Dixus starts his training to be a Sagittarius and fights his jealousy as Carola is courted by not one, but two suitors. Meanwhile she consults some experts on how to pleasure her man and tries to apply their advice with mixed results.
Sexual content warning: nonconsensual sex discussed, (not involving Carola/Darolus) as well as consensual Caryl pairing
Notes:
trireme:smaller merchant ship with tree rows of oars
navis rostrata: warship with a battering ram (rostra), which was used to sink or immobilize
Ancient Roman medicine: When applied to open wounds, honey can have an antibiotic quality that helps in the healing process by staving off infection. They didn't really know why or how it worked, just that it did.
Ancient Roman Horsemanship: their saddles did not have stirrups, (they weren't invented until the Middle Ages) so cavalry soldiers had to have incredibly strong legs and a secure seat to stay on their horses. Using weapons from horseback also meant that the animal had to be trained to respond to leg cues and shifts in the rider's weight so both hands could be free to wield the bow, sword or spear. (Voice commands didn't work well in the heat & noise of battle.)
Ishtar: Mesopotamian love goddess worshiped with sexual rites; Romans could worship any foreign gods they wished, as long as they also kept their oaths of loyalty to the Roman ones.
"Again!" the white haired bearded man barked.
Dixus felt that every part of his body on fire from his feet to the top of his head. He fought for balance, the cream white horse beneath him tossing its regal head, ears back, unsettled because it felt his seat slipping. His hands were shaking so badly the arrow he'd been trying to notch in the bow fell and bounced off his bare thigh, the sharp point slicing a line of blood as it went.
"Futuo!" Dixus cursed, feeling himself slipping, listing to one side like a trireme that had been hit broadsides by a navis rostrata. Tossing the bow aside he made a desperate grab for the horse's long thick mane to keep from hitting the hard sands of the training ground—again—but the man holding the long line attached to the horse's halter whistled out a command and the animal came to an abrupt sliding stop, snorting and tossing its head even more in what felt like disgust.
"Off." the older man said, his mouth set in a straight line, his brow furrowed.
Dixus slid to the ground, almost falling, his rubber legs refusing to support him, grabbing for the horse's withers to hold him up. The horse stood still, having been given the command to do so, for which his rider was immensely grateful. If it had shied back he knew his ass would be on the ground.
"Gratitude Ajax." he murmured to the animal, running his other hand along the horse's sweaty neck and black mane in apology.
The old man started taking in the line, bunching it in his hands as he walked closer, studying the man and the horse.
"First sign I've seen that you actually trust him." he said in a thoughtful voice.
"I've only known him a week, Doctore Viride." Dixus sighed wearily, but with a hint of humor. It had been only seven days since he'd arrived at the ludus of Ezekias, but it had been one of the longest weeks of his life.
Viride snorted.
"You have stamina, but your legs aren't strong enough yet to both keep seat and control Ajax while you fire."
"He's a magnificent beast, Doctore, very... powerful..." Dixus tried explaining that he understood the challenges of this particular animal. He was huge—at 16 hands the largest non-draft horse he had ever seen—but Ajax was not heavy boned, instead his body was muscular and sleek with a huge chest and heart. He could run all day at a ground eating canter, but could put on a burst of speed to win any race in which he was entered.
"He's the finest of Andalusians Dominus brought back from Hispaniola for use in Arena. I have trained him exceedingly well to respond to a rider who knows what he is doing!"
"I have been riding since before I could walk, Doctore." Dixus protested. "What I must do here goes beyond riding..." He looked at the horse again, "You tell me I must trust this beast..."
"Yes." the trainer nodded handing him the long line. "You and horse must become one!"
Dixus raised an eyebrow at the (hopefully) unintended sexual innuendo. Sometimes his past life experiences in Rome led his mind down such wrong paths...
"Cool him out, then rinse off sweat and give him a rubdown with liniment again." Viride ordered.
Dixus hoped if he'd get the same treatment later. He'd been up before dawn running and lifting weights to build his muscle mass and strength before target practice with the bow. After a short break for a meal he'd been in the horse ring all afternoon, trying and failing to learn how to control Ajax and shoot the bow at the same time.
"After evening meal take your bedroll to stables." Doctore ordered. "You're in his stable at night from now on."
"You want me to sleep with the horse?" Dixus asked, his eyebrows rising.
"Every minute you are not in other training, you will be with him." Viride told him, his gaze challenging the younger man to question him. "And make sure you have Medicus see to that cut after you have cared for your mount." he pointed at Dixus' leg and then waved his hand to dismiss him.
"Yes, Doctore... we will become one." Dixus said smartly, locking his knees, hoping his legs would keep him upright. As he left the ring he was talking to the horse and the riding master chuckled to overhear it. "Am I to be Sagittarius or centaur?" he muttered.
