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"He's still not answering." Armand cupped his hand over the receiver by his mouth and looked positively gleeful to report this small transgression by Malcolm. "Maybe he's gone to bed and unplugged the phone."

"We could probably improvise," Aquilinia offered. "I never had a marking strap. I just used a leather belt with the buckle removed."

"There's one of those hanging in your office closet at home, sir," Rose added.

Corvus smiled indulgently at his slave and his director of media relations slash presumptive lover. The two of them were clearly looking forward to the beating more than he was and Rose, having insisted it was necessary, seemed positively gleeful. He may not share their enthusiasm, but his dread at the idea had definitely faded.

"We could head over there," he offered. "Make sure nothing's gone wrong with Malcolm being left alone. Should we bring Clover? I know how she likes to take care of the sick and wounded."

Rose cast her eyes downward. "If you wish, but she sometimes gets upset when she sees me being beaten."

"How many times has she seen that?" Corvus asked as he led them out of the steward's office.

"I wasn't counting," said Rose. "Most of them, I guess."

Corvus shook his head. He might not have believed Rose's assertions that she could actually enjoy being beaten if Aquilinia wasn't right beside her confirming everything she said. The world had rapidly gotten much stranger and deeper today and was showing no signs of slowing down.

As soon as he climbed into the car, Aquilinia sat crosswise on his lap, put her arms around his neck and kissed him. It was sharply reminiscent of a different kiss from a different woman in this same car, but different enough that he was able to return the kiss without the lingering doubts he'd had with Crispa. Aquilinia was much less complicated than Crispa and their relationship concomitantly so.

He drew back and stroked her hair. "You're not what I expected from my media relations director."

Aquilinia laughed and kissed him again. "It's our dirty, little secret. Most of us are horribly transgressive. The first lesson any spin doctor learns is that the one reputation you're never going to repair is your own. Senator Petronius has given five speeches excoriating spin doctors as a group since I started working for him. We get scapegraced for every bad thing that comes out of Rio and we never get credit for the good."

"I won't..."

She placed a finger to his lips to stop his words, then kissed him again. "I wrote those speeches for him. Our calling is to provide the forms that let an office holder do his job. Providing someone to take the blame is part of that."

"It doesn't seem fair," offered Corvus.

"It's not. But it's very, very liberating." Aquilinia unbuttoned the top button of Corvus's shirt and ran her hand his bare chest. "Anything I can do, I've already been accused of worse by association. We provide a service - like cloaca men and hetaerae and in return, nothing further is expected of us."

Corvus drew her in for another kiss and heard the privacy partition closing. Rose had set it in motion, giving them privacy from the driver, but was watching avidly.

"You know, that sounds like a challenge," Corvus pointed out. "Are you sure there's nothing you could do that's worse than what you've already been accused of? It's important to have something to strive for."

Aquilinia laughed, wriggled, and extracted her panties from under her dress. She held them up for Corvus to see, then threw a leg over him, so she was straddling his lap.

She shook her head. "I could be the guest of honor at an orgy held in the back of this limo and not be half the doxy I've been called in a hundred speeches."

Corvus gripped her hips, his body responding as much to her Pluto-may-care attitude as to her actions. "I don't think I qualify as an orgy."

Aquilinia unbuttoned and unzipped his pants. Corvus lifted his hips to clear them and Aquilinia pulled them away before positioning herself over him and impaling herself on his cock. "That sounds like a challenge, senator," she gasped. "It's important to have something to strive for."

She rode him in relative silence, only the sound of their bodies moving together, their breathing, and the low grunts and moans she made filling the car's cabin. Corvus made only small motions with his hips and contented himself primarily with drawing down the top of her dress to kiss and suck her breasts. Otherwise, she seemed to be doing all the work.

As her pleasure rose, she clung to him tighter and tighter until her arms were wrapped tight around his chest, her head on his shoulder, and her whole body shuddering with wave after wave of pleasure. Corvus held her just as close and at the end drove up into her, lifting off the seat with each of three short thrusts that sent him over the edge of his own rising climax.

"Here it is." Rose emerged from the closet in Corvus's adopted office, holding out a folded-over leather strap in both hands.

