Claudia Sabina is a wealthy Roman widow who's retired from the city to her countryside estate. Her husband died four years ago, and though she misses the physical side of their marriage, she finds she's able to get on with her life just fine. She's enjoying her first taste of freedom, but when her young and handsome Greek secretary, Damon, walks in on her bathing, Claudia wonders just how free she can be with her desires.

Damon was enslaved many years ago and looks forward to the day when he can buy his freedom. He respected Claudia's father and ran the estate for him, and now Damon teaches Claudia how to manage her different businesses. He's falling in love with her even though their relationship is forbidden, but soon they can't deny their feelings any longer. But Claudia soon has an unwanted suitor, and her son approves of the match. As Claudia attempts to untangle charges of corruption concerning her shipping business, she uncovers the truth of Damon's past-and when her son learns that she's been sleeping with a slave, the only thing Claudia can do for Damon is to set him free-and let him go...

Set in early imperial Rome, Damon's Price is a sexy and emotional read. Ali Katz succeeds once more in immersing the reader in the story from the first page, and keeps the tension and interest going. The book's main strength is in its characters-both Claudia and Damon felt real, their emotions raw and believable. Like her previous novella The Highwayman, Damon's Price does wobble slightly at the end due to the length of the story. I also spotted a few mistakes-Romans didn't have plantations, Cornelius is a family name and not a personal name, and at one point Damon is whispering modern Italian rather than Latin, and the ben-wa balls was too much of an anachronism for me and spoiled my enjoyment of that particular scene. Overall, an enjoyable and (mostly) well researched story with some breathtaking eroticism as its undeniable high point.

Reviewed by: Maija