“Tiberius,” I whisper.
“It was not something that I initiated,” he announces as if this makes it better. His shoulders square, his back ramrod straight as he looks down his nose at me. “I am the emperor, Drucilla. I can and will do as I please.”
“That’s not okay,” I breathe. “That is really not okay.”
“That being said,” he continues, ignoring my words. “I did not initiate it, she used her magi.”
“You’re saying she magically fucked you?”
His brows frown as he looks down at me. He must not understand fuck, and I’m surprised, I’m sure that it’s one of the oldest words in the English language. I don’t get how we can have a lot of the same vocabulary, but that one is not the same.
“You magically put your penis inside of her?” I ask with a sigh.
“I did not want it, melculum. Not for a moment did I want her body. However, I was also not in charge of my own functions.”
I remember how the Devil himself had me completely immobilized. How I couldn’t move, and then I realize that it was the same thing. I would have kissed him, too. I would have done whatever, I felt something for him, something that I know was not real.
I don’t want to forgive him, my heart is hurt at the fact that he could be so intimate with another woman, but as much as it hurts, as much as it absolutely pains me, I decide in the moment to forgive him.
“The witch is not with child, the maga, she said it was not possible. My seed can only grow inside of my fated, inside of you.”
Tiberius lifts his hand, cupping my cheek. I watch him for a moment, wanting to hate him, but finding that I can’t. I am falling, continuing to fall without a landing place in sight, not yet. I know that when I do land, it will be in love with him.
I am already so close.
TIBERIUS
She wants to be angry with me, and I do not blame her as I would be furious with her if the tables were turned. However, I am too glad to have her in front of me again, too grateful and thankful to the gods, to care about her anger. She will forgive me in time and that is all that matters, that she will be here in time to forgive me.
“What has happened to your face, your neck, and your side?” I ask, changing the subject.
Anger flows through me at the sight of her bruising skin. When she appeared in front of me earlier, I felt relief. Then I saw the marks and felt anger, but she had passed out, so as soon as she woke again, I felt relief.
Now, I am angry again.
She lifts her hand to her cheek, then slides her fingers down her throat, but does not answer me immediately.
“Drucilla,” I growl.
Her eyes flick up to meet mine and she chews on her bottom lip for just a moment. I want nothing more than to tug her lip from the abuse her teeth are giving it, but I wait. She must come to me with the information.
“Chad. He was a man I dated, in the past, but I’m not sure it was really him.”
“I do not understand any of what you’ve said.”
Her eyes widen, then she clears her throat. “Do people here court, date, spend time together before they decide to marry?” I ask.
The thought of her anywhere near a man who wishes to marry her, to touch her, it makes my blood boil inside of my body. I completely understand her initial anger a few moments ago. I feel filled with rage, almost unstoppable.
“They do,” I grind out. “Not people of my station, but regular people indeed do this.”
She presses her lips together for a moment, her eyes focused on mine and unmoving. I wait, I watch, and then she speaks.
“We courted, but I didn’t know that he was married to another. When I was back there, we ran into one another. Then he broke into my apartment and tried to force himself on me.”
My body starts to tremble with rage, it shakes and my face heats, no doubt turning several shades of red at the idea that this man harmed my mulier, my fated—my Drucilla.
“He did not succeed, Tiberius,” she exhales.
Her voice, it is so soft and sweet, I had missed it in the weeks that she was taken from me. Her hand extends and she cups my cheek. Wrapping my fingers around her wrist, I turn my head and touch my mouth to the palm of her hand, then kiss the pads of her fingers.
“But he came back and he was changed. A woman was there to help me, a venefica. She knew that the creature in front of me was not the man that I’d dated in the past. She knew that he was not human. He called himself Diaboli.”
“He plays. I knew the deal that I made with Decima, she is one of his disciples.”
“The venefica,” she snaps, jealousy pouring off of her in waves.
Chuckling, I keep my fingers wrapped around her wrist even as she tries to tug her hand away from me. I do not let her do this, knowing that if I let her retreat, she will, more than just physically.
This is the first chance that I have to converse with my own mulier, and I am not going to let the conversation end in anything but pleasured climaxes for the both of us.
“Yes, she and her women had a plan. I wish that I had known, I would have never taken you to Curia, nor would I have gone myself. I would have lit the entire island on fire,” I state.
“Where is she now?” Drucilla asks.
Smiling at my mulier, I really look at her. Even with the bruising marring her face, she is stunning. “You did not know, when you