Corvus accepted it and gave it a couple of experimental smacks across his palm. "All right. How do we do this? Is there like a post or something we're supposed to tie you to?"

"There might be one out in the slave house," said Rose. "I've never been out there."

"We could just do it over your desk," offered Aquilinia. "The posts are generally for serious beatings. This is more like play."

"All right." Corvus gestured with the strap. "So, I guess we just..."

Aquilinia held out a hand. "May I?"

Corvus relinquished the strap. All at once, Aquilina's posture became more martial as she gestured at Rose. "Slave, take off your clothes so I can give you a proper whipping."

"Yes, mistress." Rose made a very serious face only slightly ruined by her attempts not to smile as she lowered her head and stripped out of her clothes.

"Place your palms flat on the desk at shoulder width and spread your feet the same way. If you move your hands or feet, you earn extra lashes. Do you understand?"

"Yes, mistress."

"Good. Assume the position."

If anyone had asked Corvus, he would have had to admit that he was absolutely fascinated by what was unfolding in front of him, so he was just as glad that Rose and Aquilina were paying more attention to each other than to him. Then, Aquilina turned to him and gestured with the folded-over strap to a chair directly in front of the desk. "Why don't you sit down, get comfortable, and enjoy the show for now?"

The chair was directly in front of the desk and had Corvus staring directly at Rose's hairless sex and heart-shaped ass. It also gave him an unobstructed view of the first angry red mark that appeared on that ass when Aquilina whipped the strap across Rose's buttocks.

Rose's cry of pain had Corvus rising immediately from his seat, but Aquilina held out a hand to indicate he should stay where he was. "Did that hurt, slave?"

"Yes, mistress," panted Rose. "It was just right."

The next lash drew another sharp cry from Rose, but it sounded less like pain and surprise and carried the beginnings of arousal. Each subsequent strike shifted the ratio until Rose's cries were indistinguishable from the sounds she made when being fucked.

"Wait!" said Corvus suddenly. Aquilina paused on a backswing.

"I thought we were just going to beat her across the shoulders where the marks would show clearly."

"This is just to warm her up," said Aquilina. "Get her in the right headspace for being beaten along the shoulders."

"Really?"

Rose looked back past her own body. "It's working, sir."

Aquilina ran a finger roughly between Rose's legs, eliciting a sharp cry and drew it to her nose. "You're soaking wet, slave. I think you should be whipped extra for that."

"It will be as you say. Service is a ... yipe!" Rose's words were cut off by another lash across her ass followed by another. She moaned with each strike until the sound coming from her throat was constant. Only then did Aquilina move on to her shoulders.

"Aren't we supposed to be sharing duties?" Corvus raised his voice to be heard over the whipping. He'd been uncertain and a little horrified at first, but he couldn't deny that his desire had risen with each strike until it was painfully obvious. He'd gone from unsure he wanted to be there to not wanting to be left out.

"We can switch off if you like," Aquilina answered, punctuating her sentence with another lash across Rose's back and a low moan from the slave. A light sheen of perspiration coated her arms and chest. "Or you could just fuck her while I beat..." the lash came down again and Rose howled. " ... her some more."

It was an outrageous suggestion and one Corvus would have assumed he'd find unappealing if he weren't rock hard at the moment and his fellow participants not only willing, but gleeful. He rose, stripped out of his pants, kicked Rose's legs apart, and took her in one savage motion. She cried out in a higher note than she'd been responding to the lashing with.

Corvus liked to think of himself as a thoughtful and considerate man, contemplating each move he made and not prone to recklessness, but there was no rational thought as he sprang from the chair, undid his pants, and drove into Rose in almost a single motion. Hand on her hips, he thrust hard.

"Your feet moved, slave. Three extra lashes."

Corvus didn't slow his pace. "My fault really. I actually lifted her off the floor."

Aquilina gave him a look that had him quickly adding, "But whip her for it, not me."

She grinned and laid three lashes across Rose's back in rapid succession. With each strike, Rose cried out and convulsed, her whole body clenching hard around him. He lost his last shreds of self-control in that moment and drove into her, matching the timing of his thrusts with the rise and fall of the strap.

