“My lady, I was merely picking away a scrap of lint from your dress!” Verres protested. “It was marring your otherwise flawless beauty!”
Lucretia laughed in spite of herself.
“And she smiles!” Verres cried in victory, while Ilithyia applauded. “The icy demeanour melts before my onslaught. And suddenly we are talking.”
“This is also not unusual,” Lucretia pointed out. “Men and women have conversation all the time!”
“But we were strangers, and now we are not. I have already crossed the hardest of seas. I am almost in the harbor.” Verres raised an eyebrow suggestively.
Lucretia blushed.
“What next? What next?” Ilithyia demanded, bringing the attention back to herself.
“Since we are imagining we are at the races,” Verres mused. “Perhaps we should place a bet. I let her go before me, of course, for that is also gallant, but I mark well what horse or chariot she favors, and I wager my coin on the very same. We return to our seats, close to the object of my affections, and the race begins!”
He leapt to his feet excitedly, staring across the room at an imaginary racetrack, dragging his two lady companions up by their arms until they were standing at his side.
“The chariots thunder around the circus!” he declared, gesturing wildly. “Every person in the crowd screams the name of their chosen sportsman! And, by the gods, how can this be? We two are yelling for the same rider! We share in his victory! We commiserate in his defeat! If he is victorious, we meet again at the bookmakers. If our chariot falls, in unison we tear up our tickets and lament the cruelties of fate. Whatever the outcome, we have an experience that is most definitely shared!”
“It is almost as if you were fated to meet!” Ilithyia breathed, clutching closely at Verres’s arm, her crinkled nose nudging at his ear.
“And as the day wears on, we spend more time in each other’s company!” Verres continued. “Perhaps the gods are smiling upon us after all. Perhaps, as you say, it is fate indeed. And if it is fate, perhaps we should help it along by conceiving another encounter.”
“In the alleys behind the circus?” Ilithyia suggested. “Against the empty barrels?”
“Ilithyia!” Lucretia scolded, aghast.
“At the temple!” Verres responded, with almost as much vehemence himself. “I suggest that we meet the next day at the sanctuary of Venus or at the festival of Mercury. Whatever seems most favorable to bring her back to me.”
“Do such stratagems work for you often, Gaius Verres?” Lucretia asked.
“Now, that would be telling,” Verres said with a smile. He reached out behind Ilithyia’s ear, adjusting an imaginary hair out of place, caressing her ear as he did so. She shivered involuntarily with excitement, and they both laughed.
The guard ushered Varro into a darkened chamber. The shutters had been closed against the night air. Candles and lamps illuminated little, in half a dozen weak glows dotted about the room. In the half-light, Varro saw plush cushions and boxed possessions, as if the occupant were partway through moving in, or moving out.
It was only as the door shut behind the departing guard, that Varro realized the room’s occupant was already present.
“You fought well today,” said a voice.
“Timarchides?”
“My name, to you, is dominus. Mark it well.”
“Apologies, dominus.”
“You tried to master me on the field of battle. You and your fellow gladiators seemed intent on bringing death to your foes.”
“Apologies, again, dominus.”
“You should not apologize for that. A little… eager perhaps for an exhibition fight, but fighting is what gladiators do, after all. Fighting and dying.”
Timarchides drew close to Varro.
“You gave me a taste, Varro,” he said, “a dim memory reawakened of my days as a gladiator. For a moment, I forgot the dreary security of freedom, and felt the visceral, vital surge of a life lived by the sword.”
“You fought well, dominus,” Varro said, carefully.
“Of course I fought well!” Timarchides declared, momentarily piqued. “I fought as I fought for my freedom. And won it, too. But you, Varro… you, I hear, gave your freedom up.”
“I did, dominus.”
“To pay a debt. Your last act as a freeman was to submit to a new master. Where slaves are usually torn from their liberty, resisting, you gave yourself of your own free will.”
“I had no choice, dominus. I needed coin for-”
“I care not. I care only that you are a Roman, who has lost his will.”
“Dominus?”
“Take it off.”
“Dominus?”
“Remove your loincloth.”
Varro exhaled and did as he was told. He stood, naked in the dim firelight.
“Excellent,” Timarchides said. “You are a fine Roman specimen.”
Varro said nothing.
“The cock’s a little small,” Timarchides said. He reached out to touch it. Varro flinched.
“Such a big man,” Timarchides said, caressing Varro’s shoulder admiringly. “And yet between his legs, there is nothing but a little finger.”
Varro twitched, but said nothing.
“There is something on your mind, slave?”
“There is not, dominus.”
“Oh, but there is. You find my words to be an assault on your manhood.”
“No, dominus.”
“I am sure you would build a tower tall enough with the right incentive. But it is no matter. It only adds to your attraction. In Greece, we are not particularly keen on large cocks anyway. Small is beautiful, for our purposes.”
Varro swallowed nervously. Timarchides continued to run his hands slowly over Varro’s body, a feather-light touch on the hard curves of his muscles.
“I was a slave myself,” Timarchides whispered. “Not by choice.”
“Nobody is a slave through choice, dominus,” Varro said.
“Oh, but you are,” Timarchides laughed. “Not I. I was raised in captivity. I was bought and sold like cattle. I was passed from master to master, I fetched and carried, I worked in the fields. I tramped grapes day after day. I was a handsome boy, Varro. Do you know what that means?”
“I do not, dominus.”
“Do you know what it means to be a handsome boy, when everything you are can be bought and sold?”
Varro said nothing, for there was nothing to say. Behind him, he heard the sound of something wet and viscous.
“I got accustomed to the sound of fingers dipping in olive oil,” Timarchides said. “I got accustomed to the cold touch of oil between my thighs.” Varro flinched again as Timarchides’s wet fingers pressed between his legs.
“Now, bend over,” Timarchides hissed.
“Dominus… I…”
“Bend over. Or should I call your fellow slaves in here to hold you down and witness your humiliation?”
“Dominus!”
“Dominus I am. And slave you are, Varro. And how delicious to imagine there was a time not long ago when our roles could have been reversed. You, the master, and I, the slave who must bend to your will. You cannot resist, Varro. Grapple with me in games, and we are gladiators well matched. But here, in this bedchamber, your very life is forfeit if you do not obey me. Obey me now.”
Knowing he had no choice, Varro bent over, resting his hands on the table. He felt Timarchides’s hard cock pressing between his thighs, nudging against his testicles. He gritted his teeth.
“Oh it feels so good,” Timarchides breathed. “See, it is not so bad to have another man’s cock between your thighs. This is how the accomplished seducer acquires all his conquests. First the cock rubs here, in the crux of the legs. Finely plucked, too, Varro, like the best of youths, my congratulations. This must have been how my thighs felt to my seducers, when I was but a young slave.”
Varro looked across the room at the flickering lamps and the curtain across the bare window opening. He tried not to think of the man behind him, far too close, whispering in his ear in a manner that no man had ever done before.