by Nina Bruhns
“Yes? What?” she prodded. Hope sparked in her heart.
“More like who. And you’re not going to like it.” He turned to regard her.
She pressed her fingers to her mouth. “If this person helps me find my mother, I’ll worship the ground they walk on. My sisters will, too.”
He gave her an odd smile. “That’s more accurate than you think. The thing is, the person I’m thinking of is a seer. A priestess in the service of the per netjer of Set-Sutekh.”
She blinked. Set-Sutekh? The ancient god? Something tickled her memory, just out of reach. “A seer? You mean—” She suddenly recalled the tomb inscriptions of Seth-Aziz and the god he served. Set-Sutekh. Good lord, were the rumors that the cult still existed true?
“Yes, Nephtys has very special abilities. She can see things in the past as well as the future. She is rarely wrong. She may be able to discern what happened to your mother, why she was with this man.”
Logic and reason warred within Gillian against the irrational wish that what he was saying could be possible. But it wasn’t. To think so would really be grasping at straws. Her hope vanished in a fit of logic, as quickly as it had sprung up. “I appreciate the thought,” she told him with another sigh. “But I don’t think so.”
He nodded. “I understand. Most westerners find it difficult to believe in such things. If you change your mind, let me know. In the meantime, I’ll see what I can find out through normal channels. But don’t get your hopes up. It really would take a miracle. Still, this is Egypt, and stranger things have happened. I’ll do my best.”
For some reason she believed him. And also felt instinctively that if anyone had the power to solve the mystery of her mother’s death once and for all, it was this incredible man.
She couldn’t help the smile that spread within her. He’d rescued her from a dead faint in the tomb, and now he’d offered to try and fix the worst anguish of her entire life. Her mysterious stranger was a true hero.
A lock of raven-black hair fell over the thick lashes of his sensuous bedroom eyes as he captured her gaze.
He was also sexy as hell.
The memory of his kiss washed over her, vivid, toe-curlingly arousing, drenching her with the desire to taste his lips again.
She took a deep breath. Didn’t a hero deserve a hero’s reward?
She took a step toward him. And another. He stood his ground, not moving, letting her come to him.
But his glittering eyes beckoned, urging her closer with an almost physical pull. The sensation intensified, brushing over the bare skin of her arms and shoulders, and lower, tingling over her chest and the exposed slopes of her breasts, making her shiver as though he really were touching her.
Suddenly, it wasn’t danger she felt emanating from him. It was pure, feral temptation. The powerful, chaotic draw of this enigmatic stranger was all but impossible to resist.
She swallowed, feeling deliciously dizzy and light-headed, as if she were tipsy. Oh, how she wanted to drown in the feeling, to float in the sensation of being kissed and caressed by the otherworldly energy flowing hotly over her skin!
His energy.
Her nipples spiraled hard, thrusting themselves against the thin, confining fabric of her camisole. She wanted it gone, to be naked to enjoy the rush of erotic sensations without interference.
“Take it off,” he ordered softly, as though she’d spoken her wicked thoughts aloud.
What was happening to her?
It was like the man had some kind of magical power over her. Over her will and her body.
But she didn’t care.
She pulled the camisole over her head and tossed it aside. Lowering her arms she watched his eyes darken to brown velvet, taking in the sight of her naked breasts.
She wanted him to kiss and caress her. Slide his hands over the curve of her hips. Brush his lips along the swell of her breasts. Probe the moist, secret place between her thighs.
“Come to me,” he said.
She felt the impact of his roughly spoken command cascade through her body, from the roots of her hair clear to her toes. Illicit excitement danced through her veins.
She closed the distance, coming next to him. She wanted him to pull her into his arms. She ached for his touch with a longing that took her breath away.
He reached out and undid the waist button of her cargo pants with a firm flick of his thumb. Then started to pull down the zipper. His eyes held hers, daring her to deny him.
She didn’t.
