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“Bethan,” she said quietly. “Bethan of the Carvetii.” Her cheeks flushed pink.
A neighbouring tribe and one that his people had likely fought and traded with over the years he’d been absent. “Bethan, don’t be afraid. I am a powerful man, yes, with strong muscles, but I know how to use them wisely. Come closer.”
She shuffled toward him and lowered her hands to her side, taking the chains with her. The links stretched across her belly and the ones about her ankles clinked as she walked.
Atticus chortled. “She likes what you say, I can see it. Keep it up, she’ll be eating out of your hand while you smart her backside. These Britons have no wits.”
Felix guessed Atticus had no clue as to what he’d said. “Closer, Bethan.” He’d no desire to drag her screaming across the room.
The dark eyes stayed on him as if she was blotting out everybody else. Behind her Rufus shifted to the edge of his seat. Reaching up to her long hair, Felix coiled it between his fingers. “Down,” he said firmly.
Apparently, he’d hypnotised her. She slid onto her knees, taking the weight of the chains between her wrists. He lifted them while keeping his hand bundled in her hair and slowly, he drew her over his lap. Her bare bottom rose up and the creamy ass cheeks parted slightly.
Gods, be patient! He would enjoy spanking her, but no more. In the temples of Rome, he’d sworn on the altar of Ceres, goddess of the harvest and fertility, that he would only spill his seed once he reached his new lands. He’d waited two months to reach Britannia; he could wait a few more days before he fucked a woman. He raised his hand and brought it down with a crack.
Bethan screamed and jerked across his lap.
Atticus roared with laughter.
Rufus’s nostrils flared, but he said nothing.
Felix rested his hand on her ass, feeling the heat rise to the surface. “Be brave, Bethan,” he said quietly. “The gods will reward you.”
Chapter Four
Atticus was an ugly bastard who treated women with contempt. He preferred the company of men, which explained why his wife spent most of her life somewhere warm and sunny. He wasn’t Bethan’s first owner. Since she’d been enslaved, she’d had two other masters. The first was kind and she’d worked the land for him, then he’d died and she’d been sold as a domestic servant to the second, an elderly merchant who brought wheat for the armies while keeping the Briganti happy with semi-precious metals. A few weeks ago, she’d been sold again, this time to the Roman army officer who came for her master’s unpaid taxes. Housesteads was one of the biggest forts on the wall. A bitterly cold place built on the side of the hill and exposed to the elements, especially the wind.
The cold made everyone hungry. The children suffered the most. She had been warned and let off the first time she was caught smuggling out food, but only because the cook, a soldier himself from some distant land, couldn’t be bothered to deal with her at the end of the day. He was lazy. However, dropping apples right under the noses of the legionnaires at the gate wa
s too good an opportunity for him to miss.
She’d arrived at Atticus’s house expecting him to have her tied to a post in the yard and flogged by one of his burly soldiers. It wouldn’t kill her; she was too useful to be killed. However, a flogging was a brutal punishment. Any kind of spanking had to be better than a flogging.
Now she knew who they were, especially Felix, the emperor’s champion, she didn’t want to appear weak. She might be a slave, but she was a proud Briton and hated the Romans, and these men, who’d once been slaves themselves, were probably more sympathetic than a legionnaire with a whip. It still didn’t make things easy. She’d not anticipated the humiliation of having her clothes torn off and being forced to stand naked before the gladiators. It was harder than she thought.
The closer she moved toward Felix, the more her skin prickled with trepidation. She kept telling herself that she was about to be spanked by a gladiator. Women in Rome might pay for a gladiator to do this! She’d dragged her chains along, letting them clink as she approached him.
He asked for her name! What did that mean? Was he interested in her? Heat bloomed across her face as she told him. The roar in her ears grew louder when he told her not to be afraid. She wasn’t afraid. She stuck her chin out and attempted to appear defiant. It probably came across badly; Atticus misread the expression completely. Felix ignored the commander’s remark about eating out of his hand. That had to be a good sign for her. She slid over Felix’s iron-clad thighs and he looped his arm around her waist until he fitted her snugly against his firm stomach. He tilted her bottom higher until her palms rested flat on the floor.
Across the room, Rufus was clearly entranced. He had a bird’s-eye view, especially of the cleft between her arse cheeks. Lucky for him. She just wished Atticus wasn’t there. The bastard roared with laughter when the first blow landed where her buttocks met. Felix’s mighty hand covered both of her cheeks easily and she thrashed her head from side to side as the shock of the pain heated her arse to the temperature of hot coals. Felix said the gods would reward her. How exactly? Weren’t they laughing at her misfortune along with Atticus?
Rufus stayed quiet. She twisted her head and managed to spy him out of the corner of her eye. As Felix rained down his spanks, she matched Rufus’s gaze with as much courage as she could muster. It lasted a few minutes, then she started to cave in to the pain blazing in her backside. She hollered and writhed. Only the firm grip of Felix kept her in position and prevented her from falling off his lap.
“Keep still, wench,” Felix murmured. “I shan’t stop yet. Atticus will not be satisfied with this unless you show him your pain.”
He understood. The gladiator knew that she was suffering for the commander and not him or Rufus.
She sobbed and tears collected in her eyes. “It hurts.” But, she refused to shed a drop for Atticus.
“And so it should. You stole,” he said loudly, then rattled more smacks down, criss-crossing her poor arse and thighs with them. The chains weighed her down, preventing her from lifting her legs or kicking her feet.
He was sympathetic up to a point, it seemed. What of Rufus?
Through a tangle of dangling strands of hair, she glanced at him. He clutched the edge of his seat with white knuckles but made no attempt to intervene in her plight. Perhaps he was just as eager to see her punished as the other? Neither of them cared for her fate—they’d be gone in the morning.
The spanking continued unabated by her cries and appeals for mercy. It was what Atticus wanted—chastised by the hand of a famous gladiator.
“Rules are not to be broken, girl,” Felix accompanied each word with a flurry of slaps.
