Maria awoke once more with a start, though the room she woke up in was not the one in which she had fallen into a deep slumber after her first meeting with the men of House Marcellus. The first thing she noticed was that the voice which had awoken her was different – far deeper, its swelling tones reverberating through her very bones, sending chills of excitement through her. As she lay in her bedsheets, the sharpness of her thoughts muzzled with sleep, her mind seemed to shy away from her memory; it was as though she did not truly wish to know who it was who had awakened her, lest she be unable to contain the dreadful implications of the knowledge. The owner of the voice had no such compunctions. After seeing her stir, he spoke again.
"Good evening, Maria. Welcome to the House of Marcellus. I am Gaius, master of the house," said he, smiling from the doorway. The only part of him she could see was his smile, gleaming in the moonlight – from its sardonic cut she could see that here was the father of the two young men she could now only think of as boys. Maria did not speak, preferring instead to savor the images flitting across her mind's eye, as she felt again that simultaneous need and fear. She noticed, as though in a dream, that her body was now clothed in fine material, recognizable as the same House tunic she had spurned earlier that day.
"Well? Will you not greet your new master in a manner befitting your status?" he asked after only moments, the levity of his words cut short with a snarl of frustration. After a moment of indecision, Maria opened her mouth to speak, but evidently she had tried his patience far enough. Gaius turned away from her, his face instantly concealed by shadow. Maria felt the first beginnings of panic, as the menace of the man before her began to overcome her imagined longing for him. She realized how little she truly knew of him, and how unprepared she was for her utter powerlessness in this Roman world.
"Take her."
A pair of men entered the room, their faces expressionless. Maria, having seen her father's enforcers in the village of her birth, recognized the same dynamic in this situation. She struggled as they laid hands upon her, the tunic she wore hardly disguising their iron grips. She felt as though the claws of some colossal eagle were biting into her flesh; the shooting pain caused her body to become limb and pliable, though she screamed inside for escape.
Gaius motioned, and with the oiled precision of long training and subservience they began dragging her through the darkened corridors of the villa. Through the glaze of the – this time – true fear closing her vision and stoppering up her cries of terror she felt again the shameful and far more potent heat of arousal slipping down her legs from the jewel nestled between them.
After what seemed like an age of her form being scraped hard along the flagstones, their cold robbing her of warmth and leaving her with only the growing desire for Gauis, she had become only a withdrawn bundle of sensations. The cold of the floor and her own heat from the fierce roughness of motion, combined with the sweetly liquid heat of her, made up her world of touch, her arms becoming numb from their entrapment by Gaius' male slaves. Her ears heard only the harsh breath of them and the unthinkably loud beat of her heart, whose pace had not slowed since her rude awakening.
But it was her eyes which betrayed her most cruelly. Though the shock of her treatment had left her blinded with fear, the eye of her mind painted a vivid addition to her terror. She saw again the young men of her village with whom she had been wont to play after a feast. She saw also the many occasions when she rose from her hut at dawn to hunt with them and they lay tangled in the frosted grass as soon as they had gone scarce a mile from the spiked outer wall of the camp. However, instead of Iccauos and Bratronos filling her mind with their youthful features, the sharp angled face of Gaius had replaced them, his confident smile haunting her. The playful couplings in the forest became terrifying chases, ending in force, and the drunken joy of feast days turned to confusion and pain. Though in her conscious mind she longed for escape, her treacherous id demanded a different sort of release; as she was recalled from her revery, she was left with a sense of loss to accompany profound relief.
Her dress was pulling at her shoulders from the friction with the stone floor, the pain leaving her fully awakened, though her deliverance was consumed by despair as she recollected her surroundings. The two pairs of hands unceremoniously released her and she tumbled to the floor, her dark hair spreading around her head like the thin roots of a white flower. From the cold she could feel she knew that they were no longer on the surface of the villa, where the heat of day lingered.
"Leave us."
A curt command was all that was required to leave Gaius and Maria alone, the slaves having obviously made this journey many times before, and being well acquainted with their master's wishes. Gaius ignored her and busied himself at a small opening in the dark corridor.
