Chapter 4

When Rose stepped into Corvus's bedroom, Clover was still in the antechamber. Rose called out, "Do you still have secretarial work to do tonight?"

"Of course. I haven't done anything but pamper the two of us all day." Clover stepped through the doorway, looking down at a piece of paper, but raised her head as she started to speak again. "I should ... you changed your clothes."

Rose gave her sultriest smile. "Corvus saw me in the other dress and I'd hate to become familiar before he's really seen how exotic I can be." She braced herself in the doorway with one hand. "Do you like it?"

"I like it very much," said Clover. She hadn't moved at all since noticing Rose, still holding the piece of paper just above waist level. "I think Corvus will like it, too. He's got a few pieces in that color himself and it really brings out the color of your eyes."

Rose grinned and held her pose. "Did you have it made just for me?"

She'd been joking, but Clover didn't answer right away, still taking in the sight of her. Finally, she said, "I ... had you in mind when I had it made. It would look good on me, but I always hoped I'd have a chance to dress you in it."

Rose couldn't have felt more triumphant if she'd been driven down the main street of the capital with citizens lined up on both sides throwing flowers. Clover had been thinking of her, fantasizing about dressing her up, and had even gone so far as to waste their master's money buying the clothes she wanted to put Rose in? The sisters back at the creche would be shocked.

Emboldened, she strutted across the room, hips swaying and eyes smouldering as she held Clover's gaze the whole way. When she was standing right in front of her friend, she purred, "You were about to say if you had any secretarial work that couldn't wait until tomorrow."

Clover frowned. The idea that work could be put off until tomorrow would usually be anathema to her, but as Rose watched, she wavered and broke. "Nothing that can wait if there's something more important to do." There was a huskiness to her voice Rose had never heard before.

Rose drew her in and kissed her, starting gentle, but slowly pouring in all the pent-up desire she'd been collecting since seeing her old friend again. Rose whimpered low in her throat, but rather than protesting, melted. Rose backed her up against the massive secretarial desk that held her computer and phone and lifted her onto the surface before lowering the straps on her dress and kissing down and across her jaw to her chin.

"There is the small matter of helping me find some release before Corvus falls back so we don't fall on him like a couple of maenads with razor teeth and claws." Rose reminded her, pressing their foreheads together so that they were almost nose-to-nose.

Clover nodded. Her breath came in short pants now, but she still managed one small protest. "And if he catches us..."

Rose gave her sultriest grin. "If he catches us, we may only be allowed to leave this room to be treated for exhaustion. He wants us to do this, Clover."

Clover cradled Rose's face in her hands. "He told you that?"

It would be so easy to lie, but Rose wasn't that far gone. "He told me as much as he could for the question I could ask. Even I have limits to how forward I'll be. But, I know he wants this, Clover. Everything I've ever learned about service tells me it's so."

Clover looked her in the eyes, searching for any sign of deception or dissemination. Rose held her gaze and didn't look away. Slowly, Clover nodded. "All right."

Rose bussed her on the mouth, heart leaping. "All right?"

Clover nodded and closed her eyes. "We can't have you tearing our owner to shreds with your razor claws."

Rose kissed her again, passion and desire roaring to the front. Clover clung to her and returned it every bit as fierce. When Rose broke the kiss, it was only to move down to Clover's throat, then the place between her breasts. Clover leaned back to give her access, but when she started to raise the hem of Clover's dress, the darker-haired girl cried out, "Wait!"

Rose looked up and saw that Clover had picked up the receiver for the phone and was trying to dial. She relented long enough to let her make the call.

"Owen, has Corvus left yet? He has?" Clover's voice was almost composed and professional, close enough that Rose doubted anyone else would hear the faint quaver of desire that permeated her words. "Could you call me as soon as he gets back, please? There's something he needs to know and he might be upset if he thinks I waited too long to tell him. Thank you, Clive. You're a lifesaver."

She hadn't even gotten the receiver back into the cradle before Rose had her panties off and had lowered her head to the other girl's sex, her tongue and fingers plying the tender folds of Clover's flesh and seeking her heat.

Clover threw her head back and moaned, the last of her restraint tearing away as Rose delved deeper inside her. She knew all of Clover's secret places. Her first experimentally sensual touches had been with Clover, her first kiss. She'd been learning Clover's personal mysteries since before she knew they were mysteries. With practiced familiarity, she pinched Clover's clit between two fingertips and flicked the tip with her tongue again and again.

Rose hadn't realized how much Clover was holding back until she stopped. From the first, her body had quivered at Rose's touch. Now it rocked and undulated and cries rose from her throat, hoarse and primal. Rose didn't relent. She and Clover belonged to Gaius Gallicus, a man she'd never met, and they would share everything they had to offer with his son Corvus. Rose thought there was still room on a deeper level for Clover to belong to her, at least in that moment.

She poured everything she had into waging war on Clover's composure and it fell back as swiftly as Rome's enemies in the field, crumbling and disappearing. She waged war on Clover's training and her sense of propriety and anything that told her she couldn't belong to another slave, not even here, not even in her secret heart. No one knew Clover like Rose did. No one had been as much a part of her life. No one knew her secrets or her transgressions nor the desires that were even stronger than the deepest training.

