Centurion's Honor (Imperial Desires, Book One) (8 page)

Titus released her mouth at the same time Cassius pulled away. Her feminine juices glistened across Cassius’ face and the vision was so erotic, so sensual that her body began to tingle all over again.

“It is almost dusk, we need to get back,” Cassius mumbled, standing. Titus helped her stand, and together they quickly righted her
stola
.

Titus’ eyes were warm and he smiled, placing a gentle peck against her lips before he turned from her to clothe himself.

Yet when she looked over at Cassius, his back was to her, and as he dressed, he purposely avoided her gaze.

He’d withdrawn from her, physically, emotionally.

Anan did not know why that made her feel cold inside, why that upset her so much. She glanced over at Titus, whose gaze remained open and warm. Titus’ affections should have been enough. Any other time, it would have been. This time it wasn’t.

She speared Cassius’ back with her gaze.

Her body, her entire being craved them both. It would not be satisfied with anything less.

* * * * *

The three of them rode back to the villa in silence, and the entire time Cassius’ gaze remained riveted on Anan.

Her back was rigid in the saddle, while her hips undulated provocatively with a gentle cadence, keeping to the rhythm of the horse beneath her.

It was wildly erotic.

It was wildly frustrating.

She was angry and she would not look at him, yet Titus did not suffer her rejection.

Many times he caught her glancing over at Titus, and a look would pass between them, smoldering and hot, and touchingly tender.

He wanted her to look at him in that way.

The same way she’d looked at him as he’d feasted upon her pussy, as he brought her to climax.

She would not look at him, not once, nor would Titus.

Cassius had always been secure in Titus’ affections for him, but as he watched his lover with Anan, as they shut him out to trade a secret with their eyes that he was not privy to, he was furious with jealousy, the dark beast crawling inside him growing dangerously possessive with each passing moment.

He’d never felt this way, never experienced such dark emotions so intense, so raw, tinged with the sexual heat of desire.

In that moment he wanted them both—Titus and Anan. He longed for their touch, their pleasure.

In that moment he hated them as well—was jealous of them both, of what they shared, and that they would not share it with him.

By the time they made it back to the villa, it was dark and the grounds were silent. He noticed too, as they passed by the area where Anan kept her livestock, that despite her orders, her servants had removed the carcasses of the dead animals.

Anan walked ahead of them, her hips swaying gently as she made her way through the vestibules toward her chambers. When they reached her quarters, he entered behind her to do a thorough search of the room. Satisfied that her chambers were empty, that she would be safe for the night, he turned to leave, to retire to the sanctity of his own chambers, but stopped when Titus closed the door and blocked his path.

He glimpsed the intent in Titus’ gaze, and his eyes narrowed, his jaw tensing.

“Out of my way,” he commanded, but Titus remained rooted in place, his eyes resolute.

“Command her to gaze upon us while I fuck you,” Titus said thickly.

Cassius’ lips twisted even as desire hummed through him. “No.”

“Do it.”

“I know what you are about, but she will not fix what is wrong between us.” He spun around, though he had nowhere to go, but he could not stand there and glimpse the pain across Titus’ face, pain he’d caused just now with his harsh words.

Instead, he was forced to meet Anan’s gaze, which oscillated between confusion and desire, and compassion for Titus. For some reason he grew angrier at that—that she felt compassion for Titus, when she would spare him none.

“And what is wrong between us?” Titus demanded. He’d closed the distance between them, and his voice was low, his breath warm against Cassius’ neck.

With a ragged sigh, Cassius hung his head, his eyes stealing closed for a moment. He could not gaze upon her and the softness in her eyes. He’d wanted Anan’s compassion and now he had it and it hurt, just as surely as Titus’ softly spoken words tinged with pain pierced him.

He could not fight them both—his need for them, his denial of his need for them.

“You know what is wrong between us,” he said quietly.

“I do not,” Titus whispered and a tremor raced through Cassius when Titus began to kiss the back of his neck. “I only know that you have been distant since Variana.”

“Because I almost lost you,” he croaked, in pain, in desire.

“But it is more than that.”

He remained silent because Titus spoke the truth. It
was
more than that. It was because he blamed himself, for so many reasons he blamed himself and he was ashamed.

“Command her to watch us, or command her to join us, but either way I shall take you, I shall punish you.”

He started at Titus’ last words. “Why?”

“Because you hurt her,” he breathed against Cassius’ neck, “because you hurt me.”

He regarded Anan in silence. She stood before him, her eyes rounded, her lips parted. She did not know what had transpired between the two men, but she still hurt for them both. That she could feel any tenderness for him after he’d withdrawn from her, after he’d been cold to her, made his heart clench.

She took his breath away, for so many reasons, in so many ways.

He should not want her so fiercely, he should not need her so desperately, but he did.

He closed his eyes. Anan’s tenderness threatened to heal him—he did not deserve to be healed.

“Command me,” she whispered, her hands finding their way beneath his tunic to touch his bare flesh. He gasped. “Command me to please you.”

His lids snapped open. “I did not say you could touch me.”

Her roaming hands stilled, her fingers tensing in the coarse hair of his groin.

A feral groan rose out of him, full of need, in response to his defeat.

“But do not stop,” he rasped.

Within seconds, her garment disappeared, his tunic with it and when Titus’ hair-roughened skin pressed against his back, he knew the three of them were fully nude.

Anan dropped to her knees before him like some tavern whore, eagerly, greedily sucking his cock as if she lived to suck cock, as if she existed for the very purpose of pleasuring his rod.

