arms that had been locked tightly about her loosened, and she slipped her own arms up and around his neck, molding her lush soft curves to his hard body. How long they remained standing there kissing, she never knew; but suddenly he was drawing her camise off, his big hands caressing her back, cupping her buttocks, drawing her tightly against him, letting her feel his deep and hungry need.
'Longinus,' she managed to whisper, wanting very much to satisfy his need and the equally deep need within her.
'Longinus is gone,' was the answer, and quickly looking about the room, she saw that Marcus spoke the truth.
'Not here, not now,' she whispered again, somewhat shy that they might be discovered.
'Here and now,' he answered, drawing her down onto a couch.
'Please, Marcus…' she pleaded.
'I very much please,' he answered her, and then she felt his hands beneath her bottom, lifting her slightly, felt the hot tip of his shaft rubbing against her womanhood, felt herself encouraging him onward, and knew that she was lost.
There was no subtlety, for the need between them was too great. Again, again, and yet again he drove himself into her, and it was, he thought, like plunging into boiling honey. The sweetness flowed from her until he thought it could come no more; but yet again it flowed and in the end it was she who weakened him, and filled him with such delight that he cried out.
Her hands reached down and raised his face from her shoulder. She loved gazing into his eyes when they lay locked in passion. Kissing him with gentle little kisses, she said once more the words he never tired of hearing from her lips. 'I love you, Marcus! I love you! Never leave me! Never!'
His sapphire-blue eyes bore into her, and told her all that his lips could not say at this tender and yet fiery moment. The deep and desperate loving began again, and she felt him growing and filling her with such pleasure that she believed for a long moment that death was but an instant away. Nothing, she reasoned, could be quite that wonderful, but he certainly was. Again, and yet once more he led her down passion's path until the rapture burst over her in a shower of tiny golden lights. Then she tumbled into a velvet abyss of warm, loving darkness that enfolded her, rocked her, protected her.
When she came to herself once more he was looking at her with a bemused expression. 'Did all of this come about simply because I questioned your prowess with a broadsword?' he asked.
Weakened by his loving, she could only manage a soft chuckle. Unable to resist, he bent and tenderly covered her face with kisses. 'I adore you, my Queen,' he said quietly. 'I adore you, beloved!'
'Then I have won this victory myself, Marcus,' and her voice held a teasingly triumphant note.
He laughed then. He couldn't help it, for she had so very neatly outmaneuvered him. 'You have won the victory fairly, beloved,' he admitted.
There came a discreet knocking at the library door, and Marcus rose from the couch, snatching up his long tunic, sliding it over his big frame, reaffixing his toga. He looked to Zenobia who had as quickly redressed in her graceful long, white stola with its wide belt of gold squares studded with turquoise-blue chunks of Persian lapis. She nodded, and he said, 'Enter!'
Cassius Longinus returned to the room, saying, 'I assume you have reconciled your differences now, my children. It seemed to me when I was forced to hurriedly depart that you were well on your way to doing so.'
They both laughed, and Zenobia replied, 'We have indeed reconciled our differences, Longinus, and I have easily won the victory.'
'Indeed the queen is invincible,' the smiling Marcus agreed, and it seemed as if his words were prophetic of the months to come.
Palmyra's legions moved across Syria, subduing all rebellion in the name of the Roman Empire. Asia Minor was firmly cowed, and only then did Zenobia return to her oasis city.
There she found that in her absence her son, the boy king, had grown into a young man. He was fully as tall as she was, and so closely resembled his father, Odenathus, that it almost hurt her to look at him.
'Is it that I have been away so long,' she marveled, 'or have you really become a man?'
'I have become a man,' he answered her. Gone was the squeaky voice of change that had bid her farewell. Now his voice was deep and sure.
'He has your knack for government,' Longinus said quietly. 'He has begun to rule, and rule well.'
'Only under your guidance, and that of Marius Gracchus,' the sixteen-year-old king replied graciously.
'Strange,' Zenobia mused. 'I had thought that you would prefer the military, like your father.'
'I have not yet had the chance, Mother. You and Marcus have led the armies these many months.'
'You were too young to go,' she protested.
'But I am no longer too young. I will take the armies into Egypt when they go this winter. Palmyra's kings have always been good generals.'
'No,' she said quietly.
'What? Do you love war so, Mother?'
'I can see now that only your body has grown, Vaba. Your mind is yet that of a child.'
'I am the king, and I
'I will choose my wife,' he said, and she knew in that instant that he already had. She invoked the gods that the girl be suitable.
'Who is she, my son?'
'You will approve, Mother. It is Flavia, the daughter of your friends, Antonius Porcius and his wife, Julia.'
'Flavia Porcius? She is but a child, Vaba.'
'She is almost thirteen, Mother. She has already begun her woman's flow.'
'I don't want to know how you know that,' Zenobia said, shocked, and behind her both Longinus and Marcus smiled. The young king might look like his father, but he was his mother's son in that he was determined to have his way.
'Nonetheless she is my choice for a wife, and I will wager even you could not choose a more suitable girl. She is Palmyran-born, of reputable family, and ready to bear children. More important to me, however, is the fact that she loves me and I love her.'
'Then why do you want to rush off into battle?'
'I must prove myself worthy to rule Palmyra; to myself, to my people, and to Flavia. Until I do I am only your son, and that is simply not enough for me. I must be a man in my own right.'
Zenobia turned away so he might not see her tears. Vaba was indeed becoming a man. Gently he put his arm about his mother. 'You have given me the greatest gift any woman could give her child. You gave me time to grow, time to learn, time to play. But now the time has come for me to earn my place. All your life you have been so good, so loyal, so generous. Do you not want a life of your own? Do you not want to marry Marcus? You are yet young enough to have children, and I believe that like any man he wants a son.'
She blushed at his words. He, her firstborn, her baby, was chiding her, but when she turned to give him a sharp reply she saw how earnest he was, and instead she said, 'You are right. You shall lead our armies into Egypt this winter while I remain behind to rule this city in your stead.'
It was going to be devastating, she thought. Both Vaba and Marcus, two of the three males she loved best in this world, away from her this winter; for of course Marcus was still commander of the legions, and would go to guide Vaba in military matters. Then suddenly she thought that it was not so terrible after all. Egypt would be easily subdued, and Vaba would have his first taste of battle. He would return to marry Flavia Porcius, then she, Zenobia, would be free to marry Marcus Britainus. Together they would guide the young king and his wife in their rule of the Eastern Empire. Zenobia smiled. When Vaba's first child was born she would declare her son Augustus, supreme ruler of the Eastern Empire. With all the lands from Egypt to Asia Minor under their rule, who would dare to dispute them? Certainly not Rome, weakening Rome with its succession of soldier-emperors, and its north-em and western