She could never say any of that out loud. Even to think it felt to Rose like the most transgressive thing she'd ever done. Beyond that, it felt wrong, like she was poking at the world's foundations and daring the gods to reduce the city to rubble for her sins.

She said them anyway - not out loud, but in the secret language of their bodies. She said it with her fingers and her tongue and the movement of her body. There were no words and hardly any sound, but every touch seemed to scream what she felt and what she needed in that moment.

She said them over and over until Clover begged her to stop and, when she lifted her head from her best friend's lap, she still hadn't had her say, so she went on, burning kissing up her stomach and her chest until she again found Clover's mouth. Clover kissed her back with animalic ferocity, the only reciprocation Rose had allowed her to give.

If they'd been worried about greeting Corvus like maenads before, Clover should really worry now. Her hair was wild, her makeup smeared and melted. She looked more like the wild-women of myth than anyone Rose had ever seen. Still, she gripped Rose's face and kissed her again and again, heedless of anything but the moment.

"I love you so much," Clover whispered. "Please tell me you know that."

The words stunned Rose. There might be far greater transgressions for a slave than loving someone other than their owner, but none that Clover would have contemplated and many lesser sins she would have been horrified to even think of. For a moment, the world did shatter around them, but it reformed itself anew in an eyeblink. Rose realized that she had known. She hadn't put a name on it because its name was so dangerous, but she stroked Clover's hair and kissed her softly. "I know, Clover. I love you too."

"Good," said Clover emphatically. "Then take me to our master's bed. He told us to wait for him there. We can do at least that much right."

Before they got into bed, Clover stripped off first Rose's, then her own clothes. Even in her current state, she folded them neatly and laid them aside before climbing into bed with her lover. The bed was enormous, emperor-sized, and Clover crawled from the end of it to where Rose rested her head on the pillows like some kind of jungle cat stalking prey. Rose's heart trip-hammered in her chest, mostly with desire but a hint of fear too. She'd been merciless in wresting pleasure from Clover and doubted her friend's gentle nature would extend this far.

It didn't. Clover kissed her until she thought she might hyperventilate. She relented only to move to Rose's breasts where her tongue, teeth, and one hand teased, sucked, stroked, nipped, and pinched her nipples mercilessly while her other hand stroked its way slowly and inexorably between her thighs.

Rose came before Clover had even really gotten started and stayed on that plateau for a long time. If Corvus returned now, they would never hear the phone. All of Rose's blood was rushing past her ears and Clover's head was soon pressed between her thighs as tongue joined fingers.

Clover found Rose's tenderest flesh and her pleasure spiraled higher and higher. Every time Rose thought she'd reached her peak, Clover would pinch or bite or run a nail over some tender place, sending her into orbit. Clover knew Rose's body as well as Rose Clover's, but Rose discovered she had no secrets from her friend. When Denter had raged at the loss of his potency, he'd found for a time that he could be aroused by hurting. The pain was never more than she could bear and Rose had begged him to inflict it only on her, not Clover. In time, she'd come to find pleasure in it and had even missed it in some ways when it was no longer a part of their routine.

She had learned to make sharp pleasure of the pain, but she'd never said so, not to anyone. She didn't think Clover knew. But with her rough, startling touches, Clover showed that she knew everything, even if she'd never put it to use before.

Rose took all of it, not fighting the pleasure or trying to restrain herself. She threw back her head and howled, trusting that the family wing would be more or less empty at this time of the evening. She swore to herself that she wouldn't plead for mercy as Clover had, but accept everything her friend had to offer, but finally had to beg when the world started to go dark around the edges.

She lay in Clover's arms, heart and breathing slowing as her skin cooled, too spent for words, but not needing them anyway. If she forgot every word ever spoken to her but three, she knew she would always remember what Clover had said to her. They might well never say those words again, but they would always be there.

Much later, after they'd slept for a while and the sky was already growing pink with the new sun, Clover worked with a washcloth and a basin of hot water to clean off the last remnants of Rose's makeup as Rose had already done for her. Quietly, she said, "This is probably just as well. It's amazing that we can send a letter to Europe and have a response in only a couple of days, but we still can't come up with a makeup that stays intact while we sleep."

Rose grinned. "That would take away one of your natural advantages. You're beautiful even with smeared makeup. It's like a wizard's spell or something."

Clover smirked and continued to work. "Maybe, but at certain phases, you look like a coati. You should avoid wearing makeup to bed, Rose."

"Yes, sister." Rose wriggled and laughed at the look Clover gave her. She'd never felt happier to be alive than in this moment. "I guess our young master didn't make it home tonight."

Clover carried the washcloth and basin into the bedroom, then re-merged. "He may have decided to spend the night somewhere else. I'm sure if anything went wrong, the household would know."

Rose wasn't sure the two of them would know if the rest of the house had burned down and this was the last room standing, but that hadn't been her point. "Crispa Iunius is a widow. Maybe he got lucky."

Clover gave her a scowl that was mostly teasing as she climbed into bed. "You shouldn't spread rumors without knowing the truth, Rose. Think of the woman's reputation..."