Legate Neganus places his pawns on the board and begins to play. This is a rough one.
Warning: explicit sexual language; nonconsensual M/F and M/M sexual contact/torture. Discussion of rape. Minor character death.
Notes: Priapus: Roman god of sexual excess and good fortune; usually depicted in a state of erection.
Even though outnumbered ten to one, Darolus, Tyresius and Abram had tried to stop Neganus' soldiers from taking Carola and Andrea. It hadn't been a fair fight, the gladiators armed with only wooden practice swords, the ludus' lethal weaponry and protective armor locked up tight in the armory, and the Centurions were fully armored carrying sword and shield. Tyresius had been badly wounded with a sword strike to the bone on his bicep and the men holding Darol had to knock him unconscious before he stopped trying to get back to Carola.
She'd been taken to the bedroom of a large guest chamber in the east wing of the villa. She had no idea where Andrea or Darolus and his friends were. Guilt gripped her throat as she saw the agony on the Nubian gladiator's face as his life's blood gushed from his arm after the battle, the red headed Celt trying to staunch the flow, yelling for the Medicus. It was her fault that Tyresius had been hurt, that Darolus and Andrea had also been taken trying to save her.
She sat in a chair in the middle of the room feeling helpless, hopeless remembering the lustful gaze with which the Legate had swept them all when he finally had them captive. If men as strong and brave as Darolus couldn't stand against Neganus, what could she do? She brought her legs together tightly so she could feel the small silver knife Darol had given her on the beach. She wore it secreted against her inner thigh, in a sheath that was also a gift from him. Could she be strong enough to use it? To wound or kill someone or even take her own life to stop Neganus from using her against those she loved?
"What's so special about this one?" one of the two Centurions who had been left to guard her said to the other, looking Carola up and down with a predatory stare. She had no idea what had happened to her personal Custos who had been standing guard outside her chamber doors and feared the worst if they had tried to keep Neganus' soldiers from entering. Two more lives she was responsible for...
"Maiden daughter of a minor local House." the other one said, sounding bored.
"A maiden?" the first man's lips curled into a smile, "Looks ripe and juicy enough to be... plucked..." He sheathed his sword, set down his shield and then he reached down, cupped his balls, adjusted himself and took a step towards her.
"The Legate's to be plucked, not ours." the second one cautioned, halting the other in his tracks. "Besides, haven't you gotten your fill of pussy yet?"
"After it's been passed through guests and upper ranks first it's so used it's half dead." the first man griped, his eyes fixed on Carola, "Wouldn't you like something fresh for a change?"
Carola closed her eyes in horror. The Legate had allowed his entire Legion to use the slaves of the household? If they survived, would Tara and Rosa and perhaps now even Andrea ever be the same?
"It is death to defy Legate." the second said, shaking his head, "Remember Pontus. We may not have been there ourselves, but we are Legion of Blood."
The sound of the lock turning in the outer door of the suite of rooms made her guards stiffen. The one who had been making noise about raping her grabbed up his sword and shield and snapped to attention.
"You'll have your chance when he's done with her." the second guard said in a low voice.
"If she's still alive." the first grumbled and sighed.
Then both were as still and quiet as statues when Legatus Neganus strode into the room.
"Leave us." the Legate ordered.
The Centurions brought their sword hands to their chests and then thrust them out in salute before turning on their heels and leaving the room.
Neganus pulled up another chair and sat directly opposite from Carola. He frowned at her sympathetically and then reached down and carefully took her hands in his.
Carola didn't resist, but neither did she return the grip nor open her eyes.
"I am so glad we were able to rescue you from clutches of your kidnappers, my dear." he said with what sounded like complete sincerity. "We believe they intended to use you as a shield to breach House walls and then hold you for ransom, perhaps demand release of their brethren for your safe return."
The notion was so ridiculous that she huffed out a disbelieving breath. She knew that he was coming for her himself and that's why he'd been in the courtyard.
"Who knows what terrors you were spared at hands of such depraved beasts." he raised her hands to his lips and pressed a long kiss to her knuckles, "Those who love you would never forgive me if I allowed you to come to harm." then his lips moved to her inner wrist.
Carola tried to pull her hands from his, but his grip tightened.
"You need to be protected." he said, and she grimaced as she felt his tongue sweep out, running along the tender inner bend of her forearm to elbow.
"So soft... so sweet..." he murmured and then without warning he turned his head, nuzzling in to find her left breast, closing his mouth over the peak and sucking down on it through her gown with a groan.
"Stop!" Outraged, Carola twisted against him, trying to use her elbows to dislodge him, but he held her wrists in a painfully tight grip, pulling them apart so her chest was exposed to his indecent explorations. When she continued to fight him, arching away from him, he bit down on the swell of her breast where it was exposed at the V of her gown and she cried out in pain. He soothed the bite with his tongue, but then sucked down hard, deliberately leaving an angry red mark along with the imprint of his teeth on the fair skin of her visible cleavage.
