The Patrician by Joan Kayse Read Free Book Online Page B

gazed into searing, gold eyes. Her legs turned to liquid. It was him. The man from her vision. 
    A day’s growth of beard darkened the square, masculine line of his jaw. She stared at his lips, blushing as she remembered how they had trailed down her neck setting her skin on fire.
    He looked at her strangely, but did not rebuke her for her breach in propriety. Gently, he removed her hand from his arm. Could these bronzed, blunt edged fingers be the same ones that only hours before had set her on fire with their touch?  For a moment his fingers intertwined with hers, causing the muscles in her stomach to bunch. An odd mixture of relief and loss flowed through her as he released her.
    “You need not concern yourself with my safety oracle,” he said with an amused shake of his head. He gave her a long look that seared her and without another word stalked out.
    Bryna stared at the closed door and tried to calm her racing heart. He was going to his death. And she had done nothing to stop him.
    As she watched, the door creaked back open. The turbaned man was standing there with an anxious Coeus peeking over his shoulder.
    “Kill her.”
    ***
    Jared strode along the cobbled path separating two single story warehouses. The area was completely deserted. Situated across the harbor from his own warehouses, he knew these half dozen deteriorating buildings had long been abandoned and were destined for demolition. A consortium of merchants, including him, had bid on the property to expand the number of berths open for ships to dock. But the landlord had balked at their offer, calling it an insult. Jared rubbed a hand down his face. The bastard stalled negotiations in a futile attempt to squeeze another coin from their coffers, a difficult task when that coffer was bare.
    He paused at the corner of the last building. By the faint light of the moon, he counted down five structures from the eastern entrance. The seer had instructed him to search the fifth building. There, she had said, he would find his answers.
    The seer. Jared’s thoughts drifted back to the cheerless room. He had expected to find a toothless hag with a hairy wart on her nose, wrinkled skin and an eagerness to share her one eye with others of her kind, cackling with glee at the gullibility of those seeking her counsel.
    But he had found no Fate of Grecian myth.
    Instead, the light from the doorway had revealed a girl, not as young as to be called a child, indeed she had possessed a woman’s full curves. His lips curled into a smile as he remembered how the thin material of her shift had outlined soft, rounded breasts that he knew would fit perfectly in his hands.
    Even in grayness of the room, he had discerned curls of firelight hair escaping from beneath a hideous red veil. Her skin was smooth as cream and more fair than any woman he knew— until he’d entered the room, then a blush had stained her cheeks, flowing down the graceful curve of her neck, deepening to a deep rose at his verbal jabs. His cock twitched at the memory.
    The only flaw in her beauty had been a cut and bruised lip. A burst of anger at jolted him. Who would mar such beauty? The answer had to be the fat pig of a master. It was the way of society, he was well aware, that a slave could be disciplined in any manner. They were property, true but he was opposed to harsh punishment.
    A burst of boisterous laughter snapped his thoughts back to the present. Jared placed a hand on his knife and leaned back into the shadows. The laughter dissolved into a slurred rendition of an ode to Bacchus. The drunken poets faded as they continued their search for liquid inspiration.
    He shook his head in disgust. He might as well be under the influence of spirits himself, chasing the oracle’s fantasy. He should be gathering hard facts, evaluating the pattern of thefts, formulating a plan to put an end to the criminal acts. It was what he did best. Staying busy, keeping focused on the mundane aspects of life. It