This was a bad idea.
‘I will not kiss a woman who is beneath my restraint,’ he stated, bending away.
‘Then release me.’
‘Release the arrowhead first.’
Then she did something totally unexpected. She obeyed him. Abandoning her pout, she spat the offending weapon to the floor.
‘There,’ she said. ‘Now will you kiss me?’
* * *
She did not know which was more confounding, his hesitation or the way his eyes lingered so long on her lips.
In retaliation, she studied his lips, which were far too lush and generous to belong to a man like him.
Why was he not kissing her? Did men not usually seize upon such invitations? She had spat out the weapon, after all. He was no longer in any immediate danger. Was it her appearance itself that repulsed him?
It would not have been the first time. Egyptian men, especially Southerners, were often repulsed by her strange combination of features. She was not Egyptian enough to desire and not Libyan enough to denounce.
Still, she was a woman and he was a man, and it was quite dark, even with the torch.
Now that torch flickered and they stared at each other—two archers who had run out of arrows. Who would give up first?
Not Aya. Clenching her stomach muscles, she lifted her torso off the floor, leaving only a hand’s width of space between their two faces. ‘Why will you not kiss me?’ she breathed.
His voice smouldered. ‘You must kiss me first.’
He was watching her from beneath those impossible brows, his expression full of menace. He lifted his hands from her wrists, pretending to give her the opportunity to escape.
Barbarian man. He was trying to scare her. He was expecting her to run, only to pull her back beneath his control. She would not give him the satisfaction. She was a noble woman—an advisor to a pharaoh. She ran when she decided to run.
She sat up, braced her arms behind her and pressed her lips to his.
His eyes flared and she felt the rush of his breath into her mouth. Good—let him be surprised. He was not the only one who could assert his will. Though in truth her will felt rather flimsy as his mouth encompassed hers. He pushed back at her, tilting his head in order to deepen the kiss. Her stomach flooded with heat.
He moved his mouth over hers, opening and closing in a kind of controlled abandon. Curse his lips. They were softer and lusher and vastly more pleasurable than she had even imagined. They were trembling slightly, as if with nervousness.
Lust rioted through her. It was as if he wanted her after all, despite her appearance.
May the gods forgive me, she said to herself, realising she wanted him back.
Their lips began to move together in a steady rhythm.
She was vaguely aware of the need to lie back on the floor, to draw him down with her and position him for her show of force. But for the moment she could only marvel at how good it felt to kiss him.
* * *
This is a trap, he told himself.
There was no other reason for her to invite such intimacy—unless he was mistaken about her feelings towards him. She had said she loathed him, had she not? She had obviously wished him dead. Yet her kiss was like life itself—served up with a generous sprinkling of lust.
How good it felt to kiss her. Their lips danced as if in time to the same propulsive lute. Perhaps she had changed her mind about him. Maybe in the time between now and when she had pressed the arrowhead against his neck she had realised that he was in fact her only hope for survival.
Not likely. Her loyalty for her departed Pharaoh was as fierce as it was obvious. At any moment, she would surely attempt another head smashing, or bite down hard upon his tongue. Still, it was difficult not to feel anything but excitement as they shared the same warm breath.
He gave her lower lip the gentlest of sucks. She sighed and he felt his desire spike. The sistrums of logic sounded, warning him to retreat. He ignored them.
He swept his tongue into the soft cavern of her mouth.
Had he gone mad? He was kissing a woman who had attacked him, who had openly vowed to see him dead. He needed to get as far away from her as he could. Instead he pushed his tongue deeper.
* * *
His tongue was plundering. It moved through her mouth, taking everything it wished. She knew she should stop him, but she did not want to.
He tasted like lavender and beer, fresh and tangy, with a hint of salt. It had been many hours since she had eaten any food. Surely that was reason he tasted so good. His hand moved up through her hair, sending ripples of sensation down her neck. She felt her limbs relax as he gently cradled her head.
This was not part of the plan, though at the moment she could not remember exactly what that plan was. She could only meet his tongue with her own, for it seemed the two appendages had urgent business together.
He pulled her towards him, deepening the kiss. Her whole body seemed to fill with light. She could not recall a kiss ever feeling this right and she doubted her own mind. At the festivals, she had kissed her partners with great passion, for that was what the goddess demanded.
There was no divine spirit observing her now, however, and yet all she wanted to do was keep kissing.
She wondered if it was a simple matter of contrast—that anything would feel good after being left for dead. Surely that was the reason for the pangs of sensation travelling down her limbs, the strange excitement in her heart. She was simply returning to life.
He seemed to be doing the same, for she could feel the length of his arousal pressing against her stomach as his tongue continued to coil with hers. The sensation should have terrified her, but instead warmth rushed through her in a secret torrent.
He was her enemy, yet she had never felt so at ease in the arms of a man. Was this some sort of deception? But it was she who was supposed to be deceiving him!
She fought to recover her wits as he eased her to the ground. She lay back, feeling like a reed bending beneath a mighty lion.