"Did he mark you anywhere else? Your rough gladiator lover?" Neganus purred, licking his way up her neck to her jaw and then to her ear, "Did he do this?" he licked over the marks there that still remained from Edgelus' attack.
Carola made an inarticulate noise of outrage, turning her head away from his growing excitement.
"Does he make you scream when he bends you over and stems your tiny rose so hard you see stars while it is yet day?" he whispered harshly, his breathing quicker, sticking the tip of his tongue in her ear in a rude mimicry of the act he was describing.
Carola refused to answer, her revulsion at his words and actions making her skin crawl.
Neganus brought her wrists together so he could hold them in one of his large ones and grasped her chin to force her to look at him and then took her mouth in a punishing kiss.
"Did your Sagittarius lover Darolus mark your tender flesh and cause you any pain?" he asked again.
Knowing it was dangerous to let the Legate know anything about the truth of her relationship with Darol she bit her tongue and still didn't speak.
"Tell me the truth or I will have your maid killed." he threatened, his grip on her chin bruising, and she had no doubt he would carry through with the threat.
"He would never hurt me." she said softly, her eyes filled with angry defiant tears.
"I say this only to protect you, girl." Neganus said, relaxing and kissing her brow gently. "You are a daughter of a noble Roman House. He is a trained killer—a beast barely civilized—such men have loyalty only to their ludus brothers. You should not lie down with beasts."
His totally contradictory actions—lying about a false abduction plot, using her body like it belonged to him and physically hurting her—and then accusing the man who loved her of being a monster for doing the same was the behavior of a mad man. Was he truly insane? Or was he was doing it deliberately to keep her off balance; toying with her...
She looked up at him with wounded eyes.
"You think he loves you." he said, shaking his head at her pityingly. "I see I shall have to show you truth." And then he stood, pulling her up along with him.
The triclinium of the east wing was a large square room intended for guest banquets. It boasted fine colorful mosaics on the floor depicting all sorts of local fish, vegetables and other foods fit for a feast. At the Legate's order, it had been stripped of its table and chairs and furnished instead with Kline couches, piles of pillows and a variety of odd looking devices that Carola had never seen before. An altar to Priapus stood at one end of the room, heaped with offerings of gold trinkets and wineskins. A few dissipated looking people, some nude, some clothed, reclined on the couches and pillows at the edges of the room, a few drinking wine or engaged in a variety of sexual acts, but a central space had been cleared and most attention in the room was focused there.
Carola gave a little cry of remorse when she realized what they were looking at so avidly.
Aaronus had been strung up, his arms stretched to each side and bound by shackled wrists above his head, suspended from a horizontal bar attached to chains run through metal rings imbedded in the ceiling, his legs the same, secured to the floor by shackles around his ankles. His well-muscled nude body was gleaming with a thin coat of oil, his biceps bulging, and his jaw tensed against his gag as if he was silently trying to rip the chains from their moorings.
Next Darolus was led out, hands in shackles with about two feet of chain between them, his face showing stark evidence of a fight or a beating, probably both, both eyes blackened, nostrils dark with dried blood. His hands were raw looking, knuckles gashed and also covered with dried blood, evidence that he had fought back against whoever had done this to him. He wore only his breech clout and more bruising was apparent on his torso and back.
When he saw Carola he looked her up and down, zeroing in on her reddened tearful eyes, kiss swollen lips and the bruised and bitten curve of her breast. He gave her a look of anguish and fought against the iron hold of the Centurions on his biceps until one of them cuffed him in the head and he staggered sideways before being pushed to his knees.
The tableau arranged in front of them terrified and sickened Carola, wondering what depraved spectacle the madman had planned. She'd known trying to escape and failing could have consequences, but she'd stupidly hoped to be the only one to bear them.
"One thing I appreciate about the ludus." Neganus said jovially, walking over to leisurely inspect both men. "It brings men to their physical peak, doesn't it?" he looked up at Carola with a grin, hitting the 'p' in the word with a little pop of his lips as he tweaked one of Aaronus' nipples with a hard pinch.
She looked back at him with what she hoped was cool dignity.
"All that hard training, depravation, pain—just like soldiers in battle—makes them long for something good, to share pleasure." He continued, smoothing his hands over Aaronus' chest and shoulders, admiring the planes of hardened muscle. His hands slipped over Aaronus' upper arms, squeezing his biceps and making an approving sound before walking around behind him and running his hand down the line of his spine and caressing the rounded curve of his ass.
Aaronus stared straight ahead, his face impassive, but his eyes betrayed his guilt and misery.
