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One of these days, he's going to die.
That's not a surprise, he supposes: all men die at one time or another. Some men die from war and some from famine, illness, accident, malice, old age; he has the advantage over all of them by knowing roughly how his death will come. One of these days, not so very long from now, he'll go out into the arena and he won't come back, or else he'll die of his wounds in the ludus. The weapon they'll use doesn't matter, or the name of the man who'll do it, because they're all the same weapon and they're all the same man. All that matters is his blood in the sand instead of inside him and the fact he won't see her again.
He was injured in the games today and that's what's put these thoughts inside his head. Some of the other men would call them morose, or else morbid, but he likes to think that what they are is realistic: he's a gladiator, and he used to be a good one, but now all that saves his life when he fights is luck and training. He doesn't know how old he is, not with any certainty, but he must be more than fifty now, with scars that tell the tale of fights he can barely remember. You've seen one man's guts and you've seen them all. His own will be just like the rest.
It's a nasty gash high up on his shield arm that's made the bandage on it pink despite the surgeon's stitches. There's another event already booked in for a month's time or a little less, sooner than usual but that's as their masters will it, and whether he fights or doesn't will depend on whether or not the wound becomes infected, but even at fifty-something years of age he's not so jaded yet that he'll wish for delay. It's perhaps because he's fifty-something years of age - this has been the only life he's ever known and as such he is resigned to it. It must be worse to have known freedom just to have it taken from you, but Cassius was born a slave and not captured, or sentenced, or entered in to pay off debts. He's had nine masters whose names he can recall and more than that in his youth that he maybe never knew at all. But he thinks he'll die a man of Gaius Gracchus, in Rome, or at least he almost hopes he will.
If he's sold outside the city, if he's sent off to Egypt or to Gaul or to some other far-flung place to fight his last, she won't be there to see him die. And that would be the one regret he'd carry with him.
---
They met four years ago, he thinks, though time has always seemed to matter less to him than to most other men he knows. What matters is the number of days until he fights again, not the house of the day or the years that pass. Besides, he was only taught to count so he could number the blows of his sword as he's training or count the lashes that they gave him; he's good, though, does as he's told because he sees no reason not to, and so the lashes have been rare.
It was winter, he thinks - there was a chill in the air, though nothing like he'd felt when he'd lived in the north, near the mountains where it sometimes snowed till they were ankle-deep in the training yard. He remembers meeting her now, as he lies on his mattress and his shoulder throbs where the blade sliced in. It was the same room then, because where they keep him at night has only changed once in all the years he's been there. His mattress has changed since then, though, because she paid to buy a better one, and though she said elegant words about his comfort, he thinks it was at least as much for her own as it was his.
When she entered the room he was on his knees but not in chains, and he assumed that was because that was what she'd ordered.
"I have your word that he won't hurt me, Gracchus?" she said, but her eyes were on him and not the lanista. She has pretty eyes, he thinks, now as he did then - they're brown ones, the light sort, so in the light of the lamp they looked like pools of honey. She has a pretty face, too, though he supposes there's a better word for it. That night, on his knees on the floor, she had the distant, knowing beauty of Minerva, upright and strong and unattainable. She had the look of a statue to her, like the ones at the arena, like marble brought to splendid life. And that was good, he thought - it was always so much simpler when he found them attractive, though he could usually find some trait he liked to get him through it.
"Of course he won't," Gracchus said, and he smiled that oily, polished smile of his that hasn't changed in all this time. "He knows his place. Don't you, Cassius?"
Cassius did, in fact, know his place, and it's always been quite easy to remember: his place is wherever Gaius Gracchus says it is. That night, it was on his knees in his cell in the ludus, the length of his outstretched arm away from the place where he now lies. It was on his knees for the woman who had entered, and he'd been told to do whatever she pleased. He'd been told to please her however she pleased, and he assumed from the self-assured air of her that she'd know exactly what that was.
