by N. D. Jones
Ocean blue eyes smiled down at her, and full lips lifted in a feral smile. “No one would dare.”
“Of course not. Your wife has Shieldmanes stationed everywhere.” Some were in black suits and boots like Tau, while others were undercover and dressed as embassy staffers. “Tamani is . . .” Sekhmet had been about to say overprotective but walking through the doors of the building where her parents had been murdered, she understood not only Tamani’s caution but the unvoiced pledge of the Shieldmanes.
None of them were to blame for what had happened to Zarina and Bambara, not even the alpha Shieldmane team of fifteen years ago. But the Shieldmanes had taken the deaths of their leaders and her kidnapping as a personal failure. Sekhmet didn’t require the words of never again to know they carried the sentiment in their hearts.
“There is no more secure world leader than the Sekhem of the Kingdom of Shona.”
Obviously pleased with Sekhmet’s compliment, Tau’s shoulders relaxed but nothing else about the man softened.
The people in the embassy lobby had gone silent when they saw Sekhmet enter the building. Felidae and humans alike gawked at her, a phenomenon she didn’t enjoy but had long since accepted. To many, Sekhmet was the “Mortal hand of the Shona gods.” She disliked the title, but it had served her kingdom well. But fear was a shortsighted plan that despots viewed as a long-term political strategy. It was not.
Three Shieldmanes joined Tau, surrounding Sekhmet and ready to escort her through the throng of embassy staffers and onto an elevator. During her stay, her team would have many opportunities to serve as her physical shields. Now, however, she neither wanted nor needed shadows during her tour of a building that, when first purchased, she had intended on razing to the ground. A waste of money, but she had wanted no physical reminders of her pain, including a building a country away.
Sekhmet laid a hand on Tau’s forearm. “Tamani has vetted everyone granted access to the embassy.”
She hadn’t posed a question, but Tau nodded, confirming her statement as a fact.
“I am free to take in our new embassy alone.” Sekhmet’s headshake silenced the rebuttal she saw in Tau’s eyes and sensed in the other three members of her alpha security team—two women and one man. All trained by Mafdet. “I’ll be fine.”
Sekhmet wouldn’t add that she could take care of herself. From personal experience, she knew quite well that even a highly skilled fighter could be defeated. So, she smiled at each of her Shieldmanes in turn, hoping to reassure them but also firm in her position.
“Meet me in my suite an hour before my press conference with Ms. Choi.”
“Until then?” Tau asked.
“You have your suite assignments but check in with Tamani before you go up to your rooms.”
“She’s probably in the security office.”
Sekhmet agreed with Tau. In four hours, the embassy’s lobby would be filled with politicians and news reporters. She could see the podium from there, the flags of the Kingdom of Shona and the Republic of Vumaris on the wall behind the sound lectern.
She felt her Shieldmanes’ eyes on her when she walked away from them and not to the elevators but the stairwell. Opening the door, the same one her parents had gone through the last time she had seen them alive, she questioned the sanity of taking such a walk down an unpleasant memory lane. But walk she did, up flights of stairs, stopping when she reached the thirteenth floor. Humans may have considered thirteen an unlucky number. If she were a superstitious person, she wouldn’t have converted the Sanctum Hotel into the Shona embassy in Vumaris.
Sekhmet strolled down the hallway, recalling the last time she’d been on this floor, with whom, and why. The memory, still fresh but less potent, squeezed her heart—leaving her reflective and melancholic but not breathless and angry. The murder of her parents wasn’t an experience to “get over,” no more than her sorrow was an emotion to “conquer.”
As much as Sekhmet was an alpha and sekhem, a queen by human standards, she was first and foremost a woman . . . a person. I hurt. I laugh. I cry. I love. I’m imperfect. And I accept all of me.
Mind on thoughts more important than the reason for Sekhmet’s visit to Vumaris, she walked down the steps and onto another floor, oblivious to her surroundings.
A door opened to her right. A hand shot out, grabbed her arm and tugged her inside a room. The door slammed shut and she was pushed against it.
