Egyptian Lover 3: Ardeth & Amenhotep Page 3

  “I can get other men,” she gasped as his lips lowered to sear the sensitive flesh of her throat.

  “I am certain you can. But they can no longer please you. I am in your blood. I am the only one for you now.”

  This was insane! He honestly believed that she was bound to him somehow? Where did he get off deciding that? Maybe it was a belief among his people, but where she came from it didn’t mean shit! She didn’t have to give in to this or to him.

  Oh, but her body was. Her breasts flushed with heat, her nipples beading hard as he traced a finger down the front of her blouse. Before her startled eyes, the nail of his index finger elongated and curled into a claw. What the fuck? Fear and excitement glued her to the spot as he took that claw and used it to rip through the buttons at the front of her shirt like a knife cutting through warm butter. The buttons were still flying when he sliced through the front of her bra, revealing her breasts for his greedy gaze.

  His mouth dove for her breast and instead of fighting him, she was straining toward him. Her back arched and her legs shifted to allow the intrusion of his rock hard thigh between them. Her body was on fire with need in a way that was completely unfamiliar to her. She’d never before felt the sort of indescribable craving that had taken over her body. Now she was a slave to it. The feel of Ardeth’s mouth on her breast, his fingers plucking at the fastenings of her jeans, had sticky wetness surging from her cunt.

  While his mouth suckled her greedily, his hand and claws shredded the top of her jeans. Incredibly, she hardly felt a thing. Those sharp claws never came even close to slashing her flesh. He ripped off her panties easily and then his hand was between her thighs, cupping her mound. Her clit was throbbing so strongly now he could probably feel the pulse of it against his fingers.

  Alex let her head fall back, the fire building in her pussy threatening to consume her. His hot tongue was a wicked torment as he licked her sensitive nipple, his nipping teeth just as enticing. Her cunt nearly spasmed in release as his finger slid between her sensitive folds, finding the small swollen nub that desperately needed his attention. The way he circled her clit with his light teasing finger had her bucking against him, trying to rub herself against that tormenting hand or the hard plane of his thigh. Anything to alleviate this incredible ache.

  When Alex dropped to the ground, her breath was released in a great gust, the air nearly knocked from her lungs. In a fury he pulled what was left of her jeans away from her legs and pressed her naked thighs apart with his hands. His nostrils flared as he breathed in her scent and he growled.

  Even in the fog of lust she was lost in, she realized that there was something not quite right about that growl.

  Yeah, well, the man had grown claws too.

  Yet, how could she contemplate that at the moment? Ardeth came down over her, his expression one of domination and triumph as he pressed his warm mouth to the smooth plane of her belly. His lips feathered down her stomach, his hard hands spreading her thighs wider as his mouth went to her clit.

  Splintering heat and rapture raced through her womb before jetting through the rest of her body. His tongue lightly caressed the aching nub of her clit, circling it slowly. Alex’s hands speared into the thick, dark locks of his hair when his lips clapped over the aching bud to finally suckle it into the warm cavern of his mouth. She writhed and arched at the incredible pleasure, her fingers clutching in his hair as he licked her, suckled her.

  All thoughts of dreams and monsters spun away in this moment as his demanding mouth ate her, licking at the cream that spilled from her pussy with abandon. Alex could hear herself in the distance, screaming and begging as her hips undulated against his tormenting mouth. She wanted more, needed more.

  And Ardeth gave it to her. He suckled her clit tighter into his mouth, his tongue lashing it with fast, fiery strokes meant to smash her sanity. Alex exploded then. Her sharp cry echoing through the cave around them as the orgasm ripped through her body.

  The strong waves of ecstasy hadn’t had time to subside before he moved again, stripping off the black robe that he wore to reveal a beautiful, male form that made her pause. He was all tight muscle and sinew. Men back in the States took steroids and lived at their gyms to look like this guy.

  She caught a glimpse of his large straining cock before he lowered himself between her thighs to probe at her weeping entrance. Gripping her hips with his large hands, he positioned her. Then he plunged into her hard and fast, filling her pussy with the heated length of his erection.

