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“Briganti land.” Atticus wrinkled his nose. “They can make trouble. We pay little attention to their skirmishes and pillaging. However, if they step foot near the wall, they pay the price without mercy.”
Felix said nothing. He was a Briganti. Born in a village somewhere. He’d been taken as a child, sold into slavery and a life as a gladiator. He didn’t fear his own people. The sun had bleached his hair and turned his skin darker, but beneath it, he was a Briton. A Celtic warrior. What he desired was to be a Roman citizen. It would take many years of tax paying and loyalty to earn that right.
The major domo cleared his throat. “Sir,” he addressed Atticus, “there is the matter of the slave.”
“Ah, the girl,” Atticus groaned. “Bloody slaves. I’ve had to have a few flogged in the last week for insolence. This is the latest needing my justice. Bring her in.”
The girl was in chains and shackled about the ankles and wrists. She had long black hair and darkly pitted eyes. However, her skin was pale. She had little opportunity to enjoy sunlight. Perhaps no more than twenty years, she would not reach Felix’s shoulders if she stood next to him. Rufus was bold. He stared at her with obvious longing. So quickly did his companion find women pleasing to the eye. Felix had promised the gods he would wait, and so he must.
“For what is she being punished?” he asked Atticus.
“Theft. Food from the kitchen. She handed it out to the beggars who plague the south gate. She was told not to do it.” Atticus continued to recline on his couch and picked at the bunch of grapes. Those grapes, Felix guessed, had taken a long journey to reach the fort. Lucky man.
“So, she stole.” Felix had met many thieves in the arena. He had little sympathy for those men condemned to die. Unlike them, he had been enslaved through war. He’d not chosen the life of a gladiator, but neither had he seen it as an excuse to complain. He’d rather fight than serve at the feet of another man.
“She stole.” Atticus snorted. “Even if it was waste for the pigs.”
Rufus stirred. “Scraps?”
Atticus nodded and spat out a pip. “The leftovers. The pigs need to be fed.”
“It was for the children,” she shrilled. “You feed your hounds better.”
Atticus’s eyes popped open and he leapt to his feet, crossed the floor, and slapped her face. “See,” he raged, turning to Felix, “the insolence I have to put up with.”
The girl’s head recoiled with the force of the blow. However, she brought it back with a look of brazen defiance. She risked much for a few scraps of food, thought Felix.
Across the room, Rufus’s hands had formed fists. The young man had a hard exterior and a soft heart. Felix shot him a warning glance. They couldn’t afford to upset Atticus.
Atticus returned to his seat. “She should be flogged…” the commander smirked, “although, perhaps we need a little entertainment.”
Rufus raised his eyebrows. “Entertainment?”
“Punished by a gladiator seems a fitting consequence for a slave.”
“I’m a Rudiarius, a freed gladiator,” said Felix beneath his breath. In his baggage was his Rudius—a wooden sword given to him during the ceremony.
“Would not a firm, hard hand on her ass teach her not to steal?” Atticus persisted. “My gift to you, great Hercules.”
Rufus glanced at Felix, then at the girl. Her eyes were widening into moons, the whites visible from where he sat.
“I decide how much she bears,” Felix stated clearly.
Atticus frowned. The commander liked power. How cruel was he? An old man by the standards of a soldier, probably in his forties and likely to be retired soon. If he had a wife, he’d not mentioned her. A spectator, then. Felix knew how to handle an audience; however, he couldn’t afford to displease his host.
“I would ensure she is well spanked. She is not my first,” Felix said. The wealthy elite of Rome liked to have him brought to their private rooms. The wives of patrons were especially submissive when a gladiator was sent to pleasure them. They submitted to his dominance, including spankings and other acts, as long as when he finished, he had left them satisfied. The practice had earned him extra money and a loyal following of women to support him in the arena. They wrote graffiti on the walls and petitioned for his release.
“Remove her clothing,” Atticus ordered the major domo.
The manservant tore the woollen tunic apart and off her shoulders. She wriggled, clinging on to the last hope for dignity but to no avail.
Rufus gasped, as if he’d never seen a naked woman before, which was hardly the truth. However, perhaps he’d not seen one of her kind. She had marble skin, milky white in tone, and at the apex of her thighs a dark little bush. She tried to hide it with the chains around her wrists. Her breasts were bountiful and tipped by peachy stones. When the major domo pushed her forward, she blushed about the bosom.
Felix’s cock stiffened. He expected Rufus was experiencing the same reaction since the young man had dropped his hands into his lap in response to the suddenness of his erection. Felix admired Rufus. He had all the vitality of youth still on his side, but the maturity of an older man. He might appear to be agog and ready to devour the poor girl, but he wouldn’t. Rufus possessed a gentleness to his strength and passion for lovemaking, and a level of self-control that was at odds with his fiery temper. He might conquer a woman with his body, but he never took her without consent. For the two months of their journey, while Felix abstained from fucking, Rufus only did so when he met a willing woman.
Her eyes were wet with unshed tears. A proud Briton. Felix already liked her. If he could, he would pity her and not treat her harshly, but he dare not offend the offer granted by Atticus.
“What is your name?” he asked her in her own tongue, which he struggled to recall, but it came when he needed it to.
