Blood Debts by Ashley Gardner & Jennifer Ashley

Author:Ashley Gardner & Jennifer Ashley [Gardner, Ashley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-946455-01-7
Publisher: JA / AG Publishing

If nothing else, being clean made me feel better. Now my stomach growled, reminding me I had missed several meals.

I left the Campus and its many entertainments and returned to the street of shops in the Pallacinae. I found a tavern and squeezed onto a stool at the corner of a table, asking the harried barmaid to bring me lentils and whatever vegetables they had cooking.

She returned before long with a bowl of lentils and limp-looking greens, along with a crackling piece of bread. I dunked the bread into the broth and scooped up the lentils and veg, enjoying every mouthful, though the broth was weak and the vegetables old. The wine was indifferent as well, but I drank it down, thirsty after the hot bath.

I realized, when I was finished, that I had no money to pay. I’d given Marcella and the man who’d applied the strigil my last coins. Cassia hadn’t known I was short of funds, or she’d have made certain I had at least the price of a meal.

I confessed my lack of coin to the barmaid. “My slave will be along later with it.” Cassia would be vexed, but she believed in paying our debts as quickly as possible.

The barmaid, who had shining black hair and skin tanned from hot summers, cocked her head and assessed me. “No matter.” She gestured for me to follow her. “Come with me.”

I assumed she’d lead me to the back to wash up or stir pots of beans, but she took me up a flight of stairs to a tiny room dimly lit by a small square window. It had a slab of a bed covered with reeds, much the same as my own.

The barmaid began to undress. I remained in the doorway, not sure how to tell her she’d be disappointed.

I didn’t have the chance. The barmaid caught my hand and dragged me to the bed, busily kissing me while she untied my belt and dragged off my tunic.

Then she proceeded to use me thoroughly. I don’t think she noticed that this former gladiator couldn’t raise his sword. She had me flat on my back, finding creative ways to take pleasure from me and my body. I’d been with women plenty—I’d been a fixture at a brothel near my ludus—but this woman, as much as she tried, delighted nothing in me.

I thought of Selenius’s sister and her defilement. No doubt hers had been far more violent and terrifying, but I had an inkling of what she’d felt. She hadn’t been a person to the man who’d taken her, only a body to be used.

But that was what a gladiator was, wasn’t it? A fighting body, performing for money? It was why we were infamis, and why a barmaid thought I’d be more than happy to pay for my dinner by letting her play with me.

By the time she wore herself out and fell asleep, the afternoon had come, heating the city. I slipped away, sliding on my tunic and moving quietly down the stairs into the street.

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