  “Ardeth.” Alex shuddered with pleasure as the wide girth of his cock stretched her greedy pussy. Her leg wrapped around his waist and his arms closed around her body, holding her in place as he began to move deliciously within her.

  “Your body is so tight, so full of fire.” His voice was a low moan at her ear as he lowered some of his weight onto her.

  Damn, that felt good. Alex wrapped her legs around his waist, rubbing her breasts against his chest as she began to pump her hips, craving more as he filled her with agonizing pleasure.

  When the thickness of his cock completely filled her, stretched her, Alex squeezed him with her pussy walls. Her hips shot off the sand to meet his thrusts, driving his cock deeper inside her aching pussy.

  “Can you tell me this is not fate now?” His cock slid into her and slowly back out, the sensual push and drag of his body within her driving her insane.

  His hands gripped her thighs hard as he began to pump faster, deeper. Her screams echoed in the cave with every hard, driving thrust. Ardeth didn’t relent until the contractions began again, the muscles of her snug channel flexing around him as he stroked her roughly.

  The orgasm shattered Alex and she arched her back, writhing wildly beneath him. The fire that seared her was hotter than the Egyptian sun and she clung to him, riding out wave after wave of pure ecstasy while his thrusts gained in speed and strength. When Ardeth began to shudder above her, he threw back his head and a guttural cry erupted from his throat, echoing in the cave around them.

  “Ardeth?” A male voice called from the darkness.

  And just like that, Alex’s eyes snapped open and she was back in the hotel, stretched out on the bed.

  Her body hadn’t even fully recovered from her release as she sat up, dazed and staring down at herself.

  Her heart slammed in her chest when she saw that she was nude from the waist down. Her ruined bra and blouse hung open, just as they had been after he’d ripped them. And there were fading imprints of his fingers on her thighs.

  Oh, shit! It was real! She’d really been with him whoever he was.

  With a trembling hand, Alex dipped her fingers into the pleasantly sore opening of her body and they were instantly coated with warm, sticky wetness. Her own juices combined with semen.

  Great! They hadn’t used anything. Shit!

  Guess what, Mom and Dad? Not only did I go back to Egypt even though I knew it was incredibly dangerous and you wouldn’t want me to, but I’m knocked up. He’s a nice Egyptian dude and his name is Ardeth. I’ve never actually met him, but hey…

  Okay, first things first. She needed to calm down. She didn’t know what the fuck was happening but she was back to her reality at the moment. Her first priority was to get a grip.

  On shaky legs, she climbed off the bed and headed for the bathroom. A nice relaxing bath was what she needed. She turned on the water and adjusted it until it was as warm as she could stand it. That would help. Pouring some of the bath oils the hotel provided into the water, she stared at the beads of light lavender, watching them dissolve.

  She just had to get through tomorrow. She’d show Hunter the cave, they could look around. Maybe they’d find Carson or some shred of evidence explaining what had happened to her. She sincerely hoped they did. Once that part was over, she was going home. She had to leave this place and never come back.

  Alex shouldn’t have returned this time. She couldn’t fight the feeling that in doing so, she’d set something in m
otion that couldn’t be stopped now.

  What had she done?

  Chapter 4

  “What are you doing, Ardeth?”

  The sound of his identical twin’s voice startled him out of his reverie at the worst possible moment. He’d been making love to the woman who would be his mate, barely finishing before Amenhotep’s intrusion. Frowning at his brother, he blew out his frustration in a long exhale.

  “What do you want?”

  “What have you done, brother?” Amenhotep stepped out of the light of the setting sun and into the cave where Ardeth sat. “You have summoned that woman back to our lands, have you not?”

  Ardeth didn’t answer him. He could see on his twin’s face that he already knew the answer to his own question.

  “Have you gone mad?” Amenhotep’s tone was demanding. “Do you realize what you have done in bringing her here?”

