ReincarnatedHunger

by Marisa Chenery

  She sat up and straddled his hips. “And if it is? You know I love you. I’d like to have a home of my own to share with my favorite soldier in Pharaoh’s army.”

  Kysen sat up and put his arms around her waist. “So I’m your favorite in Pharaoh’s army?”

  She slapped him on the shoulder. “You already know that. No other will ever take your place in my heart.”

  He kissed her long and slow. When he released her mouth, he said, “You’re the only woman for me, Acenith. I’ll love you in this life and the next. Will you become my wife?”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck, feeling as if she couldn’t possibly love Kysen any more than she did now. “Yes, I’ll be your wife.” She then made a small squawk of protest when he pushed her off him and stood. “Where are you going?”

  He picked up his discarded loincloth and put it on. As he reached for his kilt, Kysen said, “To talk to your father, of course. I want to make you mine as soon as I can.” Once he was dressed, he pulled her to her feet and kissed her hard. “I’m going to give you that home, Acenith, and anything else you want.”

  She stood in the middle of the storage room, wearing nothing but a large smile as Kysen slipped out into the brewery. She would be Kysen’s wife.

  Cena jerked awake as the dream faded. She looked around the room, trying to figure out where she was. Recognizing her bedroom, she rolled to her side and looked at the clock. It was only four in the morning. Her alarm wouldn’t go off for another three and a half hours.

  She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but the dream vividly replayed in her head. Everything about it seemed so real. She still smelled the scent of the beer stored in the tall clay jars in the storage room, felt the hard unyielding stone floor beneath her where she and Kysen lay. Kysen. She’d called him by name in the dream, and he’d called her Acenith. And what was up with them both speaking in another language that sounded Middle Eastern to her ears?

  Grabbing the pillow next to hers, Cena pulled it to her chest and cuddled around it. It was a poor substitute for Kysen, but it would have to do. She hugged it tightly, missing him. Feeling a trail of wetness run down her cheek, she reached up and wiped the tears away. She didn’t just miss him a little. It felt as if she hadn’t been with him for so very long and only being in his arms again would make the ache go away. She loved him, had never wanted to leave him, but… She lost the trail of thought, unable to grasp what she’d been thinking.

  Feeling as if some part of her that had been asleep deep inside had finally awakened, Cena gripped the pillow tighter. The dream had done that. Confused, not understanding the sudden strong feelings she had for Kysen, she did her best to blank her mind and let sleep take her.

  * * * * *

  The sound of her alarm grated against her nerves, causing Cena to lurch out of bed and cross over to the dresser where it sat to turn it off. Not the first morning she’d woken up this way, she hated the necessity of having the clock put so far from the bed. If she had it next to her it would be all too easy to turn it off, roll over and go back to sleep.

  She stretched then rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She’d only managed a fitful rest after awakening from her dream, one which she remembered as if it were a true memory instead of a figment of her unconscious mind. She remembered the feel of Kysen’s body pressed to hers and the taste of his tongue when he’d kissed her. And the love he had for her that showed in his eyes when he stared at her caused an ache inside her chest.

  Cena went to the bathroom and started the shower. When she had the temperature the way she wanted it, she stepped into the tub and closed the shower curtain. The warm water helped to wake her up even more.

  While she shampooed her hair, images of Kysen from her dream played through her head. She overlapped that Kysen from the one she knew and found them to be identical in every way. They spoke with the same deep voice, moved the same way and even had the same short hairstyle. The only thing different was the Kysen from her dream didn’t have the large, winged Eye of Ra tattoo across the top of his back.

  The more Cena thought about the dream and Kysen the more she found herself unable to stay mad at him. She didn’t want to lose him…again. Where that thought came from, she didn’t know. But she’d already pushed him out of her life. Would he really not give up on her as he’d said last night?

