One With the Darkness (6 page)

He looked her up and down. She waited. At last he said, “Are you a harsh master?”

He had a right to ask that. “I … I consider myself exacting but not harsh.”

“If you find me wanting, what punishments will you employ?”

She drew herself up. “I want no slave who must be whipped to obedience. If you are sullen, disobedient, or dishonest, I shall simply sell you. Take your chances in the market.”

He frowned. He didn’t like that prospect. Good. “Do you expect me to pleasure you?”

She flushed. She hadn’t expected him to be bold enough for that question. Was he taunting her, or was his curiosity genuine? Still, she had given him permission to ask. “I … I have no need to order slaves to my bed. I have my pick of Roman citizens.” That was true, yet she had not taken a lover in years. She was too busy trying to put Rome to rights, and she didn’t want entanglements. Still, some part of her whispered,
Yes! I want my pleasure of you, and your pleasure, too.
The thought of those strong thighs and that pretty rod stiff and eager to plunge inside her was making her wet. That was only the influence of her Companion, whose urge toward life made vampire kind easily aroused. She thought those urges had faded from lack of use. Apparently not. This barbarian’s constant presence might actually be a torment. “You are forbidden to rut among my servants, male or female, though. That will result in immediate sale.”

She thought he might be smirking, but his lips did not quite turn up. Curse her blush. He knew he had discomposed her. He probably knew she wanted him. His hot gaze roved over her. She felt more naked than he was. A
man like this no doubt always had his way with women. More than anything she wanted to wipe that smirk off his face. So it was time to tell him exactly what was at stake and seal the bargain between them. “If you serve me faithfully, I will allow you to earn your freedom.”

His gaze snapped back to her face, questioning. She saw a spark of hope bloom there and be suppressed. “How long?”

“That will depend on your behavior.”

“How do I know that you will do this thing?” he growled.

“Ask Lucius Lucellus. I freed him.”

His brows drew together. “Yet he still serves you.”

“But now he does so by choice, for a salary. A good one.”

They stood there, staring at each other. She had to tilt her head back since he towered over her. “Choose, barbarian. Do you serve me, or do I give Graccus and his friends, or Agrippina and Julia, another opportunity to buy you?”

He looked away and stared at the ground. She watched his chest rise and fall for three breaths. Finally he turned back to her. His green eyes bored into hers. “I will serve you.” He said it as though it was a vow.

“A wise choice. Then kneel.” His first test.

She saw him struggle with himself. But the combination of his honor, the possibility of freedom, and fear of the brothel would win out. He bowed his head and sank slowly to his knees.

She took out the key to his shackles and walked around him. Her eyes widened. His back, buttocks, and thighs were laced with stripes in various states of healing. She bit her lip and bent to his shackles. “Who whipped you?”

“Who did not?” he answered grimly.

She could imagine the expression of defiance he wore even in defeat attracting the wrath of his captors. He must
have been naked when he’d been whipped, and the blows had occurred over time. “They took your clothing?”

“The wool was fine, the cuirass well-wrought. The boots were tooled leather.” He had contempt for those who had stolen from him. She had thought all Celts fought in the nude. At least he wasn’t that barbaric.

“So they marched you all the way from the shores of Gaul without clothing or boots.” She glanced to the soles of his feet and saw that they were bruised and cut. She wasn’t proud of the Roman army at this moment. “And whipped you into the bargain.”

As she released the shackles, he shrugged and began rubbing the circulation back into his hands. “They wanted the other captives to despair as their leaders were humbled.”

“How did you get over the mountains?”

“I wrapped my feet with the leather jerkin of a captive who died. When it got cold some peasants along the way took pity on me and tied some animal skins about my body.”

But his spirit had not been broken. She had a tenuous truce with him, no more. Romans thought slaves had a need to submit their will to another’s, that they did not appreciate freedom. Not this slave. He might submit because his honor required it or because it was the lesser of two evils. But that was all.

