Author

Imperial Warriors

Two Scorching Tales of the Roman Empire

Regina Kammer

Viridium Press

Copyright

The Promise of Memory, Protecting Her, Hadrian and Sabina: A Love Story, and An Unexpected Discovery are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

The Promise of Memory

Copyright ©2013 by Regina Kammer

Corrected with minor revisions, ©2016 by Regina Kammer

Originally appeared in Hot Highlanders and Wild Warriors: Erotic Romance For Women published by Tempted Romance/Cleis Press, 2014.

Protecting Her

Copyright©2014 by Regina Kammer

Corrected and revised, ©2016 by Regina Kammer

Originally appeared in Conquests: an Anthology of Smoldering Viking Romance published by Story Ink LLC, 2015.

Hadrian and Sabina: A Love Story

Copyright ©2012 by Regina Kammer

Corrected with minor revisions, ©2015 by Regina Kammer

An Unexpected Discovery

Copyright ©2017 by Regina Kammer

Originally appeared in Naughty Getaways: Eleven Sultry Stories published by The Naughty Literati, 2017.

Cover design ©Regina Kammer. Warrior photograph: Hot Damn Stock; Ancient Roman spoila photographs ©Regina Kammer

All Rights Reserved. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Published by Regina Kammer and Viridium Press, Friday Harbor, Washington

Introduction

Ancient warriors. Muscles flexing under sun-burnished skin as thick arms wield swords, battle axes, or bow and arrow. Brawny, fierce, and intensely loyal to their cause, king, or god. Alpha heroes romanticized through the lens of history.

In this mini-anthology I offer two scorching tales of romance between warriors and the women who are inexorably drawn to them. Each story is set during a different time and place in the Roman Empire. Both stories have been published separately before but are now available together for the first time. Also included as bonus content are the prologue and opening section from my historical erotic epic, Hadrian and Sabina: A Love Story, and the opening to my Parthian romance An Unexpected Discovery.

The Promise of Memory is set in Rome during the reign of the emperor Trajan (b. 53 CE, reigned 98-117 CE). Specifically, the story is set in the year 100 CE, when the emperor and his wife, Plotina, were living in Rome at the imperial palace. Trajan was a man of war and was often on campaign in the provinces and not in residence in the capital.

One of those provincial campaigns forms the backstory to Promise. As commander of a legion during the reign of the emperor Domitian, Trajan helped crush a rebellion of the Germanic Chatti.

Aelia, our heroine, was captured during the rebellion and sent to work as a slave in Rome’s imperial palace, where we find her over ten years later. She is inflamed when the eques Manius and his blond Batavian bodyguard strut by her weaving studio on their way to the Empress Plotina’s bedroom. Something about Manius sets Aelia’s heart a-flutter, something more than his muscular thighs and blue-gray gaze, something that reminds her of a love lost long ago in Trajan’s wars in Germania.

Protecting Her takes place over seven hundred years after Promise. The setting is Constantinople during the time of the Byzantine empire. But why would a Byzantine historical romance be included in a mini-anthology of Roman stories?

The word Byzantine—a reference to Byzantium, the ancient name of Constantinople—is a modern construct. It was used as early as the sixteenth century and became more common in the nineteenth century to refer to the eastern Roman Empire, the capital of which was Constantinople.

The Byzantines considered themselves culturally Hellenic, or Greek, because they spoke Greek. Politically, however, those in the court of Constantinople considered the mighty Roman Empire their direct historical ancestor and their own empire its continuation.

The ninth century saw the convergence of cultures across Europe due to Viking incursions. The Vikings didn’t just search for new lands and opportunities via conquests in the West, they also went East, into what is now