"Do you want to know what happened when I fucked this one? My latest pretty purchase?" Neganus asked, his voice oily with implication, his hand curving up over Aaronus' hip and dipping around to spread his fingers over his abs, "After I had cock down throat and then so deep in tight little ass that he shot all over his hard belly? Go on, take a guess."
When neither Darolus nor Carola reacted to the taunts, Neganus motioned to one of the Centurions standing guard at each side of the room. The man was holding the club he called Lucilla, which he stepped forward and extended to the Legate, but Neganus seemed to change his mind and instead strode over to the doors and flung them open.
"Our audience is not yet complete." he said and Ezekias, Callicus, Deanna and Regulus were ushered through, looking confused as to why they'd been awoken in the middle of the night.
Deanna tried to go to Carola, but was stopped by the soldier holding her back.
"What is the meaning of this? This is my House, Legatus—" Ezekias said in outrage, taking a step forward.
"You get one interruption because you are our host, Nubian." Negan said, obviously displeased, "Do it again and my men will put one of your slaves to the sword each time it happens, starting with whichever you prize most—your Doctore, perhaps?"
Ezekias trembled in fury, his hands clenching, but had to look away, stepping back. He couldn't endanger his people further.
"Why is my daughter here? How was she injured?" Callicus asked, obviously afraid for Carola and incensed that she was being subjected to this orgiastic torture scene.
"I have only her best interests at heart. Her injuries are a result of the abuse she suffered at the hands of the gladiator who tried to kidnap her this evening." Neganus lied smoothly, pointing at Darol.
"That's not t—" Carola began indignantly, but the guard holding her tightened his grip on her arm and she felt the point of a blade against her side, silencing her.
"I don't believe you..." Callicus scoffed, gazing over at Darolus, his look saying that he knew very well that the young gladiator would die before he let any harm come to Carola. "Release her at once."
"Are you ordering me, old man?" Neganus asked, stalking closer to the new arrivals, his voice dripping with amused disdain, "I do not think you have the guts to go against a Legate of Rome."
"I demand her release this instant!" Callicus said, looking the Legate right in the eye and puffing out his chest, "This is not proper behavior! A guest/host bond is sacred—in the name of Jupiter Hospitalis I demand—" and then he just stopped, looking bewildered, staring down at the knife that the Legate had plunged directly into his abdomen and then looking back up into Neganus' eyes.
With an oily smile the Legate gave a powerful jerk sideways, slicing through both toga and flesh. The horrible ripe slithering sound of intestines flopping out and onto the floor was punctuated by Carola and Deanna's screams.
Clutching at his belly, blindly trying to push his insides back in, Callicus fell forward, dead.
"Apologies. He did have guts." Negan smiled thoughtfully, wiped his knife off on Callicus toga and then moved back to stand next to Aaronus, looking at him closely. He removed the gladiator's gag and raised the knife to place the point under the man's chin, "Now where was I?"
Carola sagged in her captor's hold, weeping. Darolus glared at Neganus in impotent fury. Regulus held Deanna, trying to comfort her. Everyone else stared in titillated fascination at the blood pooling all around Callicus unmoving body, bright red soaking into the white toga dying it crimson.
Two of the Centurions stepped forward to remove the body, but Neganus stopped them with a wave of his hand and a clipped command.
"Leave it."
The men obeyed, returning to their post.
Neganus looked all around the room with a big self-satisfied grin full of madness.
"I keep being interrupted when I am getting somewhere important in my tale!" he said, sounding annoyed. He looked back and forth between Carola and Darolus and then nodded his head as if he'd just reboarded his train of thought.
"Ah yes. That's it." he ran his free hand down the line of Aaronus' jaw. "This beautiful catamite took it all, everything I gave him, but when he reached release, did he say the name of the man who gave him such pleasure? My name? No. When he cried out in fucking ecstasy from my dick in him, my hand reaching around, he said another name! Can you believe that shit?"
Aaronus looked up at the ceiling, trying not to react to the insane specter of death beside him, but when he felt the sharp metal point of the knife pierce his skin he jerked his chin up.
Neganus swiftly took the other man's mouth in a brutal punishing kiss, biting lips and then thrusting in his tongue in a parody of penetration as his hand closed around the other man's cock, jerking him off, hard and brutal, still holding the knife to his throat with his other hand. When he broke the kiss blood dripped from the corner of Aaronus' mouth and from the knick in the skin of his throat, running down to pool in his collar bone.
"And if the name on these honeyed lips wasn't the name of his lord and master, the one who owned him, owned this mouth and this cock and this ass, what do you suppose it was?" Neganus said with a growl, "Tell us, slave!" he demanded, continuing to roughly but masterfully stroke up and down in a relentless rhythm, until helpless to fight it, Aaronus climaxed explosively and cried out a name in a despair of shame.
