One With the Darkness by Susan Squires Read Free Book Online Page B

he could pose as her bodyguard and deflect any attention another attack might bring on. She strode to the marble building that sat among the olive trees. Though in the heart of the city near the crown of the Capitoline Hill, her property had enough land to support a spacious house, private baths, outbuildings for a kitchen and the domicile of the servants, as well as a garden, all within secure stone walls. Her kind just seemed to attract riches. And they had all the time in the world to acquire wealth and watch it grow. Her lands on the other side of the Tiber provided enough wheat to make bread for a tenth of the city. It was her wealth that gave her power, at least partly.
    She trotted up the shallow stairs between the columns of the pediment to the four rooms of the bath. The frigiddarium was lined with benches. Stone niches on one wall held the bather’s toga or palla and stola , sandals. It was cool, made cooler by the January air outside and the deep water of the cold plunge pool in the center. He had no clothing to discard, but he needed protection for his feet from the heated floor beyond.
    “Put on a pair of those wooden sandals.” He looked ather through narrowed eyes. She raised her brows and waited. Reluctantly he selected the biggest pair and slid them on. They barely fit his feet. She motioned him into the calidarium through a wall of heat. The slaves kept the fires stoked at all times. The round pits in the center of the floor gave up waves of heat from their banked coals. The air was moist from the tanks of water above the coals and, beyond, the heated pool. The place smelled of sage and salt and olive oil.
    “Sit on that bench while I see if they have found what I require.” She watched him sit carefully on the warm marble bench against the wall. The welts and scabs on his backside must make sitting difficult.
    “What is this room?” he rumbled in that deep baritone.
    “Your term of respectful address?”
    He glowered. There was a long pause. “What is this room, Mistress?” He almost choked on the word.
    “It is the first of the cleansing rooms.”
    “All this will do is make me sweat the more.”
    “Exactly.” She left him and headed back to the house. Let him feel that there was really no escape. Though his shackles were gone, his honor held him in wait for her.
    The household had been unable to find a tunic big enough for the huge barbarian, but Lucius produced a flaxen cloth to wrap around his loins, and a wide leather belt to hold it in place. At least it was clean and bigger than the scrap he had worn in the trader’s stall. Her maidservant held out a basket filled with small colored-glass bottles. She told Lucius to send for a barber. She would pay dearly for dragging one out at this hour.
    By the time she headed back to the bath it had been nearly half an hour. In the cool changing room, she unwrapped her palla , removed her stola , and wound a large linen bath towel around herself, tucking it securely in overher breasts. She slid on her personal wooden clogs and took a breath. What she was about to do would be torture for her, plain and simple. Big as he was, he couldn’t hurt her. She was a vampire, after all. But his nearness would exacerbate the sensual cravings he had already started. Why were they so sharp? She had no trouble ignoring the Roman men who set their lures for her.
    But she had no choice but to enter the bath. She would spend much time with this slave. And he must see that even when he was alone in a bath with her, their relative positions did not change. He was a slave. He did her bidding. If he did not, it was back to the market and the block with his honor lost and his bond, to his people and the general who saved his men, broken.
    She entered the calidarium and saw that he had eased himself against the wall. His eyes were closed and he gleamed with sweat in the light of the coals. For anyone else, this room would be dim, but, as a vampire, she saw well in the