darkness (20 page)

Of course she did. She of course would just disappear, literally. “As the time approaches, I will send my household to my estates in the Tuscan hills. That is not far enough, of course. The Roman army has a long reach. But they can disperse from there to the far corners of the empire. If … if we are compromised, we will follow them.” She frowned. “But we must provide for the other conspirators as well.”

“How many are there?”

“Just the three, including Titus. Four if you count the actual perpetrator.”

“You have never said who that was.”

“Only I know who it is. It’s safer that way for all concerned.”

It was his turn to frown.

“What is it?”

But he shook his head. He appeared to be thinking. “The man on the steps, who stopped you in the sunlight—he was with Caesar the other night. Who is he?”

She nodded. Hmmm. Jergan was right. That was concerning. “Decimus Valerius Asiaticus, Caesar’s closest advisor besides the captain of the Guard.”

“He saw you burn. He will see you are healed when you attend the ceremony tomorrow.”

“I will tell him it was a brief reaction. How can he say otherwise?”

Jergan kept his silence, but it was clear he didn’t like someone so close to the emperor knowing her vulnerabilities.

She rose and called for food. Lucius must have had it waiting, for before she could even light all the lamps again, a line of servants brought in trays. Tufi grinned at Jergan, and Jergan grinned back. She had almost forgotten how Jergan must feel. This was his first day as a free man. His slavery had been but a short nightmare.

As the servants trooped out, she invited him to pull up a chair to the table. It felt companionable to sit here, dishing him food, talking of small things.

“Would you like to know one of the first things that shocked me about you, my lady?” he asked, around a mouthful of fresh, yeasty bread.

She grimaced. “I hardly dare guess.”

“The fact that you fed me from your own table, not scraps or leavings, but the same food you ate. That, coupled with the care you took of my wounds, belied your harsh words.”

She brushed away the inference. “I’m ashamed to think of what I said that first night.”

“Why? You were right. I was feeling rebellious, even violent. You said the only things that could make me accept my lot.”

“I lied to you.” She glanced up from dishing up her own plate to find him questioning. “I said I would not use you for my pleasure.” She flushed.

“I call what we did a partnership of equals.”

“Equally lustful,” she said, bemused. The fire was rising in her loins again with this talk.

“Something Romans should understand.”

“It isn’t just the senatorial class, Jergan. The general population of Rome is also less judgmental about the needs of their bodies, though less … orgiastic in satisfying them. On the whole, that attitude is much less constricting than that of my homeland.”

“Dacia must be a hard land.”

“Yes.” He, of course, had no idea how hard. The Elders set the Rules by which relations between humans and vampires were controlled, though humans didn’t know that. They punished transgressions, like making humans vampire. She’d heard stories of days in the sun, and long bouts of painful torture, until the vampire longed for death. The elders were right, too. What would happen if every vampire made another? Soon there would be no humans left to provide blood, for vampires could not draw sustenance from each other unless one very old took blood from one very newly made. That didn’t last for long. When the vampires were of more equal strength, the two Companions warred, each with the other. Not only painful until one Companion triumphed, but the blood itself was destroyed in the process, providing no sustenance.

And then there was the fact that most made vampires
went insane when the enormity of what they had become became clear to them. The sense of being more than a single being, whole, created by the Companion that shared their veins did not counterbalance for them the need for blood, the loss of the sun, the temptation to see humans as lesser beings. Made vampires often ran amok and killed for their blood or used their powers of compulsion to victimize the humans around them.

Why was she thinking these things? What point? She raised her goblet. “To your freedom.”

He raised his goblet and clicked with hers. “To your generosity.”

They ate in companionable silence. The servants came to clear the table.

“Is the room warm enough for you?” Lucius asked, in the doorway. “I can have the boys stoke the hypocausts.”

“It is fine, Lucius.”

“Rest, my lady,” he adjured her, as he closed the door.

