One With the Darkness

Read One With the Darkness for Free Online

Book: Read One With the Darkness for Free Online
Authors: Susan Squires
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Paranormal
his face and laughed. “Oh, he’ll be a joy to break.”
    “I agree,” she said. The three yanked their gazes up, as did the barbarian. He flushed in shame. “Now unhand my new slave, sirs, so I may begin.”
    “What? But I am buying him for my brothel!”
    She waved the receipt scroll. “Too late.” Her bodyguards stepped up behind her. She turned to the trader. “For the price I just paid, you can throw in a pair of shackles.”
    The trader nodded and clapped his hands. Slaves appeared with the required bindings. They unlocked the barbarian’s wrists from the poles and chained them behind his back before they released his feet. His ankles, too, were bloodied. Those green eyes stared at her, burning with intensity, as though he was still not sure what had just happened to him. Excitement churned inside her. This was the start of something—she didn’t know quite what. “Comequietly, slave,” she ordered, putting all the force of her personality behind her words, just shy of raising her Companion for compulsion. “You two—see that he does.” Two of Titus’s bodyguards nodded. Each took one of the slave’s arms and dragged him forward while Graccus remonstrated with the trader.
    “You knew I wanted him,” Graccus was saying. The trader only shrugged. He couldn’t have gotten two thousand dinars for a slave bound for a brothel.
    “Let’s find your master,” she said to the bodyguards. They pushed into the market throng.
    “There you are,” Titus called, hurrying over. Livia saw him frown as he registered the barbarian. “Livia Quintus, what is this? You’ve never purchased this creature!”
    “I have, Titus. He was a soldier, therefore skilled in martial arts. He even speaks Latin.”
    “Livia, return him at once. This is no slave for a woman.”
    Livia turned to her new purchase, seeing him through Titus’s eyes. His rod was still full, if not erect. Bloody and sweating, he looked fierce, with those intense green eyes and all that hair. But he was the one she wanted. She knew that as certainly as she knew her own name. “Once we clean him up you won’t recognize him.”
    “He needs more than a bath to make him suitable.”
    “You were the one who suggested a slave, and now that I’ve meekly done as you ask, you rail at me.”
    Titus rolled his eyes. “Meek? I would welcome meek.”
    Livia gestured her entourage forward. Titus sighed and fell in step. “I just hope you haven’t bitten off more than you can chew.”
    “If I have, I shall sell him. Now, to my litter.”

3
    H E’D BEEN BOUGHT by a woman. This did not bode well. Jergan had hoped he’d be bought for his strong back and sent to labor in some Roman’s fields or to pull an oar on a galley. Those things he understood. It would be painful never to see Centii, his home, again, but he would bear it. Instead a woman had bought him for who knew what purposes.
    Rome loomed around him. Huge stone buildings everywhere, triumphal arches. The place was like no other he had ever seen. He’d been marched naked through the streets yesterday, paved streets, along with the other captives and wagons holding an astounding number of seashells. The soldiers who had captured him were not happy about the seashells, but he put it down to the insanity of Rome. Rome was insane. Word of its indulgence in orgies and cruel games had spread across the world. Those brutes who had raised his cock in the slave market were no doubt just the beginning of his ordeal. The thought of their touch still made him squirm. If not for them, the woman might not have noticed him.
    Or maybe he could not escape notice. He was a clear head taller than any Roman man. He had not seen light eyes except on other captives. If the woman had not noticed him,he might be in a brothel, being raped and beaten. Could anything be worse than that? In Rome, perhaps the answer was “yes.”
    He was hurried out to a litter. It was all he could do not to limp. But he wouldn’t let these

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