Read Online For a Roman's Heart by Denise A. Agnew - Free Book Online

muscle didn’t stir Adrenia the way a mere glimpse of Terentius’s body could. “Don’t ask any more questions about slave girls or where they go after I’m through with them.”
    Some sprite inside her demanded an answer. She plunged headlong into the question. “Why?”
    He uncrossed his arms and leaned closer. His breath drifted across her face. “Because little girls who trespass where they aren’t wanted always come to a bad end.”
    The crazed glitter in his eyes sealed her next actions.
    She stood. “I have other work that needs to be done.”
    As a dismissal it should work well, but Sulla didn’t add up to an ordinary man.
    She started to walk around the side of the house when he captured her arm and turned her around. “Wait. We’re not finished here.”
    Before she could speak, he whirled her around and shoved her into the unforgiving wall. His big body pressed against her, and she instinctively pushed hard against his chest.
    “Let me go. What are you doing?”
    “I need a taste of the merchandise.”
    Panic surged up inside her. “No.”
    His mouth covered hers, and she tried jerking her head away. He grabbed her under the chin and forced her to keep still. His kiss was sloppy, wet, and he shoved his tongue inside her mouth. He tasted unpleasant, and she gagged. He pulled back, disgust written on his face. “You are inexperienced, but no one gags when a man kisses her.”
    “Maybe they do when you kiss them.”
    A vein in his forehead pulsed as his mouth twisted. He stepped back and landed a slap across her cheek. The force sent her head back into the wall. She groaned in pain and clasped the back of her head.
    His glare was heavy with contempt. “Bitch.”
    As he walked away she sank against the wall, trembling. When he disappeared from view, she covered her mouth and stifled a sob. Tears leaked from her eyes but she wiped them away and managed a gasping breath. She pondered whether to tell her parents when they returned, but knew deep in her heart they would blame her for what happened. She would stay quiet and make sure she kept her guard up when Sulla reappeared.
    Her mind raced from possibility to possibility. Her suspicions grew about the association between Sulla and her parents. Why had they taken Sulla into their limited circle of acquaintances? Where had her father met him? She closed her eyes and hoped for an answer. Sometimes, if she concentrated, a vision would come to her, or an intuition that proved accurate.
    Seconds later an answer came to her in screaming color. The young slave woman Sulla had bought lay spread eagle, her private parts open for all to see. Her eyes stared wide and vacant. Dead. She was dead. Her hair was matted with blood, bruises defined around her neck. Naked, Sulla leaned over her, ready to slake his lust on her dead body.
    Adrenia’s eyes popped open as she gasped in horror. She moaned. Adrenia clasped her hands to her stomach to ward off nausea.
    Please, goddess Coventina. Please make what I saw untrue. For if what she saw had come to light, the poor slave girl had suffered a horrible fate and her parents associated with a most heinous individual.
     
    “Pella, I must return the soldier’s cloak. Surely he needs it. Winter comes early.” Adrenia smiled as they came to a stop in the market area that had grown along the outskirts of the fort for decades.
    And I want to see him.
    While she’d weaved, Adrenia had found her thoughts returning again and again to the tall centurion and the excitement that moved in her blood whenever she recalled the day she’d first met him.
    People milled all around them, taking advantage of the sun high in the sky, and the warmth that had driven away frost. Clouds still gathered in the sky, a heralding of colder weather.
    Pella gazed upward at the giant wooden fortress gates. Adrenia wondered if maybe they’d lost their minds. After all, the soldiers at the gates might not even let her inside.
    Adrenia glanced around,