Seduced by the Gladiator(6)

So instead I stripped and slowly sponged off the layers that the arena had left on me, shivering as the water cooled my skin. As the dried blood softened and trickled in rivulets down my limbs, dropping wetly on the floor, I tried to squash thoughts of the man whom it had come from.

The man whom I had killed.

I had killed before, and would again—at least, I would if I wanted to stay alive. Once the very idea had made me sick, but the life of a gladiator was what I had been given, and I had chosen to make the best of it.

As I patted myself dry with a rough linen towel, however, I whispered a soft prayer to Pluto, god of the underworld, asking him to grant the slain man’s soul safe passage. Before I slept, I would also place a coin in the small clay vase that I kept for this exact purpose, a bribe to the god for the same.

I knew that, had my circumstances been only slightly different, I could have been the one killed on the sands. Or I could have been killed long before I ever became a gladiator.

Sometimes I wondered if the price that I had paid for my life was too high.



I stood in a line in a narrow stone alley, my hands and feet bound in chains. Six others stood along with me, their hair matted into snarled nests, their skin caked with filth. I knew that this was a reflection of what I myself looked like, and shame flooded through me to be seen as such.

I had stood in a line like this once before, mere hours after my father—my pater familias—had sold me to a slave trader. That had been years earlier, and I had been purchased by a higher-classed plebeian, one who had behaved as if I did not exist, which was much better than many alternatives that were whispered among slaves.

Now my dominus had sold me to the slave trader who was flicking the long, polished rope of a whip at our feet, and I did not know why. I would never know why—in the eyes of the world, I did not deserve to.

I was not a person. I was a slave. An animal. And now, after days of travel with no food, little water, and filthy living conditions, my life had been thrust back into the uncertainty that I had felt all those years ago, when I was but a small child.

Who was going to purchase me? Where was I going to go?

“Slaves for sale!” As the slave trader called out, his voice swallowed by the cacophony of sounds in the marketplace, he cracked the whip carelessly, and it fell across my shins. I cried out, and no one turned—no one cared.

Peering down, I studied the brilliant red that now striped my shins. Blood trickled from the wound, bright as a jewel against the dusty white of my skin.

Anger began to simmer inside of me. I knew that I had no rights—I was a slave, a commodity to be bought and sold. But no matter how often I was told that I was worthless, I still knew that I was a person, even if no one knew that but me.

“Clean this one off so that I can see her.”

A man had wandered up, a rich one, judging by the size of the ruby that adorned his finger. I was not supposed to look at his face, and so I kept my eyes trained straight ahead of me. This meant that I looked straight at his great belly, which strained the cloth of his toga.

Though a man dressed as he was likely had a private bath in his home, he smelled. I ground my teeth as a bucket of icy water was dumped over my head, causing the grime to run in rivulets over my skin.

Shame mixed with the anger that was percolating inside of me. I hated being dirty. I hated all of this.

“This one’s tits are too small.” The rotund man reached out, fat fingers pawing greedily at my breasts. I wanted to spit in his face, to shy away from the touch, but knew that my disobedience would result in a beating from the slave trader.

“Let’s see how tight her cunt is.” Panic snaked through me as those hands dropped from my breasts to the area between my legs. I was not a virgin—I had had a lover, another slave, in the house from which I had just been outed. But the thought of strange fingers touching me there was abhorrent, causing nausea to roll in my gut.

And if he wanted to test the tightness of my cunt, I knew what he wanted a new slave for.

I could not be purchased by this man.

Screeching with bloody vengeance as my sudden fury washed away my panic, I flew toward him. The fat man cried out, backing away, but I had lifted my arms, my muscles quivering under the weight of my chains, and had my hands around his throat.

I would surely be killed for this, but I would rather die here in this alley than to be taken to the home of a man who would abuse me for his own pleasure.

“Release him! Slave!” The whip cracked over my shoulders, my back, wielded by the slave trader. I heard other voices, cheers and jeers from the crowd that quickly gathered.

Romans loved nothing more than violence.

As if in a dream, I shook the man, not sure of where I drew the strength from. I did not mean to kill him, merely to convince him that purchasing me would be unwise.