Forbidden To The Gladiator

Arria lunged behind the door just as the guard opened it, pressing herself into the corner as an entourage of women swept into the barracks on a perfumed breeze. They were followed by a cluster of guards, the ringmaster among them, along with Master Brutus himself, whom Arria recognised by his gaudy, gold-trimmed toga.

‘Gladiators,’ Brutus said, ‘Governor Secundus sends his gratitude for your performance tonight.’ He gestured to the women with a bejewelled hand. ‘You have already received your allotted wine and here are your promised women. You will be rewarded similarly for a performance of equal merit at the Festival of Artemis this spring.’

One of the guards began to unlock the Beast’s cell, and Brutus gestured to a blue-eyed woman with a nest of yellow hair atop her head. ‘Here she is, Beast. Long blonde hair, blue eyes. Just as you requested.’

‘Whence does she hail?’ asked the Beast.

Brutus nudged the woman. ‘You heard him. Where do you come from?’

‘Germania.’

The Beast gave a nod and the guard let her into his cell.

‘And the second woman?’ Brutus asked the Beast.

‘Do not want a second.’

‘You do not want a second woman?’ Brutus laughed. ‘Then you are a fool.’

Arria watched the chosen woman float into the Beast’s cell. She wore a flowing white-linen tunic and matching long shawl which she let fall to the floor just as the gate clanked shut. She must have been from far in the north, thought Arria, for her eyes were a startling blue and her hair was as yellow as wheat. She was beautiful.

But the Beast did not even look at her. He reached for a flagon of wine and guzzled it, then offered it to the woman without meeting her gaze.

She accepted it eagerly, taking a long draught herself.

If Arria was going to run, it had to be now, while the entourage of guards and women made its way deeper into the barracks. Unfortunately, she could not bring her legs to move.

She could only watch in quiet awe as the yellow-haired woman removed her tunic, revealing a landscape of dips and curves. She was the kind of woman Arria would never be—fleshy and abundant. Lovely as a bowl of fruit.

Arria was studying the woman so closely that she did not notice the guards turning back towards the door. ‘They are yours for two hours,’ announced Brutus.

Arria cowered in the shadows as Brutus and the guards exited and the door to the barracks closed with a slam.

And that was that. She had missed her chance to escape. Now she would have to wait two hours and pray that she could keep herself concealed as the men and women…as they…

From somewhere further down the hall came a long, ecstatic moan.

Oh, gods.

The Beast’s cell was only steps away from where Arria squatted. Arria could see his muscular figure sitting at the end of his raised bed. His head was stooped. He was studying the floor, though the German woman stood only a breath away from him, her body exposed, her tunic in a pool at her feet. ‘You are handsome, Gladiator,’ she told him.

‘Do not call me Gladiator.’

‘Beast?’

He shook his head.

‘What shall I call you, then?’

The Beast paused, looked up. ‘Call me Husband.’

Call him Husband? What a strange request. Arria closed her eyes. She should not be watching this. Whatever this was. A ritual of some kind? A fantasy? Arria’s sense of propriety was duelling mightily with her curiosity and she sensed her curiosity quickly gaining ground.

Why should she not watch? It had been a night of firsts, after all: her first pit fight, her first discussion with a gladiator and now, it seemed, her first real lesson in the act of love. She might as well watch, for this first lesson was also likely to be her last. Propriety be damned. She opened her eyes.

‘It is well, ah, Husband,’ the woman said. She reached up to her golden bun and pulled out a comb. Her hair tumbled on to her shoulders in a curtain of yellow silk. She shook it hard and the strands danced in the torchlight like shiny ribbons.

The Beast stared up at her, his head cocked in contemplation. ‘I shall not kiss your lips, understood?’

The woman shrugged her assent.

‘May I have the comb?’ he asked.

She placed the comb in his palm. He reached beneath his bed to produce a small brazier pan full of coals. He moistened a single tine of the comb with the tip of his tongue, then dipped the small instrument into the black residue of the pan.

‘May I adorn your face?’ he asked.

The woman nodded. He stood and touched the blackened tine to her chin, gently dabbing the coal stain into a mark of Venus. He dipped the comb into the coals once more and thickened the mark, then leaned backwards to behold his work. ‘Perfect,’ he said.

He returned to sitting and reached again for the jug of wine. He took a long draught, never taking his eyes off the woman’s face. ‘Rhiannon,’ he whispered. He might have been a sculptor naming his bust—his lusty, lifelike bust that seemed to have been polished by the very hands of Venus.

‘Will you not make love to me, Husband?’ she asked in soft, melting Latin.

The Beast sighed, then bowed his bald head so that it came to rest against her smooth white belly. ‘Ah, Rhiannon,’ he said. ‘Wife.’ He reached to the woman’s hips and pulled her closer, burying his face in the creamy white flesh of her stomach.

He sat there for a long while, his head resting against her stomach, as if she were some familiar, domestic goddess and he had come to offer his daily prayers. And then he did begin to pray, or so it seemed, for a torrent of words sprang from his lips. They were strange, tangled words—words so full of breathy desire that they might as well have been kisses themselves.

Arria had no idea what language he spoke, but she could feel what he was saying in her very bones. He was speaking of love and lust, of sweetness and yearning, of things that Arria had never known. They were words so lovely, they might have been birds, or tiny fishes swimming beneath some invisible wave of emotion that Arria could sense was about to crash.

And then it did. He rose to his feet to face the naked woman, speared his fingers through her hair, and lavished her neck with the hungriest, most passionate kiss Arria had ever witnessed.

His mouth rioted down the long column, biting and tasting and sucking in a torrent of urgency and lust. He gripped the woman by the waist and pulled her against him, and Arria had to brace her shoulder against the low wall to keep her own legs from buckling beneath her.

And then, just when she thought the wave had dissipated, just when the bruising neck kisses had subsided into soft, tender caresses, he bent to take one of the woman’s breasts into his mouth.

Blessed, sweet Minerva.

A strange heat invaded Arria’s bones—pleasurable, radiant, alarming. He released the woman’s nipple and followed a winding path down her belly, festooning it with small kisses, until he was sitting once again on the bed before her and his lips came to a halt at the soft curly mass atop her Venus mound.

Was he going to…? Arria covered her eyes, then peeked between her fingers. Yes, he was going to. Arria watched in fascination as his tongue slipped into the woman’s sacred opening.

‘Oh,’ the woman sighed and Arria felt another disconcerting wave of heat. The woman arched her back, gripping the Beast’s naked skull as he began to move his mouth around her folds, kissing and sucking and…licking. It was the most forbidden thing Arria had ever seen in all her life. The woman began to whimper and Arria noticed her own breaths growing short.

What could it feel like to be kissed in such a way? In such a place? She strained to imagine it and found herself growing warmer still. She watched his hands slide slowly from the woman’s hips to her backside, which he squeezed and caressed as he continued to pleasure her with his tongue.

Arria could not look away. She could not close her ears, even as the woman’s moans transformed from soft sighs into low, rhythmic groans of the sort that Arria occasionally heard outside the baths. The woman’s arms stiffened. Her body shuddered. Her moans crescendoed as her whole body convulsed and Arria felt a shiver ripple across her own skin.

Slowly, the woman’s breaths subsided. She was still whimpering when he pressed his head against her stomach once more and hugged her close. He was breathing her in—deep, gulping breaths whose exhales sounded like sighs.