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“Is this your idea of a little light reading, then?”
“I know it’s weird,” he admitted. “But it really helped me—really helps me.”
“Helps you with what? Your war with Germania?”
“Yes. And figuring out the exact ratio of bread to circuses my people need before they rise up against me.” Putting the book aside, he twisted around to face me. He had that awkwardly sincere look again. Not charming in the slightest. “It’s—the prison chaplain lent me a copy when I was having a hard time.”
I threw up apraise be. “The system works.”
“I owe him a lot, Marius.”
“It sounds like he was trying to get in your head at a vulnerable time.”
“Oh yeah,” said Leo, “prisoners are rife for conversion to the Religio Romano.” His thumb swept across the inside of my wrist and back again. There was something meltingly hypnotic in such a slow, steady caress. “Nobody forced anything on me. I just went to services because it gave me something to do. And I talked to the chaplain because he was willing to talk.”
“About Marcus Aurelius?” My voice—like the rest of me—had lost all its edges. Blurred, smoothed, sanded down with pleasure.
“Philosophy, history, religion, everything I’d never had to give a fuck about before.”
“And that’s really how you spent your time in prison?”
His lips followed his thumb. A slow drag of rough-smooth, and the tickle of his beard, that made me swallow an actual moan. “I spent my time in prison trying to spend time. It’s sort of the whole point. At first I could barely get through a day. And thenI found ways to. And”—he tapped the cover—“this was one of them.”
“It still seems like a strange choice.”
“Fiction felt too much like it was taunting me. And say what you will about Marcus Aurelius, at least he’s concise.”
I mustered enough of myself to drawl out, “This is more than I’ve ever said about Marcus Aurelius in my life.”
“Come on.” His hand closed about my wrist and then released it. “We should go to bed.”
I gave him one of my best smoulders. “I’ve had worse invitations.”
“You’re practically asleep on my sofa again.”
“Lies,” I protested.
But I allowed him to draw me to my feet and lead me through to the bedroom. He’d remade the bed, probably while I’d been in the shower, which was never something I’d seen the point of—especially because it was the fundamental nature of a bed to be made messy. It had driven Edwin up the wall. Nevertheless, I had to admit, it was nice to fall back onto crisp sheets. To feel a freshly aired and unrumpled duvet fall over me in return.
“I’m not—” A yawn cut me off. “I don’t know why I’m so tired.”
Except maybe I did. I was Dorothy in the poppy fields of Oz, helplessly lulled by food and sex and sweetness. The problem was, I knew what happened when you woke up again.
“Maybe,” Leo suggested, “because you sprained your ankle yesterday, fucked me energetically, and didn’t really have a good night’s sleep? That can take a toll on you.”
I pulled at the tie of his robe, letting it fall open. “Those are lifestyle choices. And in any case, I want to fuck you again. Just as energetically, if not more so.”
Leo failed to answer this sentiment with anything close to the haste it merited. But it was hard to mind, when his eyes were travelling the length of me. Both lengths of me, actually. And when he reached out a hand to touch me, it trembled slightly—probably nothing more than a physiological response to cresting desire, but I pretended it was yearning, I pretended it was awe, and I felt powerful. Beautiful. The edge of his palm grazed the splayed-wide wings of my ribs. I waited for him to make some crack about my being too thin, or needing feeding up, and spoil it. Instead he spread his fingers over me, letting the heat of his palm soak into me.
“How about…” He moved onto the bed beside me, then pushed between my legs—which parted for him, even though my perpetual instinct, when someone did that, was to jam them closed in contrarian rejection. “How about…” His head was low enough that his breath warmed my cock. “How about I do this?”
I shuffled my shoulders against the pillow, the closest thing to a shrug I could manage while lying down. “As long as you don’t expect me to do it back.”
“Why would I expect that?”
“Most people do.”
“Don’t you like it?”
