'Pour a little of the oil at the base of my throat, just there. That's right. Now place a drop on your hands and put them round my neck.'
Again, Rufus obeyed, as gently as he was able, conscious that his hands felt huge and rough against the slender vulnerability of her throat.
'Rub the oil in with your fingers. Mmmhhh. No need to be quite so delicate — I am not a toy. Yes, that is much better. Just think, you could choke the life out of me before anyone had time to stop you.' She laughed as he flinched. 'Now move out to my shoulders. Use your fingers. You have such strong fingers.'
Rufus felt her body shift beneath his hands as he smoothed the slippery liquid into her flesh and the sensation moved something in him, because he felt himself grow again, this time even more than before. She noticed it too.
'That's better, puppy dog. Now, some oil here.' She pointed to a spot between her breasts.
This time he responded immediately, and he did not need her instructions to smooth the viscous liquid right and left, his hands moving over the firm orbs and feeling her tiny nipples grow hard under his fingers. She shuddered below him.
'Yes, like that, puppy dog. You are a fast learner.'
He moved his hands over her, quickening the rhythm until she gave a little gasp: 'Lower.'
Lower, across the polished ivory of her abdomen and further, where he found he had been wrong: between her navel and that other place was a thin line of fine down. He tried to keep his eyes from her sex, but now he was drawn to it like a moth to a nightlight. Instinctively, he reached to touch it.
'Not yet.' Her hand grasped his wrist. He looked up at her and saw that her eyes were no longer hooded, but wide open and aflame with a naked hunger. 'Start again at my feet, puppy dog, and move upwards.'
'Like this?'
He did as she ordered. He was becoming familiar with the game now, and he made his way over ankle, calf and the long silky curve of inner thigh with agonizing slowness, and when he eventually reached that place she shuddered again.
All the time his hands had been on Drusilla's compliant young body, Rufus's own desire had grown, and the molten feeling in his guts had moved inexorably into his groin. He was so hard now it was painful. He knew something had to happen and was just about to drop on top of her when she shook her body like a dog emerging from a river pool.
'Now you.'
She pushed him on to his back and took the oil from him. Now it was he who experienced the sensations which had so pleased her. The feel of the fingers first hard, then soft, forcing the oil into the very fabric of his body. And there was something else. With the oil came a slight burning sensation, intense and erotic, so that his whole body seemed to pulsate with energy.
When she reached the object of her desire, it throbbed and twitched in her hands.
'Now, puppy dog, now you are ready.'
She raised one knee and with an easy movement slipped on top of him.
Rufus immediately felt as if he had been enveloped in warm honey and he groaned with the pleasure of it. By now each was so aroused that the heat of her body on his could have only one outcome, and as she began to rock back and forth and her muscles contracted around him he exploded inside her with an agonized cry.
Undeterred, Drusilla maintained her grip on him and slowly increased the tempo of her movements until, grinding herself into his lower body, she too climaxed with a series of stifled gasps that ended in a long, drawn-out moan.
Rufus opened his eyes a few minutes later and realized he had been dozing. The warmth of the room, the softness of the bed and the power of their lovemaking had combined to rob him of his instinct for self-preservation. Now a thrill of fear shot through him as he absorbed the full extent of what he had done. He moved to raise himself, but a slim arm across his chest forced him back and he turned his head to find Drusilla staring at him with open curiosity.
'My brother would kill you if he knew you were here,' she said, as if she was discussing the next day's weather. 'He is terribly jealous.'
There seemed nothing to say, but to stay silent was to let her believe she frightened him, and he sensed a challenge in her words.
'And will he?'
'Only if he finds out, but he will only find out if I choose it. The only people who know you are here are my little doves and Lucius, the soldier who brought you here. My little doves will not tell, because they cannot — they have been dumb from birth. Lucius will not tell, because he has more to lose than you.'
Her hand stroked the length of his thigh. 'You really are terribly beautiful, puppy dog, almost as beautiful as my immortal. What a pity your beauty will not last as long as his. Life is so cruel, don't you think?'
She said the words wistfully, but they seemed to trigger a change in her because her eyes clouded and the pitch of her voice changed.
'My brother is cruel. He knows I love him, yet he sifts through my love seeking out imperfections which might displease him. Only yesterday he wondered aloud if he should have me tortured so he could measure exactly the extent of my devotion. When he places his hands round my throat, just as you did, he wonders at its slimness, and compares it to a swan's, then informs me it would take only a single word from him to have it severed by an axe.'
Rufus stayed silent. He understood that he had no need to speak. She was talking to him in the way Claudius talked to Bersheba. Using him as a reflector for her thoughts, so that she could consider them from a different perspective. To her, he was little more than a beast to be used for any purpose she thought fit.
'It can be a great burden to be an Emperor's favourite. Would it be an honour to die at the hands of a living god? Would it mean I, Drusilla, would be divine, a goddess in my own right? Or is death just death? An end.'
She looked puzzled for a moment, and he knew this was a subject which perplexed her. But then it was as if a lamp lit behind her eyes.
'My brother's fame will be immortal, and Drusilla's name will be coupled with his. His greatness already outshines the combined light of Divine Julius, Augustus and Tiberius. His reign will last for fifty years and his deeds will be remembered for a thousand. Already people talk of him as a god, and soon he will take his place with the greatest of the gods. Should Gaius, saviour of Rome, bow before Jupiter? No!' Her eyes narrowed, and now an unsettling new persona revealed itself. 'But first he must destroy his enemies. Even now, when his people believe he leads his army to take Rome's bounty to the barbarians of Britannia, he marches to the Rhine to deal with the traitor Gaetulicus and his legions. This creature wishes to supplant him with my own husband, whose throat I will cut with this very hand. Gaius has so many enemies, even among those he would call his friends.
'They don't think I know,' she confided. 'But I see them sneering behind his back and plotting in their whispering nests. Cassius Chaerea, with his little girl's voice — a man, so-called, who will lie with woman, man or beast. Calpurnius, who still blames him for stealing away his wife, as if such a thing mattered. He cannot even trust his own blood. Uncle Claudius, who is a better actor than any on the stage, and that Greek who is never far from his shoulder spread their poison among the Senate and the guard. I have told him to kill them all, but he is too weak. Oh, Chaerea and Calpurnius will have their reckoning, but not Claudius, who is the greatest danger of all. Gaius will spare him because he is family.
'My brother is weak, but I would be strong. I would wipe them from the face of the earth in a single day that Rome would remember for a lifetime. Their screams for mercy would be heard the length of the Empire and none would dare follow them in their betrayal.
'My sisters plot too, and my brother's wife, but against me, not him. They know I have his favour and as long as I do they will never rise. Livilla is harmless enough; she can be married off to a husband who will beat her regularly and painfully. And Milonia is but an annoyance. But Agrippina is different. We must watch Agrippina. Agrippina is a witch, and witches are dangerous. She can do more harm with her potions and poultices even than Uncle Claudius. Gaius has not been the same since she cured him of the head sickness. Cured? Poisoned, I say, or drugged to bend him to her will. We will deal with Agrippina in good time.'