  With her feelings for Kysen pinging here, there and everywhere, she became more and more confused. It almost felt as if there were two of her inside her body. One self who already knew Kysen, loved him and wanted to be with him until the end of time. The second self still felt as if she were getting to know him. She had feelings for him, but not nearly as strong as the other had. Finished with her shower, Cena turned off the taps. She had to be losing her mind if she were thinking of herself as two halves of a whole.

  After she dressed, Cena went through her regular routine of eating breakfast and packing a lunch to take with her to work. By the time she’d done all that she’d started to feel a bit more like herself. Once she reached the Japanese Friendship Garden, she felt even more so.

  Emiko was already at the tea house when Cena arrived. The older woman looked at her with a critical eye when she walked by her to change into her kimono in the other room. “You look as if you didn’t get much sleep last night, Cena. Did you not have a good weekend?”

  Cena opened the closet where her kimono hung. “Yes and no.”

  “Well, why don’t you start with the good part? Does it have to do with a certain man you met up with on Friday after the tea ceremony?”

  She turned to face Emiko. “You saw that, huh?”

  The older woman smiled. “I had been about to leave when I saw the two of you walk toward the parking lot holding hands. I knew from the way he’d looked at you during the ceremony that he would stick around to meet up with you. Is he the good part of the weekend?”

  Even though Cena hadn’t really wanted to tell Emiko what had happened between her and Kysen, she needed to talk about it. “Yes, Kysen is part of the good, but as well as the bad.”

  “Oh no, that doesn’t sound good. What happened?”

  Cena pulled off her jeans and t-shirt and shrugged into her kimono. “To start with, we had a nice early dinner on Friday. Everything went well enough that we decided to spend the day together on Saturday, which was great. It wasn’t until the evening that it all turned to crap. We went out to eat again and afterward went to a bar to have a couple of drinks. We hadn’t even finished our first one when Kysen said he had to go to the men’s room. To make a long story short, he never came back. He left me there with no word as to why and I had to take a cab home.”

  “Oh, Cena, no. I assume you won’t be seeing him again.”

  “Kysen did come by my apartment to apologize when I wouldn’t take his calls. I didn’t let him in.”

  “And why should you after he stranded you? You don’t need a man like that in your life.”

  Cena made the final adjustments to her kimono and turned to face Emiko. “That’s how I felt last night, but not today.”

  “What changed your mind?”

  “A dream,” she said slowly. “I know this will sound crazy, but I had a dream of Kysen and me together in what looked to be ancient Egypt. And the crazier part of it, I knew him as well as I know myself. I woke up from it feeling as if I lost him a long, long time ago and that I wanted him back.”

  Emiko’s gaze seemed to search Cena’s face. “Maybe in another life you did know him.”

  “You mean a past life, as in reincarnation?”

  “Hey, I’m Buddhist. I believe in it. Who is to say that once we leave this life our soul doesn’t live on to be reborn?”

  Cena shook her head. “Let’s not get into that. Religion is one topic of discussion I never talk about with my friends. Everyone has the right to believe in whatever they want.”

  Emiko smiled. “I wasn’t opening the door for that type of discussion. What I meant was it could be possible that you had a d
ream about a past life. Have you ever had a dream that you’ve had over and over again?”

  “Actually, yes I have. It started when I was young, after a family vacation to Egypt. I dreamed about a man, but until I met Kysen, I never had a clear picture of his face.”

  “And now?”

  “He’s turned into Kysen.”

  Emiko nodded. “There, you see? Maybe Kysen is your soul mate and you finally found each other again.”

  Cena grinned. “I don’t know if I believe in soul mates. I just don’t know if I should see Kysen again or not.”

  “If you want my opinion, why don’t you give him a chance to explain what happened on Saturday night. If he comes up with a good explanation you can accept, then take him back. But if he does it again, you can always kick him to the curb.”

  Cena burst out laughing. “All right, that sounds like good advice, but that is going from one extreme to the other, don’t you think? One minute you’re telling me Kysen could be my soul mate, and the next, you’re saying I should kick him to the curb if he runs out on me again.”

  Emiko shrugged. “Being soul mates doesn’t mean you have to tolerate your man being a jerk in this life. Sometimes men need to be taught a harsh lesson before they learn from their mistakes.”

