Chapter 7 #2
The boat docked as full darkness fell, and we walked back through Cairo’s evening streets hand in hand.
The city was alive with lights and music, restaurants spilling patrons onto sidewalks, vendors calling out, the smell of spices and grilled meat heavy in the air.
But I barely noticed any of it. I was too aware of Anubis beside me, the warmth of his hand in mine, the way he looked at me like I was the only thing in the world that mattered.
Anubis took it all in with the wonder of a child, his hand never leaving mine.
“There's a nightclub,” I said as we passed one, the bass thumping through the walls. “If you want to experience modern Egypt, we could.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to suggest.”
“You suggested experiencing something. I want to experience everything with you.”
The club was packed and hot, pulsing with electronic music unlike anything from Anubis’s era. We pushed through the crowd to the bar, and I ordered us drinks; something fruity for me, whiskey for him.
“This is very loud,” he said, leaning close to be heard.
“That’s kind of the point!”
“And people come here voluntarily?”
“They do. To dance, to have fun!”
He looked skeptical, but when I pulled him onto the dance floor, he followed.
I hadn’t danced in years. I hadn’t let myself move like this since before Sophie was born.
Tonight I stood on the dance floor unselfconscious and uninhibited.
The music was infectious; the alcohol was warming my blood, and Anubis watched me with those golden eyes like I was the only person in the room.
I moved against him, letting the rhythm guide me, and felt his hands settle on my hips. He moved well for someone who’d been bound to a pyramid for millennia. He followed my lead, learning the patterns, his body responding to mine with ever-increasing confident touches.
The music shifted to something slower, heavier, with a bass line that thrummed through my chest. I turned, pressing my back against him, and ground my hips in time with the beat. I felt him inhale sharply, his fingers tightening on my waist.
“Jessica,” he said, his voice rough in my ear. “What are you doing?”
“Dancing. This is how people dance now.”
“This is dancing?”
“Mmhm.” I rolled my hips again, more deliberately, and felt the evidence of his arousal against my lower back. “Problem?”
“Several.” His mouth was at my neck, breath hot against my skin. “Chief among them being that I am trying very hard to maintain public decency.”
“Who says you have to?”
“You are a terrible influence.”
“I know.” I turned in his arms, wrapping mine around his neck. “Want to get out of here?”
“Desperately.”
We made it back to the hotel in record time, barely keeping our hands off each other in the taxi.
We made it into the elevator before his control snapped.
He pulled me against him, his mouth finding mine with bruising intensity, and I melted into him.
My back hit the wall and I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything except the feel of him, the taste of him, the way his hands gripped my hips as if he was afraid I’d disappear.
The elevator chimed our floor, and we stumbled out, still kissing, barely making it to my door.
“Jessica,” he said against my neck, his voice rough. “If you want to stop, tell me now.”
“I don’t want to stop.” The door opened, and I pulled him inside. “I don’t ever want to stop.”
The door had barely closed before he had me against it, his mouth on mine, his hands everywhere. I pulled at his shirt, desperate to feel skin, and heard fabric tear.
“Sorry,” I gasped.
“I don’t care.” He lifted me, and I wrapped my legs around his waist, grinding against him. “Jessica, I need…”
“Bed. Or against the door. Wall. Whatever.”
“Bed, it’ll be more comfortable for you.” He carried me across the room. We shed our clothes between the door and the bed, leaving a trail of fabric behind us. When we tumbled onto the mattress together, both of us breathing hard, I took a moment just to look at him.
He was beautiful. Not in a perfect, airbrushed way, but in the way ancient statues are beautiful. Anubis was all clean lines and purposeful angles, strength and grace combined. The golden bands on his arms gleamed in the low light, and his eyes were molten with desire.
“You’re staring,” he said, echoing my words from the night before.
“No, I’m appreciating.”
“There’s a difference?”
“Considerable.” I reached up to trace the line of his jaw, feeling the slight stubble there. “Has anyone told you you're beautiful?”
“Not in several thousand years.”
“Well, you are. Devastatingly so.”
He caught my hand, pressing a kiss to my palm. “And you are radiant like captured sunlight. I could spend eternity looking at you and never grow tired.”
“You’re going to make me cry if you keep saying things like that.”
“Then I will kiss the tears away.”
He kept his promise, trailing kisses across my face and down my neck. His mouth found my breast and I arched into him, my hands fisting in his hair. The sensations were almost too much; pleasure bordering on pain, with a need so intense it made my whole body shake.
“Please,” I breathed. “Anubis, please.”
“Tell me what you need.”
“You. Inside me. Now.”
He slid into me in one smooth stroke, and we both groaned. For a moment, we just looked at each other. His eyes blazed gold.
“I cannot always control it,” he whispered. “My true nature. When the pleasure becomes too intense.”
“I don’t care. I want all of you.”
He filled me perfectly, stretching me in ways that should have hurt but only felt right. Complete.
