with his thumbs and began to touch her lightly and softly with his tongue.
Cailin gasped with shock and surprise. Her first thought was to push him away. This was an invasion of such a deeply intimate nature such as she had never experienced. Yet there was a tenderness to it, and a sweetness that hypnotized her so thoroughly that she found she was unable to deny him his way with her. His tongue gently caressed her flesh, then began to tease at the tiny core of her very being. Cailin felt heat suffusing her entire body, yet she shivered. The little nub began to sharply tingle, the sensation growing in intensity until she thought she could simply bear no more, but for the life of her she could find no voice to beg him to stop.
She let the deliciousness take her, and she heard herself, as if from a distance, moaning with her own pleasure. Her limbs were heavy with a longing she had never experienced but did not find unpleasant in the least. The feeling was building even more with each passing moment, until finally an intense sweetness swept over her like a wave from the sea, and receded as quickly, leaving her weak, but most strangely satisfied. “Ahhhhh,” she exhaled breathily. Then quite unexpectedly, she began to cry softly.
Aspar pulled himself up and gathered the girl in his arms. He said nothing. He simply stroked those riotous little auburn curls, marveling at their softness as his fingers became tangled amid the silk of her lovely hair. She pressed herself against him as if seeking his protection, and he was overwhelmed by his own desire to keep her safe from all the cruelty of the world. No matter what had happened to her, Cailin was in her heart an innocent. He was not going to let her be hurt again.
Finally her sobs subsided and she said, “You received no pleasure, my lord, yet I did. How can this be? I did not know a woman could be pleasured in such a way.” She looked up at him, and he thought that her beautiful eyes resembled violets, wet with a spring rain.
“There is pleasure in just giving pleasure, Cailin; not perhaps as intense for me as when I am encased within you, but pleasure nonetheless. There are many ways of giving and receiving pleasure. We will explore them all. I will never intentionally do you harm, my little love,” he told her, stroking her cheek with a gentle finger.
“They say you are the most powerful man in the empire, my lord. Even more powerful than the emperor himself,” she said.
“Never say that aloud to anyone else, Cailin,” he warned her. “The powerful are jealous of their power, and would not share it. My survival depends upon remaining a good servant of the empire. It is really the empire I honor. God, and the empire. No man. But that, my little love, must remain our secret, eh?” He smiled at her.
“You are like the Romans of old, I think, my lord. You honor the new Rome, Byzantium, as they once honored the old Rome,” Cailin said.
“And what do you know of Rome?” he asked her, amused.
“I sat with my brothers and their tutor for many years,” Cailin said. “I learned the history of Rome and of my native Britain.”
“Can you read and write?” he questioned her, fascinated.
“In Latin,” she responded. “The history of my mother’s people, the Dobunni Celts, is an oral history, but I know it, my lord.”
“Jovian told me little of your background, Cailin. Your Latin is that of a cultured woman, if a bit provincial. Who were your people?”
“I descend from a tribune of the Drusus family who came to Britain with the emperor Claudius,” Cailin said, and then, as they lay together, she told him her family’s history.
“And your husband? Who was he? Also of a Romano-Briton family?”
“My husband was a Saxon,” Cailin said. “I married him after my family was murdered at the instigation of my cousin Quintus, who wanted my father’s lands. My cousin was unaware I had escaped the slaughter until I came with my husband, Wulf Ironfist, to reclaim what was rightfully mine. Wulf killed Quintus when he attempted to attack me. It was his wife, Antonia, who betrayed me, but you already know that part of my story, my lord.”
“It is amazing that you have survived it all,” Aspar said thoughtfully.
“Now you know everything about me. Zeno has told me that your