“Come,” she ordered. “I want the stink of the slave market washed from you.” She clapped her hands. Catia, her maid, appeared. “Assemble a basket of astringent and unguents, Catia, and see if you can find a tunic for him. Oh, and make up a poultice of
acetum
and garlic.”

He rose gingerly. How had she not noticed he was footsore? Or was he too proud to limp through the city of his captors, no matter the pain? She turned her back on him and walked into the gardens. The
thermae
was out
near the back wall. She had taken two steps before she heard him follow. She avoided the graveled paths because of his feet and kept to the flagstone walk among the olive trees.

As she passed the wall that held back the hill, covered with a gnarled wisteria vine, she paused. A feeling of uneasiness wound up her spine. She should know something, or do something. She had been feeling strange all night, full somehow, urgent.

She shook herself and pushed the feeling down. Nonsense.

Her purpose now was clear. She must establish her dominance over this slave so he could pose as her bodyguard and deflect any attention another attack might bring on. She strode to the marble building that sat among the olive trees. Though in the heart of the city near the crown of the Capitoline Hill, her property had enough land to support a spacious house, private baths, outbuildings for a kitchen and the domicile of the servants, as well as a garden, all within secure stone walls. Her kind just seemed to attract riches. And they had all the time in the world to acquire wealth and watch it grow. Her lands on the other side of the Tiber provided enough wheat to make bread for a tenth of the city. It was her wealth that gave her power, at least partly.

She trotted up the shallow stairs between the columns of the pediment to the four rooms of the bath. The
frigiddarium
was lined with benches. Stone niches on one wall held the bather’s toga or
palla
and
stola
, sandals. It was cool, made cooler by the January air outside and the deep water of the cold plunge pool in the center. He had no clothing to discard, but he needed protection for his feet from the heated floor beyond.

“Put on a pair of those wooden sandals.” He looked at
her through narrowed eyes. She raised her brows and waited. Reluctantly he selected the biggest pair and slid them on. They barely fit his feet. She motioned him into the
calidarium
through a wall of heat. The slaves kept the fires stoked at all times. The round pits in the center of the floor gave up waves of heat from their banked coals. The air was moist from the tanks of water above the coals and, beyond, the heated pool. The place smelled of sage and salt and olive oil.

“Sit on that bench while I see if they have found what I require.” She watched him sit carefully on the warm marble bench against the wall. The welts and scabs on his backside must make sitting difficult.

“What is this room?” he rumbled in that deep baritone.

“Your term of respectful address?”

He glowered. There was a long pause. “What is this room, Mistress?” He almost choked on the word.

“It is the first of the cleansing rooms.”

“All this will do is make me sweat the more.”

“Exactly.” She left him and headed back to the house. Let him feel that there was really no escape. Though his shackles were gone, his honor held him in wait for her.

The household had been unable to find a tunic big enough for the huge barbarian, but Lucius produced a flaxen cloth to wrap around his loins, and a wide leather belt to hold it in place. At least it was clean and bigger than the scrap he had worn in the trader’s stall. Her maidservant held out a basket filled with small colored-glass bottles. She told Lucius to send for a barber. She would pay dearly for dragging one out at this hour.

By the time she headed back to the bath it had been nearly half an hour. In the cool changing room, she unwrapped her
palla
, removed her
stola
, and wound a large linen bath towel around herself, tucking it securely in over
her breasts. She slid on her personal wooden clogs and took a breath. What she was about to do would be torture for her, plain and simple. Big as he was, he couldn’t hurt her. She was a vampire, after all. But his nearness would exacerbate the sensual cravings he had already started. Why were they so sharp? She had no trouble ignoring the Roman men who set their lures for her.

But she had no choice but to enter the bath. She would spend much time with this slave. And he must see that even when he was alone in a bath with her, their relative positions did not change. He was a slave. He did her bidding. If he did not, it was back to the market and the block with his honor lost and his bond, to his people and the general who saved his men, broken.