He raised his head to observe her and there was that fire in his eyes. She could practically hear its windy flames. It was a man’s passion and it was all for her.
But it could not be. She was not the kind of woman men were passionate for. She was an advisor to a pharaoh.
Though not any more.
She looked around her, slowly realising that he had pushed her into the position she had desired all along. His hips had lifted off hers, exposing the most vulnerable part of him to her waiting leg. She moved it into striking distance.
She had to do it, lest he believe her weak, or easily seduced, or tacitly offering him a gift she did not wish to give. A show of force—that was what was needed now. This was her chance.
‘Forgive me,’ she whispered.
Chapter Six
Forgive her? What was there to forgive?
Then he felt it—a pain so poignant that it made him lose his breath. It shot up into his stomach and then directly to his head, which seemed to burst into a thousand shards.
He reeled back in agony. She had kicked him, the little croc. She had thrust her thigh into the most sensitive part of his body and delivered a blow so painful that it was sending tears into his eyes.
She rolled out from beneath him as pain coursed through him in unrelenting waves and he watched her disappear into the darkness beyond the torchlight.
He took the arrowhead in his hand and began to laugh. Not since the Battle of the White Desert, when a Libyan spear thrower had stuck him in the back of the thigh, had he felt so much pain.
He collapsed back on to the tile floor, foetal and laughing through his tears. She was not only more dangerous than he had at first thought, she was vastly more interesting.
He tried to think his way through the pain. He put his heart into an imaginary jar and gaz
ed at it from far away. There were endless ways to shield oneself from pain, after all, and over the years Intef had become quite adept at many of them.
There were also many ways to invite pain, including lying helpless before one’s enemy. Intef peered around the chamber nervously. There were certainly other arrowheads hidden among Pharaoh’s grave goods, along with the arrows to which they were usually attached. As Pharaoh’s Most Beloved Advisor, Aya probably knew exactly where they were. She could return any moment with an arrowhead in each fist.
The thought struck him as funnier still. Intef, son of Sharek, the deadliest archer in the southern rebel army, killed by a trembling, terrified servant who had likely never even held a dagger.
‘Are you off to find another arrowhead?’ he called into the shadows. ‘Go ahead, then.’ He felt dizzy and his voice was as dry as dust. ‘Do your worst.’
He reached for the torch and stood. At the far corner of the room, he could see the frame of a doorway. Crossing to it, he flashed his torch inside to discover a small storage room stacked to the ceiling with wooden chests. Beside the chests was a wall of shelves that had been filled with amphorae.
He could practically feel the cool water running down his throat. He flashed his torch behind him to assure himself that Aya had not followed, then selected one of the containers from the second shelf. He shoved his thumb beneath its wax seal.
He felt vaguely remorseful. It was hot and stuffy inside the tomb and she was probably just as thirsty as he. And while she had caused him a great deal of pain, it had already practically disappeared, yet she was probably still suffering the effects of her failed head blow.
He had killed many enemy soldiers in the line of duty and that was difficult enough, but he had never in all his life had to defend himself against a woman.
A beautiful woman, as it happened, though not in the traditional sense. Her eyes were not the right colour, her nose not the proper length, her skin was too pale and her lips were almost masculine in their fullness.
It was as if the venerable Ennead of Egyptian gods had sat down at their table with a woman from the Black Land of Egypt and a woman from the Red Land of Libya and fashioned someone altogether new.
She was a surprise, this woman, and Intef could not remember the last time he had been surprised.
He removed the seal from the amphora full of water. ‘For you, Aya,’ he said, raising the container. ‘Life, prosperity, health!’ He put the jug to his lips and felt his strength increased. He glanced down. Surprisingly, so had his arousal.
He should not have been surprised. He was a lusty man, after all, and he often enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh.
Intef tried to recall the last time he had lain with a woman. Surely after General Setnakht’s invasion of Wawat, six months before. A horde of Nubian beauties had descended upon the army’s desert camp after a raid, eager to relieve the soldiers of their plunder. Intef vaguely remembered a woman who had offered to rub his shoulders, but could not recall anything more.
He took another long draught of water. Had there been any women from his village lately? Perhaps during the Festival of Drunkenness at the last inundation? But he had not joined in the festival, he remembered now. It had been the second year of drought and the idea of such indulgence had not appealed to him.
A few years ago, there had been the march to occupy the Osiris Temple at Abydos, just after Pharaoh Siptah’s murder. A veritable swarm of women had come to greet Setnakht’s rebels and Intef was certain that he had taken his pleasure with one of those lusty villagers. But what had she looked like? What had she called herself?
Perhaps his long hours squeezed inside the chest had also squeezed his memory. Or maybe he simply needed a bit of sustenance to stir his recollection.
He looked around the small room and spied a basket of bread atop one of the crates. His stomach roared. Why was he thinking of women at all, entombed as he was in this house of death? He should be thinking of how to drink and eat and avoid losing his life.