After a while, Aquilina laid her last lash across Rose's back, dropped the strap and rubbed her shoulder with her other hand. Corvus gestured her closer, then dragged her to him when she got within reach. She gave a surprised little squeal, but wrapped her arms around his neck to extend the forceful, demanding kiss he gave her.

The three of them were still locked together like that when Corvus's pleasure blast past the point of no return and exploded into Rose, etching fireworks on the insides of his eyelids.

Corvus woke without realizing he'd fallen asleep. Rose's feet were resting on his chest and Aquilina's head on his shoulder. After the beating, the three of them had barely made it to the bedroom before hands on bare flesh became mouths on bare flesh and trailing downwards.

As his relationship with Rose and Clover evolved, he'd found something sweet and transcendent in the way the three of them moved together, knowing and touching each other in a way that conveyed affection even more than desire.

What he, Aquilina, and Rose had done last night was the diametric opposite. It put him more in mind of Quad's sharks than anything else - falling on each other, their nostrils full of the scent of blood or sex, driven by a need that never passed through the rational mind. It was profane and grotesque and something everyone should experience at least twice before they died.

Just as he was starting to wonder why he'd woken up, he heard again what had awakened him. Someone was moving around in the family room. He'd meant to ask Quad to put the house under surveillance, but with everything that had happened in the last few days, he'd just forgotten. Everyone not in bed with him right now was supposed to be at his father's house.

Heart racing, he slid out of bed and tied on a robe, eyes searching for something he could use as a weapon. There were antique swords on the wall in the family room, one of the few effects left over from Labeo Vitellius that he'd decided to keep. But they weren't going to do him any good out there. He had to settle for one of Aquilina's platform shoes.

Still crouched, he crab-walked out of the room, across the hall, and into the family room where he was able to crouch behind a couch. When he saw who was there, he gave a relieved sigh and stood upright. "Malcolm."

Malcolm shrieked like he'd seen a ghost, clutched his chest, and whirled for one of the antique swords on the wall. Halfway there, he broke his forward motion and turned, stumbling, to face Corvus.

"You're supposed to be at your father's house tonight!" he shouted, still panting. Then, his eyes went to Corvus's hands and he smirked.

Corvus looked down at the shoe in his hand, cleared his throat, and went to toss it back in the bedroom. Aquilina was up on her elbows, blinking sleep out of her eyes, but Corvus placed his finger to his lips and nonchalantly tossed the shoe back where it had come from before returning to the sitting room. Malcolm was still standing there in the sitting room, watching him. "You were going to kill me with an espadrille?"

"Not you, no," said Corvus. "I thought you were an intruder."

"That you could subdue with a shoe?"

Corvus laughed. "It was the best I could do. The swords are out here."

"One of the wine bottles in there would have been a better choice."

"I was improvising," said Corvus. "We did try to call ahead, but no one answered."

Malcolm sighed, recovering his composure by the second. "Sadly, the amount of work that needs to be done to open a house that's been in decline as long as this one doesn't decrease along with the number of hands available to do it. Because Armand can never resist sending three slaves to do the work of one, there's suddenly an emergency and no one can be spared to meet the vendors or the contractors or do the marketing or anything."

"That's what you were doing at three in the morning?" Corvus looked pointedly at Malcolm's empty hands.

"Actually, I was meeting with the investigator you told me to hire - the one looking into the death of Labeo Vitellius. They are a compulsively nocturnal lot, even when their work involves a lot of running from government office to government office, all of which close before the sun goes down."

Corvus nodded. "What did he find out ... the investigator?"

"That Labeo Vitellius was a thief and a traitor to the New Roman Empire. His execution, while strangely handled, was entirely proper. He was stealing from the Empire for more than twenty years and had taken over a million denarii in that time. It's the same thing the Oracle Corporation is coming to realize and the senate will as well should they chose to investigate. I know everyone likes a good conspiracy theory, but there's simply no conspiracy here."

Corvus let out a slow sigh, relieved that the investigator hadn't found anything. "I didn't mean to startle you. Would you like a glass of wine?"