"This is actually more comfortable than your cell." Carola said, snuggling in close to Darolus' side in the soft hay of the ludus stables haymow.
He reached over and plucked a stalk of grass out of her hair and then smoothed his hand down her cheek, leaning in for a kiss. She reached up and held his face in her hands, kissing him back, but abruptly pulling away when a loud horsey exhale and snort sounded close by.
"It's fine." Dixus assured her, kissing her forehead. "I told Doctore I would do morning feedings since it seems that I live in stable block now. No one will be coming in until hour after sunrise."
They had been spending at least part of every night they could together since they'd arrived; Andrea, Tara and Rosa all covering for her so she could secretly go to him in his cell. She could have had him brought to her chambers for pleasures, but hadn't wanted to tip her hand to her two suitors, who were using a variety of means to court her, or her father, who was well pleased at her prospects and so had relaxed his restrictions on her. If they suspected she had no intention of marrying anyone but Darol she would be shipped off to parts unknown fast enough to make heads spin.
Dixus understood this need for secrecy, but longed for the day they could claim each other openly. It was painful to see his brother's regular visits and invitations, so far refused, to her to come to the newly reclaimed House of Dixus villa nearby in the guise of having her advice on renovations; to see her ride out with Ezekias on the lovely little mare he had gifted her with when she had missed her own back in Alexandria; to see her wearing the jewelry and gowns that seemed to arrive daily as each man tried to outdo the other. They only way he kept his sanity was that he trained to exhaustion from sun up to sundown and got to spend at least part of each night with her.
Fortunately all of the outbuildings were connected to the main villa by either covered walkways or underground passageways. Wearing a cloak of darkest indigo and sticking to the shadows she had been able to make her way to him relatively easily in the darkest hours after the rest of the villa and ludus slept and then return before first light. Tara and Rosa took turns waiting at a locked window on the lower floor to let her out and back in and Andrea made sure her bed looked occupied if anyone wanted to check. Carola felt guilty for involving them, but her need to be with Darolus outweighed it.
There with him in the sweet smelling hay she felt calmer than at any other time of the day or night. He soothed and enflamed her in equal parts. When she was with him she couldn't stop touching him, perhaps to make up for the fact that it was totally off limits to do so during the daylight hours.
Sometimes she watched him from the villa balcony above the training grounds, her heart in her throat as he fell off the giant of a horse... but he always got back on. Her love was no quitter.
"You hurt yourself again today." she said, pulling aside the blanket he'd placed over and under them so she could see his bare thigh.
"Just a scratch." he reassured her, "Only needed a few rows of Medicus' sewing needle."
She placed her small hand over it, felt the heat of a healing wound under the bandage and worried it would fester. She had seen people die from such things.
"It must be cleaned and changed regularly. Did he use a honey poultice? That will draw out the ill humors that sicken the flesh." she told him gravely.
"Yes, my lady Medicus." he grinned. He loved that she liked taking care of him so much.
Carola leaned over him and pressed her lips to the top of the bandage in a protective kiss. Her russet curls brushed over his upper leg and groin, tickling his cock into starting to rise. He shifted his hips and gave a little groan and she raised her eyes to his, in the process coming almost face to face with his burgeoning anatomy. She watched, fascinated, laying her cheek against his thigh, all that soft hair spilling over and around him. When she licked her pouting pink lips, already swollen from their kisses, he decided she was trying to kill him.
"What does that feel like?" she asked. "What it does that—when you do that?"
"Feels good... unless it happens at wrong time, then it can feel embarrassing or shameful." he told her honestly, "Sometimes it has a mind of its own..." and then he said with regret, "It can rise for lust as well as love..."
"And when I'm not here? If you... if it does? Do you take it in hand?" she asked him, curious.
"When I thought you were lost to me..." he began, his voice sorrowful, the memory of that night in the baths closing his throat with fear for how she'd react to such a confession.
"But I'm not. I'm here now." she said gently, turning her face to press a kiss to the place she'd been resting her head, nuzzling in, licking up to the crease where thigh turned to hip.
"Sweetling, do you know what you're—" and then he felt her slightly chilly little nose press against the soft skin of his testicles and his abs went rigid with a swift inhalation of breath. When she kissed and sucked at them as she gently rolled them in her soft hand he was afraid he was going to come right there and then. His rigid cock slapped against his belly as if begging for relief and he moaned, loudly, wrapping one hand tightly around it to try to slow his response.
"Take me in your mouth... please..." he begged, his fingers petting her hair, cupping the back of her head, urging her on.
Carola looked up at him and her eyes darkened with sexual power. She'd wanted to taste him since he'd first worshiped her in this way. She kissed her way to the underside of his shaft, running her tongue over the meandering prominent vein that began at its root.