"I do, Dominus," he said, and he sat back on his heels, back straight, knees wide. He set his hands on his bare thighs and he looked at her and he would have liked to have spoken, told he'd do only what she asked of him, but knowing his place meant knowing he couldn't.
"Leave us, then," she said, and Gracchus bowed almost like he was a slave himself and made a face behind her back that told Cassius a story: the lanista hated everyone he viewed as his superior, and he hated her, and that said something. Cassius has never had much skill in telling one Roman from another, not in terms of their wealth or their status, except by Gracchus' reactions - he's not spent nearly enough time amongst them to form a picture for himself. But that look on Gracchus' face as he left the room said she was somebody important, respectable, wealthy or else she couldn't pay the fee, maybe a patrician. There'd been a few over the years, he supposed, though most wanted the younger men.
There were a lot of younger men in the ludus, too, so he wondered as she looked at him why precisely he'd been chosen. Sometimes Gracchus paraded them all in front of their client, one after the other, often naked, so that she could make a choice, but there'd been no such thing tonight, only one of the guards sweeping him out into the baths and once he'd washed himself, two of the girls from the house came in to oil and scrape and shave him all over his body. Now this, and now her.
"Take off your clothes," she said, as she lingered at the door, looking so very out of place that her presence was almost jarring. It wasn't the fact that she was in his room at all - there were rooms for this sort of thing in the lanista's villa, but some women liked the thrill of doing it where the gladiators lived and none of them belonged there. She just looked so very much beyond it all, though he smiled to himself at that thought. With all the things he'd seen over the years, all the things he'd done, the notion that anyone was beyond anything should have been beyond him.
"You're smiling," she said, as he rose to take his clothes off.
"I am, Domina," he replied. He unknotted the cord belt from around his waist, which wasn't his but they'd lent it to him for the occasion, and he set it aside on top of his mattress.
"Why are you smiling?" she asked. "Do I amuse you?"
"No, Domina," he replied. He pulled the tunic off over his head, which also wasn't his, not that there was anything much that he could say he owned. He had money, he supposed, not that he ever saw it, kept as it was in Gracchus' purse, but nothing else was his.
"The situation, then?"
"It's not that, Domina." He sat down on the stool they'd brought in, another thing that wasn't his, to untie his sandals.
"Then what?"
He stood. A few quick pulls and he removed his subligaria, dropped it aside and bared himself as he stood there in front of her. She wasn't small, which he supposed he should have noticed earlier, but kneeling had thrown off his sense of relative proportion. She was tall for a woman, he thought, not that he'd known many, with her dark hair pulled up and pulled back and held in place with bands. He was taller, of course, one of the taller men in the ludus, big and broad and ruddy from the sun, but he thought he'd have liked the weight of her long bones and fine skin against him.
"I was thinking you looked like you didn't belong here," he said. "But then no one does, and we all do, if you get my meaning."
A small smile came to her lips. "I suppose I do," she said, and then she let her gaze move over him. She wasn't coy about it - some women were, he'd found, like they could fool him or fool themselves into believing they didn't know why they were there. She knew, and he thought she didn't mind him knowing.
"Are you always so...hairless?" she asked, with a vague gesture of one hand toward his recently-shaved body.
He chuckled. "No, Domina," he replied. "I thought you ordered that."
"I didn't." She moved, walked around him, slowly, her polished sandals on his dirty floor. He turned his head to follow her as far as he could without turning around but he could almost feel her eyes on him as she moved.
"Do you know why I'm here?" she asked next, from behind him.
"I've a general notion of it, yes," he replied.
"Do you know why I asked for you in particular?"
"I've no notion of that at all," he replied.
She came back around in front of him, her inspection apparently complete, and stepped in close enough that had he reached out toward her, they would have touched.
"You were recommended to me," she said. "By a friend. Her name is Drusilla. Do you remember her?"
"Women don't usually give me their names."
"If they did, would you remember?"