But Livia wasn’t ready for rest. It was still four hours until dawn. She got up and began to pace the room. And the itching in her veins wasn’t hunger. It was as if something inside her was trying to get out. She couldn’t help thinking that she couldn’t leave Rome, or this house, even if something went wrong with their plan. She had to be here, not up in Tuscany.
Something
here was important. It must be these dreams of premonition that had her on edge. They were a new experience in a life that held nothing new anymore. And this feeling of being
too
full, more full than she felt with her Companion, was also disconcerting. She almost felt that there was something inside her trying to get out. Some knowledge? Something she had overlooked in plotting Caligula’s assassination? Even as she thought it, she rejected that idea. But something inside knew what it was. Something knew all about her.

As she turned, she almost bumped into Jergan.

“My lady,” he said, taking her shoulders. “Lucius was right. You should rest.”

“I cannot rest. Every time I sleep, I dream of something that comes true, almost as though I had already lived what happened.” She searched his face. “And I have this sense of urgency. That there is something I must do, and time is running out to do it. And I don’t know what it is.” She took a breath. “I sound insane, even to myself.”

“Being able to say that is one sure sign of sanity.” He smiled at her, a tender smile. The feel of his hands on her shoulders belatedly made its way into her senses, like realizing you’d been burned before you felt it.

Even as the sensation struck her, she saw it fill his eyes as well.

“I am a free man, Livia Quintus Lucellus.” His voice was hoarse. “And I am going to make love to you until you have screamed away all your tension, and this talk of madness seems silly.” With that, he leaned down and kissed her. His tongue searched her mouth. One hand moved from her shoulder to hold her neck. The other clasped her waist and held her to his groin, so she could feel his arousal. His beard of three days scratched her cheek and made him feel like a dangerous masculine animal that would ravish her without a second thought.

She wanted to be ravished.

He picked her up and carried her to the bed. Holding her with one arm, he swept away the
palla
that still lay across the embroidered coverlet and then laid her down. He did not bother to undress her. He took the neck of her
stola
and … and ripped the delicate peacock silk and the chemise below it down the front, leaving her naked.

He stepped back and unbuckled the wide belt that held his tunic. “Now I will pleasure you, my lady, as a free
man.” He pulled his tunic over his head and tossed it away, unlaced his boots and kicked them off, and unbound his loincloth. His rod was stiff and straining. As he approached the bed, his eyes grew predatory. He devoured her with his green gaze just like one of the leopards the legions brought back from the lands below the deserts behind Carthage. She liked that image of him. Kneeling on the bed, he bent to suckle at her nipples. Lord, there was no thinking at all when that sensation was jetting back and forth between her nipples and the place between her legs.

“Jergan,” she murmured. “You will drive me insane if I am not mad already.”

He chuckled. “That is a good kind of madness.” And he applied himself assiduously to the other nipple. His hand was on her mound, pressing, as if there were not already enough pressure, what with her blood all coursing from her head to her loins until there was no thought left, only the pulsing of need. She needed him inside her.

“Jergan, I need you.”

“Yes, you do, my lady. And I intend to see your need satisfied.”

She expected him to lie between her legs. She was not wrong. She wanted … What was he doing? He was scooting down until his shoulders were even with her thighs. He parted them, a hand on each. She opened to him. What was toward? His thumbs opened her nether lips and … and he pressed his lips against her nub of pleasure and … and licked it.

She gasped, startled at the intensity of the sensation and the act itself.

“Jergan! What are you doing?” She got up on her elbows, trying to close her thighs.

“Pleasuring you with my mouth, my lady,” he said, rising
from between her legs. “An excellent way to avoid getting you with child.”

“It is almost impossible for … my kind … to have children … and … and isn’t that distasteful to you?”

“Of course not.” He seemed surprised. “We bathed only this afternoon.” He peered at her. “Has your lover never pleasured you with his mouth?”

“Romans … Romans consider it … unclean.”

He barked a laugh. “There is something the Romans do
not
do? I thought they were open to everything.”

“Not that.” She flushed.

