CW - a bit more NSFW at the Chapter beginning.
IXILLIUS DRESSED FAST, his internal clock letting him know Brasus would be arriving soon, and already knowing the day was going to be full. He noted, approvingly, that Alex had cleaned his knife prior to sheathing it and tying it back on her right thigh. She was sitting on the bed now, fully dressed and working at the knots in her hair with her fingers, still grinning and chuckling at having chased him from his own bed earlier.
He would need to buy her a comb.
He hadn't any defenses from her tickling without hurting her, so he'd strategically retreated to land with a hard thump on the floor, dragging most of the blanket with him. Which had then made his counterattack simpler, as her body had been laid bare to him and she was laughing too hard to move out of his grasp. Her hips fit in his hands perfectly, and his mouth had quickly turned her laughs to gasps.
The taste of his own seed within her body had been almost as satisfying as seeing it running down her legs before they'd gone to the baths. He hadn't allowed her to orgasm from his tongue this time, though he'd brought her close. That he had saved for when he claimed her, their pleasure peaking together as she again cried out for him.
He would have to thank Verus for that advice about a wise tongue, though. His Alexandria – his wife, he preened, she'd agreed and was now his wife – was very pleased with it.
With only the few difficult fastenings left undone on his armor, he knelt in front of her and pressed her legs apart. He kissed his way from her left knee to her stomach, lifting her tunic to taste the drying sweat on her skin. He wanted to bed her again, but that would have to wait. He checked to be sure that the ugly bruise over the break in her rib was no worse than last night to assure himself that no further damage had been done from her nightmare fighting and the more pleasant activities this morning. She was his wife now, even more his responsibility than as his slave and lover.
She stroked her fingers through his hair, smiling down at him.
"Is good," she told him as he pulled her clothes back into place.
"I must be sure," he replied.
She didn't seem to understand his words, but kissed him anyway.
"And once that rib is healed," he added, grinning slyly, once she released his mouth, "I promise that you will not send me from any bed where you lay."
Her incomprehension was frustrating this morning after having her speak so clearly last night. He would have to wake for her dreams again. He'd questioned her lightly as they were washing before dressing this morning, seeing if she knew she'd spoken to him as fluently as any born Roman. She hadn't, but she'd admitted that she was starting to remember speaking with her father's words as a young child, the words and phrases of Rome popping back into her mind along with the early life memories.
She'd also artfully dodged around using her father's true name again, but confirmed him as a citizen of Rome, which pleased Ixillius more than she knew, and could make the children born of this marriage legal citizens even if he didn't finish his twenty-five years of service. He was going to have to question more pointedly about her father later on, though, and learn what the man's social rank was. He assumed not very high, being as he had raised her to be the way she was, and knowing through Verus and Brasus how the high born were. He could see plainly that she was avoiding telling him about her father, especially since she'd been forthcoming with simple information about her mother, but he didn't yet know why she would be so. Hadn't she come here looking for her father? Having found the Legions, wouldn't it be wise to begin searching for him now that she was able?
Maybe she had decided she didn't want to look. Did he really want her starting to? The small voice in his mind pestered as she leaned forward and kissed him deeply, her legs straddling his waist and her arms around his neck, her hair falling around him and closing off the rest of the world.
What he did want was suddenly very simple. He wanted her lithe body strong and healed. He wanted her to speak his language so he could know her mind clearly. He wanted his children at her feet, born of her womb and fed from her breast. Would he still have that if her father was found? He kissed her back more forcibly, burying his hands in that cascade of autumn hair, deciding not to ask about her father until he had to. Hopefully well on in years from now when his claim could not be challenged by even the most powerful of men. When his children were grown, and he was old.
***
Brasus arrived carrying breakfast and news that would have put Ixillius off his had he not been so hungry. Minerva's 1st would be gathering in entire at the ninth hour of the morning to witness the punishment of Valerius and his friends. Brasus had met with the messenger intended for Ixillius and brought the news in person, sending the boy quickly on to his next reportee. Listening to Brasus list the other offenses that had been committed up to and including yesterday morning, Ixillius ate mechanically.
Alex wolfed down everything left on the plate, thankfully spared from any understanding of the morning's conversation.