"I might."
"Would you say so if you did?"
"It's not my place."
She laughed. "An excellent answer," she said, and then she moved to sit herself down on the stool. "Kneel, Cassius." He knelt. "And do you know why you were recommended?"
He shook his head as he settled back on his heels again. "I don't, Domina," he replied, because he didn't. There were taller men in the ludus. There were younger men, men with darker skin or lighter skin, flame-red hair or gold like the sun, men with missing eyes or ears or fingers for the women who might like that kind of thing. Cassius was tall but not the tallest, fair but not the fairest, scarred but he by no means had the most in number. He had blue eyes, but those weren't very rare, and a good thick cock, but others were longer, or thicker, or both. The only way in which he could surpass the others was in age, because even the silver in his short hair wasn't so uncommon. She must have been barely thirty years of age herself, if that, or maybe younger, and he couldn't think of why she would choose him at all.
"My friend said you were the best she'd ever had." She tilted her head. She raised her brows. "Does that surprise you?"
"A little. I just do as I'm told."
"Perhaps that was the reason why." She bit her bottom lip as she looked at him, just for a moment, like he was a treat upon her table. "Do you understand?"
He shook his head. "You're too clever for me, Domina," he said. "I can't keep up. The trainers don't exactly teach us rhetoric."
"But you do know how to fuck, yes?"
He smiled. Before he could think to stop himself, he laughed. "Yes," he said, "but the trainers didn't teach that, either." And she looked positively delighted.
"I think you keep up wonderfully," she told him. "I'm very pleased indeed." Then she raised one hand and beckoned to him. "Come closer, Cassius," she told him, so he shuffled closer on his knees then looked up at her again. "Closer," she told him, then she set her hands down on her thighs and when her fingers curled, when she began to gather up the long skirt of her stola, he understood what she intended. He went closer, slowly, so that when she pulled her skirt up past her knees he settled there between them. When she pulled her stola higher, sweeping the tunic that she wore beneath up with it as she shifted herself to the stool's front edge, she exposed herself to him completely. He'd been right: she knew what she wanted.
"Use your mouth," she told him, so he licked his lips and he got to work.
With her knees parted so widely, with her perched so near to the edge, all it took to bring his mouth to her cunt was for him to sink down low and lean in close. He could see she was wet there already, a shine to her in the lamplight like the rings on her fingers and the jewelled comb in her hair, and he licked her there, at the edge of one outer lip, tasting her like salt against his tongue. But then he sat back and looked up at her again.
"Can I use my hands, too, Domina?" he asked, and when she nodded he could see the way a blush had turned her cheeks a fetching shade of pink.
"Please do," she said, and so he did; when he ducked his head back down he ran his calloused fingers up over her bare thighs. He ran his thumbs between them, ran them over the lips of her sex and then parted them, exposing her still further. He knew where to put his mouth; there'd been a woman once, one of his first when he'd still been young, who'd spent a full night teaching him, though when he trailed the tip of his tongue around the little hooded nub he wasn't thinking about her. He was thinking about the woman whose fingers slid into his short hair, barely long enough for her to twist her fingers and take hold. He was thinking about the taste of her as he trailed his tongue down to her entrance and then licked back up to seal his lips around her clit. She sighed, and her hips shifted, and as he teased her with his tongue he teased her with one thumb, stroking the slick inner lips with the pad of it.
With a flick of his tongue, he pressed his thumb inside her. Her fingers tightened almost painfully around his hair but the way she gasped and clenched around him said that wasn't meant to tell him no. And he could feel himself stiffening as she arched her back and pressed her free hand to the stool behind her, as she bucked her hips to press his thumb in deep. He didn't always, not immediately, not these days, not without some coaxing, but it seemed he needed no encouragement.
