Sovereign's Gladiator

An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

www.ellorascave.com

Sovereign’s Gladiator

ISBN 9781419930812

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Sovereign’s Gladiator Copyright © 2010 Jez Morrow

Edited by Briana St. James

Cover art by Dar Albert

Electronic book publication September 2010

The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

Sovereign’s Gladiator

Jez Morrow

Chapter One

The man’s back was turned as Devon entered the chamber. Even so, Devon knew him. Recognition grabbed him by the balls and squeezed hard.

The gladiator stood framed in the expansive window. Sunlight made his boldly sculpted musculature stand out in high relief. His barbarian hair was the color of a lion’s mane, but not so shaggy. His coarsely woven tunic top left his brawny arms bare. His sun-darkened skin bore white flecks of battle scars.

This was the gladiator Xandaras. The mighty Xan.

Devon feared his shock and lust were plain for all his attendants to see. He did not dare meet anyone’s gaze.

Devon had been in love with Xan from the moment the gladiator first stepped into the arena and killed the men who were meant to be his executioners.

Xan was the most beautiful man Devon had ever seen in his life—not that Devon’s life had been all that long. Devon, the Sovereign of the province of Shiliya, had seen only twenty-eight summers.

Devon was not sure whom he had expected to find here in his reception chamber, but it was not Xan.

The gladiator did not turn to face him. Perhaps the sheer number of attendants and the grandeur of this room told the gladiator that someone of great importance had entered behind him, not the sort of someone to slip a cowardly blade between anyone’s ribs from behind.

If not for defense, then the barbarian still should have turned around out of respect for his betters.

The barbarian chose not to.

Xan seemed to be watching Devon without looking at him.

Because the barbarian hadn’t actually
seen
Devon yet, Xan could not be accused of disrespect. But Xan knew who was back there. Devon could tell the gladiator knew exactly who was standing behind him.

Disrespect it was.

And Devon could not call the barbarian on it without sounding small. Devon could only command him, “Gladiator, face your Sovereign.”

Xan turned. Muscles flowed under his skin like living rock. Devon reeled inside. The gladiator was even more magnificent face on. Devon had never seen his rugged face this close, the uneven slope of his brows, his eyes an amazing color of desert sky. Blade scars nicked one eyebrow, one side of his nose and the side of his chin.

Devon forgot for a moment why he was here.

This man was the center of all Devon’s wet dreams. How many times had Devon taken his hand to himself and whispered the gladiator’s name in the night? Suddenly Xan was here, in the hard glorious flesh. Devon felt like he’d been caught in the act. He was not ready for this encounter.

Xan was one of the desert breed. This close, the savage’s scent came to Devon, exotic, distinct, intensely male. Devon felt the heat from Xan across the short space between them.

Devon breathed an inward oath in the high speech. He was trying to keep his imperial dignity while his imperial cock was about to lift the hem of his crimson tunic off his knees.

Devon paced a few brisk, agitated steps to the left and back again, his erection now up, where it might get camouflaged in one of the many vertical folds of rich fabric, instead of poking out and leveled like a lance for a charge.

The Sovereign’s wiry old regent, Marcus, hanging back at the doorway, spoke, sounding amused, “You seem surprised,
ma dahn
.”

“Well, I
might
,” said Devon tightly.

Three years ago, when the Supreme Reigna had added the wild lands to Devon’s province, the barbarian Xan had been brought here to the provincial capital in chains for judgment. Devon had judged. He had sentenced Xandaras to die in the arena as an example to all his rebellious kind.

An execution in the arena was still death, but it was an honorable end to a man’s life. Common criminals did not get a chance in the arena. Xan had never been common.

The honorable condemned was given a short sword as a chance to live. The chance was very small, because the executioner entered the ring better armed and every bit as keen to stay alive as the condemned man.

Xan had lived through that first match. And all the matches after that.

After Xan proved his worth, Devon was the one who pardoned the barbarian and gave him his freedom.

Once free, Xan stayed in the arena, as a gladiator now, champion on the side of the Imperium.

Xan stood now in Devon’s receiving chamber a free man.

Devon’s eyes strayed downward before he knew what he was doing. Xan’s fawnskin breeches fit snugly, showing the extraordinary interplay of sinew in Xan’s thighs and the bulging sex at his groin.

Devon flushed hot and cold.

A wide leather belt fit well around the gladiator’s taut waist. From it, a dagger sheath hung empty. Devon’s guards had not let Xan bring a blade into the Sovereign’s presence. Devon stared at the empty sheath as if that was what drew his gaze low.

Devon kept his face an outwardly impassive mask. Inwardly he was staggering with panic, thrown so close so suddenly to the object of his hottest fantasies.

I want him.

Devon was painfully conscious of all the people all around him. Painfully aware of his cock ring, constricting his swollen sex.

