It was hard to let go.
The haruspex gulped in air, coughing. He slumped back onto the grass, rubbing his fleshy neck, which was now marked with red fingerprints.
Rattled, Marcus stood, glowering at the Veientane. His heart was thudding. All these years he’d kept his love for his friend secret. What had he done to reveal himself? Only Pinna had guessed. Only Pinna knew. “Speak such lies again, and I’ll kill you once you’ve served your purpose.”
Artile rose, still rubbing his throat. His voice was hoarse. “Don’t worry. You’re good at keeping your lust hidden. There’s a reason for my fame. I observe and take notice of the smallest of tells. It’s the way you avoid looking at Claudius Drusus that made me realize.”
“Keep talking, priest, and I might just forget my orders completely.”
The haruspex kept his distance, eyeing the officer warily. “Then I’ll speak no more. But lost love eats away at your insides. Knowing this, you can understand my bitterness toward my brother. I would see him destroyed along with his bitch. We are as one in that desire.”
Marcus spat at his feet, the spittle spraying onto the Etruscan’s boots. “Don’t ever think we’re on the same side.”
Artile fussed over the stolen Holy Books on the trip across the river, ensuring the scrolls were sealed in their cylinders and the folded linen pages were intact and undamaged.
Marcus stood at the railing, barely aware of the shouts of the ferryman as he loaded the other cargo. Balancing on the swaying deck, the decurion stared at the water, watching the wind riffle its surface. His mind was in turmoil. He doubted Artile would be given credit should he voice such gossip. An enemy turned traitor. A member of the House of Mastarna with a long-held enmity with the Aemilians. And Marcus had committed no crime. Yet dung thrown is difficult to clean. Speculation could spread. It would harm his reputation as well as his political and military ambitions. It was this same fear of exposure that drove him to be coerced by Pinna.
When he was younger, he’d often enjoyed one of the servant boys slightly older than him. No one had thought anything of it. It was a master’s right. The slave was skilled in the art of pleasure. Marcus remembered the surprise and abandon of the first time, the soft moist warmth of the youth’s mouth encasing his hardness. Then how he’d flouted the rules at the promise in the boy’s deep gaze; taking turns, gentle strokes quickening into sweet slickened rutting before waking the next morning, lips bruised from kisses, traces of salt upon his skin, confused and guilty that strictures could be broken in passion, and terrified that the servant would not keep his secret that a noble was prepared to act the bride. Yet he was prepared to disobey them again as he rolled his back to the boy, filled with emptiness it was not his schoolmate nestled behind him.
But it was far more dangerous to indulge in an affair with another freeborn in the same way. Even more so with a fellow warrior. Throughout his career, he’d restrained himself from exchanging glances with the soldiers he guessed were soft. It would have only taken a heartbeat to signal he wanted them. Abstinence brought safety.
He readjusted his wristbands. They hid tiny scars. Pinna had warned him that he might poison his blood if he kept slitting his flesh. Now he’d turned to punishing himself with training. Welcoming the pain. He was so fit that there was little flesh on his body, his muscles corded, his face gaunt. His personal penance reminded him that what he was prepared to do in bed was wrong. There was something broken in him in longing to lie with another knight.
His greatest fear was Drusus’s disgust. Marcus knew his friend despised freeborns who were molles. And he was not interested in taking slave boys himself. In its way, this was unusual for a man. However, he didn’t want to think what Drusus might do to him if he knew he desired him. At least in silence and suppression, Marcus could always be with him. To be denied proximity would be unbearable.
Taking Pinna as his army wife had been a shield. It spared him the pretense of seeking women’s company. Before that, he’d endured visiting fleshpots with Drusus, causing him both thrills and frustration. They’d shared their first whore together. He’d balked at the sight of the bored she wolf with her knees raised to her chest. But watching Drusus excited him, especially when his friend met his eyes in boastful mastery of the woman. In that moment he realized that imagining being taken aroused him enough to perform. He’d rushed to thrust into the hot seed his companion left inside the lupa in case his stiffness failed. He thought his revulsion of the harlot was because of the tawdriness of the brothel, but over time he discovered no woman was alluring. He was always reluctant to join in other visits. But there were only so many excuses not to go whoring when on campaign. He needed to prove he was like any other man.
It was rare that Drusus was not rough with a lupa, saying they were paid to endure it. It had shocked Marcus at first. The youth who’d once protected his mother and sister from the beatings of a brutal father carried a legacy of viciousness in him. No Roman should raise his hand to a woman. Behind closed doors, though, the law was flouted. To see his friend abuse whores was disturbing. Yet he never stopped him. Always excused him. Until Pinna.
Drusus had slapped her thigh, then covered her face with his hand as he took her. She’d lain passive and quiet after an initial struggle. It had troubled Marcus but he didn’t think of it as rape. She was a prostitute. And then she’d transacted her business with him without complaining. It was only when she sought him out later to coerce him that he understood her despair. Devoid of paint, her heart-shaped face had been pale and drawn, her black hair lank, no longer reddened by henna. Her tears were real. She swore she would kill herself rather than remain a she wolf. Desperation coated her threats. He felt pity for her as well as apprehension for himself. There was shame, too, that he’d been stirred by watching Drusus rather than trying to stop him from subduing her.