A Flame in Byzantium (Atta Olivia Clemens #1) 1

"Would you rather do this?"

"Not especially," she said, preparing a mixture of oil and soap. "I need more than just blood."

He laughed deep in his throat. "I know what you need."

"I need more than hard flesh inside me, if that is what you think," she said, irritation showing for the first time. "I need… openness. Oh, for me the blood is part of it, but it is little more than bread and water if there is nothing else. It is the touching that gives it… richness." She stopped what she was doing and looked down into his face. "You have given me so much."

The intensity of her words startled him and he looked at her in astonishment. "You… you need that of me?"

"If you are willing to give it. I can't demand it." She began to smooth the oily lather over his face. "Hold still."

He obeyed, his eyes on her face as she shaved him. "Never had a woman shave me before. Do you know what you're doing?" he said when she wiped the razor on a linen cloth.

"Yes," she said, continuing with her task.

"They're sending me away again," he told her a little later. "I'm being posted to the frontier in Italy. I have two more weeks, and then off I go."

"So soon?" In spite of herself, she stared at him in dismay. "Do we have so little time left?"

"Two weeks," he repeated. "I wasn't going to tell you that." His expression darkened as she finished her work and brought wet cloths to rinse his face. "I was going to leave, that's all, and have Belisarius tell you."

"Why?" she asked.

"Why not? There's nothing for me here anymore. Why stay? Why drag you down with me?" He set his jaw. "I shouldn't have come here tonight. I don't know why I did."

"You came because you missed me." She dried his face and looked at him. "Better."

"I miss many things," he said darkly. "I miss… pride. I miss everything." He leaned forward, his forehead touching her arm. "But I had to see you. I couldn't help myself. Please believe me, Olivia."

"I'm glad you've come," she said, brushing his matted hair with her hand. "The bath is nearly ready."

He got to his feet slowly. "I… I'm a disgrace."

"Not to me," said Olivia as she shed her paenula and the Roman palla she wore under it. "The bath is hot," she warned him as she stepped into the steaming water.

"Christos!" he swore as he joined her. "You want to cook me as well as bite me?"

"Not at the same time," she said lightly, hoping he would take it as a joke.

But his attention had wandered, and he merely smiled as he rubbed his cheeks. "Very close. Not bad."

She had reached for a sponge and was filling it with water when he came up to her, touching her breast with eager, fumbling hands. "Drosos, wait just a bit."

"Why?" He took the sponge from her hands and pulled her into his arms, his mouth hard on hers.

There was only urgency in his movements, no care and no tenderness. He pillaged with his hands, probing and grasping.

Olivia wrenched herself away from him. "Drosos! Stop that."

"I don't want to." He started toward her, a beast after prey. "You want me; I want you."

"Not this way." She reached the edge of her bath and started to pull herself out of the water, but he caught her ankle and dragged her back. She cried out in protest and the side door opened at once.

"Get out of here!" Drosos shouted at Niklos. "This doesn't concern you."

Niklos came into the room with a tray that held a single cup. "If you harm my mistress, you will learn otherwise," he said implacably. He set the tray down beside the pool and looked at Olivia, who had moved away from Drosos. "Do you want me to remain?"

"Bring two drying sheets from the chest by the door." she said, knowing that Niklos would use that time to assess the problem.

Drosos had consumed half the contents of the cup before he realized it was not wine but the mixture Olivia had ordered earlier. He emptied the last of it into the water. "What is this dreadful stuff?"

"It might help you feel more yourself," Olivia said with care.

"I am fine," he protested, and then his whole demeanor changed. "No." He lowered his head and began to sob deeply, wrenchingly. When Olivia started toward him, he pushed her away. "Don't."

From the edge of the pool, Niklos gave Olivia an inquiring look, and accepted her sign to leave her alone with Drosos. He withdrew silently, remaining in the hall, ready to answer any summons.

At last Olivia was able to get close enough to Drosos to take his hands in hers. "Oh love," she said, kissing his hands, holding them when he tried to pull away.

"Why don't you leave me alone?" he demanded when he could speak at all.

"Because I love you; because part of you is part of me." She said it evenly, calmly, all the while watching his eyes.

"God and the Angels, you're not pregnant?" he protested.

"No. No, that isn't… possible."

He sighed, his breath shuddering. "Well, we're spared that." He took her by the shoulders and shook her, but gently. "I am disgraced. Can't you understand that? I am unworthy."

"Not to me." She kissed him, just his lower lip. "You are Drosos. That is enough."

"Am I? Is it?" He moved away from her. "I must have been more drunk that I thought I was to come here. I swore I wouldn't visit you."

She did not move after him. "Why? To make yourself more miserable than you are?"

"To save you from sharing my disgrace," he said. "I don't want you to be—"

"Yes, you've told me before," she said as she came to his side. "But that means little to me. I am suspect already. You can make little difference in that." She took his hand again. "Drosos, stay with me tonight."

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.