Rome, 80 AD

Torn between a forced marriage and the threat of assassination, Clodia is desperate to escape the cruel, dangerous world of the Imperial city. But the greatest challenge the young widow faces is her forbidden desire for the one man who can save her—her fearless bodyguard slave.

A proud warrior brought to Rome in chains, Artair’s hunger for freedom is almost as strong as his hunger for his beautiful domina. Artair’s fierce loyalty to Clodia soon leads him into the brutal gladiatorial arena, where he is prepared to sacrifice his life to defend her honor...

Mastered by Her Slave

Greta Gilbert

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Author Note

The year was 80 AD. The Roman Empire held most of Europe in its merciless grip. The Roman army, at constant war, labored to feed an insatiable beast—the city of Rome itself.

It must have been a terrible time to be alive. There was pernicious inequality. There were fires, plagues, and violence. There were crazy Emperors like Nero, who years before had drained the Imperial coffers and terrorized the city. There was even a volcano—the infamous Vesuvius—which in 79 AD unleashed its fury on the people of the Pompeii region, condemning them to history.

But perhaps it was also an amazing time to be alive. It was the eve of the opening of the great Flavian Amphitheater, aka the Colosseum, an architectural wonder of the world. There were opulent public bathhouses, glorious temples, and an incredible network of roads. Never before had so many different kinds of people come together—to do business, to trade ideas, and, of course, to fall in love.

I hope you enjoy the story!

Greta

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Dedication

For Mom and Wumpy, with gratitude and so much love—

And for Mary Catherine (aka “MC”), my inspiration

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Copyright

Chapter One

Rome, 80 AD

She examined the captive’s hands, searching for a sign from the gods. Her very life rested upon this choice.

“Do you favor him, Clodia? Or shall we look at some others?” asked her sister, Davena.

Clodia ran her finger down the man’s stomach, sensing him shudder. He was one of so many, his bare torso pressed between so many others—a tragic horde of ill-fortuned souls filling the marketplace with their misery.

“The mango says these are from Pompeii,” her sister added. “Can you imagine? Surviving the eruption of that terrible volcano? Such brave boys!”

Clodia marveled at Davena, how easily she sauntered past the men she called “boys,” breathing in the smell of a pink gardenia while her own slaves cooled her with ostrich-feather fans.

Clodia herself could not pretend any enjoyment. She found the slave market shameful, the essence of Rome’s brutality. Yet she knew that coming here was the least of her sins.

She was the wife—no, the widow now—of mighty general Paulinus, the man who captured Queen Boudica and brought the wild tribes of Briton to their knees.

“Glory to Gaius Suetonius Paulinus,” the guests had cheered at her husband’s funeral games. But Clodia could not bring herself to join them. It was no secret that her husband had been a butcher. Over ten thousand Iceni women and children slaughtered in a single battle. Ten thousand innocent lives erased. All for the glory of Rome.

Clodia begged the goddess Minerva to erase her thoughts. But no matter how much she wished to forget Paulinus’s deeds, she could not. Neither could she escape the thought that in some sense, the blood her husband had spilled was on her hands, too.

And now, as the Fates would have it, so was his money.

Paulinus had no men in his family. No sons, nephews or brothers to carry on the Suetonius name. By law, then, Clodia inherited everything.

It was the worse fate she could have ever imagined. Paulinus came from an old Roman clan, the kind who found Roman law tedious. It was said that Paulinus’s sister, his closest blood relative, had already set a price on Clodia’s head. Or so they whispered at the baths.

Clodia looked up at the man before her. Somehow, she had not let go of his hand.

“Apologies,” Clodia murmured, placing it gently by his side. His finger grazed the back of her hand, igniting an invisible spark where it touched.

When she looked up, the man was peering down at her, a curious gaze in his blue-gray eyes. But before she could blink he was looking forward again, his eyes fixed on some invisible horizon.

He was lean, filthy, and smelled of the sea. His hair was thick and yellow and grew in serpentine ropes that mingled with his beard, which grew so long and tangled it seemed stolen from Medusa herself.

He was a ghastly vision, but his power could not be concealed. He stood two heads taller than Clodia, his arms full, his legs long and solid as tree trunks.

But will he do what I require, when the time comes? There seemed no way to be sure.

At the edge of the piazza, Clodia spied the long toga of the city’s most famous gladiator trainer, the procuratore of the Ludus Magnus. The man’s slight build and delicate manner belied a boundless ambition. Even Clodia had heard of his efforts to maintain the favor of the emperor with increasingly bloody spectacles.

