The final extravagant course had barely been cleared away when Gawain made his excuses and rose to his feet. Not that he really bothered with an excuse. He merely stated his intention to leave without regret or false apology.
“You’re not staying overnight?” The praetor lounged back on the couch. “You are most welcome.” Insincerity dripped from every word.
“I have a prior engagement.” Gawain inclined his head. “Thank you for your hospitality. It’s been most…illuminating.”
Antonia could feel heat flooding her face at his choice of words, but at least he didn’t glance her way. His gaze was intent on the praetor. But she knew Gawain was really speaking to her. Why else would he have chosen to use the same word she had after the first time they had made love?
Sex. It was only sex. But the reminder did nothing to calm the frantic beat of her heart. Because she knew that Gawain was now fully aware that the praetor regarded her as more than merely an old acquaintance.
She wasn’t even sure why that revelation angered him. But it did, and she had known it would, and that was why she’d attempted to allay his suspicions the other day.
Why had she thought it exciting, at the start of the evening, when Gawain had glared daggers at the praetor for taking her arm? She wasn’t a foolish girl who found pleasure in having two men vie for her attention.
She had no wish for the praetor’s attention. But she desperately longed for Gawain’s. And the tragic truth was, his obvious ire at how the praetor had lavished his attention on her throughout the evening had thrilled her feminine pride.
Until that last conversation. Dynamics had shifted, as though the praetor changed battle tactics and went on the offensive. And while his attitude and questions angered her on Gawain’s behalf, it was more than that. She didn’t know what, didn’t even know why that thought was so adamant in her mind. All she knew was something fundamental had shifted and it went far beyond the events that had unfolded this night.
Gawain made perfunctory farewells and strode from the room and Antonia fought the suicidal desire to leap to her feet and follow him. He was meant to be only a distraction. A means to educate herself on the pleasures of sensual seduction. He wasn’t supposed to invade her mind at inconvenient moments of the day and night and he certainly wasn’t supposed to interfere with her shield of self-preservation.
The answer was obvious. She should end this liaison before she became more entangled in his hypnotic web. But even as the thought thudded through her head, she knew she had no intention of following it through.
Not yet. She couldn’t bear to lose him just yet. Another week or two and the memories they made would sustain her through the years ahead, when her life revolved around Cassia.
The praetor was laughing at something Maximus had said. “You are too noble, Maximus,” he said. “I know that look on a man’s face, and he was most certainly going to find the sweet comfort of a woman’s embrace.”
Antonia’s stomach churned. She kept her gaze fixed on the table and ignored the pounding of her temples. Gawain was not going to see another woman.
But how do I know? He’d never said she was his only lover. He could have several. After all, they hadn’t been together for two days. Yet it had never occurred to her that he might have slaked his lust elsewhere.
How bitterly ironic. Her relief had been overwhelming whenever she’d discovered Scipio had taken a new mistress, since it meant she could enjoy a brief respite from his demands. But the thought of Gawain entertaining another woman caused nausea to rise.
Finally she couldn’t stand it anymore. The conversation, the musicians or the dancers the praetor had hired to entertain his guests. Everything pounded in her mind, a cacophony of colliding noise. If she didn’t leave now she feared she might scream, and she couldn’t embarrass her father in such a shocking fashion.
She pressed her fingertips against her temple and thankfully her father picked up her cues and made their excuses. The praetor held her hand, helped her to her feet, and his concern for her welfare appeared so very genuine. As he led her into the atrium, she caught sight of Carys’ face. She looked mutinous. Clearly the thought of staying the night under the praetor’s roof didn’t appeal to her at all.
“I trust you had a pleasant evening, Antonia?” he said as a slave brought her palla.
“Yes, thank you, Praetor. It was most enjoyable.” Illuminating. The word mocked her, but she ignored it.
He smiled, but oddly appeared ill at ease. “There’s no need to be so formal, Antonia. I’ve been your friend for many years. I would be honored if you would once again call me Seneca.”
Her chest constricted, throat tightened. It was true that in the past she had addressed him more intimately. But she hadn’t seen him for months, and in the meantime, he’d been promoted. Calling him by the title of his office gave a semblance of detachment.
She needed to maintain that detachment. Now that she was no longer married, she knew he would look upon her use of his given name as a tacit agreement to his… advances.
“You are very kind.” She allowed him to take her hand and remained rigid as he kissed her fingers.
“We trust you will allow us to return your hospitality, Praetor,” her father said.
“I would be delighted.” The praetor’s voice was stilted. He hadn’t missed how she had deliberately not used his name, but she was too tired to care.