  Ardeth rose to his feet, standing toe to toe with his twin. “Yes, I do.”

  Anger lit up his brother’s eyes. Eyes that were the same as his own. “And you would risk everything, all of us, the entire world for this woman?”

  “She is my mate.” Anger welling up inside him fast, Ardeth summoned the sands and shifted into the form the curse of Set had given him. He became the sphinx, a winged creature with the body of a lion and the head of a man. He wanted to let Amenhotep know that he wouldn’t tolerate his harsh words over something he was powerless to control.

  With a great growl, his brother followed suit and transformed into the same beast, snarling at Ardeth menacingly.

  “What need do either of us have for a mate, Ardeth? We are here to prevent the return of our king’s murderer, not to dishonor him by bringing back a woman who could complete Set’s plan.”

  “Why would I not want a mate? So I could spend eternity with you?”

  Amenhotep viciously swiped at him with one great paw, but Ardeth dodged quickly to the side, avoiding the blow.

  His brother spoke of the curse that the old villain Set himself had placed on them both and their five companions thousands of years ago. There were seven Scorpion Warriors who had been the great king’s council in those days of glory. When Set murdered their beloved king, his own brother, Osiris -- the Scorpion Warriors had helped Isis, his queen, retrieve his body.

  Yet Set discovered the body and brutally dismembered it. Again the Scorpion Warriors were called upon to help recover the pieces. After Isis conceived a son, Horus, who would go on to defeat Set in life, they helped her again to secure their king’s body in a secret tomb. Only the Scorpion Warriors and the queen knew its location.

  Before his mortal death, Set had spat out a terrible curse, carving it into stone with his dying hand. The curse dictated that his minions, the dark riders, would roam the lands, searching for a mortal to read the curse on the stone. The language the inscription was written in was known only to a few close to Osiris. Yet somehow, Emma, Kahma’s mate, had been able to decipher it.

  And Alexis had apparently been close when Ardeth and two of his companions had burst in on the scene that night in the cave.

  They’d be looking for Alexis since she’d managed to read at least part of the curse. If they could force her to finish translating the inscription, they would use her as a vessel to bring their master back into the world. It would be a fate worse than a thousand deaths for her.

  Then Set would take control of Osiris and the armies of the underworld, using them to conquer the modern world.

  “I am not trying to dishonor our king.” Ardeth’s gaze locked with his twin’s. “I know what risk we take. But I cannot stop this. My blood mingled with hers. She is mine now, and nothing can change that. Do you understand?”

  Shock dimmed the flames of anger in Amenhotep’s eyes. The sands swirled around his body and he returned to his human form. “What did you say?”

  Ardeth let his limbs contort, his paws split back into hands and feet as he shifted again to human form. It was a slower process for him because he was so drained at the moment. His mating with the woman through the trance had robbed him of much of his strength.

  After taking a moment to catch his breath, Ardeth looked his brother in the eye. “That night in the cave,” Ardeth explained. “I grabbed her hand to pull her out of there. My blood mingled with hers.”

  “By all the gods!” Amenhotep shouted. “Did no one listen to Kahma that night? It would have been better had she died, Ardeth. Her death would have ensured that the effort to resurrect Set would have been permanently thwarted. What were you thinking?”

  Yes, perhaps it would have been better if Alexis had died. Ardeth, in his curse, could easily read the emotions of others just as well as he could project himself out of his body and into their minds. He knew that she was scarred by the horrors she’d experienced that night. Her inner scars were as obvious as the outer scars that covered her skin. Perhaps she’d never fully recover from that night enough to enjoy life. One would need exceptional strength to truly survive such an ordeal.

  And yes, the fact that she had lived through that experience and now returned to their lands meant the dark riders would be looking for her. They would be as aware of her presence as Ardeth and the other Scorpion Warriors were. There was a chance they could capture her and complete the evil mission their master had tasked them with, using her to unleash great evil on the world.