Now, the procuratore’s assistants were surveying the captives, who appeared to have been plucked from every corner of the Empire. There were war-weary souls from Judea, black-skinned Numidians from the Mauretanian sands; and rebels from Germania and Britannia, with eyes the color of stormy seas. At the procuratore’s commands, the largest, healthiest-looking men were being marked on the cheek with ash.

If she did not act, Clodia knew that the man before her would also be tagged for the gladiator school. And for him, as for the others, there would be no education. The inaugural games needed victims as well as heroes, and Emperor Titus had made no secret of his desire to anoint his new amphitheater in a river of blood. In two short days, these men would most certainly be dead.

Damnati ad gladium. Gladiator’s bait.

“This Numidian is nice,” called her sister from across the way. Clodia pretended not to hear. The procuratore and his crew edged closer.

Clodia faced the man before her and drew a breath. “Will you protect me?” she asked aloud, knowing he was not permitted to speak. Then, impulsively, she stretched to the tops of her toes whispered in his ear, “And will you obey my command, when the time comes?”

Clodia noticed the man’s chest moving. His lips tightened. Glancing down, she perceived a new fullness in his loincloth. Was it a slave’s wrath he now fought to suppress? Or had her words somehow aroused him?

“Clodia, have you decided?” asked Davena, rejoining her sister.

“What?”

“Are you unwell, sister? You look red as wine.”

“No, I’m fine. It’s just the heat.” Clodia fanned her face with her hand.

“By Juno’s peacock, Clodia, why did you not bring a fanner?” Davena motioned to a feather-bearing slave. Then she regarded the man. “So it is this one, then?”

“Yes.”

Davena studied the man closely, her eyes scanning the entirety of his body. “With a little training, he shall make a fine guard,” she concluded. Then she lowered her voice and nudged Clodia. “He seems quite willing to rise to the occasion.”

“Do not be ordinary!” Clodia exclaimed. Still, her heart would not stop beating.

“Really, Clodia. You should try to enjoy him. You cannot stay in mourning forever.” Davena held out her gardenia. “But are you sure you will not reconsider our invitation? Come live with me at Father’s villa? It would be safer, you know. Sensible.”

Sensible, indeed.

A move to her father’s villa would be extremely sensible. Sensible for Davena, who made no secret of her unending boredom. And sensible for her father, whose newly-widowed daughter now carried with her the wealth of a great general’s estate—a dowager to be properly managed.

But Clodia was not to be managed, not anymore. She smiled back at her sister, then shook her head. “Gratitude, dear sister, but I should like to stay in Rome.”

“Then you are mad,” Davena said, pulling the gardenia back to her nose. “But do your worst. Father will have a new husband for you soon enough.”

Clodia watched Davena walk away, wishing to explain her plan, to make her sister understand. She loved Davena dearly. But sharing would not be safe. Davena was notoriously indiscreet. Even now, she was discussing Clodia’s intended purchase with a well-dressed woman Clodia recognized from the Esquiline.

Davena was speaking so excitedly that Clodia did not notice the procuratore, who had arrived by her side and was inspecting the man. “Now here is a gladiator,” he announced, clasping his hands together as if beholding a sacrificial bull. “Mark this one,” he told his assistants.

Clodia gathered herself, then stepped forward. “I’m sorry, honorable Procurator,” she said firmly. Then she held up her coin purse, heavy with aurei and denarii. “He is already taken.”

Chapter Two

It was a long way from Iceni to Rome—a hundred days’ journey or more. His father had told him that much when he was a boy. Still, Artair had somehow known that he would see the famed city one day—whether in triumph or in bonds.

What he had not expected was this...woman. When he felt her warm breath in his ear, an odd feeling had awakened inside him, a kind of yearning. It had been years since he had been near a beautiful woman. Before the Romans had defeated his people, before his world had been torn apart, he had made love to a girl in the forest outside his village. It was a memory so old, he scarcely recognized the hunger.

It was of no consequence. As he walked obediently behind her—no fewer than five steps, as he had been instructed—he let his desire fade, and in its place grew a feeling as bitter as it was familiar.

Spoiled Roman woman. How dare she purchase him? He was for the arena. Couldn’t she see that? The procuratore had been just seconds from marking his flesh, had even called him “gladiator.”

How many beatings had he endured for such a chance at glory? How many snaps of the whip across his back? As a gladiator, he would show the thieving hordes of Rome the true worth of an Icenian warrior. He would rage and battle and win his freedom, or at least die with honor.

And she had taken that from him, all in a single quill stroke.

Calm yourself, man. He could feel the sweat trickling down his neck. You will find another way out.

As they walked, Artair tried to commit their route to memory, but he quickly became confused. The city was a maze. Giant concrete and stone buildings stood like cliffs along the winding cobblestone streets. Stifling, narrow walkways yielded to large, busy piazzas where shopkeepers shouted at throngs of passersby, and troops of plump gray pigeons alighted to steal their dinners from piles of rubbish.

