Page 10 of Thawed Gladiator: Quintus (Awakened From the Ice #6)

Chapter Ten

Quintus

She moves beside me through the evening air like music made flesh. I find myself listening to the rhythm of her footsteps the way I once listened to the shift in a crowd’s roar—attuned, alert, as if the sound itself could decide everything.

Reading people has always meant survival. Knowing their intentions, their fears, their weaknesses. That skill kept me alive when younger, stronger men fell.

But with Nicole, the analysis feels different. More personal. More dangerous.

She’s definitely interested—that much has been clear since this morning’s manufactured training session.

But while her movements felt deliberate, almost practiced, my reaction was anything but.

Heat coiled low and immediate, the kind of instinctive pull I know from combat—only this wasn’t the anticipation of violence.

It was the far more dangerous rush of wanting.

The way she stood closer than necessary, how she held eye contact a moment too long, the way she lingered after our hands touched during the lesson. All signals I recognize, even if I’ve had limited experience receiving them.

But something feels calculated about her approach. Like she’s following a script rather than instinct, executing a plan rather than responding to genuine feeling. There’s a fragility under her confidence, like a woman choosing desire with effort rather than being swept up in it.

The distinction matters, though I’m not entirely sure why.

“The air smells different here,” she says, breaking the comfortable silence. “Cleaner. Like it’s not filtered through twenty thousand other people’s lives.”

“Cities carry the weight of too many stories,” I agree, understanding exactly what she means. “Here, the air remembers only grass and horses and honest work.”

She glances at me with something that might be surprise. “That’s almost poetic.”

“Is that unexpected?”

“A little. You come across as so practical, so focused on fixing things.” She pauses. “I’m discovering there are many layers I didn’t anticipate. And I like surprises.”

The observation hits closer to the truth than she probably realizes.

I have spent decades learning to present only the surface that serves survival—competent, reliable, useful.

Revealing anything deeper was a luxury I couldn’t afford in the ludus, where emotional vulnerability could be weaponized by those looking for advantage.

But we’re not in the ludus anymore. And she’s not looking for weakness to exploit.

“Perhaps I am learning it is safe to show more than what is merely useful,” I admit, though honesty still feels dangerous in my mouth, honesty still a dangerous thing to offer.

Her smile transforms her face, warming it in ways that steal my breath. “I like that idea. That you feel safe enough to be more than what people expect.”

We’re walking toward the more secluded paths now, away from the main compound where casual conversations echo across courtyards.

I know the route she wants without her having to ask, because I’ve been reading her body language all evening—how she angled us away from populated areas, how she chose directions that lead toward privacy.

That awareness makes me sharply attuned to everything about her. Confidence has changed how she carries herself: shoulders back and head high instead of hunched in apology.

How intelligence lights her eyes when she’s engaged in conversation. The growing grace in her movements as she learns to inhabit her body without shame.

Everything about her draws me in ways that feel dangerous to a man who’s spent so many years learning not to want things he couldn’t have.

“Can I ask you something?” she says as we reach a grove of oak trees.

“Of course.”

“The gladiator thing—how do you handle it? Being seen as this exotic curiosity instead of just… a person?”

The question catches me off guard. Most people don’t think to ask about such complex things.

“Carefully,” I say after a moment. “There is always the risk of being seen as spectacle rather than human. Property rather than person.”

Something in her expression shifts, and I realize I’ve touched on something that resonates with her own experience.

“Yes. Exactly that. Being seen as something to be managed rather than someone to be valued.”

I’ve never had this conversation with another person. I’ve never met anyone who understood what it means to rebuild yourself after the world has stripped you bare.

“In the ludus,” I hear myself saying, “connections were temporary. People sold, traded… killed. Learning to care meant learning to lose. It was… easier to remain distant.”

“Easier, but lonely.”

“Very lonely.” The words scrape raw on the way out, more revealing than I’d wanted.

Real relationship was never possible—I was property, not a person. Feelings were uncharted terrain, left unexplored. Desire itself was forbidden, stamped out before it could grow. In the ludus, wanting was weakness, and weakness was dangerous.

But she’s not asking me to want things I can’t have. She’s offering something mutual, something chosen.

The problem is, I already know this can’t stay only physical for me—no matter how much she tries to approach it like another lesson to master.

“I sense you’re protecting yourself from something,” I say gently, testing whether honesty will drive her away or draw her closer.

Her step falters slightly, and for a moment I think I’ve miscalculated. But then she nods, looking ahead rather than at me.

“Twenty-five years of learning that wanting things for myself was selfish. That my needs were inconvenient complications.” She glances at me sideways. “I’m still figuring out how to want something without apologizing for it.”

The pieces click into place—her careful approach, the way she’s treating this like a skill to be mastered rather than a feeling to be explored. She’s recovering from being with someone who taught her not to trust her own desires.

Whoever taught her that lie deserves the arena’s lessons—and I’d volunteer to give them. But that impulse won’t help her now.

What she needs is patience. Gentleness. Someone who can follow her lead while staying honest about what this means to me.

Because it already stirs more in me than she expects, and pretending otherwise would only build a lie between us.

“Wanting is not selfish,” I tell her as we pause near a bench beneath ancient oak trees. “Wanting is human. Whoever taught you such a thing sought only their own comfort, not your good.”

Her breath catches audibly, and when she looks at me, there’s something raw and grateful in her expression that makes my chest ache.

“How do you know exactly the right thing to say?”

“Experience with having my humanity questioned. I recognize the wounds.”

We’re standing close now, close enough to see the pulse at her throat, close enough that the air feels heavy with possibility.

Rather than sit on the bench, as I thought she might, she continues along the path that will take us back to the compound.

We walk in comfortable silence, listening to the soft noises of the night.

“Would you like to come in?” The invitation comes out slightly breathless as we approach her quarters. “Just… to talk more privately.”

The offer hangs between us, loaded with meaning. This is her choice, her invitation, her decision about what happens next.

For a moment I just look at her, memorizing the curve of her mouth, the heat in her eyes, the courage it takes to ask. “Are you certain?”

She meets my gaze directly. Her confidence this time feels real, not rehearsed.

“I’m certain I want to find out what this is.”

The honesty in her voice decides it for me. Not desire alone, but curiosity. Not mere attraction, but a true wish to explore what grows between us.

“Then yes. I would like that very much.”

Her smile is nervous and excited and beautiful, and when she opens her door and steps inside, I follow without hesitation.

The small room feels intimate in lamplight, transformed by intention from simple accommodation to private sanctuary. Her space, her rules, her choice.

The door closes behind us with a soft click that sounds like everything changing.

She turns to face me, and the awareness crackling between us suddenly has nowhere to hide. No more casual conversation, no more public spaces requiring careful behavior. Just the two of us and whatever we decide to make of this moment.

“I should probably mention,” she says, voice almost shy despite the bold invitation, “I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing here.”

“Neither am I,” I admit, which earns me another one of those transformative smiles.

“Good. We can figure it out together?”

Together. The word lodges in my chest like a promise. For the first time in years, I’m being invited to be human with another person.

The prospect is terrifying. And exhilarating.