The Isis Knot

by Hanna Martine

  With great effort she broke the kiss. Cross-eyed with lust, her entire world narrowed down to William. Her eyes locked on his, she whispered, “No more doubt. It’s you and me tonight. No one else.”

  His hands cradled her face, and she rubbed her cheeks into the roughness of his palms. His voice turned husky. “You’re certain?”

  It took her a moment to realize what he was truly asking her. Though they were linked, their worlds were so different.

  “I told you I’m not a virgin, if that’s what you’re thinking about. You won’t hurt me or anything.”

  He frowned, then cleared his throat, looking somewhat uncomfortable. “Have you had children then?”

  Different worlds…

  “Ah. That.” She threaded a hand into the back of his hair, loving the way the curls seemed to find and wrap around her fingers. “No, I haven’t. Because I can’t.”

  His eyes widened. “No? You’re sure?”

  As sure as a tubal ligation could make her. She’d had so many painful problems since puberty, that the second she got insurance through her secretarial job she’d had surgery to correct them. And then, since she was scared to death of ever becoming her mom, or ever bringing a child of her own into the world, she’d told the surgeon to just go ahead and make infertility permanent.

  But all she told William was, “Yes. The doctors told me as much.”

  He nodded and kissed her softly, and she noticed that he was shaking. She drew back and searched his face. “How long has it been since you’ve been with a woman?”

  The smile that came was severely tilted to one side and gorgeously sheepish. “At least a decade. Forgive me if I’ve forgotten how.”

  She wasn’t worried about that. But if it had been over ten years since he’d had sex and he seemed in perfect health, she decided not to worry about the bad things that could come with intercourse in the past.

  Besides, the magic in the cuff could help them both, if needed.

  She smiled at him, full and warm. “There’s nothing to forgive.”

  At that very moment, William Everard was hers and she was his.

  Holding her gaze, his hands slid from her face down her neck. They dragged lightly over her collarbone, making her back arch as they covered her breasts with heat and exquisite pressure. Her head lolled back, eyes closing so all she could do was feel. He lingered in the center of her body, hands spanning her ribs, thumbs rubbing teasingly over her hard nipples. The rough fabric of her blouse only heightened the sensation.

  “Look at me,” he murmured.

  When her eyelids fluttered open, she wondered how she could ever again look away from what she saw on his face: soul-clutching desire. Agonizing need.

  Love.

  Yes, that was what she saw.

  She gasped. As much from the shock at seeing it in him as the realization that there was the kindling of something similar deep inside herself.

  “Sera.” That voice, that accent. He gave her a tiny, chaste kiss. “No doubts. Just us.”

  When he slowly started to pull her blouse from her skirt, she almost cried in relief. Nearly every moment since she’d laid eyes on him had been an awful study in control. To finally let go of that, to release the ties that bound her to doubt and anxiety and fear, gave her such a complete sense of joy.

  He popped open the buttons of her blouse, starting at the bottom. He worked smoothly, deftly, his eyes never leaving hers, until he’d bared a strip of flesh down her center. Only then did he look down.

  Sinking back onto his heels, he pushed her blouse off her shoulders and used it to trap her arms at her sides. She stared down at him, in awe over the hunger that painted the most amazing expression on his face.

  “So beautiful,” he said, before leaning forward and closing his lips around one of her nipples. The shock of the wet, wonderful sensation made her legs weak, her support wobbling.

  He held her up, and in more ways than one.

  His mouth opened and closed, his tongue dragging over the small hardened peak. He kissed her there as passionately as he’d kissed her mouth. Just when she thought she couldn’t stand it any longer, he pulled back. The sudden cessation of feeling had her gasping for air. Then he switched sides.

  Arms still immobile, she couldn’t drop to the ground in surrender. She couldn’t touch him. She could only beg.

  “Please. Please.”

  William’s eyes squeezed shut and he shuddered, pulling off her. At last he completely stripped off her blouse and threw it to the ground. He rose to his knees again and met her face to face. No part of their bodies now touched. The air swept cool between them and the void stung.