Sekhmet didn’t snarl or fight. Two reasons kept her from doing either or even both. One, there was a mouth fused to hers. Two, the mouth belonged to her husband.
She returned his kiss with building enthusiasm but, when he pulled away and dropped to his knees, her reply whine was unbecoming of an alpha. Gentle hands glided from shaking knees to trembling thighs and then up to quivering sex, compelling a moan from a mouth gone dry. Who knew two months without her husband’s touch would produce such carnal need?
Ekon’s head, like his hands, disappeared under her dress.
“You feel so good.” Voice muffled against the mouth Ekon had pressed to Sekhmet’s center, he kissed her there, and she thought her legs would melt like ice cream on a sultry day. “You sound even better. I’ve always loved the way you say my name when I do this.”
He kissed her center again, pressing his lips and lingering through the long length of her moan.
Sekhmet’s head fell against the door, and her mouth hung open.
“I’ve been dreaming of having you in this way for weeks.”
“We’re going to do this right here and now?” Not that Sekhmet knew what room Ekon had pulled her into—likely his office since that was the location for their agreed-upon reunion.
They shouldn’t indulge, but she had never been one to deny her sexual urges. The fact that they often coincided with Ekon’s made her submission that much sweeter.
Ekon stood, his tall, brawny frame as delicious as the lips that had teased and tempted. Sekhmet’s eyes drifted to said lips. She wanted them on her again, so she went on tiptoe and took them. So soft.
She got lost in the taste of him and the glorious sensation of touching her husband after a necessary but annoying separation. It hadn’t been the first time government business had taken one of them away from the other, but they had never been apart for such an uninterrupted stretch of time. While Sekhmet traveled as much as she once had with her parents, she had limited her visits to Vumaris to the essential and unavoidable.
“Shit, that’s good.”
Sekhmet had cupped Ekon through his dress pants, his erection a bulging temptation she wanted inside of her. With a firm gentleness, she caressed him the way he liked.
Lowering his head to her shoulder, his breathy groans tickled the warm flesh of her neck.
“I feel as if I’ve loved you forever.” Ekon’s head rose, and his earnest brown eyes, combined with what he’d said, stilled her hand. “I loved you when I watched you from afar, a book in your hand and your mind in the clouds. I loved you when you placed your faith in a young Shieldmane. I loved you when you left me in the restaurant walk-in freezer.” He stole a quick kiss. “I was mad as hell, but also full of love. I loved you when you buried your parents. No stoicism but a daughter’s unashamed grief. I loved you when you awoke in my arms and told me that was the first time you’d slept through the night since your return to Shona. It also saddened me, but I was happy you found comfort with me beside you.”
Sekhmet tucked herself against Ekon’s chest. Her husband—at thirty-six—was taller and broader than he’d been when they’d first met. She’d changed too. At thirty-three, Sekhmet was still young by felidae standards, but she had grown much over the past fifteen years—in body and in mind.
Ekon cradled her face in his hands, the same way he had when she’d returned from Vumaris, wearing a lion’s head and smelling of divine retribution, blood, and death. “And I love you now. My Asha but also my Sekhmet.”
“What am I to say to such sweet declarations?”
Ekon n
uzzled her neck, treating it to worshipful kisses. “A proverb, perhaps. A sexy one, preferably.” Raising his head, he grinned down at her. “If there’s such a thing as a sexy proverb.” His mouth returned to her neck, which made thinking of a quality response a challenge.
Sekhmet excelled at challenges, but no sexy proverbs came to mind, but ones about love did. She stroked his cheek, the way she did upon waking each morning and before falling asleep every night, happy with the person she’d become and grateful for the people in her life. “Let your love be like misty rain, coming softly but flooding the river.”
Ekon lifted his head again. “I like that one.” Deliberately . . . teasingly, he glided his hand up her thigh, stopping at her waist and circling until he held her bottom in the palm of his hand. “It had coming and flooding in it. Tell me another.”
