this is real. Maybe I want to find out if I can feel the same for him. He was a madman and a murderer, but to be fair—so was everyone who had ever ruled Rome. All the way back through history, even before the coming of the Dominions, every emperor or consul of the city had been either insane or violent. He just happened to be both.
She didn’t love him. It’d been two days. But she could try. She…wanted to try. “I need time.”
“I’ll give you as much as you could ever want. I’m just going to keep kissing you every chance I can get. I’m going to keep trying to get you to spread those pretty legs for me so I can bury myself in that—”
She went to slap him, but he dodged. “Hah! Swing and a miss.” He cackled in laughter.
She pushed him. It caught him off guard, and he slipped on the tile, falling into the water. He sputtered. He probably let her push him, but it made her feel triumphant all the same.
He didn’t come back up. “Nero?”
She felt danger the moment before he hit. The movement of the water beneath the surface was her only warning. She shrieked as he shot up, taking her with him, and suddenly she was airborne again. The world tipped upside down as she splashed back into the pool. She came up sputtering and laughing.
Or at least, she laughed as much as she was able before he caught her in his arms and silenced her with a kiss. There was so much passion in it—so much emotion, that she felt something in her heart hitch.
The embrace sparked a heat in her that was as dangerous as it was exciting. When he broke off, he feathered kisses along her cheek until he reached her ear. When he took the lobe into his mouth and grazed it with his teeth, she gasped and pressed her hands against his chest. Whether she was pushing him away or trying to pull him closer, she didn’t know.
He hummed low in his throat and broke away from her. “You don’t have to fight what you want, you know.”
“It’s wrong.”
“Psh. Have we met? I’m the human embodiment of wrong desires.” He chuckled and then left her. She felt him swim away from her a bit, kicking up waves as he did. “It’s my trade, my livelihood, and my hobby.” He was some feet away from her now, probably floating on his back, by the sound of it. “You can have anything you want. You just need to decide what that is.”
“It’s not something I’m used to.”
“I’ll ease you into the water, that’s all. I—” He paused. She blinked as she heard nails scrabbling on tile. What on Earth? “Oh, no. No! No, stay—sit! Stay! Brutus, Cassius, sit!”
She froze as the scrabbling nails got closer. Whatever they were, they were big, and fast, and were not listening to Nero. She shrieked as an enormous splash of water hit near her, then a second.
Something was in the water next to her. Two big somethings. Two big, wet, long-limbed somethings.
She panicked and swam away, heading for the stairs. Nero was laughing and was clearly going to be no help to her at all. Whatever they were, they were chasing her. She hit the stairs, and one of the large creatures knocked her over, then a giant head was at her face, licking her.
“Bwoof!” A deep-chested woof of a dog came from the other giant creature. They were dogs. Very big. Very excited dogs.
Nero was laughing in hysterics. He wasn’t going to be any help at all.
She sat up, and both dogs were licking her face now. “Stop it—knock it off—” She pushed the animals away but found herself laughing. “You could have warned me, Nero.”
“You’re not the only one I live with who likes to swim. Meet Brutus and Cassius. I bought them to be guard dogs. Sadly, they’re harmless.”
One of them lay down on the tile next to her and draped his large, heavy, soggy head in her lap. She began petting them both, and now that they were getting attention, they were much calmer. The one to her right sat and panted happily.
“They’re huge,” she chuckled. “Are you sure they aren’t horses?”
“They’re a breed I bought from Hugo. Great Danes. I thought that because they were big, they’d be scary. Nope. Lazy fucks just hog my couches.”
She heard Nero climb the stairs next to her, water dripping off