  Cena laughed again and shook her head. “That definitely sounds like good advice.”

  “Always listen to your elders,” Emiko said. “We’ve spent enough time here gabbing. We’d better start getting everything ready for the day.”

  She followed Emiko out to the main room of the tea house. After their talk, Cena decided maybe she would give Kysen another chance after all. It would only be this one, and if he screwed up again, there wouldn’t be any others.

  Chapter Seven

  Kysen had called Cena’s apartment early that morning but she hadn’t picked up. Since it was Monday, he figured she’d be at work. Taking the chance she’d be at the tea house, he drove to the Japanese Friendship Garden.

  He went to the tea house but didn’t go inside. The door stood open to let in the morning breeze and he easily heard the sound of Cena and the tea master’s voices coming from inside. With the knowledge Cena was indeed at work, he went back to his car. He could either sit in the parking lot all day until her work day ended, or leave and come back later. Kysen didn’t really want to take the chance of leaving just in case Cena left earlier than he thought she would and didn’t return to her apartment right away.

  A large yawn crept up on him, making the decision. He had to leave at least for a little while to get some much needed coffee. After hunting last night, he hadn’t been able to sleep—at all. The way Cena had shut him out bothered him, made him almost feel desperate to get her back. He already thought of her as his, and he didn’t give up what he considered his without a fight.

  He hadn’t even bothered to get into bed when he’d returned to the headquarters a couple hours before dawn. He’d been too keyed up. There had been no way he would have been able to shut off his brain long enough to allow himself to drift off to sleep. Instead of resting, Kysen had spent the time looking at the small, hand-painted portrait he’d had done of Acenith and holding the enameled lotus bloom pendant he’d planned to give her on their wedding day. Those two items had always made him feel closer to his lost love. This time, though, they made him ache to be with Cena. Staring at the portrait, it just reminded him again of how much Acenith and she looked alike.

  Kysen started the car and drove to a diner not too far from the Garden. He ate a large breakfast and drank a couple cups of coffee to give him the caffeine he needed to keep awake for the remainder of the day and night. Generally, Ra’s Chosen didn’t need a whole lot of sleep. Four hours and they were good to go if sleep was a commodity they couldn’t afford. There had been times when the undead problem had been extreme and he and his brothers-in-arms had gone days without sleep. It was hard and caused them to spend a great deal of time in the sunlight to recharge their batteries that way, but it had been doable.

  Once he finished his meal, Kysen returned to the Garden to wait out the rest of the day in his car. He watched mortals come and go while he planned what he’d do once Cena got off work. First and foremost, he would force her to listen to him as he tried to explain what had happened on Saturday night without really giving her the full truth. He hated that he’d have to give her only the varnished truth, but until he was ready to tell her what he truly was, it couldn’t be helped.

  After he got her to take him back—groveling on his knees if he had to—Kysen needed to find out one way or the other whether she was truly his mate. And the way he wanted to go about that was to get her into bed. He’d make her his, then feed from her. If her blood didn’t appease his blood hunger, he’d know she wasn’t his mate and he’d be able to wipe the memory of him biting her from her mind. It didn’t mean he’d wipe himself completely from her memory as he did with donors, though. He planned to keep Cena one way or the other.

  The hours ticked by slowly. A few times Kysen caught himself snoozing before he finally got out of the car and went for a walk in the Gardens. He made sure he didn’t come too close to the tea house in case Cena happened to be outside and spotted him. One thing he didn’t want was for her to know he was there until he wanted her to. He needed to catch her off guard so she wouldn’t have the chance to sneak away before he got a moment to talk to her.

  Finally four thirty rolled around and Kysen went to wait just outside the tea house’s fence for Cena to leave. After the group of mortals who had been at the last tea ceremony left, he didn’t have too long to wait for Cena to step through the tea house’s door. At the sight of her, his heart beat a little faster. He devoured her with his eyes as he watched her walk onto the paved path that led out to the Garden. Kysen knew the instant she saw him when her steps seemed to falter before she quickly recovered.

