Seduced by the Gladiator(22)

Every touch of his fingers sent a lick of fire straight between my legs. Though I tried to swallow it down, a groan escaped my lips.

His touch felt so incredibly good.

“I cannot let myself be seen like this.” There was no point in denying that I found his touch pleasurable. Against my better judgment, I closed my eyes for a moment—just a moment—and let sensation wash over me.

When I again opened my eyes, Christus’ fingers had trailed upward to my calf. His eyes burned brightly and were fixed on my own.

“I told the men that anyone who bothered you while you bathed would find himself without a cock.” My mouth fell open at the words, and inexplicably a giggle bubbled up from my throat.

I clapped a hand over my mouth as it escaped. I never giggled. I rarely even laughed.

Sobering myself, I tried to tug my leg from Christus’ reach. “That does not mean that they will listen.”

“I assure you they will.” Christus did not allow me to pull my flesh away, instead trailing his fingers ever higher. My breath caught in my throat as he stroked the tender skin behind my knee.

“If it eases you, Darius is keeping watch. No one will disturb you. No one will disturb us.”

I heard the double meaning in his words, and though I felt as though I should run, I found myself doing nothing of the sort. Instead I reached out, my hand shaking, and ran uncertain fingers over the stripe of cheekbone.

I shuddered as my fingers made contact with his skin. It had been so long since I had been touched with anything but violence or desire that was twisted at its root. Darius touched me sometimes, but his caresses were friendly and reassuring.

They did not affect me in nearly the same way that these small caresses were.

“Christus. I cannot do this.” I wanted to. I could no longer lie to myself. I wanted this man, wanted the moments of pleasure that he could bring to me in this strange life that I called my own. “If the men found out that I took you as a lover, we would both be under attack.”

My voice had a breathless quality to it, one that I had never heard before. I was feeling things that I had never felt before, too, as Christus lowered his head and laid his lips on my knee.

When he again looked up, the expression on his face—the longing, the desire—was my undoing.

“Why should anyone find out? It is no one’s business but our own.” The fingers that still softly stroked the skin behind my knee moved with excruciating slowness, tracing a stripe up, and up, until they met the edge where my leather wrap met my skin.

“Christus.” What was happening to me? I was not weak—I made my own decisions. Yet I could no more have stopped this encounter than I could have stopped breathing.

Slowly, giving me time to say no, Christus worked at the knot in my leather. When the fastening was loose, he worked the garment away from my body, hanging it on the edge of the tub.

Leaving my skin bare from the waist down.

I felt my lower lip tremble, but apart from that small movement I was still, tensed, my breath caught in my throat with anticipation. With his eyes on my own, drinking in every nuance of my expression, he inched his fingers up, then up again, trailing them over my inner thighs as the muscles beneath quivered.

I inhaled sharply when those fingers grazed over the heated skin between my legs. Christus paused as the noise, again giving me time to say no.

I waited a long moment, my innermost thoughts whirling through my head in a great rush. Sex had been tied up with violence for so long, it had made me feel cheap at best. The idea that I could embrace it for pleasure was strange and oddly thrilling, if I could but take that leap.

My eyelids lowered, I looked down from the edge of the bath where I still perched, looked at the god of a man who was rising out of the water at my feet. He was golden and sleek and beautiful, and he wore an expression of reverence and of need that looked to be nearly painful.

It was that exact combination that pushed me that last step. With an exhalation of the breath that I had been holding, I covered his wrist with my hand, holding his hand in place even as I arched my hips to meet his touch.

“You are certain that we will not be disturbed?” I could not quite believe that I was prepared to accept his word when he nodded—the Lilia of even a day before would never have taken anything at face value, would have had to see for herself.

But this man inspired trust. Trust, as well as lust.

For the first time since I had come to the ludus, I decided to embrace the sensations.

Sliding my hand from his wrist down his arm, over his broad shoulder and up, I burrowed my fingers in the wealth of blue-black hair that was spiked with dampness. I fisted the strands, tugged gently, and closed my eyes, waiting for the touch.