It was only a short journey home and in the flickering light of the carpentum’s lantern, she gave her father an exasperated glare. “Why do you encourage him? You know of my feelings on this matter.”
Her father sighed and took her hand. “If your heart is set on adopting this child you told me about, then I’m certain the praetor will have no objection to embracing her as your daughter. He even said how much he longed for a daughter. It’s as if the gods themselves bless this match.”
She stared at him as horror clutched her breast. She didn’t want the praetor knowing she was adopting a child at all—a child who was the exact same age as her own, supposedly dead, daughter—but the scenario her father painted was nothing short of a nightmare.
It would never happen. She took a deep breath and tried to calm her mind. When her father entertained the praetor, she would affect feminine indisposition and not join them. It was unforgivably rude, but surely the praetor would finally realize she wasn’t interested in what he offered her?
Elpis met her in the atrium and with relief, Antonia made her way to her bedchamber. The thought of having relaxing incense burning as soothing oils were rubbed on her temples was seductive.
It might even take her mind off the thought of Gawain with another woman.
“Domina.” Elpis’ whisper was scarcely audible as she paused outside Antonia’s bedchamber. “I’ll be here if you should need me.”
Antonia blinked and frowned. Her headache was worse than she thought, since she could make no sense of Elpis’ comment at all.
“Where else would you be?” Elpis had slept in her bedchamber up until her marriage, and ever since her divorce.
Elpis smiled and opened the door. A low golden glow bathed her bedchamber from the lamps. “Here, domina,” she whispered. “I will be right here.”
Antonia’s breath caught in her throat and a quiver of delicious alarm skated through her breast. Surely not? But she didn’t ask Elpis the question hammering through her mind. Instead she stepped into her bedchamber, and Elpis gently closed the door behind her.
From shadows beyond her bed, Gawain emerged, like a warrior god from the beginning of time. Her mouth dried and heart lurched against her ribs. He was here. In her bedchamber. Waiting for her.
“Are you speechless with delight or horror, my lady?” His low, mocking voice wrapped around her, as sensuous as the incense from the Temple of Venus. “Will you scream in pleasure or disgust at my touch?”
“I cannot believe you’re here.” Her voice was scarcely above a whisper. Her heart thundered too hard to draw enough breath into her lungs. “If my father discovered you he would…” She wasn’t sure what her father would do. Run a dagger through Gawain’s heart or die of shame at her feet?
“Then we had best ensure your father never finds out.” He took another unhurried step toward her and her foolish heart twisted at the magnificent figure he presented. The glow from the lamps heightened the bronze of his skin and dark blond of his hair, and enhanced the breathtaking muscles of his biceps. If Celts sculpted images of their gods in marble, Gawain would be their chief deity made flesh.
She walked toward him until merely a hair’s breadth pulsed between them. She longed to wrap herself around him, breathe in his unique scent and forget the outside world in his arms. But she feared if she did so, he might guess that her feelings were deeper for him now. And she didn’t want to give him any reason to end this insane liaison any earlier than fate had already decreed.
“How are you here?” Of course, Elpis must have assisted him. But even so, the dangers of evading the guards, of being seen to slip into her room, were immense.
“I have my ways.” His teeth flashed in a mirthless smile and with a jolt, she realized that he still seethed with fury. “It was not so very difficult for a man with my talents.”
His self-scathing comment lashed across her heart. How many times had he evaded capture in order to meet an illicit lover in her bedchamber? Why had she imagined this was something as shocking and novel to him, as well as for her?
She smothered the questions before they consumed her. It didn’t matter how many times in the past he had done this. At least he was with her now, and not with a strange, faceless woman. The knowledge eased the ache in her heart and she cradled his jaw with one hand, rubbing her thumb across his light stubble.
“Your talents,” she whispered, “are impressive.”
His lips quirked in obvious reluctance. “Don’t flatter me with pretty words, Antonia.”
“Why not?” She trailed her fingertips along the strong line of his jaw. “You flatter me most charmingly.”
His large hand covered hers. For a moment, she thought he was going to thrust her from him, but instead his fingers threaded through hers.
“No.” His voice was harsh. “I don’t. It’s one of my irresistible traits. I’m blunt to the point of barbarity.”
His self-condemnation caused her heart to squeeze. She took that final step and sank against the hard ridges of his body. “I have yet to see this barbarian of whom you so freely speak.”
Tension radiated from him, coiled and waiting to spring. Did he truly imagine that she compared him to the praetor—and found Gawain wanting? How could he be so blind?
How could she prove how wrong he was?
“That Roman.” Gawain’s breath seared her ear as he wound his arm around her waist and held her in a punishing grip. “Every time he looked at you he stripped you with his eyes. His lust polluted the air. He will not rest until he has you in his bed.”
