Silk and Steel (Siren Publishing Classic)

  Silk and Steel

  Decimus buys beautiful, red-headed Corinna from Silvinus Cato, a nominal Christian and her cold Roman master. Corinna, also a Christian, is terrified to be sold to a hired killer but finds Decimus to be an honorable, caring man—and overwhelmingly sexy.

  Their lovemaking introduces her to passion she has never known before, and love-spanking that she finds deeply erotic. Happy for the first time in her life, she is horrified when her former master, Silvinus Cato, comes to Decimus’ house with devastating information. Decimus, whom she is beginning to care for deeply, has killed Joseph, the holy man who converted her to Christianity. Silvinus Cato says she must be like Judith in the Bible and kill Decimus in his sleep. Corinna is appalled and suspicious. Why does Silvinus Cato want Decimus dead? And what should she do?

  Genre: Historical

  Length: 13,884 words

  SILK AND STEEL

  Lindsay Townsend

  EROTIC ROMANCE

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Erotic Romance

  SILK AND STEEL

  Copyright © 2009 by Lindsay Townsend

  E-book ISBN: 1-60601-556-7

  First E-book Publication: August 2009

  Cover design by Jinger Heaston

  All cover art and logo copyright © 2009 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  SILK AND STEEL

  LINDSAY TOWNSEND

  Copyright © 2009

  Chapter One

  Rome, AD 80

  ‘I intend to sell you tomorrow,’ remarked her seated master, as he perused a letter.

  Standing before him in the library, bathed in the blood-red rays of the setting sun, Corinna trembled from head to foot. Why was he selling her? What had she done wrong?

  ‘Your service has been adequate,’ Silvinus Cato continued, without raising his suave, patrician face. ‘Indeed, for a female I bought only last month from a public bath-house, you have proved surprisingly adept. Remind me, how long were you in that establishment?’

  ‘I do not know, Master,’ Corinna whispered. ‘Many years.’ For as long as she could remember, she had lived in the bath-house on the Street of Armorers in Rome, slaving first as a cleaner and later as a girl trained to bathe and to please men. Silvinus Cato had bought her, put her to work in his kitchen and never mated with her. It had been a blessed relief. Now that fragile peace was about to be ripped away.

  ‘Master!’ Desperate, she dropped to her knees. ‘Who is the buyer? Who wants me?’

  ‘The gladiator, Decimus.’

  A killer? He is selling me to a killer?

  ‘He spotted you at the baths last month, but I bought you first. He likes red-heads and he wants to make me a substantial offer for you. See that you acquit yourself well.’

  Silvinus Cato raised his head. ‘Decimus does not know that we are Christians, Mary,’ he warned, using Corinna’s secret, baptismal name. ‘When he allows you out alone, then and only then will you attend our services. We shall still see each other there. Until that time, I shall tell our priest why you are absent.’

  Why? If you care for me at all, why sell me? If you are a true Christian, how can you sell me to a gladiator? How can you speak so casually of my missing holy services? Our priest has given me hope, yet I am to be kept away, denied his teaching and comfort. How can you do this? I thought you bought me for the sake of mercy and charity!

  She dare not speak. In the time since she had been in his household, and despite her ‘adequate’ service, Silvinus Cato had beaten her for walking too quickly, for smiling at a chestnut seller, and for coughing whilst he was reading. Her master was a cold, proud man, outwardly correct and honorable, seemingly charming when it suited him to be so, but filled inside with a freezing anger. To him, Christianity was an interesting concept, but not a way of life, or a true faith.

  The priest believes in him, though. Joseph, the holy man, believes Silvinus Cato will be saved through Christ. And he did rescue me from whoring in the public baths.

  ‘Master, please.’ She put all the pleading she could into those two simple words. Silvinus Cato regarded her without pity. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘Prepare yourself for tomorrow. You must be as you were in the baths: appealing and available. Go.’

  Dazed, Corinna stumbled back to the kitchen, too shocked to speak to the other slaves. Later, unable to sleep, she wandered out into the garden and knelt by the old well, dropping pebbles into the water, trying to pray but failing. As the long hours of the night dragged on, she felt abandoned and ill, her stomach burning, her mouth dry. She had felt safe in the house of Silvinus Cato, but he was going to sell her—and to a gladiator!

  Decimus. The name meant ‘Tenth’. Had he killed ten men? Ten women? Ten children? Decimus, the hired killer. Only bath slaves were more reviled than gladiators. And she would have to touch him, submit to him. She wanted to love and be loved. She had always longed for love, but not with a murderer. I can’t, she thought wildly, her head throbbing as she squinted into the darkness, mentally clawing for an impossible escape.

  And then she heard a soft snapping of twigs, and then the gentle thud as a strong, toned body dropped into the garden after scaling the surrounding high wall.

  It’s him. She knew at once and was transfixed, unable to stir as a tall, black shadow detached itself from the wall and prowled towards her. In the bright, cold light of the full moon she saw him emerge clearly: a strapping, powerful figure, towering yet agile, dressed in gray homespun yet carrying himself like a king. Weaponless, he strode forward with absolute confidence, almost a swagger.