Malcolm started to move towards the kitchen. Corvus waved him off. "Sit down. I'll get it."

"You're here alone?" Malcolm sat. "You didn't bring anyone to serve?"

"Rose is in my room, but she can keep sleeping for now. I had to flog her tonight."

"I would have been more than happy to do that for you," said Malcolm dryly. "What did she do that finally incurred the wrath of even mild Corvus Gallicus?"

"Hey! I'm not that mild," Corvus protested, extracting a bottle of white wine from the refrigerator.

"Not that one - the Chardonnay in the back." When Corvus extracted a second bottle, Malcolm shook his head. "Not that one - the other Chardonnay in the clear bottle."

Corvus finally found the right bottle, poured two glasses and brought one to Malcolm.

"So, before I ordered you around like a first-generation Vulcan field hand, you were about to explain your fearsome and not-at-all-mild wrath." Malcolm quipped.

Corvus froze, a moment of genuine anger at having been so openly mocked rising to the surface, but then he laughed. "All right. Point noted. Still, I could flog you for that. I've got some experience now."

"I await your lash." Malcolm sipped his wine.

"Not you too," muttered Corvus.

Malcolm looked up, seemed to decide whatever Corvus had said wasn't meant for his ears and went on. "I meant only a small illustration of your basic nature. You have wrath in you, but you have humor and reason and wit. If you're genuinely wroth, I have no doubt you would act accordingly, but in a footrace, your wrath will cross the finish line long after humor has finished and gone home."

"That might be the most poetry anyone's ever used to call me a wimp," Corvus pointed out.

"Hardly a wimp, although you do prove my point," said Malcolm. "There may be no blood between you, but you're a good son for your father. You share so many traits - ones I don't see descending from the distaff side of your parentage."

"I'm going to take that as a compliment," said Corvus. "But I wouldn't underestimate my mother if I were you."

"I do not for one moment underestimate Lucretia Tullius," said Malcolm. "She would have made a fine general or a sniper or the power behind the throne. I still don't understand why he felt he needed to marry her, though. A handsome, young general may capture the people's imagination by marrying a pretty girl. A man in his forties marrying ... a woman his own age does not have the same draw."

He looked up as if remembering Corvus was still in the room. "Forgive me for saying so. I know your own fortunes have certainly risen because of the arrangement. I don't mean to suggest you don't deserve anything you've gotten or will get."

Corvus shook his head. "My benefitting biases me to think it's a brilliant idea. It doesn't mean I don't want to hear where its flaws might be from someone with a clearer perspective. I will have to live with them."

Malcolm sighed. "Unfortunately, my perspective is at least as clouded. I've lived my whole adult life with the idea that there is Gaius and there is me and whatever he needs, I do for him. We've been through two wars together and almost two decades of peace and he's never needed a wife before now. I can't help but feel I've failed him in some way."

Corvus didn't answer. He couldn't speak for Gaius and he didn't think Malcolm's assessment of his mother entirely fair, a point Malcolm had already conceded. Malcolm broke the silence by saying. "I'm starting to ramble. You were going to tell me what Rose did to deserve a flogging."

"She poisoned a senator."

"Not a Republican, I'm assuming."

Corvus laughed. It didn't take Malcolm long to get back to unflappable. "No. She served Senator Rufius a drink spiked with rum. I didn't know rum was a poison, but I can't very well take her word over a senator's. Can I?"

Malcolm smiled. "Hardly."

"We wouldn't have come back to the house, but Armand couldn't find your marking strap."

"That's because I don't have a marking strap," said Malcolm, looking disgusted. "Such things are for a steward more loyal to those who serve beneath them than those he serves. They're meant to trick the master into thinking that their will has been carried out when it's all just a show."

"That ... explains why we didn't find it then," said Corvus. "I didn't realize it was a sore subject."

"Neither did I," admitted Malcolm. He finished his glass of wine. "I think a day of doing a whole household's work alone has made me unforgivably short-tempered. If you don't have anything for me to do tonight, I should probably get some sleep."

Corvus and Aquilina was at breakfast in the kitchen when someone knocked on the front door. Rose, walking stiffly, but smiling broadly, went to answer the door. She returned less than a minute later. "Luculllus Memmius is here to see you."