  “Please?” A sinful quirk bent his lips. “What exactly do you want?”

  A deep sexual hunger flashed in his eyes, enhanced by that other emotion she’d marked earlier. Brilliant as a jewel. Rare and pure.

  She forgot where she was. She forget when she was. This man had altered how she viewed the past and approached the present. He had, unknowingly, mapped out her future.

  He was timeless.

  “I want you, William. All of you.”

  “Oh, Sera.” Her name on his lips vibrated in her blood. “Didn’t you already know? You have me.”

  At last he touched her again, his fingers tickling her belly where they plucked at her skirt ties. He moved too slowly. Desperation took over and she slapped his hand away to yank at the various strings herself. Amusement lighted his face until the hated skirt billowed in a circle around her knees.

  For once, she didn’t mind a man’s possessive stare. She relished the way his gaze roved over her, like a starving man facing a fine meal. He was still fully clothed and it heightened her arousal to be so exposed when he wasn’t. She was offering herself to him, in every way possible.

  Sliding one arm around her shoulders and another around her waist, he pulled her naked body flush against him. The roughness of his shirt and pants scraped against her bare skin and there was something wonderful about that feeling. When he leaned in to kiss her, he aimed for the sensitive slope of skin stretching from shoulder to ear. As his tongue made a wet, hot trail beneath her hair, the hand at her waist dipped down around her ass.

  She parted her legs. Slow, like silk, he slipped a finger inside her. No hesitation, as if he already knew she’d gone liquid for him. A high sound escaped her throat. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she moaned into his skin in the same rhythm as his inner strokes. Her thighs quivered around his hand, his quickened breath hissed in her ear.

  It wasn’t enough. She was beginning to think that with him, nothing ever would be.

  Her hands dove between their bodies. She fumbled with the knot of his pants, her blind need practically scraping skin from her fingertips. Finally the knot came apart and his pants crumpled to the ground. His fingers drew out of her and slid up her wetness, eliciting from her simultaneous sounds of pleasure and disappointment.

  He grabbed his shirt at the back of his neck and pulled it forward over his head. Moonlight dappled his torso, so lean and strong. She dragged a hand down his chest, watching his pale skin pebble. When her touch grazed the gunshot scar, his breath hitched, eyebrows drawing together. The worry and fear that surrounded the nature of his wound started to creep back into his eyes, and she refused to let that happen. Not now. Not when they were alone and naked and so close.

  She closed her fingers around his hard length and gave him a smooth, tight glide.

  The next second he had her on her back, stretched out across their discarded clothing, his body hovering between her legs. Just like that night by the river when they’d first realized what—and who—was inside them. Only this time there were no barriers.

  She hooked her ankles around his calves, circling her hips up and up. He held back, his arms trembling. He covered her mouth with his, a long passionate kiss that stole her breath and made her body writhe. The tip of him rubbed against where she most wanted him to be, but he wouldn’t lower himself.

/>   Instead he bent his head and whispered into her ear, “What I feel for you is far stronger than Amonteh.”

  Then he slid inside.

  Yes. This was what she was meant for. The way he moved inside her—lifting her body on the plunge and making her cry out in blissful agony on the retreat—was perfection.

  Completion.

  He was right. This—them together—felt larger and greater than any lost soul, any amount of magic. It was more expansive than the universe. And, like the universe, she wanted it to go on forever.

  Love. She’d seen it in his eyes and now heard it in his voice. Love. Love.

  Each thrust pushed that word inside her. Built a similar emotion within her heart. Fortified it. That word turned as tangible as the way he filled her, and there was no going back. No room left inside her for anything but…William.

  He made the most glorious sounds against her throat. Helpless noises that told her he’d surrendered, too. As she raised her legs to wrap around his waist, changing the angle, he murmured a name and increased his pace.

  Only it wasn’t Sera’s name. It was Ramsesh’s.

  And it didn’t come from William’s lips.

