Then she did what she’d promised herself she would do with the first legionary she saw inside Carnuntum: she marched up to him and gave him a kiss. She’d had in mind a kiss on the cheek, but the soldier’s beard and the cheekpieces made that impractical. She kissed him on the end of the nose instead.
He laughed out loud. “Hello to you, too, sweetheart,” he said. “You can do better than that, I’ll wager.” He let the shield slip to the ground, wrapped his arms around her — sword still clenched in his right fist — and bent his mouth down to hers.
That kiss, crushed against scale mail and with a sword bumping her backside, was odds-on the most uncomfortable she’d ever had. She didn’t care. It was — damn, it was fun. Just like the basketball game years ago before she ever met Frank, when Indiana clawed from behind to beat Notre Dame with a shot at the buzzer. She’d let out a squeal and kissed not only her date but the guy who sat on the other side of her. They’d all laughed. It had been that kind of moment: dizzy, crazy, and oh so sweet with victory.
The legionary’s left hand closed, painfully hard, on her breast. She wasn’t really alarmed, not yet. She stiffened and tried to pull her head away, with a protest all ready to burst out as soon as her mouth was free. But he followed her, prolonging the kiss, driving his tongue deep into her mouth, grinding against her teeth.
She bit down hard. He yelped and recoiled. She slapped his hand away. “That’s enough!” she said sharply.
He laughed again, not pleasantly at all. There was blood on his lips. He licked it away, wincing: his tongue must have hurt like hell. His words were thicker than they’d been before, and his tone had a nasty edge. “Now, now. That’s not nice. Not nice at all.”
“Look,” Nicole said, doing her best to ignore the stab of fear. “I didn’t mean to tease you. But just because I was glad — I am glad — to see my city back in Roman hands, doesn’t mean — “
She should have listened to her fear. She should have shut up, twisted loose, and run like hell. All that, she realized afterwards, when it was much too late.
The legionary listened to her just long enough to realize she wasn’t going to give him what he wanted. She was still explaining, in logical, lawyerlike, twentieth-century fashion, how a kiss didn’t necessarily imply anything more, when he shut her up for good and alclass="underline" he kicked her feet out from under her and threw her to the ground.
She landed exactly as he wanted her to land. Afterwards — that word again — she decided that throwing people to the ground would be an important skill for a soldier to acquire in an age when fighting was face to face, up close and personal. In the middle of it, she had time for one startled squawk before he flung himself down on top of her.
By chance or by design — she strongly suspected the latter but could not have proved it in a court of law — one of his elbows caught her in the pit of her stomach. For the next minute or so, she had not a chance in the world of using the self-defense techniques she’d learned in another life. By the time she could think about anything but the agonizing struggle for air, he’d poised himself between her legs, yanked down her drawers, and driven deep into her.
It hurt. She hadn’t wanted him, and she was dry. He didn’t care. He didn’t care in the slightest. That was the worst part, worse even than the pain — and yes, it hurt like hell. In and out, up and down, his weight on her, the scales of his cuirass digging into her belly and breasts, crushing her, making it even harder for her to breathe.
When at last she did manage to suck in a quarter of a breath, she thrashed and writhed, arching her back, twisting and struggling, anything to get him off her. He grunted. It was, to her horror, a grunt of pleasure. “That’s more like it, sweetheart, ‘ he said. “Don’t just lie there — do something.”
She did something, all right. She hit him. Every part of him she could reach was covered in iron. Her fists throbbed with the pain of it, and he never even felt it. He pounded away on top of her, not caring that she didn’t want him on her or in her, not caring that he hurt her. Not caring at all.
There above her was the nose she’d kissed only a couple of moments before. She snapped at it. He jerked his head back — he’d stayed alert, damn him. Something caressed the side of her neck: the edge of his sword. It felt cold and very sharp.
“You don’t want to do that, sweetheart,” he said between thrusts: a word, a thrust; another word or two; another thrust. “It’s not friendly, you know what I mean? ‘
She knew. She hated him; she hated herself, for knowing it — and worse, for giving way to it. She lay still. It was small comfort that he wanted her active; that if she lay like one of the fish she’d thrown out the window this morning, he’d get less pleasure out of her. He didn’t stop or even slow down. Another dozen breaths, and he grunted again, shuddered, rammed home. She felt the hot gush deep inside her, in her most secret place.
He lay on top of her for a stretching moment, stiff as the armor he was cased in. Then, as suddenly as he’d forced himself into her, he jerked out — one last, small stab of pain, like insult on top of injury — and got smoothly to his feet. He was an athlete, of course he was, with an athlete’s grace and an athlete’s arrogant strength.
He straightened his pleated military kilt — no inconvenience of underwear in that uniform — and looked down at Nicole. His face was as impenetrable as ever: black beard, iron cheekpieces, gleam of eyes under the visor. “So long, sweetheart,” he said. “That was fun.” And then, as if she’d never interrupted him, he ran on up the alley, lifting again his ringing shout: “The Emperor!”
She lay where he’d left her till he was long out of sight. She would have lain there till Rome fell, but the flies were buzzing, tickling her lips and her eyelids. She slapped at them, hard enough to sting, and lurched to her feet. Every part of her hurt: the back of her head, her haunches, her solar plexus, her chest and belly where his armor had crushed and pinched. And worst of all, she hurt where he’d violated her, a throbbing, burning ache, as if he’d scraped the skin raw. She stood as she’d stood the night she lost her virginity, as if she’d been riding a horse all day and half the night. But that had been an almost welcome pain, a pain she’d bargained for and wore like a badge of pride. There was no pride in this. And the pain — that had been an ache or two, some chafing, and a tendency to walk spraddle-legged. This was pain.
“He raped me,” she said. She said it in English. Latin wasn’t enough, not for this. “The bastard just — went ahead — and raped me.” As if to mock her with incontrovertible proof, semen dribbled down the inside of her thigh, wet and sticky-slimy. Her drawers were tangled around one ankle. She yanked them up. She tried to think. Her thoughts kept scattering. Her memories kept fragmenting, coalescing in a single spot — the end of his nose, the grind of his pelvis against hers — then shattering again. And again. Think. She had to think.
All around her, battle was raging. She heard the sounds of it both nearby and farther away, like an iron foundry in a lower level of hell. Another stalwart defender of civilization was going to come charging down the alley, she could bet on it. Would he care that he was getting somebody else’s sloppy seconds? Would he even take time to notice?
Walking was hard. She wasn’t built bowlegged. But walking normally rubbed tissues outraged beyond endurance. She was probably bleeding. She didn’t stop to investigate.
She made her way up the alley, back past the stinking piles of ordure, to the German who’d fallen in front of her. He was dead now, though his blood still soaked into the dirt. In the street beyond him, live Marcomanni and Quadi still fought the Romans.
Nicole shrank back against the wall. Romans, barbarians — God forbid anyone see her. Was one of them the son of a bitch who’d violated her? She couldn’t tell. They were all crowded together in a knot. They all wore the same clothes, carried the same gear. Uniform — that was what it was, uniform dress, uniform looks and fighting style. Wasn’t that the point? Look alike, fight alike, kill alike. Rape alike, too. And never mind if the victim was friend or enemy.