  The fact was that Ardeth couldn’t explain why he’d saved her that night. The fear he’d read in her large eyes let him know she was on the edge of her own sanity. The bleeding wounds that had covered her flesh almost convinced him that killing her would have been better, would have eased her pain.

  At the last moment, Ardeth hadn’t been able to harm her. The woman had been so fragile in appearance and the hope he’d read in her face when he’d arrived with Kahma and Amenhotep had made it impossible to strike her down. He’d only meant to get her outside of the cave. That was all.

  Yet once he’d gotten her safely out of there, Sopdet, who’d been missing from their group until that moment, swept her up and carried her off into the night.

  “Perhaps it would have been better if she had died, brother,” Ardeth pointed out. “But she did not. Sopdet is partly responsible for that, and my connection to her has been growing with each rising of the sun. My blood, our cursed blood, flows in her veins. It would only be a matter of time before that brought her back here and you know it. We were doomed to face this situation from the moment my blood mixed with hers.”

  “We are doomed,” Amenhotep’s voice was filled with resignation. “Do you not know that?”

  “Perhaps we always have been.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “How long are we supposed to go on, brother? How long must we stand guard?” So many times over the years he’d thought the words, but had never spoken them aloud. “Until the end of time has become unbearably long for me. The thought of a mate pleases me, brother. She is something new, something giving in an eternity of bleakness. Why do you think Kahma and Sopdet took mates? Their temperaments are much improved these days.”

  “So your loneliness is enough to justify the risk to us all?”

  Ardeth stared at his brother hard. “It is more than that.”

  “You are saying that perhaps we should allow the curse to be fulfilled?”

  Instead of disbelief, his brother’s expression was one of calm. So Amenhotep had the same thoughts, had he? How could he not when they’d lived this nightmare, ever vigilant, for thousands of years?

  “What if we allowed Set’s vision to be realized and found we could finally bring it to an end? Would that not be better than remaining here, endlessly trying to avoid what might be inevitable?”

  “That’s treason against our king and queen.”

  “Yet you have thought of it too. Admit it.”

  Amenhotep shook his head. “And how would we accomplish that?”

  “I know not.”

  “You would sacrifice this woman to them? D
eliver her to the dark riders to set the curse in motion and then try to thwart it?”

  “No,” Ardeth said instantly, surprising himself.

  He couldn’t do that to Alexis. Especially not now that he’d tasted her, claimed her. While he hadn’t deliberately set about to make her his mate, he found the idea of whatever time was left with her held great appeal. He liked her fair skin and the way her sheath closed around him like a tight fist. Her sleek little body pleased him greatly. He’d always loved smaller women.

  Ardeth admired her spirit too. She had challenged him earlier just enough to pique his interest but had surrendered to him when he’d wanted and needed her submission.

  No, Alexis was his. He’d made his mind up about that.

  “How do you plan to protect her?’

  Ardeth had given that aspect of this a lot of thought. “She already is protected to an extent. Slowly she will become one of us. Once the curse is fully upon her, the dark riders cannot touch her. Just as it is with Emma and Carson.”

  His brother angled his head at him in question. “Their transformations were almost instant, Ardeth. Kahma cursed Emma himself, which he vowed never to do again because of the amount of time it took him to recover. And Carson? Sopdet turned her. They are not like us. They are drinkers of blood. It was only a matter of her dying a mortal death and being reborn as one like him.”

  “Her transformation must be hastened,” Kahma said.

  Both of them turned to stare at Kahma who stood just inside the mouth of the cave, his expression dark as he stared at Ardeth. In life he’d been Pharaoh’s high priest, their undoubted leader. In their endless eternity, Ardeth and his brother still followed him.

  Ardeth groaned in dread, just knowing that Kahma heard most of their story. Including his traitorous thoughts about simply allowing the end to come.

  “I would like to explain --”

  Kahma held up a hand to halt Ardeth before he got started. “I have heard enough, Ardeth. All can be discussed later. The dark riders are on the move. There will be no more talk of allowing Set’s will. We must either destroy this woman or bring her back here as your mate.”