Free One With the Darkness by Susan Squires Page A

so close? Would she get any sleep at all?
    He cast her a smoldering look that hinted at rebellion. But he knelt on the carpet beside the bed and lay down on his side, one arm crooked under his head as a pillow. She’d have Lucius find a real pillow for him tomorrow. His other hand rested possessively on the hilt of his sword.
    “Do you require a cover?”
    He shook his head. “This room is warm.”
    She made a mental note to have Lucius find at least a light blanket for him. That might help her as well, since it would cover that muscle. She watched the blood beat in the hollow of his throat. The feeling of anxiety that had haunted her all evening came over her again, as though there was something she should do. Feed? But she never fed from her own household. Twin bites on her servants’ necks would soon cause talk, and that she could not afford. Still … there was something niggling at her.
    Oh, dear. She was still dressed. She couldn’t go to bed fully clothed. Maybe that was what was bothering her. Normally she wore exotic embroidered night robes from Constantinople. But she had no intention of disrobing before this barbarian. She would simply sleep in her stola tonight. And tomorrow she would have Lucius install a screen in the corner so that she might change in privacy.
    She thought about how blithely she had told the slave that he would attend her in her bath. That would be expected of a bodyguard. But she couldn’t imagine letting that incendiary gaze rove over her naked body. What acoil she had gotten herself into. Why had she bought this slave?
    But it was right, somehow. Indeed, it felt as though she had been searching just for him. Something inside her made her feel that someone, maybe everyone, knew things she didn’t. The whole thing was … disconcerting. Even now he watched her as she unwrapped her palla and folded it, then laid it across the bench of her dressing table. Feeling the thinness of the fabric in her stola , she walked to the lamps and extinguished them one by one. The fabric, fine as it was, scraped across her sensitive nipples. The creature had her aroused again. She felt full to overflowing, and throbbing with desire. In short, not like herself at all. When the room was dark, she went to her bed and crawled under the richly embroidered wool coverlet. She could see the slave still watching her.
    H E HAD AN erection for the third time tonight. Gods, could she raise his prick even as exhausted as he was? But the floor was warm through the thick red carpet, and his belly was full of better food than he had eaten in half a year, and rich red wine. She had fed him from her own table, not with scraps or rotten leftovers. The room was suffused with her scent, spicy and exotic. She probably didn’t know that he could see her form clearly through the thin fabric of her tunic as she moved in front of the lamps. Her breasts were full, as were her hips, her waist narrow. The outline of her nipples, taut against the fabric, was almost enough to make him spill his juices.
    Fingering the hilt of the short sword, he watched her take to her bed. It was a simple weapon, the hilt bound with leather to absorb sweat from his palms. Practical. Good in tight places like a city. It made him feel like a man again.
    Why did she trust him with a weapon? For all her brave talk, she must realize he could run her through and leave her bleeding her life out onto that red carpet. She had no way of knowing it was against the creed of his people to use a weapon against the one who had given it as a gift. What did Romans care for the beliefs of those they conquered? Yet she trusted he would keep his bargain to save his men because he had told her he would. It wasn’t because she was naive. This woman was clever, perhaps ruthless. No. It was because she believed in his honor. … That was a burden in some ways.
    Would he defend her? The fact that he’d be put to death on one of those crosses if she died did not weigh with