He pulled back. He sat back and looked up at her, his own face flushed, muscles taut, cock hard. She looked down at him in turn, imperious and so very nearly perfect, with the light against her long gold earrings drawing his gaze to the long line of her neck where he'd have liked to have put his mouth. She looked at him, her gaze moving over him, from his eyes to his recently shaved jaw, the muscles in his chest, down to his erection that jutted up between his thighs. He liked the way she looked at him, so openly, entirely unabashed. He did the same because she seemed to like it, too.
He eased his thumb back out of her and she laughed, delighted, as he sucked on it, then gasped as he trailed his fingertips where it had just been. He has big hands, very much in keeping with the rest of him, and she arched her back again as he pushed the first of his fingers up inside her. She was hot and tight around him, clenching as he teased her clit with the pad of his thumb, then he leaned in to press his lips to her, to kiss her there, between her thighs, almost as he might have kissed her mouth. He pressed his mouth to her clit, and to her lips around his finger as it pushed in knuckle-deep; when he eased it out it was just to add a second and she moaned, breathy, not self-conscious like some of the others had been. She moaned and spread her thighs a little wider, tucked the folds of her stola up into her belt and slipped her fingers back into his hair.
"Touch yourself," she told him. "Pleasure yourself. Use your hands. I want to see." And she pushed him back, using his hair, so he sat back on his heels, knees still spread out wide. He did as he was told; his fingers were slick with her and that eased the way as he wrapped his hand around himself and began to stroke there by the tip. He was leaking there, too, quite freely and obviously, over the head of his cock and down the shaft, and that also helped as he eased his foreskin back to expose the thick, blunt tip to her. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth as she watched him do it, so he did it again; he pinched his foreskin up over the tip then drew it back, again, again, the head shiny in the lamplight with her wetness and his own precome, and for a second he reached out back to her cunt to gather up a little more of it and slick himself up thoroughly.
She was so wet, so fucking wet, and she smelled so good, and he watched as she slipped her own hand down between her thighs to rub her clit. She pushed her first two fingers up inside herself as far as they would go then used them to rub herself, firmly, slowly, her legs so wide apart and her muscles so tight that only the toes of her sandals remained against the floor. He could hear her breath, even louder than his own, though his chest fairly seemed to heave with it. And he reached down between his thighs to grip his balls, pinching his fingers tight around the base like that might keep his orgasm at bay.
He pulled his hands back. He gripped his thighs. "Domina, if it pleases you, I'm going to finish," he said, and she nodded at him tightly as she touched herself.
"Please do," she said. Her voice seemed thick, and tight, and he felt his cock give a twitch, saw it do it, as if it wanted to obey her without so much as another touch. It barely took another touch, either; as soon as he'd wrapped his hand around himself, that was the end of it: he came over the floor between her feet, over his own fingers, while she watched. He came, gasping like he'd spent an afternoon in the arena and not half an hour on his own fucking floor. Then she waved him closer once again, and he was only too happy to oblige. He replaced her fingers with his mouth, pushed his fingers up inside her and fucked her with them, firm and deep, while she gasped and pulled his hair like she might tumble over otherwise. He felt it when she climaxed, how she pulled so tight around his fingers that it almost hurt, how her entire body tensed, and spasmed, almost shook, until she suddenly relaxed. She seemed to tense again, once, twice, five, six times, pulling tight around his fingers as he looked up at her, his fingers still pushed deep inside. Then he eased them out, and he sucked them clean, and rested his hands on his thighs again. He found he really didn't mind the taste of her at all; if anything, he liked it.
"Was that what you had in mind, Domina?" he asked, and she gave a breathless little chuckle as she looked at him, pink-cheeked and pretty, with her cunt still utterly exposed.
"Something like it, yes," she replied. "I'm glad to say you didn't disappoint." Then she frowned and made a face, so incongruous with the rest of her person that he only liked her more for it. She gestured down between her thighs. "Will you lick me clean?" she said. "I really can't go home like this." So he put his mouth back to her, softly, and did precisely that before she stood, and dropped her stola down back into place, and stepped toward the door.
