The banquet was all bright lights and bright gowns, loud voices and louder music. Hired dancers and acrobats, a blur to his eyes. Roast flamingo and dormice rolled in honeyed poppy seeds; all ashes in his mouth. Lepida shared his dining couch, laughing and flirting and talking with everyone except him. But under cover of her stola, under cover of her conversation, her foot caressed his.

“Senator, how delightful! Do show me—” She reached across Paulinus’s back to examine Senator Halco’s sapphire ring, and her breath whispered across his neck.

“Lady Cornelia, your hair! However did you manage those curls—” She turned over for a better look, and the tips of her breasts brushed his shoulder.

He remembered nothing about the banquet. Nothing but his father’s wife making love to him in a thousand tiny ways.

“A delightful party,” she enthused as they streamed out of the house with the other guests. Dawn lurked around the corner, but, she was still bright-eyed. “To think I thought Brundisium was going to be boring. I haven’t had so much fun in years.” Her fingers kneaded his arm.

He handed her up into the litter. She arranged the folds of her stola, allowing him a glimpse of bare white ankle, and he was helplessly certain that she wore nothing at all under the clinging silk.

She shot him a glance under black lashes. “You’ll take me home, of course.”

“I’ve got guard duty in two hours.”

“Skip it.”

“I can’t. My centurion—”

“You’d leave me alone in the small hours of the night, just to avoid a scolding from your centurion?” Blinking innocently. “Whatever would your father say?”

Father.

His father, bent and quiet and kind-eyed. Lepida may look lovely and worldly, but she’s still very young . . . watch over her for me.

Paulinus wanted to die.

“Climb in.” Lepida flung herself back against the cushions. “I’m getting cold.”

He climbed in.

She tapped the side of the litter. It swayed like a ship as the bearers rose and lurched out into the street. She twitched the green silk curtains shut, cutting off the light from the streetlamps and turning the litter into a dim shadowed box. Paulinus crammed himself into the far corner, blood pounding in his own ears.

“So silent, Paulinus.” Her voice had an even greater effect in the dark. “Too much wine?”

“No,” he managed. “Against the rules, before guard duty.”

“Do you always follow the rules?” Her sharp-nailed little hand found his wrist.

“Yes,” he clipped. “It’s safer.”

“Oh, but safe is so boring. Safe is so . . . safe.” Her painted mouth found his.

Her arms twined around his neck like snakes, and her teeth drew blood from his lip. But when he leaned in toward her she tugged back, teasing his lips with her tongue, working her belly against his. He kissed her with a stifled groan, ripping the silk away from her breasts with shaking fingers. She wrenched his tunic up, her legs twining around his hips as her musky scent twined through his brain, and as he fell into her he felt her smile.