  His face, as he drew close, surprised her. She had expected scars, battle-weary eyes, and a harsh calculating look. This stranger was young. His face, lit by the moonlight, was as flawless as an angel’s and his eyes were as brown and warm as the good earth beneath her clenched bare toes.

  He hunkered down before her and looked deeply into her eyes. ‘I could not wait to see you again,’ he said softly. ‘Ever since I sp
otted you at Piso’s bath-house, I have been haunted by you. I came here early, in the hope of catching another glimpse of you. Will you tell me your name?’

  ‘Corinna.’ Astonished that any man should go to such trouble to seek her out, and to seek her out early, Corinna realized in wonder that he had also asked her a question, not demanded. ‘I am Corinna,’ she said again, ‘and you are Decimus. Do the crowds in the arena chant your name?’

  ‘Sometimes.’ His full mouth tweaked into a half-smile. ‘Mostly they bawl, “Get him, Thracian! Stick him with your sword!”’ He nodded at the garden. ‘What are you doing out here? Are you hot? Shall I draw you water from the well?’

  Again, Corinna was amazed that he should offer to serve her. And his hair, now that she could see its color this close-up, was gray! Utterly gray. Old hair, a young face and a muscular, youthful body: the contrast was piquant and it intrigued her, made her aware as she had not been this last month of her own young body.

  ‘Ah, my hair.’ His expression turned rueful as he tugged his forelock. ‘This thatch turned from straw-yellow to ash in almost a night, soon after I’d killed. And for your knowledge, Corinna, I do not gut women or children.’

  ‘Are you a mind-reader?’ she gasped.

  ‘Only a reader of faces.’ He brushed her cheek with his fingers, flicking one of her red curls away from her forehead. ‘Yours is wonderfully expressive. I marked that when I saw you first, when you helped the lame old man at the baths. Your face then was wrought with pity.’ He touched a small bruise on her chin, a final lingering legacy of the baths. ‘I would see you racked with bliss, all gold and rose and open for my pleasure.’

  Corinna jerked back, hitting the well, her face burning with a rush of heat. She had lain with many men, but none had spoken to her like this, in such a searching, intimate way. ‘You can say what you want,’ she said, deliberately tearing her eyes away from his.

  She heard him chuckle. ‘Because you will be mine? There is that. And I think, my Corinna, that you are a natural: tender and loveable, eager to give service.’

  ‘A good toy to find in your bed after a long day’s killing,’ she replied tartly. Instantly she clapped her hands over her mouth, horrified by what she had just said, but her soon-to-be master only laughed.

  ‘You do not know what you want yet,’ he said, smiling. ‘But I know.’ Suddenly he moved, bringing an arm on either side of her, trapping her against the well as his mouth found hers. He kissed her, very quickly and sweetly, his tongue teasing against her open lips.

  Please—Still kneeling, Corinna stared up at him, marveling afresh at how handsome he was. She could still taste him on her lips; a fresh, astringent scent, both musky and clean, nothing as she’d expected a killer to smell. She found herself leaning forward, to kiss him in return and stopped in time, mortified by her own response. She wanted to run indoors, away from this disturbing man.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked gently. ‘You need not be afraid. Never with me.’

  Corinna shook her head. Her sex ached and she was aware of a wetness between her legs, but she was wary of pleasure. Always after pleasure came pain—the brutal pain of sex, of being torn into and rammed, the slow, bruising pain of being ignored and abandoned.

  ‘You were not treated well in the baths.’ He kissed her again, lightly. ‘That is past.’

  Corinna said nothing. He could do as he wanted, of course.

  ‘Yes, I can do as I please,’ he said, in that uncanny divining of her thoughts. ‘But I do not think you will complain. No woman has before.’

  I am not interested, Corinna fired at him in her mind and now he smiled and drew back, sitting on his heels like a boy.

  ‘Do you know what I was born to be?’ he asked, plucking a pebble from the ground and tossing it from hand to hand. ‘I am a farmer’s child. One of ten, sold into slavery at twelve when my father died and mother could not feed us all. I was the biggest and greediest, so she sold me. Last year, I bought her farm and gave it to her outright.’ He tapped his chest with his fingers. ‘Yes, I am still a slave, but I was able to do this for her. Another year in the arena and I will have made enough to get my own freedom and my own place. A farm and a woman.’ He flipped the pebble into the well and ran his thumb down her ear and teasingly beneath her chin. ‘When I have dealt with Silvinus Cato, I will have the woman.’

  The slave buys me through killing, Corinna thought. The Christian in her was appalled at his lack of remorse, but she was horribly fascinated, too. Ashamed of her own interest, she said nothing.

  ‘Come, speak to me,’ he said. ‘You have a pretty voice.’

  She almost asked him who was his master, but still she made no reply. Where had this new stubbornness come from? Was she mad? This man was a hired killer. Did she want to provoke him?

  ‘Silence as a weapon, eh? Then I shall have to disarm you.’