He pushed her gently back down. “Then prepare for a lesson in pleasure, my lady. I spent some time in my youth among the Gauls. It seems barbarians know a thing or two that Rome does not.” He laid a hand on either thigh. She felt vulnerable as she had perhaps never felt. She could forbid him, or just close her legs. But he had issued a challenge. She could not acknowledge she was narrow or afraid. Besides, the forbidden exerted a strange attraction. Then, too, his tongue was … was licking again, softly. Venus and Juno, but that was intense! His tongue slid up and down the moist folds of her flesh, spreading her own juices, adding to them. It glided over her point of pleasure until he had her moaning. And she forgot to be tense or appalled. She thrust her mound up, the better for him to lick her. Her thighs were splayed as far apart as she could open them. She wasn’t sure just when she gave herself over to him, but she had, and now the flesh between her legs was so engorged that there was no blood in any other part of her body.

“Jergan,” she moaned.

“Shall I stop?” he mumbled, raising his head. “You have but to command me.”

“No. No, don’t stop.” She pulled his head back in
toward her needing, throbbing woman parts. “Don’t ever stop.”

So he rubbed her harder with his tongue, shaking his head quickly from time to time, holding up her hips, the better to lick her. Then he thrust inside her with two fingers all the while he licked. In and out he slid his fingers. He sucked on her engorged flesh, lightly.

She gave a little shriek, shocked at the intensity of hand and mouth, both focused on pleasuring her. “More,” she whispered. And then she couldn’t say anything, because sensation turned to something else entirely, overwhelming, engulfing. She gasped and cried and arched into him as he sucked and pulled at her. He might as well be drawing out her soul, or filling it. Her orgasm took her and shook her and wouldn’t let her go. She couldn’t see or hear. She couldn’t even feel his lips. Blind and deaf, still she knew she screamed.

Slowly she came back from the place where she had gone. Air rushed into her lungs and out. He slid up beside her and wiped his mouth on the coverlet. She rolled into him moaning, still contracting in irregular spasms. “Jergan,” she whispered as if that said it all.

He ran his hands through her hair. “Abhorrent?”

She looked up at him, unsure. “Not for me.” Had he sacrificed to give her pleasure?

He grinned at her. “Not for me, either. Your musk is salty-sweet.” He cradled her close against his chest, and she breathed in his scent. He bent. “Would you like to taste?”

She couldn’t admit she was shocked. She raised her eyes. He kissed her, tenderly. And there it was, just faintly, a taste of … something. Not abhorrent. He was right—sweet, musky.

“Is that … me?”

He nodded. His eyes were so tender.

The sense of newness washed over her and she realized how long it had been since she had experienced the sweetness of surprise. It was a joy, a gift, and he had given it to her.

It required reciprocation.

For the first time in centuries, she felt ignorant. His need was apparent in the stiff rod she felt along her thigh. His generosity required an equal gift. But how? She sucked in a breath. “I … have heard that … it is possible to do the same for a man. Would it be pleasurable for you?”

His green eyes were laughing at her even though his mouth was serious. He nodded again. “Yes, my lady.” She was glad the furrowed brow was gone. She had distracted him from whatever he might have asked her about the healing. She could distract him more.

Still, shyness almost overcame her. “I have no knowledge of this way of pleasing you.” She raised her chin. “But I would like to try.” Who would have guessed that she, who had lived so long, would ever say such a thing?

12

J
ERGAN FOUND HER
tentative resolve endearing. Who would have thought that Romans, who were debauched in the extreme, would think this most basic of pleasures forbidden?

“Experiment freely,” he said, rolling onto his back. He clasped his hands behind his neck, leaving himself vulnerable to her. She needed to feel she was in control. And he wanted to earn her trust, in preparation for the question he was resolved to ask when they were done. He wanted to show her that he accepted her in spite of what he was certain would be her answer to that question.
Why
he accepted her still puzzled him. But he did. What she said would change everything between them, likely. Whatever it was that was between them. But he had to know. And he wanted her to trust him for other reasons. Reasons he didn’t want to examine closely.