He slid the trousers over her hips, and then her panties. Dipped his chin so she’d step out of them. And then she was completely naked. She shivered with anticipation.
Never before had she wanted a man like this. This badly. This thoroughly. Willing to do anything he wanted, if only he’d take her. Fill her. Use his hard, powerful body to make her shatter in a million pieces.
“You are perfection,” he murmured, taking her in. “A goddess.”
But still he did not touch her.
“I want you,” she whispered shakily, stepping against him. Shivering at the male roughness of his tunic and the musky, masculine smell that filled her senses.
“I mustn’t,” he said, and her heart sank. “Not yet.”
“But...why?” She put her hand to his chest, felt the firm, defined muscles under his clothes. “Why bare my body if you don’t intend to use it?”
“There are things you don’t know. About me. About...”
“About what?”
His steady gaze held hers for a long moment. “Me.”
“I don’t care,” she admitted, weak with desire. She nestled against him. Brazen. Shameless. “Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter.”
And in that moment, she truly believed it didn’t.
His hands finally found her, glided slowly down her nude torso, grasped her hips and pulled her flush against him. His arousal, thick and long, strained at her belly through the folds of his Bedouin pants.
He did want her.
He wound his hand in her hair and tugged back her head, exposing the column of her throat to the brush of his lips. He kept tugging as he put his mouth to her skin and licked wetly down, down, bending her over his free arm in an arc so her breasts were offered up to him in a sacrifice of hot, tingling flesh.
His lips closed over a nipple and he suckled hard, sending a stunning shockwave of pleasure and pain straight to her core. She cried out. Craving more.
More.
He switched to the other and she nearly came.
Her knees buckled and he caught her up. She surrendered herself to him with a moan.
“I can’t,” he said, his voice raw with some intense inner conflict, even as he swept her onto an armless settee and laid her down on it.
“Please,” she begged. Beside herself.
She groped at his clothes, trying to peel them away. To expose him to her as she was exposed to him. He evaded her efforts, instead grasping her knees and wrenching them apart.
She gasped. Utterly open. Vulnerable. Shivering with the desire to be taken by a man she’d met only an hour before. She didn’t care. She wanted this.
He dropped down between her legs. Her heart thundered. He slid his hands along the backs of her thighs, raising them, spreading her. She shook with sudden terror, and with lush expectation, quivering under his hands, waiting breathlessly.
Until finally, finally, he put his tongue to her, his lips, his mouth. To her sizzling need.
At his first fleeting touch, pleasure roared through her. She screamed at the tumultuous onslaught. And came apart under him.
It was the last thing she remembered.
Chapter 11
May your knives not get hold of me;
may I not fall into your shambles, for I know your names.
I am one of those who follow the Master.
—The Papyrus of Ani
Rhys pleasured his woman until well after her moans of ecstasy faded and her body ceased to tremble and quake. He d
idn’t want to stop. Not ever. Definitely not until he’d rammed himself into her, pounded mercilessly between her thighs and slaked the ravenous need that was eating at him from the inside out.
The swollen staff between his legs was worthy of Min, the outrageously endowed lord of fertility. And Rhys’s willpower was flagging badly. Thank the gods he’d had the presence of mind to rob her of consciousness at her last quiver. So she couldn’t demand he mount and ride her.
And she would have. For Gillian Haliday had well and truly succumbed to his will, and hungered for his dominion.
Which would have been a heady, powerful feeling...were she his to conquer. But her availability had yet to be determined. It was up to Seth who could have her. Rhys dare not take what had not been granted. Even going as far as he’d done could cost him dearly.
He drew in a deep breath of her, savoring the bouquet of her wild passion and her desire for him. Again he had to fiercely battle back his own voracious craving.
He would have her.
Soon.
Somehow, he would have her. He must have her. Regardless of Seth’s capricious wishes.
Rhys rose, carried her into the bedroom, and draped her gently across the bed, next to the silk dress that had been laid out for her. As much as it pained him, after a brief inner struggle he pulled the dress over her head and covered her smooth, luscious body so he would not be further tempted.