  Moving with a deadly, fluid grace, Decimus scooped her away from the well and up, high, going higher, towards the moon. Even as she started and tried to react at the speed of his response—which she had had been trying to anticipate and evade—Corinna found herself tucked tightly into the crook of his arm, unable to kick or jab.

  ‘No biting,’ he warned, as she strained against a sinewy arm that gripped her in a python-like vice. ‘I despise fighters who do that.’

  He carried her to the middle of the large courtyard garden, where Silvinus Cato had placed a wooden bench beneath a gnarled olive tree. Sitting on the bench, his back resting against the olive and Corinna snug on his lap, he brought a pomegranate from the folds of his tunic. ‘Here. Bite on this, instead.’ He cracked the rough skin open on the bench and offered her a piece full of glistening, plump seeds. ‘No? Do you think I am death himself, offering you this fruit to lure you to the underworld?’

  Corinna shook her head—she knew the pagan story—but to prove him wrong she took the piece, relishing the tangy taste of the sweet fruit, the first time she had enjoyed such a delicacy. He ate, too. They chewed in silence, a curious intimacy in the silent garden.

  ‘I think we two are the only ones awake,’ Decimus remarked, wiping his mouth and breathing in deeply. ‘What is that scent?’

  She almost answered, rosemary and lavender, but still said nothing.

  ‘There!’ He kissed the tip of her sun-burnt nose. ‘I nearly had you answering. Women love to show off what little knowledge they have.’

  Not so! Corinna shrugged to show that his comment did not trouble her. She was curious as to what he might do next: already she did not fear that he would beat her. But then, she could scarcely believe that this smiling angel was a gladiator. Was he indeed real? Was this a dream?

  ‘Should I tickle you into speech, make you laugh out loud?’ His hands hovered close to her stomach, teased under her breasts, lingered under her arms. ‘You are a very hot little wench. Is that excitement or fever?’ He ducked his head to check her expression. ‘Do you not want to ask me questions?’

  In answer—and it was a teasing answer—she traced a finger along a long white scar on his forearm. He smiled, lifted her hand and kissed her finger. ‘Believe it or not, that scar was from a plowing accident, years before I entered the arena. It has grown with me. And not the only thing that will grow, if you keep wriggling like that on my knee.’

  ‘I’m not moving—’ She broke off, but was too late. His eyes gleamed.

  ‘Let me look at you, gladiatrix,’ he exulted. ‘I claim a victor’s right to do so.’ Deftly, he untied her cord belt, tipping up her head and kissing her as he did so. ‘No more fight, my red-headed beauty?’ he murmured against her cheek, stopping any possible reply with a longer, deeper kiss. ‘No more teasing?’

  ‘A slave is not allowed to tease,’ Corinna answered, disliking the way her voice wavered as his hands raised the ragged hem of her tunic. She was no innocent so why did she feel so nervous? In the bath-house she had been stripped before hundreds, and endured rough handling. So long as he did not hurt her, what did it m
atter what he did?

  She closed her eyes, stiffening herself to endure again. His large, powerful hands skimmed up her calves, briefly hugged her knees and then glided higher. Her rough tunic grazed against her taut belly and she flinched as the cloth brushed roughly across her nipples. He murmured something in Thracian, then again in Latin, ‘Sorry. I will have you in softer cloth than this. There!’

  Corinna welcomed the cool night air on her naked skin. She felt Decimus’ fingers ease down the length of her spine, kneading at the rigid points on the back of her neck.

  ‘Uhh,’ she mouthed, her head falling against his shoulder. She could feel her lurking headache unraveling, melting away with his expert massage.

  ‘My, but you are hot. I think you really are turning sick.’

  Corinna forced her eyes open. ‘If I am, I’ll soon be well.’ Men never liked sickly females. They could not be bothered with the trouble of them. The world around her was starting to spin, very slowly, and she licked her dry lips. ‘Truly Master—’

  ‘Master, eh? Finally, we are getting somewhere.’

  She tried to smile, but the garden was now spinning faster and faster. She hung onto Decimus’ tunic, bracing herself for a stinging slap to bring her round, trying to sit up on his lap and thrust out her breasts for his attention, suddenly fearful that he might withdraw from the sale. Then what would Silvinus Cato do to her? ‘Believe me, Master, I am never ill—’

  ‘Hush, Corinna. Drink this.’

  They were over at the well again and he was cradling her one-handed, splashing water over her body. ‘Drink!’ he said again and now a jug was pressed against her burning mouth and she gulped, spluttering and drinking.

  ‘Let’s away. I’ll leave your slave-price on the garden bench. Silvinus or his people will find it in the morning and you’re in no fit state to be haggled over. I want you back in my barracks where I can tend you. Come.’

  She felt herself being lifted again, opened her mouth to protest that she was naked, and knew no more.

  Afterwards, she knew snatches of life. A handsome, naked man looming over her, easing watered wine down her throat. A sweaty mess of sheets, then cool, crisp sheets. A handsome, naked man saying, ‘Keep drinking, Corinna. I’ve paid good silver and gold for you and I don’t want to lose you now.’