She turned her gaze toward me, her expression so serene, so tranquil, so different than the first day I met her.
“When a woman bares her neck to a dragon”—her voice was silky and soft—“it means that she desires him, that she is submitting to him, and that she trusts him.”
She then arched her neck again, farther back, and I groaned then nipped and kissed her throat from the base all the way to the top until I found her mouth.
Whenever we kissed, I lost myself, completely withdrawn from the world. Only she mattered. Like now.
She broke the kiss far too soon. But then her gaze turned serious as she whispered, “I did not think I would ever give my trust to another man.”
“I know,” I admitted somberly.
“If I did, I did not think it would ever be a Roman.”
I pressed a soft kiss to her lips. “I know that too.”
When I inched forward to take her lips again, she pressed a finger to my mouth to stop me, holding my gaze.
“I did not think to ever love another man.”
My heart pounded hard against my rib cage. She’d said many sweet words in the dark, but they’d never been these. Here we were in the light of day. It couldn’t be the ecstasy of pleasure coloring her words so sweetly. They were genuine. They were real and true.
“But I do, Trajan,” she confessed, the vulnerability in her eyes cutting me down the middle. “I love you so very much.”
“Gods above.” I cupped her face and pressed my forehead to hers. “You are more dear to me than anyone in the world, Lela. I love you so completely.”
“I know.” She smiled.
I pressed another gentle kiss to her lips.
“Any word from your contacts?” she asked, stalling my kisses.
She wasn’t asking about my contacts inside Rome who we were attempting to reach, hoping Agrippa and Horatius and the others were still alive and well inside the city. She was speaking of the queries I’d penned to people I knew in all the different provinces around the Roman Empire. One positive aspect of being from such a renowned family who was exceedingly wealthy was that I had a plethora of connections in many corners of the world.
“Nothing yet. But it is hard to find one Dacian dancer whose village was attacked in the Carpathian Mountains. Unfortunately, that happened to many more than one village.”
She heaved a sigh. “We’ll keep looking for her.”
“Yes. We will.”
“When will we go back? To meet up with Alaric?”
“In a week or two.”
“So soon?” She combed a hand through my hair, my curls having grown long the past few months. “That’s not much time at all.”
“Exactly. Which is precisely why you should come behind this tree with me and be naughty.” I gestured toward the clearing where my sisters and Malina were still laying out clothes to dry. “Look at all of these fools working through the whole day.” I snorted in disgust. “My own friend wasting the hours mending timbers when he could be mounting his lovely wife.”
I waited for her to swat me again. But she didn’t. She smiled and stood above me, gazing down, sultry heat warming her face.
“You know what I was just remembering?”
“What?” I asked, skating my hands around her leather boots at the ankles.
“That night in the olive grove.”
I could smell the tangy olives in the air even now.
“The night you tasted my blood and yelled at me so cruelly. That night?”