Devon wore a cock ring to help him keep his interest when he was with a woman. Sometimes he had trouble maintaining an erection. Here, now, he was wildly interested and thought the damn thing might kill him.

Devon looked up. He saw—or imagined he saw—a knowing glint in Xan’s heavy-lidded eyes, an upturn at the edges of Xan’s seductive lips.

Xan’s gaze bordered on insolence.

Struck stupid with the shock of suddenly coming face-to-face with his midnight fantasy, Devon couldn’t talk. His mouth had gone sand dry.

It was for him to speak first. He needed to say something. His thoughts blanked out.

Then Xan bowed his head and dropped on bended knee, smooth and majestic as a kneeling lion. His tawny hair fell forward around his face.

And Devon remembered to breathe.

Devon found his voice. “Do not bow to me, gladiator. I am not a Prince. I am a Sovereign.”

Xan rose like a regal animal, shaking his back his sandy mane. He asked, “A Sovereign is less than a Prince?”

Oh gods, the voice.
Devon had forgotten about his damn voice. In the arena, Xan’s voice was a savage roar. Here it was soft and low, a crumbling baritone, powerfully masculine, almost intimate. The sound stroked Devon’s sex.

Where was he? The words. Xan had said something. Devon needed to answer him.

The question was strange and Devon searched Xan’s extraordinary face for sarcasm. He found none.

“No,” Devon answered thickly. His own voice had dropped to rutting depths, but at least it sounded strong. And his breathing was coming more easily now. Xan’s bow had broken Devon’s strangling panic.

Devon ruled the province of Shiliya and this man was only a barbarian rebel who was free by Devon’s mercy and will.

Devon struggled to think how he must appear to this man. It was stupidly, urgently important. Devon always presented a regal, sensual image. The Raenthe were a sensual people as well as lordly. Devon tried to remember what he was wearing, as if he were on a tryst.

Devon collected his scattered wits. Remembered donning the red tunic with the bronze bosses, not the gold. That was good. Bronze was hard. Gold was soft.

He couldn’t feel the coronet on his head, but he was sure it was there. The coronet was a band of gold so thin Devon never felt it anymore, like the fine rings he always wore. He made fists to make sure his rings were on. His hair was thick, nearly black. A slight curl kept it off his shoulders. His eyes were midnight black, his lashes so thick he never lined his eyes with kohl.

He was well-built and tall—not tall next to Xan, but Devon was tall.

Devon turned languidly to his regent, ignoring Xan, and talked past the gladiator as if Xan were furniture. Devon was relieved to hear his own voice come out steady and rather cold. “Marcus, do you really mean to place a barbarian among my guards?”

Devon’s advisor and sometime regent, General Marcus, was an old veteran of many campaigns. Marcus had fought the barbarians alongside Devon’s father. A hatchet gash cratered one side of Marcus’ face from a long-ago campaign. Devon loved and trusted Marcus like he’d loved his father.

Lean, very lean, Marcus was all muscle and bone. Marcus’ skin appeared to be stretched over his skull-like face. His bold, craggy face was much-scarred. His eyes were black as Devon’s, but Marcus’ eyes were small and canny, with no lashes left to speak of. What was left of the hair on Marcus’ head was a scatter of dark strands on the shiny dome of his head.

Marcus said, “
Ma dahn
, this is the champion gladiator, Xandaras.”

In front of others, Marcus called his Sovereign respectfully
ma dahn
—my liege—in the high speech. In private, Marcus called him Devon. Sometimes Marcus slipped and called him Son. Devon didn’t mind.

Marcus had lost his own son in the war. Devon had lost his father.

“I
do
recognize him, Marcus,” Devon said dryly. “Is this wise?”

“I think it’s brilliant,” said Marcus, grinning, his sparse eyebrows arched high.

“To take a barbarian as my personal guard on a journey into the land of barbarians?” Devon asked. Marcus could not be serious.

The barbarian, for his part, said nothing in his own defense. Xan did not appear to mind Devon and Marcus ignoring him and discussing his merits across him as they would a slave on the auction block.

Normally it would be Marcus who accompanied the Sovereign on his journeys into unsettled lands as his first guardsman. This time, Devon needed Marcus to stay behind as his regent. Alas, there were not two Marcuses. So Devon had charged Marcus with selecting a suitable replacement for himself to serve as first guardsman.

Marcus brought Devon here to approve his choice.

Marcus had chosen Xan.

Devon asked lightly, “Do you want me dead, Marcus?”

Merry lines crinkled the taut skin at the sides of Marcus’ beady dark eyes. “Devon, I promised your father I would keep you un-dead for as long as I remain so. You’ve seen this man in combat. This is what I want at your side in the wild lands. As much as I have the power to insist, I insist you take him.
Ma dahn.
”