She said nothing else before she left. All she did was smile at him over one shoulder, and then she swept back out again, and left him there still on his knees. And perhaps he thought that was the end of it, the one and only time he'd see her, and that when Gracchus called for him the next month it would be another woman, another bored politician's wife, another lady pretending to be shy, but she came into the room.
"You're smiling," she said.
"I am, Domina."
"Do I amuse you?" she asked.
"Not at all, Domina." His smile broadened. "It's just that you came back. I didn't think you would."
She seemed pleased by that. And by everything that came after it.
---
He was injured today. That's not unusual - in fact, it's more unusual that he returns from the arena completely unscathed - but usually his injuries are more minor. He's annoyed, and his shoulder aches, enough that when the door creaks open he doesn't bother looking up. It's probably the surgeon's man coming to poke at the damned thing again, he thinks, but when he doesn't hear steps crossing the room, he turns his head and does finally look.
"Domina," he says, with a surprised clench inside his chest, and he sits up quickly. He winces, and she goes down on her knees beside him.
It's been four years now since they met, he thinks, since that first night inside his room. It's not a big room, not even by the standards of the ludus - their champion has a larger one, but Cassius really has no need of more space and anyway, he's lucky that he doesn't have to share. At least part of that, he thinks, is because of her, because of her visits and their privacy. She comes there once a month, every month, and he wonders if that's how he should measure time now: not the days till his next fight but the days till he'll see her.
She's told him stories over the years, about her childhood, about her marriage, about the places she's been to outside Rome and in it while he lies back with his head on her lap. She's run her fingers through his greying hair while he's imagined orchards, clifftops, waves on the sea that he's never seen and never will. It's hard to know what a sea is like without seeing one, but the way she speaks it's almost like he understands.
He's told her stories, too, as he's undressed for her. Some of the scars have histories he can't recall but some he does; he's told her about fighting lions for the emperor and the day he beat Old Titus, the giant from Sicily, when everyone believed he'd die from a blow of his hammer. Sometimes he tells her about training, about other men he fights with or he fights against, where they come from, where they're told men go to after they pay their way out. And she's asked him, more than once, why it is that he stays.
"I've never known anything else," he's always told her. "I'm not getting any younger, Domina. Where would I go? What would I do?" But they both know what he means is he'd never see again.
If she's been here every month for the past four years, he's seen her nearly fifty times. He's knelt naked on the floor and watched her undress until she's naked, too, all pale skin in the lamplight, like a goddess come to earth. He's had her, standing, her back pressed to the wall and her legs around his waist, his cock in her so deep and hard that he almost couldn't stand it. She's ridden him there on his mattress, the one he knows she bought for him, his big hands at her waist as she bites her lip and splays her fingers on his chest. He's never been shaved again like he was that first day, so he thinks she probably ordered that. And there have been no other women since; he thinks she might have ordered that, too.
"Were you there today?" he asks, and she nods as she eyes his blood-damp bandage.
"I was," she said. "That's why I'm here."
"You were worried."
"Yes, I was."
He smiles, and she turns to straddle his lap. She rests her forehead against his and cups his jaw in both her hands.
She doesn't say she wishes he'd pay for his freedom, because they both know he won't. She doesn't say she'd rather that he live but that be the end of it, because they both know he'd rather die but see her one last time. So what she does is kiss him, and with his good arm he holds her close, and when she helps him to undress, when she undresses herself and settles down astride him, she's gentle in spite of her passion. He's known for some time that this woman, his lover, his mistress, is beautiful as a statue but burns right to her core. She's made all the more beautiful to him because of it.
"Domina," he gasps, as she's over him, as he's inside her, and she smiles at him as much with her honey-gold eyes as she does with her lips.
He'll die one day, and probably sooner than he'd like to, but that's the life he's always had.
He'll die, but he'll feel blessed to have known her, though he's never known her name.