"I ... don't know who that is," Corvus admitted.

"He said he's a forensic accountant," said Rose.

Corvus smacked his forehead. "He's going to want to look at Labeo's old office. Rose, could you please go ... uh, straighten up after us a little before I let him in there. I think we knocked a few things over in there and I know we left some clothes behind."

Rose gave a stiff, little bow. Aquilina giggled. Corvus looked at her, "Should you be giggling over that? I can't imagine what happened last night being the sort of thing that would be good for my career if it got out to my enemies."

Aquilina shook her head. "Forensic accountants are an offshoot of the Truthspeakers. They take a sacred oath to protect a client's privacy. We could have let this Lucullus watch last night and, as long as he was in your employ at the time, he wouldn't be able to tell anybody what he'd seen."

"Even so, I'm just as glad we didn't invite him to watch and I'd rather he not figure out what we were up to," said Corvus. "I watch TV. I know what these forensics guys are like. He'll sprinkle some powder on the desk blotter and know somebody got the strap there last night."

"Forensic accountant." Aquilina emphasized the second word. "He's probably just here to look over Labeo's books for the senate."

"Actually, he's working for me. I wanted to understand what exactly happened here in case the senate does decide to investigate. I don't want any rude surprises."

"Good thinking," said Aquilina. "You'll have to tell me if he finds anything so I know how to spin it."

Corvus went out into the entry hall, shook hands with Lucullus Memmius, and made small talk for as long as he could. Fusa had filled him in on whose office he was going to be investigating and who Labeo Vitellius had been, but Corvus decided to explain it all again, ignoring Lucullus's protests that he'd been told all this already.

Malcolm stepped into the entry hall. "Forgive me for not getting the door. I was in the back of the house taking an inventory."

"Not a problem." said Corvus. "Malcolm, this is Lucullus Memmius. He's going to look through Labeo's private records and reconstruct how he managed to steal so much money from the senate. Would you please show him where the books and records are and give him any assistance he might need?"

"But, we've already investigated Labeo's crime. The senate went over his books. What more is there to investigate?" Malcolm sounded faintly exasperated.

"That's what Mr. Memmius is here to tell us. Maybe there's nothing else to investigate, but I wanted to make one more pass." Corvus smiled and patted Malcolm on the shoulder. "Please show him where Labeo's office is and give him any assistance he asks for."

"Of course." Malcolm inclined his head and indicated that Lucullus should follow him. "This way, please."

When Corvus returned to the kitchen, Aquilina looked up with a grin. "There you are. Where were we?"

Corvus chuckled. He was still worried the forensics guy would somehow figure out what they'd been up to last night, but he had been enjoying the conversation. "You were about to explain to me why all patrician girls are perverts?"

"Not all patrician girls - just all the girls who've come of age in the last twenty-five years," Aquilina clarified. "That's how long girls' companions have been really popular. Before that, they grew up just as frustrated as plebeian girls. Fifty years ago, it was just as deviant to have a girl lick your pussy as it was for boys to keep buggering each other once they go off to college."

"I ... didn't realize there was a lot of boys buggering each other before college," Corvus admitted.

"Well, not a lot - but it's generally viewed as a phase when it happens." Aquilina reached over and stroked Rose's hair affectionately as the slave brought over a fresh pot of coffee. Rose rewarded Aquilina with a smile. She was moving more slowly than normal today and her motions were a little stiff, but it seemed to Corvus that, far from being resentful, she was actually standing a little closer as she moved today as if she wanted every excuse to brush against them. "Teenage boys will put their cocks anywhere they fit. At least they don't get splinters from each other's bungs."

Corvus laughed and pointed to his chest. "Hey! Teenage boy here."

Aquilina shook her head and leaned over to kiss him. "You are a man in your teens. Big difference. Trust me. My brother's twenty now and still acts like he's fourteen. You're eighteen, going on statesman."

Corvus drew her closer to kiss again. He knew Aquilina was stroking his ego, but the stroking felt good, so why stop her? "So, how does this make them perverts exactly?"