Unease shivered along her spine at his words, but she forced it aside. She wasn’t as easily manipulated as Gawain appeared to think.
“I’ve no intention of sharing his bed. But I have every intention that you will share mine this night.”
She felt his body shake in a silent laugh and then he pulled back so he could look into her face. “I am enraged. How dare you attempt to mollify me with false promises?”
“It’s not a false promise. It is night, you are here and my bed is beside us.”
He glowered at her, even as his tempting mouth fought to smile. His frown lost the battle. “You are an enchantress. There’s no other explanation. What magic have you cast upon me, my lady?”
“A lady never shares her secrets.” And then she laughed at the absurdity of her comment, at the relief Gawain was no longer vibrating with repressed fury and the knowledge that, for a short time at least, she could hold him close and savor each precious moment.
He grunted and began to pull the pins from her hair. “As long as I’m the only one you enchant. I don’t share what is mine.”
A foolish frisson of delight ignited deep in her heart. She knew he spoke purely from lust when she—ah, she could no longer deny the truth. It was so much more than lust for her. But what did it matter if she hugged his words close and gave them a meaning he didn’t intend? “And am I yours?”
For a second he paused, his hand in her hair, his gaze boring into her as if he wanted to peel back the layers of her mind and read her most secret of desires.
“Yes.” His voice was raw, primitive and another delicious tremor claimed her sensitized flesh. “Tonight you’re all mine, Antonia. I intend that you’ll never forget what we shared together.”
There was little chance of that when Gawain had slid, unbidden, into her heart. She would remember him until her last breath.
“But will you forget, Gawain? Will I be simply another Roman woman you passed a few pleasant weeks with? Will you even recall my name a year from now?”
Somehow she kept her voice light, playful, as though she didn’t mean every word from the bottom of her soul. It would do no good for him to discover just how devastated she’d be if he forgot everything about her as soon as their liaison ended.
Gawain stared into Antonia’s ice-blue eyes, eyes that had captivated him from the first moment they had met. He knew they would haunt him until he continued his journey in the Otherworld, and perhaps their beauty would haunt him even there.
Forget her? How he wished he could be certain that he could. But every time that fucking Roman had fawned over her, pawed her and attempted to denigrate Gawain in her eyes, the tarnished truth had clawed through his chest.
She was more than a fleeting fuck. She always had been, but until this night, he hadn’t realized just how much she meant to him.
They had no future. He knew that. But the thought of her marrying the praetor, as she was sure to given her status and the Roman’s obvious interest, curdled his guts.
Antonia was in his arms, smiling up at him and driving him out of his senses with lust. It should be enough. With any other woman, it would be enough. But with Antonia he wanted more. He didn’t want her to blithely mention the short duration of their affair. A few weeks? Was that all she was willing to give him?
Savagely he flung her hair pins onto the floor and tugged her ringlets over her shoulders. Now she looked untamed, unregimented. Un-Roman. But it didn’t matter how she looked. Because her blood was still the blood of patricians and she belonged to the empire.
“Perhaps I’ll engrave your name on the inside of my torque.” He offered her a sardonic grin. “Then I’ll never risk forgetting our enjoyable encounters.”
For a moment, her lips trembled as though his words wounded. But perhaps it was a trick of the lamp light. Perhaps he had merely imagined it. Because her smile now was more blinding than ever.
“Do you engrave the names of all your conquests on your torque?” She traced her finger over the images of Lugus but her gaze didn’t waver from his. He almost told her yes, he did, but somehow he could not.
“The torque of my forefathers is sacred. I would never desecrate it in such a manner.”
Her finger slipped to his bare throat. Her light touch burned his flesh. “Have you ever been in love, Gawain?” Her voice was soft, persuasive, but anger flared that she dared to ask him such a personal question. Then he looked into her eyes and instead of idle curiosity, he saw those elusive, haunting shadows, and his anger fell to ash.
“Once.” More than two turns of the wheel ago and yet it felt like another lifetime.
“Was she of Cambria?”
He unclasped the brooch that held Antonia’s gown at the shoulder. “She was a warrior.”
The tip of her tongue moistened her lips. “Of course.”
He studied the precious gems encrusted in the brooch as it lay in the palm of his hand. He couldn’t fathom why, but Antonia’s response speared through his chest. And the pain was not for the loss of Morwyn.
Antonia’s gown pooled at her feet, leaving her clad in only a knee-length tunic. She looked oddly vulnerable, alone, as if the slightest harsh word from him would send her crumbling into dust.