Leaving her, he strode to the salon to pour himself a stiff drink. He needed to collect himself. Gather his wits. Renew his loyalties to his leader and his cause.
He’d just thrown back a second shot when there came a loud, insistent rapping on the front door of the villa.
“Kilpatrick! Open up!”
His blood froze and the hair on the back of his neck stood at attention.
What in the name of Anubis was he doing here?
For it was none other than Khepesh’s immortal enemy.
Haru-Re.
Chapter 12
“Lord Haru-Re,” Rhys greeted the man whom his houseman, Amr, ushered into the salon with scowling mistrust. “To what do I owe this...visit?”
He’d kept the man waiting while he’d closed the door to the bedroom. Under no circumstances did he want the bastard to see Gillian. Haru-Re would contrive to steal her from him simply for sport. And there would be no ritual ceremony involved. She would not survive his bite.
“Just in the area,” his archenemy said casually. “Thought I’d pop in and see how you fare.”
Right. Ray did not make house calls. He wanted something.
All smiles and affability, Ray appeared for all the world an everyday wealthy Middle Easterner calling on a friend. Except of course, Rhys’s remote estate was situated deep in a shady valley on the mostly uninhabited West Bank specifically to discourage anyone “popping in.”
And the treacherous demigod was anything but a friend.
“I do not like being kept waiting,” Haru-Re added with imperious acerbity.
He wore an expensive Western linen suit—white, of course—and a Panama hat, which he handed to Amr along with a falcon-headed walking stick. A bit much, Rhys thought, but he did cut quite the dashing figure. For a murdering thief.
Still, Rhys dared not insult the man. “Do forgive. Please join me,” he invited. Enemy or no, there was a certain etiquette to interacting with the immortals of other cults—especially a high priest. A demigod’s powers were infinitely greater than Rhys’s. He didn’t relish having his blood drained. “Drink?”
“I’d kill for a martini. Extra dry.”
“I’m sure you would,” Rhys agreed genially, signaling Amr to fetch a bottle of gin from the drinks cabinet while he filled a cocktail shaker with ice.
Haru-Re glanced around the empty room. “I heard you have company.”
“Did you, now,” Rhys said, adding a touch of vermouth, wishing it were poison.
Except, of course, poison had little effect on vampires. An upset stomach, perhaps. Alas, death required far stronger means. Still, it would be gratifying to see Haru-Re puke his guts out.
“Where is she, then?” his guest asked.
Rhys poured and handed him his drink. “Who would that be?”
“The mortal I sense within these walls.” Ray’s lips curved knowingly. “The woman who perfumes your skin.”
“None of your damned business,” Rhys said pleasantly.
Haru-Re let out a bark of laughter. “You are brave, Englishman, I’ll give you that.”
“Are you by any chance threatening me?”
“Good God, no.” Ray grinned affably.
“Then what, exactly, do you want?” Rhys asked, his voice betraying the slightest edge of annoyance at the untimely and unwelcome visit.
“To defeat your master and rule all of Egypt for the glory of Re-Horakhti, God of the Sun and Lord of the Sky.” Haru-Re lifted his glass in a toast and drank half the martini down in a single swallow, then popped the olive into his mouth with a brilliant smile.
The audacity of the man was colossal.
“Yes, well, good luck with that,” Rhys said, returning the toast. “Darkness is the natural state of things, not light. In the absence of all else in the universe, there will still be darkness. Your puny sun is a mere candle in the vastness of space.”
“How comforting on a cold night,” Haru-Re said sardonically. “Myself, I prefer the warmth of day.” He turned to the enclosed courtyard, indicating the pots overflowing with flowers. “I see you also enjoy the blessings of the Lord of Dawn.”
He took a step closer, peering at a small plant bearing a crown of white blossoms, the essence of which had a powerful anesthetic effect on anyone who tasted it. Not poison, but it did work on vampires, or so Rhys was told.
