The Fire God

Chapter Fourteen

     I was twenty.

    Master would periodicaly bring in a new culcina slave who would flirt with me, but the other girls in the culcina would inform her straight away of the arrangement. More for her sake than for mine.

    Master went away for political duties. I pretended that Mistress was mine and Mistress pretended too. We called each other husband and wife in the mother tongue and no one was the wiser. We giggled to each other and were silly.

    Then it reached my ears that Lavinia had given birth to a second child. Vitalis had let her marry another household slave some time ago. Didn't I know that?

    We were in Master's bed, completely naked, as we had already had one another. But I was sitting up. Mistress was rubbing my shoulders.

    "Mricul, talk to me. Dyad sensi meram."

    "Dyad sensi meram, Asperia." I hadn't whispered it and I hadn't tried to hide it. A rage was burning in me that I didn't understand. My own brazenness was gumming up my head.

    Mistress slid her arms around my torso, hugged me from behind, kissed my neck. I didn't want to look at her, to appraise her brown eyes, the flecks of amber color brightening them, her beige lips that filled me. She nibbled my ears.

    My heart was thundering against it, but I said, "He'll be home tomorrow."

    "I don't care," Mistress said. "I only want you."

    "I only want you." It caught in my throat and tears started. "To be in the marketplace and not be able to touch you, not even hold your hand. I want to walk up to you, place my hands on the rounds of your ass, your breasts. I want to be joined to you always. Tomorrow I have to go back to pretending that this is enough. That our nocturnal tumbles sate this. I—I can't do it anymore, Asperia."

    Her smile gleamed and she crawled out of the bed, presented me with a little vial.

    "What is this?"

    Mistress's chest heaved. "A little of this in Augustus's port and he'll sleep forever."

    "You're out of your mind," pushing it back at her.

    "I want you. Only you, Mricul. The very thought of that buffoon touching me tomorrow, mounting me."

    I didn't want to picture it, Master's wrinkled body, his thick abdomen, the way he would pull himself over Mistress, of him pushing himself into her and she lying there, her granite lips and her dull eyes taking it. She would never light up for him as she did for me. He did it just to prove she was still his wife. That it was by his grace alone that I was permitted to be with her at all.

    "Mricul, he's an old man. Old men go to sleep and never wake up," she whispered. "It's normal."

    "Master is a kind man."

    "Who rapes your wife, forces himself on me. He squeezes my breasts like lemons, puts himself on me, the friction when he pushes into me hurts, Mricul. I'm as helpless to it as you are."

    A tear went down my cheek and I pressed my fingers into my temples.

    "I knew the first time I saw you that you were mine, Mricul," Mistress said. "When I was in my travails, you sat with me. I knew then that I loved you, that I wanted to be with you always. For you, I fought through that hell. Hades called to me, but your hand held me. Your voice led me back. Your black eyes gazed at me." Mistress stopped, gulped, tightened her grasp on my arm. "I loved you then and wanted to spend the rest of my life with you from that moment on. Mricul, don't punish me."