Afterward he turned his back. He wanted to die.

“Well, I do believe we’re home.” Lepida pulled her red stola around her naked body and slipped down out of the litter. “Coming, Paulinus?”

“Don’t,” he said dully. “Don’t.”

“Coming?”

He looked at her. Her cheeks were flushed pink, her eyes sparkling, her milky throat rising out of the torn stola like a flower stem. She grinned, tongue flickering over her lips, and he felt a dull ache on his shoulder where she had left bite marks.

“Yes.” The word was as heavy as lead in his mouth. “I’m coming.”

He followed her into the house like a dog.

Eleven

THERE was a boat, Paulinus knew, that carried the souls of the dead to the underworld. A dark boat rowed by a grinning, skull-faced ferryman. Paulinus’s own boat was a bed, white and airy and beautiful as a cloud, and the lovely black-haired girl who stroked the oars in it was carrying him to hell faster than any skeletal ferryman.

“You know how many men I’ve had?” Lepida rippled her back under Paulinus’s hands. “I started with a gladiator when I was fifteen, so I wouldn’t have to go to your father a virgin bride. I told your father the bruises came from falling down the bathhouse steps, and he believed me. What a fool!”

“Don’t say that,” Paulinus muttered. “He’s not a fool. He’s brilliant—and he’s honorable—and he’s everything I’ve ever wanted to be, so don’t—”

“You want to be an ugly hunchback?”

“Don’t insult him.” Paulinus was shaking. “Don’t you dare—”

“Oh, the dutiful son rears his ugly head. Well, dutiful son, if you love your father that much, then get out of my bed.”

She was sprawled on her side, the sheets pushed down around her hips, her hair half-covering and half-revealing her breasts, her mouth parted in a smile. He couldn’t move.

“I didn’t think so.” She slid down onto her back and crooked a finger at him. “Come.”

He came.

LEPIDA

I could make Paulinus come to me just by twitching an eyebrow. I could sink my nails into his back and watch him arch up in agony and ecstasy. I could bite him and caress him, and whether it was pleasure or pain he came back for more. Paulinus the immaculate, the good; Paulinus the soldier, the saint; Paulinus my stepson: enmeshed and enslaved and utterly under my spell.

How wonderful.

What fun it was, making him dance to my tune. I made him brush my hair and oil my back, I made him run my errands and carry my parcels. I kept him waiting in uncomfortable places, summoned him and sent him away again, pouted when he shouted at me and giggled when he wept. I made a tryst with one of his friends at the Praetorian barracks and summoned Paulinus to catch us in the act, feeling his eyes behind the crack of the door hating me as I moaned and writhed under another man—and that night he still came crawling back. Who would have thought that men tortured by guilt could be so much fun?