She entered the
calidarium
and saw that he had eased himself against the wall. His eyes were closed and he gleamed with sweat in the light of the coals. For anyone else, this room would be dim, but, as a vampire, she saw well in the dark. She noticed how drawn he looked. Dark half-circles hung under his eyes. Marching, wounded, from Gaul to Rome at the tail of a cart had been an ordeal.

“Relaxing, isn’t it?”

He sat forward and shrugged, unwilling to admit even so simple a truth if she suggested it.

“Hold out your hands.” She reached for an amphora set on a low table along with a tray of salt and several curved, ivory-handled
strigils.
She poured some oil scented with sage from her gardens into his cupped hands. His right palm was calloused from long contact with the pommel of a sword. Both wrists were raw. “Rub this in your hair.”

He looked up at her, incredulous.

“How else am I going to drag a comb through it?”

He glared at her and set his lips. But he smoothed the oil over the tangled ends, then reached up and untied the
leather strip that held the sides of his hair back. She poured more oil on his scalp, and he worked it into his hair. The bulge of his biceps and the revelation of dark hair under his arms were intimate and frankly arousing.

She cleared her throat. “Now, more for your body.” He held out his hands and she poured them full of oil again. It smelled like summer.

“Do you Romans not even know of soap?”

“Soap? What is this?” She watched as he rubbed his chest and belly. This was definitely torture. It was distracting her so that she had forgotten to demand he be respectful.

“A way of cleaning. Much better than oil. How can one be clean with oil?”

“Well, what is your ‘soap’ made of?”

“Sheep’s tallow and charcoal.” He was rubbing his thighs. “It creates a lather.”

“Sheep’s tallow and charcoal?
That
sounds clean. I prefer olive oil and salt.”

He glanced up at her, as if he had not realized before how absolutely insane rubbing sheep’s tallow on your body sounded. Then he returned to smoothing oil over his arms.

“You forgot your … your genitals.”

This time his glance had all the disgust of a glare in it, but he rubbed the oil over his private parts. They weren’t private now. They belonged to her. That thought was dangerously exciting. She mustn’t be seduced by her reaction to him, or by the insidious lure of slavery. She bit her lips and throbbed between her legs.

“Turn round.” She stood on the bench and poured the oil over his back and rubbed it in. The touch of his flesh was hot, but that didn’t explain the jolt it gave her. She vowed to ignore her reaction, but both her body and her
mind seemed disobedient tonight. “Now use the rock salt in that tray to scrub yourself. The salt will hurt the open sores, but it helps prevent infection.”

He shrugged. “No matter.” He scooped up the salt and rubbed it over his body, even into the wounds at his wrists and ankles. He didn’t make a sound other than a sharp intake of breath as it seared him. The man was practically a Stoic. She took up a handful of salt herself and climbed up on the bench again. She spread it carefully, focusing only on the fact that he must be cleaned, not on the fact that she was hurting him.

He didn’t even flinch.

“Now,” she said. “Hand me one of the
strigils.
You take the other.”

“What?”

“The ivory-handled scrapers.” She had to remember that he was a barbarian and knew nothing of the civilized world. Sheep’s tallow, for Jupiter’s sake! “You scrape the effluvium from your body.” They scraped in silence. She concentrated on avoiding the welts.

“There.” She stepped down, feeling like she had passed an ordeal herself. “Into the pool.”

He rose and stepped down into the steaming pool. At this end the water came to his knees. He looked around. “How is this done? A volcanic spring?”

A slave should not be allowed such questions. But there were limits to how much slavelike behavior she wanted. If she was successful in taming him, she would be around him for much of her night, every night, at least for a while. A totally silent and submissive companion would be boring. What she wanted from him was an acknowledgment of his slavery, not cowering submission. In other slaves, achieving that balance was easy, because
they were already broken to their slavery. She had only to allow them certain freedoms and they were grateful. But this one—in this one, that balance might be elusive.

“Our spring is cold. The pool is heated with pipes and fires, the same as the house.”

He looked at her as though she were mad.

“I should think you would appreciate it in January. Now duck yourself.”