"Well, most girls start to get seriously curious about kissing around eleven or twelve so they go to their companion for kissing lessons. They start to blossom a year or two after that. The companion is charged with helping them be comfortable with their own bodies. They touch. It feels good. They want it to feel better. The companion does what they're told." She shrugged.

"But, I thought that was the whole point of a girl's companion. How does that make them perverted?"

"Well, we start kissing girls at eleven or twelve. We enter the marriage circuit at sixteen, but we're still not supposed to be kissing boys. Most girls take four seasons on the circuit just as a matter of form. By the time we're supposed to be kissing boys, we've been kissing girls half our lives and that's what seems normal."

Corvus noticed Aquilina had switched from "they" to "we" and had a million other questions besides, but there was a crash from the office and he heard Lucullus Memmius shout, "Be careful!!"

Corvus sighed, banged his head on the kitchen table a couple of times, and went to see what happened. When he got into the office, the massive oaken desk was askew, the rug that it normally rested on to protect the hardwood floor folded over on itself and crushed beneath. Papers and the forensic accountant were sprawled on the floor. Malcolm knelt with his shoulders bowed and his head down. Lucullus reached out a hand and Corvus helped him to his feet. The man was a little red-faced, when he rose, but grinned broadly.

"Ah. I was just about to come find you. As I was telling your boy here, I found something interesting."

Corvus still didn't understand how anyone could look at Malcolm and think "boy," but now was hardly the time to split hairs. "What have you found?"

"A Seius & Sentius!" exclaimed the accountant.

"Which is what exactly?"

"A wooden safe of sorts ... and sort of a puzzle box and ... well a lot of things." the accountant gestured at the rug. "It's built into the floor of this office." He went on to explain about who Seius and Sentius were, how they'd come to build these custom hidey-holes for wealthy men to hide their secrets, and a lot of other details that were probably very interesting for men with a passion for antique gadgets, but Corvus was only half-listening. He was staring at the floor as if hoping he could see through it to what lay underneath.

" ... always wanted to hide it under heavy things, particularly desks, but that was a mistake. If he'd put it anywhere in the house but here, it would have taken much longer to find it."

Corvus forced himself to pay attention. There were too many people in the room to be having this conversation. Aquilina had stepped into the doorway with Rose pressed lightly at her side.

"Aquilina, will you excuse us for a few minutes, please?"

A flicker of disappointment crossed her eyes, but she smiled and said, "Do you mind if Rose shows me the shower for a while?"

"Not at all. It can take a while to see all of it." Corvus deadpanned.

Once they'd left, Lucullus said, "Anyway, I suspected..."

Corvus turned to his father's steward, still kneeling off to the side. "Malcolm, would you give us some privacy, please?"

Malcolm looked surprised by the request and didn't rise from his knees until Corvus made an "up" gesture with his hand. Even then, he said, "Should I clean up the papers I've spilled before I go?"

Corvus shook his head. "No. It's fine. I know you have a lot of work to do with the rest of the household being at my father's house. We'll take care of it."

Malcolm inclined his head. "As you wish."

Once he'd gone, Corvus turned to the accountant. "You were telling me what you suspected?"

"Yes. I suspected there had to be a hidden ledger somewhere. Caepio Naevius did the investigative report for the senate and while his work is always sloppy, it was particularly slapdash this time. But I couldn't help notice that he only ever investigated half the story. Unforgivable, really. But, what can you expect from government work?"

"What does all this have to do with dropping my desk exactly?"

"Ah, right. I was getting to that." Lucullus raised a finger. "Anyway, Caepio only did the bare minimum. He glanced through the official ledgers and found enough numbers that didn't add up to justify a charge of treason, then he stopped. Shameful."

Corvus frowned. "I thought the senate hadn't decided whether or not to investigate this."

"This could hardly be considered an investigation," offered Lucullus. "But any time there's a charge leveled, there has to be some proof. This isn't Europe. Caepio was called in to look over the books right after the execution. He probably wrapped up his 'investigation' in an afternoon. I heard the Oracle Corporation is asking for a political investigation to see who they can blame for this mess, but that's a whole nother animal."