Page 59 of Firebird
“Yes,” he finally answered. “I know that.”
“And so”—my voice vibrated with anger—“yet again, you will root them out and kill them all and put their king’s head on a pike on your Wall of Victory as a sign that the Romans are the almighty rulers of all.” I paced beside the war table, breathless and furious. “Always the same thing,” I muttered to myself.
“Malina.” He stood in a plain tunic, holding the curtain aside. “Join me for dinner.”
“I’ve already eaten,” I snapped. “What’s left is yours.”
“Join me anyway. Let us talk.”
“I don’t feel like talking.”
He paused, then used his heavier, more dominant voice. “Then come assist me. I require a bath.”
There was a heavy promise in his words and in his eyes. He seemed tired. Not physically exhausted, but weary emotionally. It tugged on the tether between us, killing the ire that had inflamed me only a moment before.
He turned but I could see him clearly enough, pulling his tunic over his head. Even though I was in fact his body slave and was required to assist him in such things, he hadn’t demanded that of me yet. There was nowhere for me to go, and even if I could, I didn’t want to go anywhere else. Or be anywhere else. I couldn’t refuse him.
Moving the curtain aside, I found him seated on a stool that Koska had set over the small tub, nude but for a piece of linen draping his lap. I also noted the small table next to him with a bottle of oil and the strigil, the concave instrument made of bronze to scrape the oil and dirt from the body. I’d seen it used before, though I never had used it myself. I preferred a wet cloth or a stream, like the Celts did.
He watched me, almost daring me to do my duty. If he thought to scare me off by having me cleanse him with oil and strigil, he would be disappointed. I marched across the small chamber, the room lit by a single oil lamp, and stood behind him.
Pouring an ample amount of oil in my palms, I rubbed them together, then spread them across the expanse of his back. He stiffened, then shivered beneath my touch. I couldn’t help smiling at how intensely quiet and still he was, his hands on his knees.
Once his entire back was covered with the oil, I took the strigil and curved it across his shoulders first, admiring the taut lines of muscle. I scraped the oil in silence, shaking the excess off into the tub beneath him. I set to my work with ease and comfort while my pulse beat wildly from seeing and admiring the lovely lines of his body so closely. It was almost meditative.
By the time I circled around to his chest, he couldn’t hide his heavy breathing. He was as affected as I was. I refused to meet his gaze, concentrating on being thorough as I applied the oil to his chest and began methodically scraping with the strigil along the firm lines of his pectorals. He kept still while I did my work, his body heat radiating to me, both of us breathing the same air.
It was when I pulled the strigil down one side of his abdomen, all the way to where the linen in his lap stopped my progression, that he finally moved. Like a viper, he caught my wrist. I flinched and finally met his gaze—all fire and embers glowing burnished gold.
Breath caught in my throat; he held me still but I hadn’t even tried to move.
“Enough,” he grated, his nostrils flaring as he let me go and stood to move around me, avoiding my touch.
Now I was panting, glancing over my shoulder to get a full view of his naked body, unable to pry my eyes from his hard cock. I turned quickly, biting my lip so I wouldn’t make a sound.
I busied myself setting the strigil and oil to a side table. After a moment of shuffling and the sound of cloth moving on skin, he heaved a sigh and said, “You can turn around.”
He took a seat on his bed beside the low table where the tray of food had been waiting for him. He ate quietly, picking at the meat rather than devouring it like he usually did. I sat across from him on the carpet.
There was a tremor of unease surrounding him, my empathic senses quickly picking up on whatever was circling in his mind. I assumed he was anxious or frustratingly aroused or both, like I was. But when he finally looked up at me, abandoning his meal altogether, he seemed apprehensive, nervous. Scared, even. That wasn’t what I expected. That wasn’t what I was feeling.
Then he broke the silence. “I don’t want to kill them.”
At first, I didn’t follow, my mind reeling and my pulse racing from the sensual experience of scraping oil from his body. Then I remembered what we were discussing before, what had gotten me annoyed and made him use hismastervoice to get me to obey.
“The marauders?” I asked.
“Not any of them. Not the Celts or the Macedonians, the Greeks, the Persians, the Carthaginians. Not the Dacians.” He held my gaze and said, almost in a whisper, “None of them.”
“But you’re the Conqueror. That’s what you do.”
“Yes. I must. To stay in my uncle’s favor. Because that is the only way I can stay close to him. To maintain access to him.”
My heart tripped faster, trying to reconcile what he was telling me. What I believed he was confessing to me.
“And why is that important?” I asked softly.
He was sitting with his weight leaning back on one arm, one leg stretched out on the carpet, the other slightly bent. He leaned closer across the table and spoke low.