Artair marched in a retinue of slaves that surrounded the two women. Several other slaves followed, carrying a large, empty litter. Artair had never seen such a thing. It appeared to be designed to carry a person. Were the aristocrats of this fabled city so heavy with wealth that they did not deign to walk on their own two feet?

Artair wondered if he, too, would be obliged to carry such a litter. He had suffered many indignities in the nine long years since his capture, but he had never imagined himself—a proud Icenian warrior—reduced to a beast of burden.

Perhaps it was Rome’s final jest. The first had come long ago, at the battle of Manduessedum, his queen’s final stand. His family murdered, his tribe erased, he had battled and raged until all strength had departed his body, and all thought his mind. He lay on the battlefield, covered in blood, and the Roman legionaries left him for dead.

But dead he was not. When consciousness returned, Artair took refuge in the forest, where he taught himself to survive. For years he wandered, lost in the wild, his anger festering inside him like a deep wound. Why me? Why keep me alive? he demanded, but the gods of earth and sea gave no answer.

The boy became a man, and the man in due course found himself in the North—in the land of the Brigantes. It did not matter that he was an Iceni, an ancient enemy. Their leader hated Rome as much as Artair did, and vowed to keep the Romans out of the North at any cost. Artair was ready to pay that cost; indeed, he yearned for it. Every day, he instructed the Brigante warriors in the Iceni arts of sword and steed. And every night, he dreamed of vengeance.

But when the Romans finally came, they came not as warriors, but as thieves. They invaded in the night, burning the village, setting the Brigante warriors in shackles before they could even unsheath their swords. Then there was the dark hold of a ship, a slave market south of the Rhine, and, finally, a brick factory owner from Pompeii, who paid well for strong men. “I shall get five years out of you before you die,” he had told Artair, smiling. What would his new domina tell him now, he wondered, with that same wicked Roman smile upon her lips?

They arrived at a crossroads. The women kissed, then the older of the two stepped inside the litter and pulled the curtains shut. In an instant, the entire retinue was gone, and Artair was alone with his new domina.

“Well, then,” she said. “Let us go home.”

She walked quickly, as if trying to outpace the passing of the day. Her black hair was tied in a tall, plaited bun and fastened with two ivory pins that crossed like miniature swords. Rivulets of sweat made their way delicately down her slender neck, sending a pang of unexpected lust through Artair’s bones.

In another life, she would have been mine, he thought. A prize of Artair, great-grandson of Antedios, the last of the great high kings of the Britons. In another life, he would have simply taken her down to the Tiber and enjoyed her on the sand.

But that was not this life, Artair reminded himself. In this life, he was the property of this woman’s husband, surely some corpulent government official who sat on a latrine made of stolen gold.

Artair cringed to think he was now bound to serve such a man—body and soul—for the rest of his life.

Never.

The hill leveled off and they emerged into a small, sparsely populated piazza. In its center, a decorated pillar spouted water into a small concrete pool. The water trickled continuously, as if by magic.

Artair had seen Roman fountains before, but none so grand as this. It was like a spring bubbling up in the middle of a city. He ran his tongue across his parched lips.

“Please, go,” the woman said suddenly, motioning to the fountain. “Neptune awaits you.”

Artair could hardly believe her words, but she nodded vigorously, a playful smile materializing on her crimson lips. “Drink.” When he did not move, she slipped her soft hand into his and gently led him toward the fountain.

Her touch sent a wave of warmth through his body. Were all Roman noblewomen so bold? At the lip of the fountain, she released his hand. “Please, satisfy your thirst.”

And what of my hunger?

Artair glimpsed the curve of her waist as he bent to cup his hands in the small pool. Then he closed his eyes and drank his fill.

When he opened his eyes and stood, she was there, smiling curiously, the low sun casting a rosy glow on her cheeks.

By the gods, she was beautiful.

He forced his gaze to the ground. The cobblestones beneath his feet appeared to throb, and his head pounded. He steadied himself, feeling as a satyr in a Greek play—drunk not on wine and song, but on clear water and sunshine...and an ethereal woman just beyond his grasp.

In truth, he owed his life to her. The mango himself had tagged Artair for the arena, but not for glory. “It will take a heavy coin to keep you from the lions,” he had said with a laugh. And that’s just what she had offered—the largest bag of coins he had ever seen.

He kept his eyes upon the ground. He would have to guard himself from this woman. He could not lose his will to escape. A life spent in bondage was no life at all, he reminded himself, no matter how kind or beautiful the master’s wife.

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