Page 1 of Don't Let Me Go
Chapter 1
Lucius
If there was ever a time when I didn’t love Marcus, I don’t remember. From the moment I could speak, I saved all my words for him. From the moment I could walk, my legs carried me in his direction. Even now, after all these years, when I’m in a crowded temple or the busy streets of the Forum, his face is the first thing my eyes seek out, just as his voice is the only music that delights my ears. He is so much a part of me that I scarcely know how to exist without him.
“Stop it,” Marcus grumbles. His sleep-heavy eyes flutter open as his lips curl into a mischievous smile. There’s more light in that smile than in all the morning sun streaming through the tiny window of the squalid room we’ve rented over Faustus’s tavern.
“Stop what?” I ask, stroking a strand of his fine tawny hair away from his brow.
“You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
Marcus slides his strong hand up my back, sending an exquisite shiver down my spine, before arriving at my head and clasping a tight fistful of my black curls in his grip. I gasp, breathing pleasure into the air, as he pulls me onto my back. Then the sturdy weight of his body is pressing down on me as his mouth closes on mine, still tasting of honey and wine.
“I’ve told you to stop watching me sleep,” he whispers, his lips so close, it’s impossible to know if his words on my mouth count as speech or a new form of kissing.
“You tell me a lot of things,” I answer, biting his lower lip when I can no longer bear its absence.
“And you should listen to all of it.”
“If I did that,” I counter, wrapping my legs around his waist, “we wouldn’t be here now, would we?”
He has no answer for that. At least, not an answer of words. He shuts my mouth with a kiss, and I surrender to him. Just as I’ve always surrendered.
The first time we made love was supposed to be the last.
That was two years ago. Pompeii was sweltering under the oppression of a searingly hot July, and the city reeked of piss even more than usual. Marcus and I were sixteen and bored, so we escaped our tutors, as we were wont to do when the midday heat made them drowsy with lethargy, slipped outside the city walls, and spent the day swimming in the bay.
Later, behind the privacy of the rocks, we dried ourselves in the sun. It was there I tried and failed not to stare at his sun-kissed form, more perfect than any statue of Apollo. It was there we first gave in to each other. Without words. Without shame. Just his strong arm around my waist and my body welcoming his as the shore welcomes the sea.
In the blushing aftermath, Marcus became adamant that what we’d shared was nothing of significance—a moment of trivial pleasure, a thing to pass the time, or, if we wanted to cast a more noble light on our assignation, a testament to our unique closeness and to the friendship that had kept us by each other’s sides for sixteen years.
But, he said, it would never happen again.
That was his resolution, and it lasted until the following day, when he sought me out in the public baths, where we once again found each other in the damp heat of an empty steam room. The next day it wasin a secluded street behind the Temple of Venus. The day after that it was among the grape arbors of his father’s vineyard.
So it was that in the months that followed, we became thieves of time, stealing an hour here, an hour there, sometimes an entire night when we were feeling bold, despite the mounting suspicions of our families. It was also in those months that we stopped pretending that we were merely passing the time, that Marcus didn’t own my soul as surely as I owned his. Instead, we began pretending something else, something far more impossible: that what we had could last forever.
“I have to go,” Marcus sighs, slowly pulling his mouth away from mine, as if it required all his strength to forsake my lips. Spent but still wanting more, neither of us has the will to move, let alone part. Instead, Marcus’s body sinks into mine, his head resting over my heart.
We’ve stayed out later than we should, considering the scoldings we’re bound to receive when we return to our homes. But it’s an indulgence we’ve allowed ourselves because it’s my birthday and because of the other thing. The thing neither of us wishes to speak of but that we both know we won’t be able to avoid much longer.
“We have the room until noon,” I remind him, running my fingers through his hair, which always smells faintly of sweat, muskroot, and myrrh.
“My father wants me to go with him to inspect Gaius Lucretius’s vineyard this afternoon.”
“You mean your father wants you to go with him to inspect Gaius Lucretius’s daughter.”
Marcus frowns. This isn’t a conversation that either of us wants to have. Not on my birthday. Not any day. Not when there are so many sweeter things we could be whispering to each other. Like how his hair in this moment looks like burnished bronze gleaming in firelight. Orhow his eyes are bluer than the Bay of Naples. Or how his heart is half my own.
But we’ve put off this talk for too long already.
“They say Lucretia is very beautiful,” Marcus answers simply.
“Lucretia could have the face of a horse and the brain of a mackerel, and your father would still expect you to marry her.”
Marcus’s shoulders tense. He knows I’m right. Gaius Lucretius owns one of the largest vineyards in Pompeii, second only to that of Marcus’s father, and he has no heirs except his daughter. A marriage between their two families, therefore, would be not only convenient but highly lucrative.