On this part of his body, his hot skin was as soft as a babe's, its taste spicy salty sweet from the remnants of his herbed oil rub down and soak in the ludus baths, his scent clean and very male.
She smiled at the grunt he made when she reached the place on the underside just before the swollen curve of the head and flicked it just as he always used his tongue on her. She felt his hips jerk up when she licked the pearl of warm fluid from the tip and his fingers tighten on her curls when she pressed an openmouthed kiss there and then engulfed the head.
Since Tara had been such a well of information about how to please him before, she had gone back to her and peppered her with questions on the proper technique for doing this. Overhearing them, Andrea and Rosa had joined in the discussion, lending their expertise as well. Their knowledge and her lack thereof showed the difference in the lives led by a slave and a Roman maiden.
All three of the slaves had been initiated into sexual practices by their masters as girls. At thirteen, Andrea's maidenhood had been sold to the highest bidder at a party and she was used by him and his friends until Carola's mother had seen her at a friend's home. The young servitor was thin, with lifeless eyes and lank blonde hair. After hearing her hostess complain that the girl was useless as a house slave after her son had finished with her and was to be sent to the copper mines the next day, she'd told the woman that she needed a quiet girl to serve as body slave to her young daughter and been gifted with Andrea.
Tara had been a bit more fortunate. Her first mistress had been a lover of women and had trained her to please her and her friends at the regular orgiastic rites of Ishtar, a foreign fertility goddess she worshipped. She also learned techniques to please male worshippers when called on to do so and had been quite popular at the religious gatherings. When her mistress died in childbirth her husband couldn't stand to be around anything or anyone who reminded him of his wife and sold off all of her slaves. In the market for a second body slave after Regulus' ludus had a particularly good year in the arena, Deanna had liked Tara's sense of humor and had offered for her.
Rosa had grown up in the House of Monroviatus, daughter of the previous Doctore and Deanna's first body slave, and had been raised alongside the two pampered sons of the household, all of them playing together as small children until the boys were sent away to boarding school when they were eight and nine and she was six. Her sexual initiation had been with the boys when they returned seven years later as teens, arrogant in the knowledge that as a slave she had to do whatever they told her. When she tried to fight back, they took what they wanted anyway.
Legally it wasn't considered rape; she was their property, but her father went to the Dominus and asked for restitution and protection for his child. Full of regret because he was fond of Rosa and her parents, Regulus bought his sons commissions in the Legion, which they had been clamoring for but their mother resisting, and they left soon thereafter, returning only just before the city fire that claimed their lives. By then Rosa's parents had both passed away and she had taken her mother's place as Domina's body slave.
Of course Carola knew none of this, only that these young women had things to teach her that would let her bring pleasures to Darolus in the ways he deserved from her. Her sexual initiation was not one filled with brutality and pain; it had been gentle and passionate with a man who loved her. All of them felt protective of her, not just because it was their duty to do so, but because she treated them like human beings, like friends. They wanted her to be happy and to have what they had not, a chance at happiness with the person she loved.
"You need to get him as wet as you can to ease his way." Tara advised, picking up one of the leather phalli she'd brought to the discussion and using it to point at Carola. "Use your own mouth waters or the oil..."
"They key is to stay relaxed, your jaw, your throat... especially if he's well endowed." Rosa said, waggling her eyebrows, "Which he most definitely is."
Carola frowned, wondering how she knew anything about Darolus' size, feeling her jealousy spike.
"Oh sweetling, I'm sorry but he's a gladiator in training." Rosa said when she saw Carola's face, gesturing at Tara. "We've both seen it. They're all paraded before potential buyers and guests without a stitch—sometimes even... they perform..."
When Carola looked confused Tara held the strap-on to her own mound and mimed a man pleasuring himself.
"Wh-Why? Why would they do...that?" Carola squeaked, pointing at the phallus Tara held.
"You have never accompanied father to slave market. They have no choice. Buyers wish to make sure equipment works before they lay down coin."Andrea said dryly, her jaw tight. "That is how one makes best purchase of a beast, is it not? Check for soundness in performance?"
Carola shook her head in disbelief and a look of sadness and then dawning understanding passed over her face. She reached out to put her hands on Tara and Rosa and then took Andrea's hand in hers and raised it to her lips to kiss it, tears filling her eyes.
"Humblest apologies." she said quietly, "I have been terribly cruel to you all to not realize you had no choice but to learn these things... to do them with..."
"You ask for love's sake." Andrea stopped her, pulling her in to a hug. "That makes all difference."
"To be giver of pleasures to a kind man such as yours is what we can all hope for." Rosa said reassuringly, her voice a bit wistful.
"Speak for self," Tara pouted, sticking out her tongue in a very rude gesture, "Some prefer landica to cock."