  Her gaze locked with his as she came to stand in front of him. “Hi,” she said softly.

  “Hi,” he replied and took a step closer to Cena so the toes of their shoes touched. He took a deep breath, drawing her familiar scent into his lungs. “Will you talk to me? Give me a chance to make you understand that I wouldn’t have left you like that if I hadn’t had a good reason. Please.”

  She nodded. “Only this time. If you do something like that again, you won’t have another chance.”

  A wave of relief washed over him. Unable to resist not touching her any longer, Kysen cupped Cena’s face in his hands and brought his mouth to hers. He thoroughly kissed her, angling his lips along hers as he stroked the inside of her mouth with his tongue. A rush of desire surged right to his cock, causing it to harden and lengthen. He couldn’t wait to get her under him to finally claim her as his own.

  Kysen pulled away and his cock jerked inside his pants at the sight of Cena’s kiss-swollen lips and flushed cheeks. He hugged her to him and kissed the top of her head. “Can we go to your apartment to talk?”

  Cena nodded against his chest. “Yes. You’ll have to follow me in your car again.”

  “I can do that.” He released her and took a step back as he held out his hand. “Shall we go?”

  When Cena didn’t hesitate to put her hand in his, Kysen took it—along with the fact she hadn’t pushed him away when he’d kissed her—as a good sign that she was no longer as mad at him as she had been before.

  He walked her right to her car and kissed her again before he went to his. Kysen spent the majority of the drive to Cena’s apartment telling himself he couldn’t fuck this up. He had to come up with a plausible explanation that she’d accept.

  At her building, Kysen followed Cena inside and up the stairs to her apartment. She unlocked the door and pushed it wide for him to walk in behind her. He moved out of the way for her to shut and lock it. Not saying a word, she headed for the living room and sat on the couch to look at him expectantly. He quickly joined her.

  Once he was seated, Cena said, “Tell me why you left the bar without giving me so
me warning beforehand. Before you do that, I have to point out that you’re lucky I had enough cash on me to take a cab home or I would have been really, really pissed off with you.”

  Kysen cringed. Fuck, he hadn’t even thought of that when he’d gone looking for the undead. “That was extremely irresponsible of me. I swear to you it won’t happen again.”

  “Cross your heart, hope to die, stick a needle in your eye?”

  He grinned. “Yes.”

  “Then say it.”

  “Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye. Happy now?”

  “Yes. Now explain.” She shifted to sit on an angle with her back pushed into the corner where the arm and back cushion met.

  “Okay. While we were at the bar, I saw someone that shouldn’t have been there.” That was as close to the truth as he could get. An undead warrior in such a place should never have happened.

  “Was this someone male or female?”

  “Definitely male. I caught up with him in the men’s room.”

  “All right, I can accept that. You said that you taking off had something to do with your work. Was this guy somehow related to your job?”

  “You can definitely say that,” he said drolly.

  “How so? And you still haven’t told me what you do for a living.”

  “I’m what you would call the first line of defense between the good and the bad. I watch out for the good. The man I confronted in the men’s room was on the bad side.”

  “You’re a cop?”

  “No. I’m more like a private warrior. My friends and I take care of the bad guys the cops don’t know exist.”

  Cena frowned. “You make it sound as if you’re all a bunch of vigilantes.”

  He shook his head. “Not even close. Look, that’s all I’m permitted to say about what I do right now. And if I happen to run into one of the bad guys, I can’t not do anything about it. If I hadn’t acted that night, I would never have forgiven myself if something had gone down that I could have prevented.”

  Cena stared at him, then slowly nodded. “You look as if you aren’t lying to me. I guess I really can’t be too upset with you if your ditching me had something to do with your job. Next time—if there is a next time—don’t just up and disappear on me. Being left high and dry at a bar doesn’t do wonders for a woman’s ego, especially when I had to have the male bartender go to the men’s room to look for you.”