Sekhmet was tempted not to, but a decade of marriage made her vulnerable to Ekon’s playful charms. He’d worked hard to turn Sanctum Hotel into Shona’s first embassy. The embassy hadn’t been part of her parents’ plan with Ms. Choi. But an embassy dedicated to healing wounds and building bridges would better serve her people than a million-dollar building decimated to rubble.
She nipped his jaw. “The best part of happiness lies in the secret heart of a lover.”
“I like that one too. A third, please.”
Sekhmet thought about the life she once had with her parents, and the life she now had with Ekon—different yet the same in the ways that mattered the most. “Where there is love there is no darkness.”
“I think that one is my favorite.” Ekon lowered to his knees again and, before she knew it, he’d removed her panties.
“Ekon . . .”
“You know it will be good.” He ducked his head under her dress and big, possessive hands parted her thighs.
Being with Ekon was always better than good, but she could hear people in the hallway, entering and exiting rooms. Neither Sekhmet nor Ekon had locked the door and . . . soft, probing lips kissed her, bringing an abrupt halt to her wayward thoughts of being caught. He kissed her again and again, no hesitancy in the way his mouth moved up and down her slick folds.
Sekhmet couldn’t help it, her eyelids slid closed.
Intense kisses turned into purposeful licks. Ekon’s tongue slipped between her lips, compelling her to widen her stance. Hands clamped onto hips and pulled her against his ravenous mouth.
“Ekon . . . E-Ekon . . .” Sekhmet’s voice cracked, and her knees threatened to buckle.
Gripping her bottom and laving her flesh, he gave her the best Panthera Leo kiss. He hoisted her right leg onto his shoulder, and she nearly came from the change in angle. His tongue slipped inside, and she could’ve sworn she saw stars.
She rocked into his mouth, but the position wasn’t ideal for equal participation or good balance.
As perceptive as ever, Ekon stopped. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m going to fall on my face if you don’t let me down.”
“Face, hmm? That gives me an idea.” He popped out from under her dress. “Let’s get this off you.”
With a few deft movements, Ekon had rid Sekhmet of her clothing. “You’re gorgeous. Sexy. I want to devour every inch of you, and then do it over and again. But first, you mentioned something about a face.”
Pulling Sekhmet to her knees, Ekon situated himself on his back, the crown of his head a few feet from the door of what she could now see was indeed his office. Her mindless wandering had taken her to his office. Sekhmet had found Ekon . . . or rather he had scented her outside of his office door.
“All aboard the Ekon Ptah Express.”
“Excuse me?”
“Face, remember?” Ekon pointed to his lips. “Right here. We’ve done this before.”
They had but . . . Sekhmet pushed away her trepidation of making love to her husband in a place where only a wooden door separated them from everyone else in the embassy.
Sekhmet climbed on the Ekon Ptah Express. Any awkwardness she felt drained away the second he sucked her clit into his mouth. She swallowed a scream and slammed shut her eyes.
The position made it easier on Sekhmet’s legs. Her knees were on either side of his head and her palms on the closed office door. Sekhmet rocked against Ekon’s mouth, tongue, and nose, careful not to smother him but taking all the pleasure he offered.
Ekon’s tongue was a steady, delicious piston, a reminder of all the ways she’d missed her husband.
Belly tightened. Sex throbbed.
One finger then two breached her sex. His mouth found her unsheathed clit again and sucked with such intensity she muffled her scream with her hand. Her orgasm was right there.
Yes. Yes. So close. So clos—
The door pushed in, hitting Ekon on the head. At the same time, Sekhmet’s palms slammed back on the door, closing it the few inches it had opened.
“What’s going on? Is something wrong, Ekon?”
“Yes, yes,” she gritted out, chasing her orgasm.
“Sekhmet. Good. I saw your team with Tamani. I hoped you had come here.”
“Don’t. Don’t.”
“I’m not stopping,” Ekon whispered at the same time Mafdet asked, “You don’t want me to come in? Why? What’s going on?”
Sekhmet couldn’t stop. All she could do was keep her hands pressed against the door and ride her husband’s fingers and mouth until the end of the line—the Ekon Ptah Express a five-star travel experience.