"Busy night?" Brasus asked, voice innocent, eyes hovering at her neck where the collar should have been. "I'd have thought your late return would leave the Lady too tired to take interest."
"My Lady has many virtues," Ixillius replied with a smile matching his Optio's exactly. "One of which is finding all kinds of trouble whenever she leaves this room," he added with a frown.
"So there's a truth behind the rumors passing through Bonna as quickly as fire this morning?" Brasus asked, suddenly keenly interested.
"Possibly more than one. What have you heard already?" Ixillius stood in preparation to leave, stopping for Alex as she reached over and began tightening the last fastenings on his armor.
At that moment, Verus and his Guard Commander entered without knocking.
"I had the pleasure of half a breakfast with Quintus Abelardus today," Verus interrupted, closing the door and clearing the plates off the table while motioning his Guard Commander to lay his burden of paper and stenciling charcoal in their place. "And during my typical morning rant he reminded me of a splendid trick of your Lady's, if I may borrow her for a moment?"
"We were actually just discussing her," Ixillius answered, unsurprised at his old commander's sudden appearance after the letter describing the events of last night.
Verus scanned over his previous Optio and Alex, a mocking frown pulling at his brows.
"There was a time when I would have caught you washing just now."
"I learned quickly to always be just washing the day after interesting events," Ixillius grinned. "You listened better, sir."
Verus barked out a laugh.
"As your Lady's hands are currently busy, and that is what I need of her, please continue speaking of her," Verus replied, settling onto the vacant stool.
"Well," Brasus cleared his throat, "the details I'll now leave out, sirs, but the rumors have said that last night Lady Traversi appeared at will from only shadow, called a sword to hand from thin air, calmed a stallion bred from the gods' own stock, was attended on by the First File Celsus Calix," he nodded to Verus, whose eyebrows were still peaked at the use of 'Lady Traversi', "using just her familiar name as reference, could command said godly beast – the stallion, not Celsus Calix – to battle with the language of Olympia spoken from her own mouth, and then she seduced him – the First File, not the stallion – into a private attendance from which his Optio then escorted her return to you. This morning, your Lady did sprint half naked without a whit of notice to the cold, at times turning into a kite to fly with the lame bird she uses to pass messages to Him We Don't Name, attended by the Legionnaire whose soul she owns after the 1st and 1st slaughtered him at the baths and she returned him to life unscarred." Brasus paused, and then added to Ixillius, "you, my poor man, are now a dupe whose mind and heart are lost to an Underworld's born nymph, and you'll soon be the sorry fool at the center of a cautionary tale against rescuing strange maidens from holes in the ground."
Ixillius raised a single eyebrow at his friend in reply as Alex methodically checked all of his fastenings. Verus watched Alex impatiently.
"I may have exaggerated that last bit," Brasus adding, grinning widely.
"So, how many truths are in the tales?"
"Many, actually, most merely exaggerated," Verus replied, seeing that Alex had finished her task. "Now, dear one," he held out a hand to her and pulled her attention to himself, setting the charcoal in front of her. "You said that Mark owns Max?"
***
"Nunc ipsum, carus una," Verus said, using the same pet name he'd given her last night to get her attention. "Vos dicere Mark proprius Max?"
She nodded in reply, not touching the stenciling charcoal.
"Mark proprius Max," she agreed.
"Delineare Mark," Verus held up the charcoal and tapped the paper. "Mark, carus una. Delineare Mark."
Alex stared hard at Verus. She knew what he was asking, it was very clear. But if she did the sketch for him, he would leave – most likely taking Ixillius – and they would find Mark and probably kill him for training Big Man Max as he had. She wouldn't have a chance to talk to him and find out if he knew anything about controlling the jumps through time that had sent her gigno to her time and brought her back to his. She had to talk to Mark. As much as she wanted to wash her hands of all of it and just stay here in this now as Ixillius's wife, to see if maybe one day she could even love him as completely as he claimed for her, she needed to know what, if anything, the horse trainer knew about jumping between times.
"Non," she finally, quietly, replied, pulling her hands off the table and setting them in her lap.
From the expressions on everyone's face that she could see, it wasn't something anyone in the room was expecting her to say. Ixillius's hand clamped firmly on the back of her neck.
