“I don’t look…how women are supposed to look. Delicate, and soft, and flawless.”
He clasped a hand over her breast. “You feel plenty soft to me.”
That, at least, made her chuckle.
He massaged the swell of her breast. “That first time I met you, when I saw these pop out of the bindings you wore…I swear I almost passed out.”
Now, she let out a full-throated laugh. “Iknewyou were ogling me.”
He drew her tighter into his arms, holding her in an inescapable grasp. “You’ve enraptured me from the beginning, Lea. The only reason your scars bother me is because it kills me to think of what you’ve suffered.”
She was silent for a moment. “You want to know about the marks on my back, don’t you?”
He didn’t, not really, because he sensed it would only upset him. But at the same time, he was desperate to know more of her past, to understand what had led her to where she was today. “You don’t have to speak of it.”
“I don’t mind. It was a long time ago.” She shifted in his arms to lay her head on his shoulder. “I grew up working in a household here in Rome, with my mother. She died when I was seventeen. I didn’t realize how much she’d been protecting me until she was gone. Making sure I was never in the wrong place at the wrong time. Never at risk of being…alone…with the wrong person.”
A tendril of darkness spiraled within him. He knew the precarious struggle of which she spoke—always trying to make oneself as invisible as possible, striving never to be noticed.
“Then, my mother was gone and…things changed.” She gave a brief, mirthless chuckle. “Remember how you told me I was very brave and very stupid?”
“I’ve had multiple occasions to use those words.”
“It’s nothing new. My master, he tried to…” She gave an expressive shrug. “I fought back, you see. Broke my master’s nose. That’s where the beating came from. Then he sold me to Lucullus. It was supposed to be a death sentence. But Lucullus healed me. He trained me. Gave me a new life. A new name. And that’s where I’ve been since.”
The darkness unfurled in Kallias’s chest. “I’m so sorry,” he murmured, his voice rough. Her story prodded at the cache of memories he kept tightly buried in the depths of his mind, like old clothes stuffed at the bottom of a trunk.
Unlike Lea, he had never been brave enough to fight back.
Her fearlessness astonished him. She must have known she could have been killed outright for raising a hand against her master, and if he hadn’t wanted to extract profit from her by selling her to a gladiator school, she probably would have been.
Now Kallias understood how precious a gift the trust she’d placed in him truly was. Her courage both awed and shamed him.
“I never fought back,” he confessed in a low voice. Would she be repulsed by his cowardice?
She rolled over in his arms, coming to face him, and traced a tender hand down his cheek. Her eyes held no disgust, only sorrow. Then, an incongruous smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “Probably for the best. No offense, but I don’t think you’d do very well in the arena.”
He chuckled. Sometimes, the best way to chase away the darkness was to laugh at it. “How many matches would you give me?”
She lifted an eyebrow, smirking. “I was thinking in terms of moments, not matches.”
He scoffed, but she was probably right. Lea might have defied her odds, but life had taught him that self-preservation often required doing the cowardly thing. He wouldn’t be sorry for surviving.
He shifted the topic to something less distressing. “I’m glad Lucullus was kind to you. I clearly was wrong to shout at him the other day.”
Her fingers swept along his forearm, back and forth, brushing the light dusting of dark hair on his skin. “He treats his gladiators well because it’s in his interest for us to be content and healthy,to fight and win. But not all managers share that outlook, so I’m glad I ended up in his service as opposed to anyone else’s.”
“It must have been very frightening at first.” He couldn’t imagine being plucked from his life—even an unhappy one—and thrust into a world as rough and forbidding as a gladiator ludus. For a young woman, it must have been a thousand times more terrifying.
“Yes,” she admitted. “A woman alone in a ludus full of men? Depending on the men, that could be very dangerous indeed. Lucullus made it clear that I was not to be trifled with, but he couldn’t be everywhere at once. But then I met Hector.” Her eyes closed, and she smiled. “He was the sort of man who felt it was his personal responsibility to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves. Which was me at first. We didn’t start sleeping together until years later,” she clarified hastily. “It wasn’t like that. But then Ferox arrived, and Jason, and Hector befriended them. He had a nose for good people. With those three around, no one would look twice at me if I didn’t want them to.” Her voice warmed as she spoke of her friends, but it was edged with melancholy.
Kallias felt an echo of the loss she spoke of. It was strange, but he wished he could have met this Hector, who’d protected her and whom she’d eventually deemed worthy of taking to bed. “I’m glad you had him.”
“I miss him,” she confessed, then shot Kallias an anxious glance, as if worried he’d be jealous of a dead man. “I mean—it’s been years since he died, and it wasn’t like we were—”
“Lea.” He stroked her hair. “You don’t have to diminish what you shared with him for my sake.”
She relaxed into his arms. “Thank you,” she murmured.
