Seduced by the Gladiator(79)

She was not wrong. However, the girl brought out such tenderness in me that I felt I must ensure that she was safe and comfortable, before tending to myself.

Only after she looked as though she might fall asleep did I close and lock her door behind me. I rolled tension from my shoulders and my neck as I opened the door to the room that Christus and I shared. After the day’s events, I wanted nothing more than to wash, perhaps to eat, and to fall into a dreamless sleep in my lover’s arms.

“She sleeps?” Christus turned from the window at which he stood as I entered the room. His entire attention focused on me the moment that he saw me, and I found myself responding, my world narrowing until it included nothing but him.

“She rests, even if she does not sleep.” My eyes drank him in as I stepped forward slowly. It was strange for me to see him dressed in such finery. I did not like it.

I wanted to rip off the expensive wool, to find the skin and sinew that were so familiar to my eyes, to my touch.

I could tell that he was having similar thoughts as his eyes roamed over me. After all that had happened that day, I had thought that pleasures of the flesh would be far from my mind.

“Christus.” I was wrong. He was there, right next to me, and I wanted him as much as I ever had.

“My love.” Striding across the floor, he caught me up in his arms and rained kisses over my lips, my cheeks, my neck. My skin began to hum under his attention, and I rubbed against him.

“I am here.” Christus buried his face in my hair as he spoke, and for a long moment we simply clung to one another, each of us thinking of how the gods had favored us, to be in each other’s arms after all that had happened.

We had survived Gaius. We did not know our future, but for the moment, we were together.

“I love you.” Fisting his hands in my hair, Christus tugged until I looked up into his face. There I saw everything that I felt, reflected back at me. Reaching up, I trailed my hand over his cheek, over the cuts and bruises that he had sustained while trying to save my life, even at the expense of his own.

“I love you, too.” Standing on my toes, I pressed my lips to his. One kiss became two, and then more, and soon our bodies were straining together, feverish with the need to join.

I felt his cock, the hard length jutting into my stomach. I rubbed against him, savoring his moan.

We were alive. We could feel.

“Lilia.” Cupping my bottom in his hands, Christus lifted me, placing me on the rickety wooden table that sat against the wall. Clasping the skirts of my toga at the ankles, he pulled them up, up until the expensive fabric was wrapped around my waist. Slowly he knelt, his hands smoothing in slow circles up the tops of my thighs.

I shivered as the cool air hit the heat between my legs, and then he was on his knees in front of me, nibbling at my incredibly tender flesh.

I felt like a ripe fruit, the way that he lapped at my skin. First, wide circles around the outer perimeter, big fat sweeps with his tongue, the warmth feeling wonderful on my bare skin. The circle got smaller, then even smaller, until his tongue was teasing my clit. He flicked back and forth, faster and faster, and my breath began to hitch as I felt the familiar wave begin to crest.

He stopped—the bastard—and I sat there, quivering, my entire being focused on that tiny inch of flesh between my legs.

When I was calm, well, calmer, he began again. But instead of the rhythmic flicking, he made shapes, irregular little licks, so that I wasn’t sure where the next sensation was coming from. It was as if he was drawing pictures with his tongue, pictures intended to drive me wild.

They worked.

Impatient, I arched my hips, pressing my flesh into his mouth. He laughed, his lips vibrating against me.

“Christus.” My words begged him, my tone taut with need. “Now. Please. I need you.” I would have had him take me hard and fast, the heat of our joining burning away the taint of the day.

“No.” I felt the pressure building again as he continued to lavish attention on my clit, his tongue darting inside of my heat. I moaned as he made the pressure inside of me build. “No. For once I have time to savor you. Nothing will stop me from doing so.”

Afraid that he would make me wait again, I tried to keep quiet and still, hiding my impending climax. The trembling in my thighs must have given me away, because as soon as I had gotten a taste—just the slightest taste of that intense pleasure—he withdrew his tongue again.

And started. Again.

This time, as soon as his tongue entered me, my world went bright and I cried out with the intense feeling that I was finally granted. I bit my tongue as I climaxed, trying to swallow my cries of pleasure, aware of Viola, sleeping in the next room.