"Alex, delineare Mark," Ixillius urged, his voice soft.
"Non," she turned to Ixillius and hooked a finger into one of the fastenings at his side, looking up at him imploringly. "Alex dicere Mark," she said, then corrected, "Ego dicere Mark." I speak to Mark.
The flash of jealousy was unmistakable and his hand tightened slightly on her neck.
"Carus una," Verus spoke low, his temper kept well in check, holding the charcoal in front of her face when she turned back. "Delineare Mark."
The words she needed hovered just out of her mind, the memories sliding away before she could catch them. Verus was easily one of the most intense people she had ever met, and holding his entire focus should have been unnerving, she could feel that. It would have been unnerving at any other time. But right now she needed to know whatever Mark knew, and if she did this drawing she would lose that chance.
"Non," Alex repeated.
The man Verus had come in the room with backed up a step. Alex reached out a hand and pressed her fingers to the officer's cheek, holding his piercing green gaze.
"Verus, Ego dicere Mark." His jaw hardened under her hand so she turned back to Ixillius. "Ego, luna," she lied smoothly, walking her fingers around on the table. "Ego, luna," she held up her hands as a cup, the same shape as the pit at the village. "Luna, luna, non Mark," she said, using the same reference of a month passing that she had earlier this morning. "Mark et Alex? Non Mark et non Alex."
She made a quick hand gesture that could only be sex without any feelings attached which made Brasus hide a grin. Ixillius was frowning at her, but she could see inside his head the wheels were turning quickly.
"Nunc," she said, putting both hands on top of the paper on the table as if she was praying. "Cras, luna, luna, luna," she chopped her right hand across the table with each word. "Heri, luna, luna, luna," this time, she chopped her left hand across the table. "Mark et Alex, heri, luna, luna, luna, luna, luna, luna," she held up six fingers, one for each month since she and Mark had last had sex. "Nunc, Mark et Max, Bonna?" she asked, turning her voice incredulous. "Non," she stated firmly. "Mark non. Mark male. Ego dicere Mark."
***
Ixillius thought he'd caught most of what she was trying to tell them. She was determined to talk to her casual man, that was certain. She'd stressed a month's travel, and a month at the village with the pit where he'd found her, but six months of time passing since the last time the man had sexed her. She questioned this Mark now turning up in Bonna. Mark is bad. I speak to Mark.
His thoughts flashed back to what she had told him last night, that Mark and Jeremy were holding her legs, keeping her under the water. They are bad men, she'd told him. She had named Jeremy this morning as the husband that had left her for being barren, and this Mark was her casual man. Both bad men, holding her under the water.
"What did she tell you?" Verus asked.
Ixillius considered for a moment before answering.
"That it's been too much time passed for Mark to be here for her, she doesn't trust him, and she wants to find out for herself what's going on that he and Max would come here, now."
Verus glared at her. This was not the way he had intended for the morning to play out. First the verdict had come down on his idiot of a half-brother, which he would now have to write their father about, and just this moment he was defied by a woman. A slave woman. Not even his slave woman. And he didn't even have a useful argument as he was starting to think that she may be right in going, that this Mark may well tell her things in trust that he wouldn't talk to Verus about, especially with Ixillius glowering down at him. And Verus didn't have time to properly torture the man to verify anything that was said as they were to march out in two days. Her way might work better. By all his lines of thinking, it most likely would work better.
"I'm very cross with you," he said once he'd reached his conclusions. "Mostly because I'm beginning to believe you may be right and I hate losing an argument. I don't even have a closing remark to give insult as I'm increasingly impressed with you, to best me with so few words, which vexes me more than you know." He finally broke from staring at Alex and turned to Ixillius. "She cannot be intimidated at all, can she?"
"The rumors do say she tames horses born of the gods own stock, sir. Us men are of little challenge," Ixillius replied, doing a very bad job of attempting to hold back a grin.
It didn't happen often that Verus was bested in an argument, and each of the three times he had now seen it happen had seemed immediately funny. Even when bested, you would think Verus had won.
"Bring her to the execution this morning," Verus ordered. "We will go to the dens right after and scout for this Mark fellow so I can clear up any," he paused, considering the right wording, "ownership issues regarding my new stallion."