The City War Read online

  It was better, he thought, when they were face to face. He might have less leverage that way but he could feel the warm press of Cassius’s cock against his stomach, the hot wet rush when he came, the scratch of fingernails along his shoulders. But sometimes this was good too, with Cassius warm and sleepy, willing, his slight movements all Brutus needed as he thrust between his thighs, feeling the head of his erection brush up against the soft skin of Cassius’s balls. Small wonder the Greeks loved this; there was no feeling quite like it in the world. He spread kisses over Cassius’s shoulders, and Cassius reached out to cover his hands where they were braced on the bed, fingers caressing his knuckles.

  He felt the low, tight curl of his orgasm building, the urgency of his thrusts grow more frantic. He bit down on Cassius’s shoulder, and when Cassius twisted a little and said, “Marcus,” he pulled back and pressed his cock to the swell of Cassius’s ass, coming all over his back. Cassius chuckled and stretched while Brutus panted through his release.

  “Ten stripes for insubordination,” Cassius said, shameless, amused.

  “Every time you make that joke and every time it’s still not funny,” Brutus chided, smacking him gently on the curve of one buttock. Cassius tightened the muscles there, propping himself up on his elbows and looking over his shoulder.

  “I took a napkin from the table.” Cassius nodded at his tunic and belt lying on the floor. “Do us both a favor and make me presentable.”

  “Nothing in the world could make you presentable,” Brutus replied, but he climbed off the bed and found the scrap of linen, wiping him down, a little reluctant to clear away the evidence of what they’d done. Well, he supposed the bluish bruise where he’d bitten him high on the shoulder would suffice.

  Cassius saw him staring and touched it with a smile. “We’re not fooling anyone,” he said, turning onto his back as Brutus slid into the blankets. Cassius rolled and curled up around him, legs twined with his, one arm on his chest, looking down into his face.

  “Perhaps not fooling, but at least not flaunting. We’re senators and patricians, Cassius. Powerful men.”

  “Mmm, so you are.”

  “And you.”

  Cassius twisted his smile a little. “Well, perhaps.”

  “Junia and Porcia don’t care, anyway, and Aristus wouldn’t smear my reputation.” Brutus traced the backs of his fingers down Cassius’s cheek.

  “But we have to be discreet.”

  “We are discreet. We’re here instead of at home in the city, aren’t we?”

  “The servants, though.”

  “You say this every time, and nothing ever comes of it. They’re servants, who would listen? Fuck them,” Brutus said, a little more vehemently than he’d intended.

  “I wonder if you’d like to.”

  Brutus turned to regard him more fully, a question on his face.

  “Your new horse-boy. Aristus implied he was offering more than his services as a groom. He’s handsome. Thinking of throwing me over?”

  “For a horse-boy?” Brutus laughed. “I think not. I felt bad for him, that’s all. His father fought in the civil war. For the other side,” he added, and nudged Cassius’s thigh with his knee.

  Cassius snorted. “You’d have thrown in with Caesar too, if you weren’t so damned ambitious.”

  There was something testing in his tone, some question there that Brutus couldn’t name. Different from their usual banter.

  He sighed. Cassius would come to it in his own time, he supposed. “It wasn’t ambition. I fought for Pompey because I thought he was best for Rome. So did you.”

  Cassius’s eyes were dark. “I fought for Pompey because you did, Marcus.”

  “That’s not true,” Brutus said, though he’d worried for some time that it was. “You know we’re responsible for the welfare of Rome.”

  “Maybe, but you can’t deny Caesar was more charismatic.”

  “But he was attacking Rome. I knew I’d have to defend her from him.”

  “Caesar likes you.”

  “And he’s Princeps, so I’ll follow him, because I’m better than he was.”

  “Yes, you are. If you spoke out more—”

  “I’m not interested in being Princeps, Cassius.” Brutus studied him. “Or in buying his mistrust when I’ve done nothing to earn it. You’re not as loyal to him as you could be, you know. Or you don’t come off as loyal as you could, anyway.”

  “I’m loyal to you,” Cassius said softly, settling down, voice vibrating against his shoulder. He sounded disappointed.