Though perhaps it was the very nearness of death that made him consider women at all—lust being one of the more vibrant features of living. So why could he not recall the names and faces of the women with whom he had...lived?
In truth, there was only one he could remember at all...
Her name had been Nebetta. They had grown up together on a temple-owned plantation north of Thebes. Intef did not remember when he had met Nebetta, just as he did not remember when he had learned to speak or walk. He just remembered that she had always been there, like the sunrise or the western hills.
He had liked to tease her. She had been so tall in those early years—much taller than he—and she had never seemed to know what to do with her limbs.
‘Be careful not to poke your head in the sky, Nebetta!’ he would warn her and she would scold him for being too short to see above the wheat.
He had not really noticed her beauty until his eighteenth year. She had begun to work at her family’s date stand in the market at the centre of Thebes and, whenever Intef had visited her, he’d noticed some new miracle. The silken shine in her long dark hair, the flush in her cheeks, the way her green bead necklace seemed to glow against her sepia skin.
‘My lotus in bloom!’ he would call to her and would know by the tinkle of her laughter that his compliment had hit its mark.
One day Intef had joined his father at a gathering of military recruits in a tavern in the centre of Thebes. Pharaoh Seti’s brother, Amenmesse, had been preparing to seize the Horus throne and most of the men of Thebes were joining the fight.
‘Amenmesse is the rightful heir!’ they had shouted.
Intef had stood beside his father as the recruiting scribe had added their names to the list.
‘We are recruiting all over the South,’ the scribe had told them. ‘We need your help in the search for volunteers.’
When the meeting had concluded, Intef had strolled back through the marketplace, hoping to catch a glimpse of Nebetta. By then he had been so popular among the young women of Thebes that he had been known as The Fisherman, because he always had at least a few young women on his hook.
When he had spotted Nebetta that day at the date stall, he had cast his line in the water. She had been as lovely as a palm standing there, arranging the small fruits.
When she had finally noticed him watching her she had held out a date to him and flashed a grin so dazzling that it had stopped him in his tracks.
‘Leave it to you to show up when there are free dates to be had,’ she’d jested.
Right then, Intef had realised that he was no longer The Fisherman. He had somehow become the fish.
They had made love that afternoon in the shade of the date palms. When Intef had returned home that night he had been nearly trembling with joy.
‘Father, Mother, there is something I must tell you.’
It had been just after sundown and the two of them had been lounging on the roof of their small mud-brick hut, gazing out at the river. The last ferry of the day had just embarked from shore and Intef had watched with strange delight as its big linen sails had caught the wind and headed for the west bank of the river.
‘We must pack our kits tonight,’ Intef’s father had said. ‘We leave tomorrow for Edfu.’
‘We are leaving Thebes?’ Intef had asked.
‘Of course we are—did you not hear the recruiter? He needs our help.’
‘But it is just a recruiting mission.’
‘We volunteered to support General Amenmesse’s bid for the throne,’ Intef’s father had said. ‘This is how we do it.’
‘But there is no battle. It is a voluntary mission for the able.’
‘And we are able,’ Intef’s father had said. ‘Or do you not wish for the rightful heir of Egypt to wear the double crown?’
Intef had frowned. It had seemed to him tha
t it was less a question of succession than it was of the balance of power: Amenmesse’s supporters lived in the South, while Seti’s resided in the North. It all seemed rather pointless, though he would not tell his father that.
‘I need you to come with me, Intef,’ his father had added, ‘to protect my back.’
Intef had gazed out at the ferry, slowly making its way across the great river. Its passengers had seemed so small against the tide.
‘I wish to do what is right, Father.’
He had glanced at his mother, who had nodded gravely. ‘I do not need any help in the fields, dear boy.’
‘We leave before dawn,’ his father had said.
‘But it is just a recruiting mission.’
Intef’s father had shaken his head. ‘You either support Amenmesse or you do not. There is no—’
‘Mother, Father, it is Nebetta. I wish to make her my wife.’
Intef’s mother had gasped with joy, but Intef’s father had frowned.
‘You have committed to Amenmesse’s army,’ he’d said. ‘Nebetta can wait.’
The ferry had approached the opposite shore. Intef had seen the pilot pull hard on a line and its sails go slack.
How easy it was for his father to say such things with Intef’s mother at his side! he had thought.
‘I am so happy for you, Son,’ she had said, her eyes full of tears.
‘Father?’
His father had stood and crossed to the ladder, then started his way down. ‘You are a man now and your life is your own. But remember your duty,’ he’d said.
Intef had slept on the roof that night. He’d gazed at Sopdet, the brightest star in the night sky, and decided it was a sign. He would build a hut for Nebetta over the following days and, as soon as it was built, he would make her his wife.
With Nebetta waiting for him in Thebes, he had known he would be able to fight whatever battles awaited him. He would stand strong by his father’s side and help put Egypt to rights.
Saved by Her Enemy Warrior Page 4
