Page 3 of Gladiator's Captive
But I always woke up just before Rager touched my skin, wet and panting, my clit pulsing and my body screaming with need. The dream had come last night as well, like always before one of Rager’s fight in the arena. Just the memory of it was enough to set my skin on fire.
How can I be aroused in a situation like this?
With a healthy dose of self-loathing, I forced my eyes away from the sculpted, glorious Muharib warrior about to fight for his life.
Then the doors opened again and four more gladiators stepped on the sand of the arena, to the ever greater screams of the crowd. I could see the tension rippling on their skin. Two were Mandragos, those large reptilian creatures with their poisonous fangs and sets of throwing knives at their belts, long tails snapping angrily on the sand as they stalked closer. A bit farther to their right were the Agapits, monstrous mammalians the size of Earth’s horses, dragging heavy clubs behind them, twin tusks poking out of long, rounded snouts. Belligerent porcine eyes instantly fixed on Rager, standing alone in the center of the arena.
The Mandragos and Agapits moved toward Rager, but their steps were slow, their gazes wide and fleeting. They were afraid to face the legend, afraid that their superior number was only a semblance of advantage in the fight to come. Rager turned to meet them, his wide shoulders rippling with the tension of violence unshed as the shouts of the crowd came to a peak. As the Muharib gladiator took in their sight, his shoulders slumped by just a sliver. It wasn’t much, but it was enough for my stomach to churn with bile and my mouth to fill with a sour taste.
He knows this isn’t a fair fight. This isn’t even a fight he’s designed to win.Then my blood froze over as I understood.This is an execution.
“You didn’t warn him?” I turned to my father who was still focused on his conversation with his businessman friend, barely remembering to keep my voice low enough that nobody else but him heard me. “Rager didn’t know he would be so outnumbered?”
“Ha, my dear daughter!” Arenius turned to me, his small, dark eyes shining with a glee that sent shivers straight to my soul. “Have I ever introduced you to my good friend Rodrigo?”
I watched as my father extended a familiar, warm embrace to his friend’s shoulder then squeezed it with a gut-churning affection. Rodrigo, his face thin like a skull, laid cold blue eyes on me filled with an unmistakable lust.
No.
I knew what that look meant. Knew why my father had called me home after all those years.
In the arena, the gladiators had started. The sound of the fight reached my ears, far, far away in the back of my mind. Screams and shouts, from spectators in the audience and below, on the blood-soaked sands.
I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t think.
“No, I’m afraid I never had the pleasure.” How was my voice so even, when all I wanted was to scream?
“Well, he is simply the richest merchant on the eastern frontier of the Galactic Empire!” Arenius laughed, deep and loud, immediately followed by Rodrigo. “Although he is way too humble to say so himself.”
Yes, humble, I’m sure. As humble as a snake poised to strike.
“Business has been good.” Rodrigo leaned forward toward me. A sickening smell made of heavy perfume and costly oils emanated from the man, and I recoiled inside, but didn’t move. All my life, I had been trained to hide my true feelings and it didn’t fail me, even now. “The eastern frontier is a lucrative market, when one knows it as well as I do.”
A falsely modest smile stretched up Rodrigo’s thin lips, giving him the air of a desiccated corpse.
I shivered, deep in my guts, from that secret place inside of me that had never been tamed, had never lost hope for a better life.
Down in the arena, a scream rose, the pain-filled sound resonating deep inside my chest. My eyes strayed to the sands, where the first Mandrago lay dead in a pool of blood. Amid the fight, Rager moved like a deadly dancer, his twin swords twisting through the air with grace. He might know the fight wasn’t fair, but he wasn’t giving up. In fact, it seemed to make him even deadlier than usual. I watched the Muharib gladiator move with a lethal grace, his sword dancing in the air, drawing wide arcs around his body.
“Yet, with all the riches I have amassed, I am still a poor man at heart,” Rodrigo continued, reclaiming my attention. “For what is a man without a woman to give his life meaning, by way of an heir?”
I snapped my head from Rager’s formidable sight and stared once again at the thin man. My stomach clenched at the hungry look in his eyes, the way his stare glided down my neck to my breast.
As if I’m already his.
My hand went up in an instinctive gesture, covering the necklace resting between my breasts. Rodrigo had no way of knowing I was wearing it, but I still felt like hiding it from him.
“A pain I would see you put behind you forever, dearest friend. And so would my daughter.” Arenius turned his too-bright smile to me, a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. There was a warning there, a warning and a promise of retribution should I disobey. “Serena, what do you say?”
Better death than this.
“Marriage?” The word caught in my throat, bitter and hateful, yet my voice was as meek and compliant as ever. “I never had a thought toward it.”
It was a lie. Marriage had plagued my thoughts ever since I turned into a woman. I had feared I would be married off much sooner, but at twenty-three, it was long overdue.
“So innocent, almost to a fault,” Rodrigo commented, smacking his lips like he could taste me in the air. “Of course, you will be granted your every whim, my dearest. As long as you don’t withdraw from my own desires.”
Rodrigo turned to my father and for the briefest moment, his face lost all warmth and he looked like a dried-up, loveless bag of bones.