  “I don’t ask for loyalty.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  It was hard to tell, with Cassius, where speaking stopped and kissing began. He liked to talk into Brutus’s skin, into his mouth. The movements of his lips could sometimes be taken for whispered supplications, words Brutus couldn’t hear. Cassius spoke prayers into his body and he never knew what they were.

  Of course, that was the least of what Cassius could do, he thought as the scratch of the other man’s jaw rubbed the sensitive skin above his collarbone, distracting him.

  “We’ll talk more tomorrow,” Cassius said, body going lax against his.

  “Talk more about what?”

  “Nothing. I have to— Nothing we need to talk about tonight. Sleep now. Should I go?”

  “There’s no reason. Stay and keep me warm.”

  “Well, if the Senator insists.” Cassius’s eyes closed. Brutus watched for a few moments and then relaxed as well, drifting into sleep.

  Brutus woke earlier than Cassius the next morning—earlier than most of the household, as well. With the sun barely lighting the horizon, the air was still cool. The river that ran through the estate might be icy, but it still beckoned him out for a sunrise bath.

  He left Cassius snoring gently in his bed and slipped into his tunic, walking down the damp, packed-earth path to where a little statue of Lympha, the farmer’s goddess of fresh waters, watched over the river. He left a sweet cake from the previous night’s feast at her feet and passed on, down to the muddy bank of the river. He stripped down as he passed the stone outcrops overhanging the river on either side of the bank, preparing himself for the shock of cold water in the shallows.

  While he was bending to lay aside his clothing, he heard a giggle and a rustle; for a heartbeat he wondered if it could be the statue come to life, but then he caught a glimpse of flesh through the thick brush on the far side of the river. A young woman, round bottom still damp and gleaming in the sun, was running away from the river, clearly caught in an early morning bath. Probably one of the dancing girls eager to wash off the smell of sweat and rich food before going back to whatever rustic farm she’d come from. The Greeks had a word for that: callipygos, the lovely bum.

  Even as he watched, however, the figure slipped into a plain white tunic cut for a boy, stumbling away as she belted it around her hips. Perhaps she’d brought a lover to the river for an early morning tryst and taken his clothes by mistake in her haste to escape, but still, it was strange. And he saw no man on either side of the river.

  He forgot about the girl with the first rush of cold against his skin as he walked out into the shallows and then stepped down into the drop-off, the water suddenly covering his hips. It was bracing, almost numbing, and it sluiced away the remains of the road dirt and the smell of last night’s lovemaking.

  He ducked under, wetting his head, and came up shuddering with cold, reminding himself that the longer he stayed in the river, the warmer the air would feel when he climbed out. He could heat himself in the water well enough by swimming laps to the far bank and back, through the deepest portion of the river where the current ran fast.

  Perhaps, he thought as he ducked under again, he should clip his hair shorter, like Caesar. It was difficult to accuse Cassius of disloyalty to the Princeps when he had very little loyalty himself. But everyone, including Caesar, knew they could trust Marcus Brutus because he was loyal to so few men. He’d never made a
ny secret that his first responsibility was to the state. If more patricians followed his example, Rome would be better for it. If Caesar gave actual dedication to Rome instead of using it as an excuse to seem humble—

  Well. That was uncharitable. And even Brutus couldn’t live only for Rome, or he wouldn’t be here now, fresh from a night with Cassius in his bed, wondering how long he could stay before Rome called him back. Not long, he supposed. Even without the Senate in session, Rome did not stop moving, growing, doing business. He sighed, put it out of his mind for now, and hoisted himself back onto the bank.

  With the mist slowly burning off in the sunlight, the villa rustica looked forbidding and strange as he trooped back, ready for some fruit or a bowl of porridge from the kitchen. Sometimes he felt as though nothing that happened at the villa rustica was real, that it was all a strange dream, and one day he would wake at the villa urbana in Rome without remembering the journey back. Perhaps it was the otherworld, or the afterlife.

  And with Cassius here, he was never sure if his afterlife was to be punishment or blessing.