  The heavy, exotic tones of a man who’d lived thousands of years ago reverberated through Sera’s mind and body. Amonteh called out to Ramsesh, and Ramsesh answered, crying in joy at their reunion.

  This time Sera didn’t fight it. She let it happen. Indeed, she welcomed it.

  Around their joined bodies, the world shifted. Even with her eyes closed and William consuming every sensation, Sera could feel the change. The very atmosphere charged with something unspeakable. It fed on their triumph, their mounting pleasure.

  She turned her head and opened her eyes.

  The unfinished walls of the empty house in the Rocks flickered. Above, the Southern Cross faded and new patterns of stars sprouted up. The briny scent of Sydney Cove and the sour stench of the Rocks fell away. Jagged stone precipices rose high above her. The new cliffs glowed gold in the moonlight, not a patch of greenery upon them. Dust and sand tickled her nose.

  William’s hands dragged through her hair in a slow, loving gesture. With a great shudder he stopped moving, though he remained buried deep inside her.

  “I don’t want this to end,” he murmured into the crook of her neck.

  She slid her hands up his sweat-slick back and whispered, “Do you see this? Do you see where we are?”

  With a hand on the back of his skull, she gently turned his head so he could see the wonder of the flickering, changing world all around. Together they watched the last bit of the Rocks completely disappear.

  They were now making love on a barren, rocky ledge that dropped off into a long, sloping valley. A silvery ribbon of water crossed in the distance and she knew immediately, instinctively that it was the Nile. It could be no place else.

  Sera’s fear of the unknown tangled with Ramsesh’s elation over the familiar…but it was Ramsesh who won out, bringing Sera out of the fear and sending her straight into wonder and curiosity.

  “My God.” With a gasp, William pulled out of her.

  The desert landscape instantly vanished, plunging them back into 1819 New South Wales.

  William looked back at Sera and she said, “Be inside me again.”

  He wrapped an arm around her waist and rolled over, swinging her on top of him. Creeping her hands up his chest, she took his mouth in a brief, breath-stealing kiss, then lifted her hips and rocked him back inside her, inch by precious inch.

  The sharp cliffs and desert and distant river filtered back in. The more she circled her hips and the harder he drove up into her, the more real the scene became. Sand, not dirt, ground wonderful pain into her knees. A chilly, dry night air caressed them.

  “It’s Egypt.” William’s voice shook. “Egypt…”

  Then he dug his fingers into the tops of her thighs, drawing her eyes away from the scenery and back to his. She knew beyond a doubt that this was what Ramsesh and Amonteh had wanted all along for them. This joining.

  As the first deep thrums of orgasm began rippling through Sera’s body, Ramsesh reached out and shared with Sera her pleasure.

  Head falling back on her neck, Sera let her voice do what it wanted. Every star turned to flame in the sky. All her muscles stopped listening to her brain and gave themselves over to the pulsing waves that never seemed to end. William kept slapping into her and she bounced on top of him, the force of his drives giving her more and more and more.

  His body suddenly went completely still. Then he released a sharp huff of breath and started to move again in short, mindless strokes. The power and ecstasy behind his low moans told her Amonteh was feeding him, too, and that William was just as lost as she.

  When at last he calmed, she pulled herself off him and bent over to press tiny kisses to his jaw. His arms went tight around her back. They lay that way, saying nothing. Their heartbeats thudded together. Their breathing fell into the same pattern, even and slow.

  Something wrapped around them. Dragged them under. They clung together as the world around them shifted, as voices told them stories inside their minds.

  She pressed her cheek to his, closed her eyes, and listened to what Ramsesh had to say.

  CHAPTER 21

  Philae, Egypt, 535 A.D.

  Do not run. Do not draw attention to yourself. Do not show your fear, your worry, your heartbreak.

  Ramsesh left the market perched high above the bank of the Nile and weaved through the village. The high heat of midday permeated the soles of her sandals. Her skin was sticky with sweat. She told herself to be calm, to be careful. It took all her strength not to run.

