Page 27 of Thawed Gladiator: Quintus
“It’s just the exercise program,” I hedge.
“Right.” She folds her arms. “Spill.”
“Maybe there’s more, but it’s nothing serious.”
“Why not? You deserve happiness.”
“I’m making my own happiness. That’s the point. I’m finally figuring out who I am when I’m not bending myself into someone else’s expectations.”
“But being whole doesn’t mean you can’t share that wholeness,” Ava says, her voice sharp with wisdom that humbles me. “Dad made you smaller. Maybe this person makes you bigger.”
The words land deep. Quintus doesn’t ask me to shrink. If anything, he makes me feel more like myself than I’ve been in years.
“It’s complicated,” I murmur.
“The best things usually are.” She softens. “Promise me you’ll stay open to possibilities, okay?”
After we hang up, I stare at my reflection in the darkened glass. The woman gazing back is someone new—confident, sensual, lit from within.
This is what it feels like to be seen.
I tell myself again that this is only temporary. Casual. Safe. But as I climb into bed, coffee mug still on the nightstand and Quintus’s voice still in my head, I know the truth.
The most dangerous thing about Quintus isn’t the way he touches me.
It’s the way he makes me want more.
Chapter Thirteen
Quintus
Playing by her rules is harder than any gladiatorial combat I ever faced.
In the arena, enemies were honest about their intentions. They wanted me dead, and I fought accordingly. But this—giving Nicole the casual relationship she demands while my feelings deepen daily—requires a kind of discipline I never learned in theludus.
During morning training, I maintain a careful distance. I force myself to offer only clipped, professional corrections, though every instinct screams to step closer, adjust her stance with my hands, and claim any excuse just to touch her. When she successfully throws Alaric again—her technique improving with each session—I nod approvingly from across the yard instead of closing the distance between us.
“Excellent form,” I call out, keeping my voice level. “Your timing is perfect.”
She flushes with pleasure at the praise, and the sight of her confidence blooming under my recognition makes something tighten beneath my ribs. Everything about her draws me deeper. Each day she stands taller, learning to take up space without apology.
Determination drives her past her own limits, the fierce spark proving she is no longer the hesitant, bruised woman who first arrived. And when she responded to my touch in the darkness of her room that first night we crossed her boundaries—generous, unguarded, absolutely devastating—my carefully maintained emotional control unraveled. One night, and already it echoes through me like a brand.
“You’re being remarkably well-behaved,” Thrax observes in our Thracian tongue, a language so old the Sanctuary’s translators don’t touch it.
Without taking my eyes off her, I reply in the same tongue, “Respecting her boundaries.” No need to advertise our conversation, although the translation devices pick up every word.
“Even when those boundaries are making you miserable?”
I don’t answer, because what is there to say? That I lie awake replaying every sigh and whispered word of that night, knowing one taste will never be enough? That casual physical release feels like torture when what I want is to hold her through the night, to wake up beside her, to build something real and lasting?
She made her terms clear. I accepted them. A man of honor doesn’t renegotiate the deal just because his feelings have evolved beyond the original agreement.
But, Goddess Fortuna, it’s getting harder to pretend that this is enough.
Two nights later, the Missouri air carries autumn’s promise as I make my way to my usual spot for evening music. The sanctuary sleeps around me, peaceful and secure in ways theludusnever was. No guards watching for weakness, no threat of sudden violence, no need to sleep with one eye open.
Freedom to grieve, to remember, to let music carry emotions too large for words.