He barely had a moment to savor the bolts of desire shooting through him from the ministrations of her skilled mouth when Titus pushed his legs apart and pressed the tip of his cock against his hole.

It was slick and wet with pre-cum and saliva and Cassius turned his head, snaring Titus’ lips at the same time a hard, thick cock plowed inside his anus.

Titus’ sudden brutal thrust sent an arrow of pain shooting through him, but as quickly as it came, it was replaced by endless waves crashing upon him, one after the other.

Titus’ arms were wrapped around him, holding him securely, holding him close as he pounded Cassius’ channel with deep, hard thrusts. Titus was already swelling inside him, his twin sacs grinding against the cheeks of Cassius’ ass.

He was close. Cassius felt him riding the thin edge between control and bliss. Titus’ entire body was trembling by the time he wrenched his lips from Cassius’.

Titus’ breath came in short, choppy pants broken up every so often with a deep groan. Cassius held himself perfectly still, accepting his lover’s rod, Titus’ cock pummeling inside his tunnel.

Truthfully, Cassius could not have moved even if he’d wanted to, he was imprisoned within the other man’s strong embrace. He could only stand there, rooted in place, his stance wide, his hole being drilled with cock, filled with nothing but thick, hard cock as he stuffed his own shaft down Anan’s throat.

Cassius’ climax hovered inside him, threatening to claim him so he could not have been sure it was his voice or Titus’ when a long, uneven grunt rent the air, until a wet warmth flooded his anus.

The bands of Titus’ muscled arms tightened around him as groans of pleasure flowed from the man, while his hips still pumped against him, his cock twitching inside Cassius until his seed trickled out of his stretched hole. Even as he softened, Titus remained lodged inside Cassius’ ass, while Cassius’ own cock began to swell.

He gazed down at Anan, his length disappearing inside her mouth, in and out. It glistened before his eyes, her saliva leaving a warm, wet sheen all over his shaft.

She was beautiful on her knees before him, eager to please, eager to satisfy and she took him between her lips with lusty strokes. Her mouth, her tongue, were skilled along his cock, even as there was an endearing innocence to her movements.

Her skill came in her desire, her need to please, not in her experience. It was that same need that shattered him. He already stood on the edge of climax, his body corded with unabated desire, but when she looked up at him, her golden eyes full of warmth, full of hunger and wanton arousal, he experienced a tightening in his chest that had less to do with what her mouth was doing to his cock and more to do with the raw honesty revealed in the gaze of the woman who knelt before him.

In a single motion he pulled his rod from her lips and wrapped his hand around his wet length, pumping it with furious strokes.

“Lift your teats with your hands and offer them to me. I wish to spray them with my seed. I wish to see my cum dripping from your flesh.”

Anan leaned back on her haunches and lifted the heavy mounds of her breasts—woman’s breasts, full and round.

“Rub them,” he said thickly. “Pluck at your nipples as I would.”

She did as he commanded and when her berry-ripe nipples stood stiff and hard, he could no longer hold back his pleasure as he did exactly what he’d said he would and sprayed his seed all over the fleshy globes of her breasts in thick ropes.

He pumped himself hard and fast with swift strokes, staring at her from beneath heavy lids as she continued to rub her breasts, now dripping with his cum.

“Come here,” he commanded when he was spent, pulling her into his arms. He ignored the wet stain of his own semen against his chest as he dipped his head to kiss her, to plunder her mouth with his lips, his tongue.

It was a kiss of possession. It was a kiss of something more, a growing feeling that he did not want to examine too closely.

But as he held her face between his palms, he kissed her with a passion that went beyond what they’d just shared and the bounds of physical release. With his kiss, he conveyed to her what he could not, would not, through spoken word, but when she sighed beneath him, her arms winding around him, around Titus who was still pressed against him, he knew she understood.

* * * * *

Locked in the arms of Titus and Cassius was how Anan fell asleep that night, her body satiated, exhausted. That she was abruptly wrenched awake was the first clue something was amiss.

Her lids snapped open, searching in the darkness that cloaked her private chambers like a dense, black fog. Trapped between both men, her two centurions, she could not move, and did not wish to.

She did not want to wake them—not just yet.

Yet her gaze continued to probe the darkness around her, peeling away the layers until a shadow flickered in the corner. She did not turn her head as she glanced sideways.

Anan could not make out the figure that lurked in the shadows, but the outline was masculine. Her brow creased. The outline was familiar to her, as if she’d glimpsed the silhouette before.

She gasped when she recognized who, or rather,
what
skulked in her chambers. She still could not make out the face of the figure, but it turned and she held still, already planning her next move. Anan would have to rouse the men, at the least she knew she would wake them when she rolled from her bed to grasp the dagger she kept tucked beneath it, hidden to all.

Her body lay corded with tension, already prepared to spring into action, but before she could act, the figure disappeared from her view, as it moved like a ghost across her room and then vanished into the shadows. She could have told herself it was a ghost, except she did not mistake the distinct thud of the door closing shut. The sound was faint, eerily quiet, but she heard it, and apparently Cassius did too, because he awakened beside her. He sat up straight in the bed, the sudden movement rousing Titus as well.

She did not sit up with them, instead she held perfectly still, although her eyes remained open.

“Did you hear that?” Cassius queried.

She nodded, her smile faint. She did not want to alarm them. Not yet. Not until she was sure of her suspicions.

“I am sure it was nothing.” She reached out to stroke his chest. “Return to sleep,” she said softly.

She should have known her command would fall upon deaf ears as Cassius slipped out of bed, his face twisted into a frown. Titus followed after him, searching her room, then the sleeping quarters she’d given them that were next to her own.