He scowled. "So you can get what you want from me?"
"Yes; because you will have what you want from me." She ignored the bark of angry laughter he gave. "If you want this to be the last, so be it. I will be sad, but that would be the case whenever you left me, however you left me."
His dark eyes could not meet hers. "What is the point? I will be gone soon."
"There are a few things I want to say to you," she told him, swallowing hard against the grief that was chilling her.
"You mean the tales you told me before, about living after I've died? That fable about the blood being the elixir of life? You're as bad as the popes, with their promise of life everlasting if you drink their wine." He launched himself out of the bath and reached for a drying sheet. "Lord God, how I have missed your body." He stared down at her. "All right. I'll stay. We'll have this one last time."
His tone and his attitude were not promising, but Olivia got out of the bath and wrapped herself in the other drying sheet. "If nothing else, you can rest in a clean bed."
"So I can. That's a luxury I won't have again once I reach the north of Italy." He let her lead the way back to her bedchamber. "You're as fine a woman from the back as from the front," he said, patting her rump.
Olivia glanced back at him, not knowing how to evoke the response she longed for. She nodded toward her bed. "I'll take what you have on."
Drosos tossed it across the room, on top of his dalmatica. "Let the slaves tend to it, or that arrogant bondsman of yours." He reached out, pulling her drying sheet off her. "I will miss you, Olivia," he said as he stared at her. "You could use a little more breast—but they come with children, don't they?" As he said this, he brushed his hands over her nipples. "They're pretty; it doesn't matter that they aren't very big."
Olivia listened to him in growing apprehension. She caught one of his hands in hers. "Is that all you want of me?"
"Bigger dugs? No, not all." He grabbed her. "It would be the best thing in the world to get lost in you and stay lost. That's what I want. But I will settle for what I can have." This time his kiss was more skillful, and Olivia let herself respond, hoping to feel a similar accessibility in him. He took her face in his hands and held her for his second kiss. "I never knew any woman like you and I will never know another."
By the time they sank together onto the bed, Olivia had been able to evoke a sporadic contact with him, but she felt him flee this intimacy even as his frenzy for her body increased, and her passion for him was tinged with despair. There had been so much between them, and now he eluded her, shut her out of his soul as his body covered and entered hers.
His release came quickly, seizing him like a palsy. His fingers clutched her as if her flesh would save him from being shaken to bits. He rolled off her and away as quickly as he could, and huddled in the folds of the soft woolen blanket.
Olivia lay with the taste of him on her lips and abjection in her heart. She knew that he would not permit her to reach him again; he would never offer the wholehearted access he had once given unstintingly. She knew, also, that it was not contempt for her, but detestation of himself that held him back, and the pain of that knowledge was cold and keen as a knifeblade.
Drosos sat up suddenly, his hand clapped to the little thread of blood that ran over his collarbone and down his chest. "Christos! You did it again!" He rounded on her, his other hand closed in a fist.
"Drosos?" She was fighting off the anguish that threatened to take hold of her.
"You bit me! You drank my blood!" He heaved himself out of the bed.
She raised herself on her elbows. "But I've always—you haven't objected—"
"You're unnatural!" he bellowed.
"Drosos—"
"Monster! Monster!"
Seriously alarmed, she got out of her bed and took a hesitant step toward him, one arm out.
"Keep away, monster!" He reached for the heap of his clothes and drying sheet and flung them at her. "Stay back!"
"I won't—"
"Monster!" His voice had risen to a shriek. "Vampire!"
She stopped. "But you know that," she said softly. "From the first you knew that."
"Fiends of Hell, I did!" He reached the door latch and yanked it open. "Keep off me, you, or I'll dash your brains out." Naked, he went into the hallway, tugging the door closed behind him.
Olivia stood alone as she listened to his hasty footsteps outside the door. He would find another place in the house to sleep, and later she would see that he was covered. Terrible desolation swept through her, and she went down on her knee to gather up the cloth he had thrown at her. Slowly, automatically, she made a bundle of it and placed it by the door so that it could all be washed in the morning. She moved the way a doll might move, her tragic eyes blank, her thoughts in such turmoil that she could not sort them out yet. She added the bedding to the other bundle, and then sat on the uncovered mattress, trying to keep from capitulating to the despair that clawed at her heart.
"There have been worse times," she whispered, the words making no sense to her. There had been awakening in her own tomb. There had been the day that Regius discovered her with his son. There was the time that she had been trapped in a burning cottage, when she was sure that she would die the true death. There had been Zaminian who had run her through with his sword six times, but never touched her spine. All of them had been more dire than this. But they were in the past; the immediacy of her debacle overwhelmed her. The loss of Drosos engulfed her.
Some little time later she was shocked out of her misery by a loud crash from somewhere near the front of her house.
Gathering one of her bed-curtains around her, Olivia rushed out into the hall. Her sight, keener than others at night, let her find her way quickly and easily to the reception room off the vestibule.
Drosos had come there to drink the wine kept for visitors, and he had consumed two amphorae of it. Now he lay where he had fallen, amid spilled wine and overturned roses.
* * *
A commendation from the Emperor Justinian to his naval fleet.
To the men who have achieved so great a triumph over the ships of Totila, we send our grateful commendation for the superb triumph you have achieved.
The Ostrogothic ships are vanquished and you all share in this victory. Each of you will know the extent of our gratitude in our prayers and our public thanks. For every man who participated in this great campaign there will be a commemorative coin struck and distributed. To all officers there will be greater rewards, which will be heaped upon them and their families.
All those who have been in this battle will be honored in a great Mass at Hagia Sophia, and upon the consecration of the entire great basilica, another Mass will be offered, so that the building will be made a more holy monument by the addition of the names of these valiant men who have defended our land from the predations of Totila and have discharged their duty to the Empire with greater valor than has ever been shown before.
There are many tributes that an Emperor values above the riches and treasures of his realm, and a victorious navy is one of them. You have given us more than any Emperor could want, and for that we bless your names and give thanks to God for your courage and might.
From this time on, all men who set out to sea to conquer the ships of Totila may count themselves excused from taxes levied for the benefit of our warriors, either on sea or land, for a greater measure than gold has already been paid, and we disdain to require more of you. Every officer who was part of this undertaking is relieved of taxes on all chariots, palanquins, and boats owned by his family in recognition of the officer's service in our cause.