Andrea released Carola and glared at Tara, but she had lightened the mood enough that they could return to helping their mistress in her quest to pleasure her man.
"Futuo, Carol!" Darolus cried out as she took him even deeper, more than halfway. Her hot sucking wet heat felt so fucking fantastic that he had to stop himself from overwhelming her, pulling her back as she whimpered and choked at the effort she was making to take him all in.
"I can do it!" she protested, her reddened swollen lips pouting as she reached for him, "I just have to breathe through my nose and relax my throat more."
"Sweetling, stop." Darol said, taking hold of her upper arms and pulling her up to rest her breasts on his chest. "I love that you want to do this for me, but I'm... well, I'm a lot of man and you're new to all this."
"I have left you wanting." she said miserably, "You didn't reach your peak. I was supposed to take you into my throat and swallow around you..."
Darol made a choking sound. In his experience that was a technique that only the best trained most experienced sex slaves mastered. He would have to have a word with Tara about just exactly what she was thinking with such instruction.
"If you want to pleasure me with luscious mouth, may I show you what I like?" he said gently.
She looked mutinous, but after a few beats nodded her head up and down. He kissed her lingeringly and then set her away from him and sat up so she could watch.
"One hand cradles," he said, reaching down and cupping his balls in one hand, "the other strokes," he fisted his shaft, pulling up and over the head a few times, bring him back to full erection, giving a ragged sigh of pleasure. "If you take me in sweet mouth to here," he lowered his fist an inch or two below the head, "and stroke and fondle with hands..." he closed his eyes and let his head fall back from the erotic sensations he was creating.
He heard the rustle of the dried grasses as she moved closer. Her lips skimmed his lower hand in a light kiss and he released his hold on his sac to let her take it over. She did the same to his other hand and then wrapped her smaller hand around him, enclosing as much as she could. Raining kisses first on the taut soft skin, she then slowly licked all around the tip.
"That's so good, what you're doing..." he praised her and her eyes rose to his, slitted and glittering with desire, "So good..." and then her swirling heat enclosed him again.
She kept on, moving her head up and down in concert with her hand on his shaft. He couldn't help but start moving his hips in response, holding back the need to plunge deeper. He cupped the side of her face in one hand and held her hair back out of the way with the other so he could watch her pleasure him with such passionate determination.
Gods she was beautiful.
The tingle started at the base of his balls as they tightened, starting to rise as she continued to suckle and stroke, he was getting close, his chest heaving, abs flexing, dancing on the edge of bliss.
"You should...I'm going to..." he warned, but she just closed her eyes and hummed, the vibration taking him over the edge, crying out and flooding her sweet mouth with his seed, feeling her working to suck and swallow with each pulse of his cock as he babbled out her name along with words of love and nonsense.
Carola nuzzled in, laying the side of her head on his hip, feeling the way he still throbbed in her hands and against her tongue, his breathing erratic as he came back down from the height of pleasure. His hand still cupped the back of her head, his fingers sifting gently through her curls. When he came back to himself he urged her back up onto his chest so he could hold her, wanting to kiss her and look into her eyes to make sure she was all right with what she had done.
"Gratitude." she said softly, her eyes smiling a soft blue.
"It is I who should give you gratitude, dearest one." Darolus smiled, holding her chin and lightly brushing it with his thumb.
"You protect me, even in this." she more earnestly than he expected, her face reflecting the sadness she had felt earlier when talking to the three slave women, "I have learned that most men do not do so. They take what they want without care for how much pain they cause the one they use."
"I would rather die than hurt you." he said, the love in his voice making her heart ache.
"I know." she said, raising her hand to cup his cheek and look deeply into his eyes. "I love you."
"I know." he grinned, a dimple appearing in his cheek under her hand as his chin jutted out a bit arrogantly, teasing her.
"You are a wicked, wicked man!" she said haughtily, pushing him back into their bed of hay and reaching for her gown, "Hour grows late...cock crows soon with dawn."
"Stay sweetling—my cock crows sooner..." he growled seductively, growing hard again already. It was always like this between them. The first time he came it would take the edge off, but he had to have her at least twice each night, so lusty was his desire for her.
Carola looked down at him and saw he was indeed rising to the occasion.
"Perhaps I could tarry a bit longer..."
"Longer, did you say?" he grinned and she giggled back, tossing her gown aside.
She was almost caught by the rising sun, barely making it back to the villa before her Aunt came to her chambers to call her to break the fast.
The sound of the trumpet at the gates announcing an arrival barely registered with Andrea chiding her on the danger she courted with the nightly forays the whole time she worked to comb all the bits of hay out of her mistress' curls while Carola just yawned and smiled a very satisfied smile.
Yes, they are riding high on their secret romance, but a new arrival will change everything, revealing hidden motives and bringing a dangerous new foe to the story...