  She shifted the reed basket from one hip to the other. She was supposed to have traded a newly beaded shirt for vegetables, but the shirt still rested folded at the bottom of the basket. Now she would return home without fresh food for the evening meal, bearing only frightening news.

  Generations ago, steps had been carved into the hard land leading up to the simple homes of the stone-cutters, of which her husband, Amonteh, was one. Away from the eyes of the village at last, she hurried up the steps. At the top she stubbed her toe and stumbled. The basket flew from her hands, dumping the shirt into the dust. The stray beads that had been rolling about the bottom of the basket skittered across the stone to circle at the feet of an old woman resting on a rock.

  The woman slowly leaned down and started to pick the beads from the cracks. Pronounced wrinkles surrounded her mouth and lined her brow. Ramsesh stuffed the shirt into the basket at the same moment the woman tilted her handful of recovered beads into it. Their hands touched. Their eyes met.

  Ramsesh had passed this woman many times along this corridor, but they had yet to speak. Once, not long ago, she’d seen the elder woman on the banks of the Nile gathering water. After hoisting her water skin across her back, the woman had lifted her eyes to gaze across the water at the island of Philae, to its pale, glowing temples dedicated to Isis. They stood regal and beautiful…and neglected. When she’d thought no one was looking, the woman had smiled sadly. But Ramsesh had seen.

  That was when she’d known. The old woman was like her: a keeper of the old ways.

  Now, as the two of them crouched on the ground, they shared unspoken emotions. The love for something forbidden. The sadness over its loss.

  “Say nothing, my child,” the woman whispered, her eyes full of warning. She rose and hobbled on her way.

  Ramsesh wanted to crumple to the ground and let her tears soak into the parched earth, but instead she forced strength into her unsteady legs and continued home.

  She attended the Roman services, as was required of all the villagers. She spoke the words to their sole god and gazed up at the man nailed to the cross. She touched the points on her body like the helmeted and leather-clad soldiers told them they must do, but she was not one of them. She was not a believer. Their emperor might dress like the old pharaohs when he traveled the length of the Nil
e to appease her people, but she wasn’t fooled into thinking he sympathized with the people he’d conquered.

  Her home stood second to last in a long row. Its door faced east, and in the morning Re’s golden orb exploded into life over the Nile, grazed the temples on Philae, stretched across the green fields lining the riverbanks, and crawled its way up the slopes to bless her home.

  Inside, Amonteh stood over the cooking fire. He lifted a hand to the light streaming inside behind her. “Back so soon?”

  She said nothing. She couldn’t.

  He circled around the cooking pit, thick brows hanging low over his eyes. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  She sank to the dirt floor, her husband following. He took her face in gentle hands. He smelled of sweet smoke and it brought tears to her eyes.

  “What is it?” His thumbs brushed her cheeks.

  “Emperor Justinian will close the temples. After sundown tomorrow, no one will be allowed to go to Philae or Biga Islands until the temples there have been converted to places of worship for their god. Mere mention of the old gods will bring death.”

  Amonteh’s hands fell limp to his lap.

  “I heard the Romans speaking of it in the market. I rushed back. I have no food for this evening. I’m sorry.”

  Amonteh’s eyes turned so dark, darker than she’d ever seen. “They will turn Isis’s temple into a church?”

  Not even a hand over her mouth could hold back the sobs she’d been restraining all morning.

  #

  Ramsesh lay sleepless on the bed of woven reeds. A light breeze tickled her toes that stuck out from underneath the linen cover. A long time ago her mother had whispered to her a tale of the air god Shu. There in the dark, she thought of the wind as Shu’s reassuring, calming breath. It didn’t work. All she felt was sorrow and panic.

  Amonteh’s strong arm was thrown across her stomach, and sweat pooled where skin touched skin. She lightly grazed her fingernails over his forearm. He’d always been a deep sleeper. For the past ten years, since they were twelve years of age and only just betrothed, she’d watched him sleep whenever she could.