Call to Juno (Tales of Ancient Rome #3)(72)
Her eyes followed the coil of the serpent. It was narrow as it twisted around his massive neck, then gradually thickened as the scales wrapped around the musculature of his chest, waist, and abdomen, before tapering again around his hips down to his groin to disappear into his thatch. She smiled. His penis was erect and ready. The snake was not two headed but it had a tail.
“Don’t make me wait,” he growled, seizing the shoulder of her dress, ripping it in his haste. She smiled, wriggling out of the shift, her hair tumbling down her naked back and breasts. Then she wrapped her legs around his waist. As he pushed into her, her nails dug into the flesh of his back, and she dragged them downward, raking the scales of the snake. Arruns arched for a moment, then pumped harder. Semni tightened her legs around him, locking her ankles across each other, determined not to let him go until they had both finished, wanting his power and heat, waiting for the moment when his seed would flow into her.
His breathing was ragged. Hers also. Semni laid her head against his shoulder, his sweat coating her cheek. They said nothing, their body heat cooling. After a time, he carried her to the pallet so they could hold each other.
“I have heard of fighting tooth and nail,” he murmured. “I did not think making love would be the same.”
“Well, you promised me it would be worth waiting to see the other end of the snake. I wasn’t disappointed.”
He didn’t comment, but in the failing light of the oil lamp, she noticed him smile.
Thoughts of what she’d seen at the temple surfaced. If the red scourge spread, not even palace walls would protect those inside. And the prospect of starving now seemed real. She didn’t think she could bear to watch Nerie dying of either plague or famine: his little body skeletal, his belly bloated, his eyes dull. She couldn’t bear to lose Arruns either. “It was frightening to walk through the citadel tonight. The sickness is coming. Are you afraid of dying?”
Solemn, he turned on his side, observing her. “I try not to dwell on it. Instead I’m determined no man will kill me. I would prevent others taking you and Nerie, too. And the royal family.”
“Fists and daggers cannot battle hunger and disease. You could perish from a rash instead of a wound. Hunger may deprive you of the strength to defend yourself.”
His eyes flickered. “I have faith in the master.”
“Why do you believe in him so much? He’s a man like any other.”
“Perhaps, but his courage is without limit, and he’s wily. If anyone is to find a way to rescue this city, then it will be him. I owe him my life.”
“And he owes his life to you! The debt has been repaid.” She thought of how Arruns suppressed his frustration at his master not taking him to war. “Don’t you resent him for leaving you behind?”
He pressed his lips into a hard line. “He expects me to protect the queen and children. It’s not my place to question his decision. And now I’ve breached my promise to him by lying with you.”
His retreat into duty irritated her. “I don’t regret what we did. We should enjoy life while we can.” She ran her fingers along one corded vein on his forearm. “My milk is drying up. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to nurse Thia. I don’t think Lord Mastarna would be angry now. I know Lady Caecilia would understand.”
He engulfed her hand with his palm. “And what if you fall with child? You should’ve let me pull out of you like I did the first time. You know I don’t believe that another son should be born into war. What awaits him? A lingering death by starvation? A fevered ending by the scourge?”
“I want your child, Arruns. I don’t care if there is a war.”
He sat up. “We must not do this again. We must wait until you’re released from your duties as a wet nurse. And that will only happen when Lord Mastarna returns. I don’t want to betray his trust.”
She frowned, frustrated he should retreat back to observing an unfair vow. Determined to persuade him to change his mind, she rose and kneeled on the pallet, bending and running her tongue along the channel between the muscles of his chest and abdomen to his groin. She heard his sharp intake of breath as she grasped the snake’s tail, his body responding as she planned. “And this serpent? What does he want?”
“You are wicked.”
“No, I’m hungry. And so is the snake.”
CRISIS
THIRTY-TWO
Caecilia, Veii, Spring, 396 BC
The stench hovered in a pall, death and ordure and smoke intertwined with the sadness of weird keening desolation. Caecilia gagged and pressed a kerchief saturated with her lily perfume to her nose as she sat beside Tarchon in the royal carriage.
Bodies were piled in the street, ready to be fed into pyres. The cadavers were stacked high, a grotesque fuel for fires that otherwise used dung for combustion. A city of the living was being turned into one of the dead. Exhausted, survivors tended the sick and dying, wondering if they would be next. Caecilia’s eyes pricked with tears to see how many of the corpses were those of children. The red scourge marked the young as its favorite victims.
People trudging along the pavement stopped when they saw their queen, bowing their heads as she passed. Some were emaciated, death’s heads instead of faces, their lips cracked, eyes bloodshot. All wore dark mourning clothes. The rainbow of blue and green and brown denoting class distinctions had disappeared. Everyone was equal now, unified by grief.