Chapter 31 Trajan
XXXI
One week later …
TRAJAN
I watched Lela and Malina hanging tunics on the drying racks with my sisters Junia and Marilla.
The four of them had spent the morning washing clothes together in the brook near my home in Britannia.
It was far colder here than in Rome, but my sisters had lived in Pannonia for so long, the brisk, cold weather didn’t seem to bother them.
I was supposed to be mending a fallen timber in the barn with Julian. But instead I was sitting here propped beneath an oak tree in the shade, watching my beautiful mate talk and laugh with my sisters. I couldn’t seem to leave this sight.
The house was overfull. If we had time, we’d annex another section for a bedroom for my sisters and Grandfather. But we would be leaving soon, so there would be plenty of room for them. We’d be heading to Dalmatia to meet Alaric and plan our assault on Rome.
Julian and I had originally planned to bring Caesar and his regime down from within.
Alaric had planned on doing the same but from without.
We now realized it had to be both. We needed a new way to get messages into the city, to discover what was happening on the inside, to organize with our allies, and assure them we hadn’t abandoned them.
Julian and I had a few ideas. So did Lela and Malina.
And Julian and I listened. After watching what Lela did to Quintus, and knowing what Malina was capable of, we were sure they must play a key role in this final push toward the razing of Rome.
Besides, I wouldn’t part from Lela now even if the world depended on it.
Lela caught me staring and smiled. She then said something to Junia, who glanced over at me then nodded and laughed. Malina and my sisters waved then laughed, muttering something awful about me, I was sure.
I didn’t care. I had the best view in the world from here. So I watched Lela walk to me in her short linen tunic, her bronzed skin warm from the sun, her blue eyes the color of the noonday sky.
As she approached nearer, she shook her head at me. “How naughty you are. We’re all working, and you’re lazying about in the shade.”
“Come over here and be naughty with me.”
She scoffed. “You need to go help Julian in the barn and stop wasting the day.”
“Julian is a fine, strong Roman. He can handle the barn, while I much prefer sitting in the shade staring at my beautiful woman.”
She propped a hand on her hip. Oh, now it was serious.
“Come here. Relax with me on this fine day,” I told her, holding out my hand. “You should join me.”
“It is not a fine day. It is freezing. I’ve already baked three loaves of bread and washed the clothes while you sit here and laze about.”
“I can’t wait to eat your bread,” I teased, grinning. “I bet it’s delicious. Just like you.”
“Trajan—”
Before she could say another word, I reached up, grabbed her arm, and hauled her down into my lap, catching her about the waist.
“Trajan!”
“Stop fighting me and sit in my lap and enjoy this beautiful day in the shade with me.”
“You’re ridiculous.” She squirmed then finally wrapped her arms around my neck, sounding completely annoyed with me while also trying to hide her smile.
“If you keep squirming, I’ll be taking you behind this tree to show you how I truly would like to spend the day.”
“That’s all you ever think about,” she chastised me.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but it was you who put her mouth around my cock last night when all I wanted to do was sleep.”
She swatted me across the head. “Stop that,” she teased. “You know very well I was only thinking of your well-being, not mine. You seem so worried lately. I thought I’d help distract you.”
“You’re right.” I sighed. “You’re always thinking about me first. I wish you’d distract me every single night.” I brushed my nose along the line of her jaw.
“Mmm. All right. It is lovely here.” She angled her neck, exposing her throat for me to kiss.
My dragon immediately growled, rumbling low in my belly. “You do know what that means, don’t you?”
She turned her gaze toward me, her expression so serene, so tranquil, so different than the first day I met her.
“When a woman bares her neck to a dragon”—her voice was silky and soft—“it means that she desires him, that she is submitting to him, and that she trusts him.”
She then arched her neck again, farther back, and I groaned then nipped and kissed her throat from the base all the way to the top until I found her mouth.
Whenever we kissed, I lost myself, completely withdrawn from the world. Only she mattered. Like now.
She broke the kiss far too soon. But then her gaze turned serious as she whispered, “I did not think I would ever give my trust to another man.”
“I know,” I admitted somberly.
“If I did, I did not think it would ever be a Roman.”
I pressed a soft kiss to her lips. “I know that too.”
When I inched forward to take her lips again, she pressed a finger to my mouth to stop me, holding my gaze.
“I did not think to ever love another man.”
My heart pounded hard against my rib cage. She’d said many sweet words in the dark, but they’d never been these. Here we were in the light of day. It couldn’t be the ecstasy of pleasure coloring her words so sweetly. They were genuine. They were real and true.
“But I do, Trajan,” she confessed, the vulnerability in her eyes cutting me down the middle. “I love you so very much.”
“Gods above.” I cupped her face and pressed my forehead to hers. “You are more dear to me than anyone in the world, Lela. I love you so completely.”
“I know.” She smiled.
I pressed another gentle kiss to her lips.
“Any word from your contacts?” she asked, stalling my kisses.
She wasn’t asking about my contacts inside Rome who we were attempting to reach, hoping Agrippa and Horatius and the others were still alive and well inside the city.
She was speaking of the queries I’d penned to people I knew in all the different provinces around the Roman Empire.
One positive aspect of being from such a renowned family who was exceedingly wealthy was that I had a plethora of connections in many corners of the world.
“Nothing yet. But it is hard to find one Dacian dancer whose village was attacked in the Carpathian Mountains. Unfortunately, that happened to many more than one village.”
She heaved a sigh. “We’ll keep looking for her.”
“Yes. We will.”
“When will we go back? To meet up with Alaric?”
“In a week or two.”
“So soon?” She combed a hand through my hair, my curls having grown long the past few months. “That’s not much time at all.”
“Exactly. Which is precisely why you should come behind this tree with me and be naughty.” I gestured toward the clearing where my sisters and Malina were still laying out clothes to dry.
“Look at all of these fools working through the whole day.” I snorted in disgust. “My own friend wasting the hours mending timbers when he could be mounting his lovely wife.”
I waited for her to swat me again. But she didn’t. She smiled and stood above me, gazing down, sultry heat warming her face.
“You know what I was just remembering?”
“What?” I asked, skating my hands around her leather boots at the ankles.
“That night in the olive grove.”
I could smell the tangy olives in the air even now.
“The night you tasted my blood and yelled at me so cruelly. That night?”
“The night I tasted your blood and realized you were a man I could learn to trust. I was angry because I didn’t want to like you or believe in you.
” She stepped out of my reach, a teasing smile on her lips.
“I thought we could try again, and do what I often wish I’d done that night in the olive grove. ”
“What was that exactly?”
“We don’t have an olive tree. But I do recall a few fig trees this way. If you’d like to follow me and find out.”
I jumped to my feet. “I love figs.”
She laughed. “You’re going to love them more in a few minutes.”
I swept her up into my arms, and she squealed.
“Point me in the right direction.”
“That way.”
I tromped farther away from the brook and the house. Lela laughed then set her head on my shoulder.
“I love you, darling.” I pressed a kiss to her temple. “And how your devious mind works.”
“Just like yours, you mean.”
“Exactly. Now let’s go find a fig tree and some privacy, and I’ll show you just how devious I can be.”
She laughed again, and I swore to myself that I would do everything in my power to give her joy, to hear that sound, for as long as I could.
If anyone deserved happiness, it was my beautiful Lela.
They tried to snuff her out, to dim her brightness.
But that was impossible. She’d burned her way out of the darkness and found her light again, and I never wanted it to go out.