Seducing the Roman by M.K. Chester

Author:M.K. Chester
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LBD Media Co
Published: 2021-01-19T16:00:00+00:00

TITUS WOKE WITH A START, his hand grasping the hilt of his gladius as he sat upright. He gasped for breath. Only a dream, a fictional recreation of the night he’d been roused from his bed and interrogated over his brother’s ill-advised love affair.

He shook himself and tossed lukewarm water from the basin on his face. He’d been forced to accept the familia’s punishment for one member’s poor choices. Once he righted these ridiculous wrongs, the nightmare would disappear.

The sun had not yet risen but the hour drew near. Until the others rose, only his wayward thoughts and memories accompanied him. He made his way to the courtyard and took a deep breath of dry summer air.

His gaze drifted toward the temple on the hill. Sariah lay sleeping somewhere inside those walls. She, with the mahogany hair and porcelain skin. The shaky smile saying what words could not. How soon could he go back to her? Only another day.

A means to an end, no matter how beautiful, no matter how he craved her. And he did crave her. His body tightened at the thought of lying with her again and he reminded himself several times a day he must not feel for her plight.

To be sure, no more pitiful plight than hers existed in all the empire. He felt sympathy for her and nothing more, or so he told himself. He anxiously guarded against the advent of her slipping into his blood like honeyed wine.

“Another nightmare?” Emmaus stepped out beside him. The poor man had been on the bad end of Titus’s persistent bad dreams more than once. “The same?”

“The same.” Titus nodded, scrubbing his hands over his face. “Always the same. Nothing a hard day’s work will not cure.”

“And a night with your goddess?”

Titus hung his head in mock shame. “You see through me?”

“No one blames you, yet all envy you.” Emmaus laughed. “Every man in this regiment wishes he received such invitation.”

The men needed no further diversions. “Women are a distraction from duty, Emmaus.”

A beat bounce between them. “Tell me about her.”

The words, once started, could not be stopped. “She is slender and strong as a reed. Her voice, when she sings, silences the birds of the air.”

“You sound sick with love.” Emmaus chuckled. “I but wanted to know how her physical skills compared.”

Titus’s face heated as he admitted, “This is a strange thing. Temple girls become women knowing they shall live a life servicing men and they are taught those skills well. They are open in a physical sense yet closed to the ideas of family and relationship other women embrace. The idea of service guides them.”

“Not unlike a soldier,” his friend offered.

Titus agreed. “Duty, yes, like a soldier, hers is a different kind of life, to be sure.”

“Yet your little goddess is ready to flee all she knows on a whispered promise. You must be hung like a stallion.”

Titus chuckled, then changed the subject. “Tell me about this provincial governor who holds the ear of the high priestess.

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