“And I imagine this explains your extraordinary luck luring women to your fold. By the rod of Min, Kilpatrick, you do have a ruthless streak, after all. Who would have thought?”
“I only use the herb on my enemies,” Rhys retorted. He’d learned of the plant from a Sufi healer during his army days, and it had come in very handy on several occasions since then. But never with women. He gazed pointedly at his enemy’s martini glass.
Haru-Re let out a belly laugh and quaffed the rest of his drink, unconcerned. “Are you quite sure I can’t tempt you over to our side, Englishman? I could use an entertaining and resourceful man like you.”
“No doubt you could,” Rhys said, refilling the man’s drink from the shaker. He wished he’d thought of the herb sooner. Would the bastard never leave? “But my answer is the same as it’s been for the past hundred twenty-five years. No, thank you.”
“Such a shame. I like you, Kilpatrick. But eventually you must die for your misguided loyalty.”
“But not today!” a threatening voice growled from the front door as it was flung open. The house vibrated with the beginnings of a temblor.
Shahin.
Rhys turned to see his good friend storm in, black cloak swirling behind him like wings. “I’d come to warn you,” Sheikh Shahin Aswadi said, halting under the onion-domed archway leading to the salon. “But I see I am too late.”
The air crackled with the tension of gathering lightning. Shahin and Haru-Re glared at each other with bitter hatred. If Rhys didn’t intervene, there could well be a battle right here and now. Not that he didn’t share Shahin’s abhorrence of their foe. But he wasn’t sure they could win against the more powerful demigod, even with two of them using all the magic they knew, as well as his friend’s ability to call earthquakes.
“Shahin!” he greeted Seth’s captain of the guard, going to him quickly. “Ahlan, ahlan. Come in and join us in a drink.”
“Are you insa—”
“Rhys?”
The soft, hesitant female query brought the exchange to an abrupt halt.
They all spun toward the sound.
Like a vision, Gillian stood in the mouth of the hallway leading to the master bedroom, barefoot and looking erotically dishevele
d. One delicate strap of her dress slid down a pale shoulder, exposing the curve of her milky breast.
His breath caught. By the goddess Isis, she was beautiful. He’d never seen anything so delicious in all his life.
A wave of power rolled through the room. Immortal power.
Or was it simply the power of stark male arousal...?
Just what was not needed in this already volatile male pissing contest.
If it had been Seth instead of Haru-Re standing in his salon, Rhys might despair of caution prevailing in the presence of such tempting feminine beauty. But as it was, he would die before he saw his enemy take her.
“Darling, come in.” He opened his arms, compelling her to come to him, his own stiff cock reminding him not so subtly of all he had to lose should this go badly. As their bodies touched, he wove a spell of protection around her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I must have...” She pushed her still-mussed hair from her sleepy eyes. “Oh! You have guests.”
A streak of red stole across her cheeks as he brushed a kiss to her lips and folded her body close to his, letting the other men know she belonged to him.
“Did you have a good nap, my dear?”
“Yes, I...” Her words faded in embarrassment.
So, she remembered.
He smiled down at her. “Good. Wouldn’t want you fainting again.” He leveled a look at the high priest of the Lord of Sunrise and said with a hint of irony, “Too much sun this morning.”
Haru-Re’s arrogant gaze narrowed.
For a long moment, Shahin stared at Rhys and Gillian in surprise. He could almost hear the gears turning behind his friend’s hawk eyes. Unfortunately, everything he must have been thinking was true.
Haru-Re observed all this with cool calculation, then walked over to Gillian, grasped her hand and bent over it in a courtly kiss. “I’m Harold Ray, a...business acquaintance of Rhys’s. Call me Ray. Delighted to meet you, Miss...?”
“Haliday,” Rhys supplied curtly, deliberately leaving out her first name. She slanted a questioning glance his way and he gave his head a grim shake. Not a man you want to know. “And this is my good friend, Sheikh Shahin Aswadi.”