  The tall posts carved with phalluses that guarded the front of the house were shadowed with the sidelong light, the long members looming and forbidding. They’d been a little bold for his tastes, but he supposed they suited the rustic setting. Under each was scrawled a legend. He who robs this place I will bugger to death on the one, I come in the Evil Eye on the other. Tiresias, the horse-boy with the Greek name, had probably been amused. Cocks on buildings—a Greek idea the Romans had made their own, as with so much else. He tapped the balls of one of them, laughed to himself, and passed inside.

  At the back of the peristylium garden, the kitchen was full of noise and the smell of bread and porridge. Cassius’s cook was already chopping fruit for the evening’s delicacies, and at the very rear of the house, a farmer was bartering with one of the servants for the slaughtered pig he’d brought. Brutus helped himself to a bowl of cooked grains and a handful of grapes, drifting out of the kitchen to the garden. It was quieter there, but he still heard voices coming from the servants’ entry hall.

  “Ah, just a little favor—”

  “Not for a boy who smells like horses!”

  “That’s not the only way I’m like a horse, you know.”

  “Scandalous!” A woman’s laughter. “Come back when you have a beard, little colt.”

  “They’re wearing their chins clean-shaven in Rome.”

  “That’s not all that’s hairless about you.”

  Brutus choked on a bite of porridge, laughing to himself.

  “You could find out for yourself—”

  There was a soft noise and then a sharp slap, and Brutus watched, half-hidden by the slender trunk of a young fruit tree, as Tiresias emerged from the hall, one hand held to his face but still looking amused.

  “I didn’t hire you to corrupt my servants, you know,” Brutus said. Tiresias started, dropping his hand quickly.

  “If you had, I’d be too late,” he replied smartly, to his credit. Brutus lifted his eyebrows.

  “That’s not what your slapped face says.”

  “Well, I like a challenge, Dominus.”

  “You seem to find an endless array of them,” Brutus agreed. “Stop trying to convince them your baby face hides the soul of a satyr and go get my horse ready. Cassius’s too. Wait—is Aristus up?”

  “My lord Aristus is reading in the atrium,” Tiresias said, a little humbled in the face of the scolding.

  “Very well. Ask if he’d like to ride out with us, and ready his horse as well if he pleases.”

  “Shall I send a servant to wake my lord Cassius, sir?”

  “He’s not up yet?”

  “Not as far as I know, Dominus.”

  Brutus sighed. Cassius was not a man who relished the sunrise. “No. I’ll wake him. Off you go.”

  He found Cassius still asleep in his bed, a servant hovering discreetly outside the bedroom, waiting for the other man to emerge before she entered to sweep and set the bedclothes right. He’d chosen his servants carefully for their discretion; they were not the best he’d had, but they kept their mouths shut. He ignored her as he stepped into the room.

  Cassius was a curled-up lump in the middle of the bed, and when Brutus leaned over him, he screwed his eyes tightly shut and mumbled, “You’ve killed me. Leave me to my grave, I’m happy here.”

  “Nonsense, Cassius, you’ve done enough evil in this life that I’m sure your spirit will walk the world after your death.” Brutus tugged the blanket back. Cassius groaned and rolled onto his back, twisting his torso and lifting his arms over his head. His eyes slid to Brutus, and Brutus knew that he was looking to see if his feline stretching had any effect on him; he could have teased Cassius and kept his face stern, but it was cruel to taunt him early in the morning when the world seemed hard enough on the poor man as it was.

  “I haven’t done so much evil,” Cassius said as Brutus bent to kiss the soft skin between his collarbones. One of his hands ruffled Brutus’s hair.

  “Yes, but you’re an active man, always moving about and plotting things and such.” Brutus kissed the broad stretch of his pectoral, one hand twisting a nipple gently. Cassius tensed under him for a moment, then seemed to forcibly relax.

  Brutus raised his head. “What?” he asked softly.

  Cassius shook his head. “Not right now.”

  “Gaius, what is it?”