Three things Morwyn had never looked in her life.
“She saved my life.” The words thudded in the air between them, shocking him. He had never spoken them before. Not even to Carys, and she and Morwyn had been the best of friends.
“Yes.” Antonia’s voice was faint and she was no longer holding his gaze. Instead she stared at his chest as her fingers unlaced his shirt.
He realized she didn’t understand. He tossed her brooch onto the end of the bed and covered her hand, stilling her fingers.
“No.” He wasn’t sure why it was important she understood. Only that it was. “The last time we saw each other she gave me a warning. That treachery awaited in the land of the Brigantes. If she hadn’t, if I had ignored her words, I would’ve been cut down by those I considered my allies.”
Antonia swallowed. “Then I owe her a great debt of gratitude. Because of her foresight you’re here with me now.”
Whatever he had imagined she might say it hadn’t been that. Incredibly, a laugh huffed from his throat and he cradled her face. She was so fragile, not only physically but also in the way she had so little control over her life. The knowledge seared him and a wave of raw protectiveness surged through him. A sensation he had never once experienced while he’d been with Morwyn. “You’re so different from her.”
Her smile seemed strained. “Alas, it was thought more prudent for me to learn Greek than how to wield a dagger.”
“There you have me.” He began to slide her tunic off her shoulders. “I don’t know a word of Greek. Perhaps you should teach me.”
She shrugged free of her tunic and stood before him in all her naked glory. His cock thickened with anticipation. She was the most fuckable vision he’d ever seen in his life.
“I cannot imagine why you would wish to learn Greek.” She tugged ineffectively at his shirt and he obliged her by ripping it over his head and dropping it to the floor. “How do you speak Latin so well?”
Other Romans had asked him that. He’d always been aware of the incredulity behind the question, as though they distrusted the fact he spoke their language so fluently. But there was no such undercurrent in Antonia’s words.
“There was a Gaul in our clan who spoke perfect Latin. He taught us all.” No need to explain that the Gaul had also been a Druid with Roman blood in his veins.
“Hmm.” She appeared distracted by his torso and he flexed his muscles for her viewing pleasure. The breathy sigh she emitted stoked his male pride to new heights. She was always so appreciative. “I could speak Greek to you now, if you wish.”
He buried his fingers in her glorious hair as she began to strip him with tantalizing concentration. “I would rather know what you say to me in the throes of passion, Antonia.”
She gave a breathless laugh as she sank to her knees, exposing him to her avid gaze. He gritted his teeth, forced his fingers to relax against her head. His fantasy of Antonia sucking his cock into her wet mouth would remain only that—a fantasy.
It didn’t stop the tortured groan from escaping, though.
Her hands slid along his thighs and down the back of his calves. Her uneven breath teased his flesh and his erection throbbed with unfulfilled need. She was so cursed close. He imagined the tip of her tongue sliding across his wet slit, imagined her lips wrapping around his swollen glans.
Involuntarily he tightened his grip on her head and battled the primal urge to jerk her forward. To force his shaft between her parted lips and take her as she knelt before him. Did she think he was made of stone? Did she deliberately tantalize him with every ragged breath she took, every teasing stroke of her fingers?
“Stand up.” His command was guttural and he emphasized the urgency by tugging on her hair. She looked up at him, a vision of feminine innocence and earthly desire. A combination that should be impossible, that should never exist. Yet Antonia embodied it all without a trace of artifice or manipulation.
Then she smiled. It wasn’t a smile of triumph that she could drive him so easily to the edge of his endurance. It was a smile that speared through his chest, paralyzed his lungs and hypnotized his enslaved gaze.
He’d never seen such a smile before. It illuminated her face in the glow of the lamps and in that moment, it would be easy to believe she possessed immortal blood. Surely no mere human could look so bewitching?
“Your body enthralls me.” Her seductive whisper weaved through the heated air as she slowly, sensuously rose from her knees. “I want to worship every glorious inch of it.”
A tortured laugh escaped and he sculpted her shoulders, the dip of her waist and irresistible flare of her hips. “Another night, my lady.” In the back of his lust-fueled mind, the leering face of the praetor lurked, mocking him with the knowledge that, sooner or later, Antonia would belong to him.
His banked rage once again surged through his veins and pounded against his skull. Antonia was his. He would give her pleasure such as she had never before imagined. Would give her a memory that seared her senses forever; a memory that would never fade by the passage of time or become lost in the demands of a new husband.
He cupped her delectable arse, felt a delicious tremor claim her body. He leaned in close, her nipples hard against his chest, and breathed against her ear. “Tonight, sweet Antonia, I will make good on my promise and take your virginity.”