“Mafdet, if you open the door before I’m finished, I will kill you.”
How Sekhmet managed to gasp out that hollow threat through her roiling orgasm, she would never know, but Mafdet said nothing more and the pressure on the door ceased.
Wave after wave of pleasure smashed into and over Sekhmet, drowning out apologies running through her mind. She would owe Mafdet many. But not now. Later, when Ekon’s masterful fingers weren’t buried deep in her, and his mouth wasn’t holding her clitoris as a willing hostage.
Ekon laughed, and even that felt good against her sensitive skin.
Sekhmet collapsed on Ekon’s chest, languid but far from sated.
Loving arms wrapped around her. “I missed you.”
“I missed you too.”
“Unless you’ve forgotten,” Mafdet said, her voice that same exasperated tone she’d taken when she’d caught them having sex before their wedding reception, after a council meeting and . . . well, too many times, “you have a press conference in less than four hours. It wouldn’t do if the sekhem and khalid of Shona arrive to greet Chief Choi smelling of sex. Shower and be on time.”
Mafdet retreated, and Sekhmet knew she would order everyone to steer clear of Ekon’s office.
“I think we upset her.”
Sekhmet rolled off her husband but didn’t stand. Instead, she reclined on her back beside him, naked and gloriously happy. “Our sex life tends to have that effect on Mafdet. She’ll either feel better or worse, once I tell her our news.”
“What news?” Ekon shifted to his side, propping his head in his hand. “What news?”
Taking hold of his free hand, she placed his palm on her stomach . . . and waited. It didn’t take long. They’d ceased using birth control nine months ago. Ekon wanted a big family—five or six children. Sekhmet would be content with two or three.
“I’m partial to the names Zarina and Bambara.”
Eyes sparkled and his grin delighted. Ekon leaned over and kissed her stomach. “I’m partial to the name Asha.” He truly was her Adorable One. “It has a nice ring to it, wouldn’t you agree?”
Their mouths met, his hand on the stomach that carried their first child. She’d visited the Temple of Sekhmet before boarding the plane for Vumaris. Sekhmet had sat with her parents, sharing her good fortune with them and the goddess. A breeze had entered the temple, stroked her cheek and kissed her forehead.
She’d cried happy tears for her future, present, and past selves.
Hafsa Sekhem Asha—Overcomer of A
ll Enemies.
Sekhem Sekhmet—Lady of Jubilation.
Epilogue: Swiftborne
Batari County, Minra
The Kingdom of Shona Embassy
Looking at what used to be Sanctum Hotel, no one would know horrible crimes had been committed within its elegant walls, that innocent felidae had been killed by cruel humans. She once believed all humans were cruel. Little in her life had challenged that belief. But where most humans were heartless toward felidae, some felidae betrayed their own kind, choosing to side with humans and do their bidding.
She stared down at the clipped newspaper article in her hand. “The Shona Queen Returns to Vumaris: New Embassy Opens Next Month.”
“A rag newspaper. You couldn’t even get the sekhem’s title correct. But the photographer is excellent. I finally know where you’ve been and where to find you.”
Crushing the article in her hand, she tossed it into the back seat of her parked car.
The international community knew where Shona’s sekhem and khalid would be today. If the rest of the article was correct, the couple would be in residence at the embassy for a week.
She climbed out of her car, grabbed her suit jacket from the back of the seat and slipped it on. Play the part. Get in. Seven days. That’s all the time I have before she returns to Shona.
Reaching inside the car, she retrieved her pocketbook from the front passenger seat. She wasn’t a member of the press nor had a legitimate reason to be admitted into the embassy. But she had an identification, an insider’s name, and one hell of a sparkling smile. Neither her real ID or fake smile would get her past the security checkpoint and into the embassy, but a single name would.
I hope.
Looking both ways, she crossed the street and joined the line of people seeking entrance into the Shona embassy.
You should be dead. But I found you. And I’ll make you pay for betraying me. For betraying us all.
Upper West Minra