Solar Wind. Book one - страница 12

Won't he dishonor the family, disgrace her with his close relationship with Caesar?

He did not convey his anxieties and doubts to his mother. Why bother her? Why put before her and great-grandfather Regin the difficult choice? Although for Regin, probably, there was no dilemma in such a delicate and important issue. Marcus felt that his great-grandfather was ready for anything because of the power, even to sacrifice his grandson or, at least, part of his body.

Moonlight already made its way into the narrow window holes when Domitia Lucilla left her son. She carried away an oil lamp and her wandering light, moving along the corridor further and further, plunging the room into darkness. Only the aroma of Paestum roses still hung in the air—in Hadrian's Palace it was added everywhere, even in oil lamps.

Warm, not yet cooled air penetrated into the room, blowing Marcus, promising him sweet dreams. But he was not sleeping, he was thinking about his talk was his mother. Nearby on the table there was a tray of fruit, he stretched, took the dates, ate.

Suddenly, he felt that apart from the night breeze in the room someone else stood there, someone alive. Were there thieves? But the villa was guarded by the Pretorians. The emperor? Marcus helplessly squeezed into the bed, feeling like he was being thrown into the heat.

In the barely discernible moonlight, he saw a white figure approaching him—large, shapeless, like a huge snowball rolling down a mountain. Once in Rome snow fell, which was a rarity, and Marcus and his friends lowered from the Caelian Hill such ice balls. The snowball was getting closer and almost rolling to the bed, it suddenly split, turning into two, clearly distinguishable people.

No, it was not the emperor!

“Who are you?” he asked barely audibly.

“We are slaves in the villa,” one of the figures replied in a girl's voice. “I'm Benedicta. Theodotus is with me.”

“What do you need?”

“We were sent by a great Caesar. He told us to fulfill all your wishes, master.”

“My desires?” Marcus hesitated.

“Of course!” Benedicta laughed with a soft cooing laugh.

Theodotus at this time lit the lamp and put it on a table next to the fruit. Marcus saw a very young, twelve-year-old black boy dressed in a tunic. Benedicta turned out to be a nice girl, also young and slender. She was a little older than Marcus. He also noticed in one of the walls opposite a subtle light beating from an inconspicuous crack. Or from a hole. Someone was watching them. It was Hadrian understood Marcus.

Marcus immediately recalled the words spoken to him in the morning by Caesar about possession, about passion. Hadrian ordered him to let himself go, with his head immersed into the river of desires. But did he really want Marcus to lose his virginity in Tibur? What if it was a test? Perhaps Hadrian wants to make sure that Marcus was able to own himself in difficult moments when he was subjected to temptations that not every mortal can withstand? After all, Hadrian was almost a god, who could control passions. Even his connection with Antinous did not look mad against the background of the orderly and leisurely life that this art lover led.

Antinous could have just been a decoration, an expensive ring on the finger, which could be used for bragging to friends, as if a perfect work of art.

Meanwhile, Marcus felt the girl's fingers on his body. Her hand caressed, stroked his neck, his chest; she fell to her knees. Theodotus on the side step climbed on the bed and lay down next to him. He started kissing Marcus, cuddling him harder and harder. But Marcus instinctively distanced himself from them, from the boy and from Benedicta.