  “Not now, Marcus. Please,” he added, and slid his hand down from Brutus’s hair to cup his cheek. Brutus turned and kissed the heel of his palm, letting the matter drop. Instead he kissed his way down past Cassius’s navel, along the ridge of his hip where it met his muscled thigh, and then, with Cassius whining for a different kind of attention, down his leg. Cassius, trying to get Brutus’s mouth back up to his cock, bent his leg and pressed his foot flat on the bed; Brutus rested his chin on the cap of his knee, looking down at him thoughtfully.

  Cassius twisted, head thrown back, arching as if that would make Brutus move any faster, as if he didn’t know how deliberately Brutus always paced himself. Brutus skated his fingers up Cassius’s other thigh, grasping his cock lightly. Cassius thrust into it.

  “We don’t have much time,” Brutus said. “I’m supposed to be waking you so we can ride out to the farms today.”

  “Then stop tormenting me,” Cassius moaned.

  “As you please,” Brutus replied, kissing the side of his knee before he bent his head and took Cassius in his mouth, tongue tracing along the thick vein on the underside. He inhaled the smell of him, sleep and sweat, and stole one hand down to hitch up his own tunic, grasping himself and stroking lightly. Cassius gasped above him, and Brutus looked up at him through his eyelashes, a trick he’d learned on Aristus and which was no less effective on Cassius, sensualist that he was.

  “You’re so warm,” Cassius murmured, “so wet, that’s it. Harder, don’t be delicate. Oh, the clutch of your mouth . . .”

  It didn’t take long for him to come, filth still on his lips, hips shifting restlessly against the bed. Brutus swallowed, lifting a hand to wipe the last of his seed from his lips. He pressed his fingers into Cassius’s mouth, his other hand still desperately pulling himself off. Cassius closed his teeth gently on the knuckles and sucked, and Brutus let out a hitching breath and came into the bedclothes.

  When they emerged a short while later, Brutus pristine and Cassius at least in some semblance of order, Brutus told the servant to change the blankets, barking it out brusquely as they passed. Cassius gave him what Brutus always chose to interpret as a look of lust, though he knew it was more like remonstrance. Cassius, so risky in all other things, worried incessantly about this. There was no whisper of it in Rome, but Cassius always seemed to be waiting for the moment the rumors would begin to spread.

  Aristus was waiting for them in the yard when they emerged from the villa, patiently inspecting the horse whose reins Tiresias held. The other men had the mounts they’d brought with
them, but Brutus’s mount was the high-blooded charger Tiresias had been riding when they’d met on the road. He gave the boy a look, eyebrow cocked, but Tiresias simply looked back innocently, eyes not quite meeting his, as befitted a servant. The tack gleamed.

  “These social calls are so tedious,” Cassius remarked as he mounted up and accepted a saddlebag and a waterskin from Tiresias. “I’ve already sent the servants out. Why do we need to go?”

  “The locals like to see a bit of nobility around the place,” Brutus replied, pointing to the senatorial stripe on the tunic he wore. “Besides, if there are problems or disputes, sometimes I can settle them without anyone having to appeal to the city. It’s good to know the people, Cassius.”

  “Better you than me,” Cassius said.

  “I can’t say I disagree,” Aristus added.

  Cassius rolled his eyes. “How was that girl you took away with you last night?”

  Aristus clicked his tongue and brought his mount around to face Cassius. “Fine,” he retorted coldly. He turned his head. “How was yours, Brutus?”

  Brutus, startled at the crassness from his teacher, jerked sharply on his reins. The horse snorted out a protest. The other men glanced at him.

  “He’s spirited,” he said to Tiresias, who tucked away a smile and nodded.

  “Not too bad if the Senator has a firm hand,” Tiresias said, rubbing the horse’s nose to calm him. “He’ll enjoy the exercise. He still looks for the battle sometimes.”

  “Don’t we all,” Brutus said. “If you two are ready . . .”

  “We follow at the Senator’s lead,” Cassius said.

  “The Senator is most kind,” Brutus replied sardonically, and led the way toward the gate. Tiresias ran ahead to open it, then closed it behind them. Brutus glanced over his shoulder when they were nearly out of sight of the villa and saw the boy still watching.