Second Act by Marilyn Todd Read Free Book Online

then?’
    Jupiter in heaven, please, who is she? Where was he? How had he ended up in this impoverished little bedsit? Orbilio tried to think, but was prevented by the relentless clack of castanets behind his eyes. Last night, last night. Where had he been? What was he doing? Dammit, never mind last night. This morning was troublesome enough. Croesus, not only did he have to contend with a perfect little breast swelling in his hand, there was a corresponding swelling in his groin. He groaned, which she mistook for pleasure and began feathering her fingertips lightly down his chest. Lower, lower, lower, until he had to push her hand away.
    ‘Taking it slowly, huh?’
    In the early morning light, her face was beautiful. A small, round, pixie face flushed pink with sleep, surrounded by a halo of frothy honey curls. Any man would feel it a privilege to wake up next to such an enchanting creature. Any man except Orbilio. How the blazes had he got here? Why couldn’t he remember?
    ‘Slow is fine by me,’ she whispered, running her tongue inside his ear.
    ‘I have to be on duty early.’ Despite himself, a shiver of desire rippled through his loins. ‘Today’s the day the new tribunes assume elected office.’
    Being the sole member of the aristocracy attached to the Security Police, this meant Orbilio was the only person his boss could call on for assistance with the protocols of the governing classes. Another resentment Callisunus could then add to his list, since, being equestrian class himself, he bitterly begrudged having to rely on a patrician for advice on social matters. A subordinate, at that. By way of retaliation, and as though it was Orbilio’s fault that he was born to the nobility, Callisunus would proceed to toss him every rotten assignment that he could. But today the Head of the Security Police needed his patrician subordinate at his shoulder when the tribunes were sworn in. Just in case of gaffes.
    ‘You don’t have to go,’ the pixie wheedled. ‘You could send a message saying something’s come up.’ She giggled again. ‘After all, it’s the truth.’
    ‘I’d love to stay, darling,’ he lied, ‘but this is a big day.’
    ‘It certainly is,’ she giggled.
    He groaned. ‘No, really. I have to go.’
    Croesus, she was lovely. Sexy, too, with her slim white hips and soft white skin. Her legs went on for ever. But he didn’t know the woman. Couldn’t even remember her name, for heaven’s sake—and whatever rapport the drink had established between them last night, it did not constitute a relationship in the true sense of the word. Therefore, it followed that, if he consummated the urges his body was telling him to, he was reducing the pixie to the level of a whore and himself to— To what? What worm was lower than the man too drunk to know—or care—who gave him satisfaction?
    Images of another woman burned his brain. A woman with flashing eyes and dark, tumbling curls, and although he had as much chance of taming Claudia Seferius as he had of throwing a harness round the wind, when he made love, he wanted to experience all the passion, all the redhot anguish, pain and pleasure that the act entailed. His gut wrenched as he imagined himself burying his face in those dark curls. Inhaling the scent of her intense Judaean perfume. Running his tongue round that little dip in her collarbone. To submit to copulation for its own sake in the cold, clear light of sobriety was not the same and whilst he supposed a man could argue that succumbing to his sexual urges when he’d hit rock bottom didn’t make a scrap of difference at this stage—just be stronger next time, Marcus, and try not to end up naked in a bed with any more attractive nymphomaniacs—he wasn’t fooling anyone, much less himself.
    ‘I’m already late,’ he told the pixie, swinging out of her exquisite nibbling clutches and narrowly missing the edge of the stove.
    ‘You’ll call round tonight, won’t you?’ Moist pink lips