He started to move, slow and deep, each thrust deliberate. I met him stroke for stroke. This time, as the intensity grew, I noticed changes.
The air around us shimmered, taking on that golden quality I’d seen the night before. But it was stronger now, more pronounced. Anubis’s eyes weren’t just glowing. They blazed like twin suns of divine radiance that should have been blinding but somehow weren’t
“Don't stop,” I said, even as a frisson of fear ran through me. “Please don’t stop.”
“I cannot.” His voice had changed, layered with harmonics that resonated in my bones. “Jessica, you should not be able to withstand this.”
“I can. I am.”
The golden light intensified, spreading from him to envelop us both.
And suddenly I felt the vastness of him, the weight of eternity, the infinite space between life and death.
It was like standing at the edge of the universe and looking into forever, feeling the pull of something so much larger than myself.
It should have been terrifying. It should have driven me mad, just like he’d warned.
Instead, I felt exhilarated. I felt alive in ways I’d never imagined possible.
Anubis moved faster now, harder, and I could feel his control fraying.
The light was everywhere, filling the room, seeping into my skin.
I sensed things I shouldn’t be able to sense, like the beating of my heart, the flow of blood through my veins, the spark of life force that made me mortal and finite and precious.
“You burn so brightly,” Anubis said, his voice layered with divinity and wonder. “Like a star. Like the sun itself. How do you burn so brightly when you have so little time?”
“Maybe because we have so little time,” I gasped, feeling the orgasm building. “Maybe that’s what makes it matter.”
The light exploded, and I felt the boundary between us dissolve. For one impossible moment, I wasn’t just Jessica Thomas anymore. I was part of something infinite, something eternal, connected to the vast cosmic weight of death and rebirth and the endless cycle of existence.
And in that moment, I understood.
I understood what Anubis carried. The burden of watching everyone he'd ever known fade and die while he remained. The loneliness of being eternal in a world of temporary things. The terrible weight of duty that spanned millennia.
I understood, and my heart broke for him even as pleasure shattered me into a million pieces.
We came together; the orgasm ripping through both of us with enough force to make the light flare brilliant and blinding.
I felt myself shatter and reform, felt the boundary of my self dissolve and re-establish, felt every cell in my body sing with the intensity of it.
I heard myself crying out, heard Anubis say my name like a prayer, felt reality reassemble itself around us as the divine manifestation slowly faded.
When I came back to myself, the light had faded.
Anubis was above me, his eyes normal again; or as normal as glowing gold could be, breathing hard.
I found myself cradled against his chest, both of us trembling.
The room was dark again, the golden light gone, but I could still feel the echo of it thrumming through my veins.
“Are you alright?” Anubis asked, concern filling his voice. His hand stroked my back. “Did I hurt you?”
“No.” My voice came out hoarse. “No, you didn’t hurt me. That was…” I searched for words and found them inadequate. “I’ve never felt anything like that. Never felt so alive.”
“Direct contact with divine essence would destroy most mortals. Their minds cannot comprehend…”
“I’m not most mortals.” I pulled back to look at him, seeing the worry in his golden eyes. “And maybe that’s the point. Maybe I’m not supposed to comprehend it. Maybe I’m just supposed to feel it.”
He cupped my face, his thumb brushing across my lips. “You continue to surprise me.”
“Good. Wouldn’t want you getting bored.”
“I could never be bored with you.” He pulled me back against him, and I settled into his embrace, feeling thoroughly satisfied and slightly in awe of what had just happened. “In all my existence, I have never met anyone like you.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“The highest.”
We lay there in the dark, skin against skin, our heartbeats slowing. I traced loops on his chest with my fingers, feeling the steady rise and fall of his breathing, and tried not to think about the fact that I only had a few more days of this.
“Tell me what you’re thinking?” Anubis asked.
“That I’m in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
I was quiet for a moment, debating whether to say it out loud. “This is going to hurt, isn’t it? When it ends.”
His arms tightened around me. “Yes.”
“Worth it though.”
“Yes,” he said again, pressing a kiss to my hair. “Worth every moment of the pain that will come.”
I knew with absolute certainty that I was past the point of no return. This wasn’t a vacation fling anymore. This wasn’t casual. I was falling in love with a god, and there was no way this ended well.
But right now, wrapped in his arms, still feeling the echo of divine power thrumming through my veins, I couldn’t bring myself to care.
“What do we do?” I whispered.
“I do not know. Perhaps we simply fall and deal with the landing when it comes.”
“Sounds like a terrible plan.”
“Do you have a better one?”
I didn’t, so I said nothing and held him tighter, feeling the warmth of his body against mine, and tried to memorize every detail of this moment because moments like this didn’t last.
Nothing good ever did.
But right now, wrapped in golden light and the arms of someone who made me feel alive, I couldn’t bring myself to care about tomorrow.
Tomorrow could wait.
Tonight was ours.