Page 68 of Cleopatra

“Allow?” I said incredulously.

“You asked the impossible of me.” His anger was quiet. Simmering. I relished it.

“I ask nothing of you.”

He stepped towards me, until I could feel the heat of him. “Nothing?”

If I had been bolder, I would have told him all the things I wanted from him. But my courage only matured with time, and as it was, I could only say: “No.”

His hand reached up to the nape of my neck, his touch tender. Where his fingers lingered, my skin turned warm.

“Of all the things I would ask of you.” His eyes moved to my lips and I found my breath stuttering in my chest.

“Such as?” I whispered.

“A kiss, if you would grant it.”

My hands went to either side of his jaw, where the roughness of his beard met the olive of his skin. I leaned forward until we were a hair’s breadth apart.

I could feel his breath on my face, shallow, hot. His eyes bored into mine, dark, pleading.

The distance closed between us. I could not tell you if it was him or me who made the irrevocable move. It was impossible to separate the need from the person.

The kiss was gentle at first. Our lips parted, each of us savouring the other. But then it deepened and our bodies pressed together.

I sense your thoughts: What of Calpurnia, his wife? Rome was a distant land, made even more distant by the immediate danger we lived in. We knew not if we would survive this war. Besides, it was his marriage to thwart, not mine—take your judgement and your questions to his grave instead.

His hands moved from my neck to the coils of my hair. I nipped at his lower lip and a sound, more animal than human, emanated from his throat.

Cleopatra only fights for the man in her bed. She is a whore.

I broke away from the kiss.

“My queen?” Caesar said. He stepped back into the space I had created between us, his hands held out to mine.

I did not reach for him and his expression turned guarded. “I am sorry if this was not what you desired.”

To my surprise, his knees struck the floor as he bowed before me. He pulled his blade from his waistband and laid it on the floor between us. “You may punish me as you will.”

I thought of the guard I had sentenced to death with his blade. It was the very same sword he proffered now. The gladius that had killed Pothinus. I picked it up and turned it around in my hands.

He bared the skin of his neck to me; it was browned from countless days spent fighting alongside the soldiers to reclaim my throne.

I could have killed him. He would have let me, would have welcomed it.

It would have been a more honourable death than the one he ultimately had. But how different your history would have been. Caesar’s martyrdom would have been a quiet thing, the smallest of ripples in the currents of the world. Not enough to sway the tide of war.

He would just be a Roman slain by a whore. Because my tale would be the same.

I would always be Medusa. A monster and not a person. For how else would the world conceive of a woman with such power?

Medusa was a kindred spirit, another woman wronged by white hands and black ink. But this is my story and not hers.

Caesar looked so vulnerable beneath me, as if the weight of his feelings had laid him low.

I let the sword clatter to the floor, the sound shattering any hesitation I had left. I had already been labelled a whore. The word could never be unspoken.

There will be those of you who scowl and shake your head at the thought of the great Julius Caesar bowing before anyone. But he bowed before me, time and time again.