Fists of Iron: Barbarian of Rome Chronicles Volume Two Read Online Free

The bed-chamber smelt strongly of jasmine, and sex.
    Flavia kicked hard at the black rump perched on the edge of her wide bed. The slave landed awkwardly on the marble floor. The large Nubian slowly got to his feet. Flavia took in the slave’s sheer size – the wide shoulders tapering to a narrow waste, arms thickly muscled. Her gaze traced its way down to the dark member that still glistened in the gloom, wet from his seed and her juices.
    “Go,” she commanded, “I have no need of you…for the present. I may summon you later. And, remember to wash yourself as instructed, or I’ll have that weapon cut away and fed to the dogs,” she added spitefully. She recalled the first time she had used the Nubian; how he’d smelt like an animal during the heat of their coupling. Afterwards, she’d put him under the lash as well as the house slaves’ supervisor. People rarely made the same mistake a second time when she’d been displeased.
    She rose and stepped lightly from the bed. Using a nearby bowl she washed her private parts with fresh water tinged with the scent of violets. Her figure was slender, her skin pale. Coated with a fine film of sweat from her exertions, she wiped first her face and neck from a separate bowl with a silk cloth from the east, followed by the rest of her body.
    As she cleansed herself her mind turned to her departure on the morrow; when she would sail from Ostia to Pompeii, and her husband to be. When her father informed her of his plans for her to marry, she’d cringed at the thought of the noble Gaius touching her flesh. He was a man over twice her age and older than her father. But, she’d known that her father would brook no argument. After, when she’d learned of the widowed Gaius’s great wealth and authority she viewed her fate in a far more positive light. She’d managed to fuck every remotely desirable servant and slave on her father’s estate without him finding out, and her new husband would be no different. Her mother had suspected, as women do, but she’d dealt with her and the threat she’d posed in relation to exposing her excesses. She’d slowly poisoned the bitch’s wine during the previous long, cloying summer.
    Her father had paid Rome’s best physicians to tend the Domina of House Inciatus, but they had failed to diagnose the malady, and the poison continued to do its slow and painful work. Flavia had been given the very best advice from a most trusted source regarding the choice of poison – one that was easy to administer and that had neither scent nor taste. She’d felt no pity as she watched the flesh drop from her bones, as her eyes shrank to hollow pits in her face, her yellowed skin hanging loose like old rags; just a feeling of relief when she finally succumbed. The breathing corpse had simply revolted her.
    Killing her own mother had caused her no angst; killing others was as traumatic as squashing a fly.
    Thinking about her rich new husband she smiled, I have very specific plans for you, my dear Gaius…and for your only son.
    Ablutions complete, she stepped cat-like across the cool marble floor. Parting the filmy drapes she stepped out onto the balcony. She felt no cooler, the night air clammy, thick, with a myriad smells that seeped up from the sleeping city – the Tiber’s watery aroma tainted with the stench of humanity from the sprawl of tenements that threaded between the seven hills.
    But the view was breathtaking.
    Flavia’s eyes travelled to where the dark outline of the templed island in the Tiber was joined to the mainland by two bridges, before moving across the city, taking in the spectral outline of the Imperial Forum, its soaring porticoes housing the beautiful Temple of Venus; her personal Goddess. Magnificent in the night sky was the massive edifice that was the Circus Maximus, nearly filling the entire space between the Palatine and Aventine hills. Flavia felt her heart beat faster, recalling her excitement as one of a hundred and