"Darolus."
"That's right. That name. His lover's name while they both trained at the ludus Monroviatus." Neganus' eyes, glittering with gleeful malice found Carola's. "Woe to she who thinks a slave's favors are for her alone."
Carola bit the inside of her lower lip, tasting the bright copper tang of her own blood. She would not give him the satisfaction of reacting to his taunting revelation.
"Watch closely my dear," Neganus purred to Carola, "This will prove most instructive."
He nodded to the Centurions holding Darolus and they forced him to his feet and dragged him forward until he stood before the Legate.
"You've missed your hard muscled lover, haven't you young gladiator?" he laughed, a low mocking chuckle and ran his free hand lingeringly over Darolus' pectorals and down over his abs until he reached the waist of his clout and slipped his hand under it. The humiliated gladiator's arms strained against his captors hold, trying to twist his body away from the Legate, but Neganus held fast to both Darolus and the knife. Only when Darol stopped struggling did the Legate remove his hand and release him, also sheathing his knife.
At a nod of Neganus' head the two Centurions holding Darolus' arms roughly pulled him forward until he was standing directly in front of Aaronus. He tried to fight them, but they cut off his breech-clout until he was nude as well.
"That's a pretty toy you have between your thighs, Sagittarius." The Legate said, staring at Darol's length thoughtfully. "I imagine you've been trained to use it well?"
Darolus gave Neganus a death glare.
"I demand a demonstration! You're going to show us all how you use it to fuck him." Neganus ordered Darolus, his voice smooth and cold as ice, pointing at Aaronus.
Amidst the titillated murmurs that rose around the room, Darol heard Carola stifle a gasp, but he forced himself not to look at her.
Neganus nodded again and another of the soldiers lowered the bar holding Aaronus upright, forcing him to bend until his head was at hip level, his arms now stretched behind him.
Neganus came forward, grabbed Aaronus by the hips and drew the other man's ass back tight against his groin, mockingly pumping against it a few times to test the height before releasing him and stepping back.
"Perfect." He grinned in satisfaction, then frowned in annoyance when he looked to Darolus lack of erection. "Suck to harden first." He ordered Aaronus and then turned to Darolus with a narrow eyed look.
"Let us witness why he craves your cock above his Dominus'."
Breathing heavily Darolus stared at the ground, his hands fisted, refusing to act.
Neganus moved to his side, grabbing Darolus' hair and pulling his head back painfully, and then he leaned in, his mouth touching Darolus' ear, speaking for him alone, whisper soft, "Refuse me, boy, and I will kill him and then let you watch while hang her up here next for the pleasure of all my Centurions and every other gladiator in this ludus."
Darol started shaking.
Neganus released his hold and stepped back.
Darolus met his eyes and saw the truth in them. This man cared not that Carola was a daughter of Rome, an innocent meant to be protected at all costs. She was a pawn; just as they all were, in whatever sick games he was pursuing. Neganus had all of the power while he, a slave, had none, only the ability to spare the ones he loved from as much pain as he could by taking it on himself.
"Keep eyes open, girl, and watch evidence of how little he truly cares for you." Neganus ordered Carola, moving to stand behind her, taking the Centurion's place, one big hand circling her neck at the nape, his other arm tightly around her chest, forcing her to watch. "Witness him betray your love as he did before."
Darolus' eyes shifted to Carola, in his shame trying to silently ask for her forgiveness. What he saw in her liquid blue eyes shook him to his core. Instead of the expected hurt and anger at his betrayal with Aaronus, he saw her fierce love for him shining there. Her tears flowed freely, her fear for him almost overwhelming, but she bravely raised her chin and then gave him the tiniest of nods, granting the permission and forgiveness he knew he didn't deserve.
Darol tried to clear his mind, knowing that if he couldn't perform he would get them all killed. He looked down at Aaronus; saw the same humiliated rage he felt reflected in his friend's eyes.
"Apologies." Darolus said softly and swallowed hard, wrapping one hand around his shaft and lifting the other to cradle Aaronus' stubble roughened jaw, rubbing his thumb gently against the man's full lower lip.
Aaronus' eyes softened and his lips curled down in remorse. Then he nodded and opened his mouth.
So yes, Neganus is a sociopath who gets off on torturing people. As a Roman Legate, he has the status, power and wealth to do just about whatever the hell he wants to just about anyone, which is very true to the times. Ezekias and Callicus stood up to him and so he carries out his wildly uneven paybacks against them. He is also jealous as hell that Aaronus prefers Darolus to him and wants to punish him for it, which means destroying Carola's love for Darol. It all makes sense in his twisted brain.
It gets better after this! I promise!