I groaned, squirming around its thickness, and felt my own cock jump when it pulsed again. Anubis’s shadow covering me drew my eyes to him, watching him bend toward me and lick up my length with the same magical flexibility as my Meryt. But it was only when I looked again toward my beloved’s awed, adoring, and somewhat dazed expression that the next pulse of Anubis’s knot triggered my release.
“Meryt!” I coated my own chest, but also, when I glanced at the god who remained within me, I saw speckles of my release on Anubis’s cheek.
He lapped them up with his overlong tongue.
Oh that it was Meryt’s tongue, or mine, and it was Meryt’s release I was lapping.
I arched my back with a greater stretch, reveling in the aftershocks that continued to flow through me, while wondering when Anubis’s knot might diminish, only to look toward where Meryt should be and see nothing but the wall of the chamber, as if a door had closed.
No… Did they mean to torment me by showing him only to tear him from my sight again? It seemed a worse punishment to feel the despair of his loss while also experiencing lingering pulses of pleasure.
“Now you face your real test.” Anubis remained buried to the hilt and engorged within me.
Now? “Will the swell of you not release me?”
“Not until you answer.” He placed his hands on my hips, and slowly, while speaking, began to slide them upward with the tipsof his claws drawing lines along my skin. “With each of us, you will be tempted, but not only with pleasures of the flesh and an offer to stay with us instead of pursuing your beloved.”
He had said that before, that the gods might wish to keep me. “I could… stay with you? Consort to the great Anubis?”
His trailing claws reached my ribcage, and I trembled from the tickle. “It is an option that is open to you. You would make a wonderful consort, worthy of any god.”
Never could I have imagined hearing such praise. Anubis had done nothing but praise me.
“But each of us has something else to tempt you with as well.”
“But I know if I agree, I fail.”
The claws had reached my shoulders and delicately splayed around my neck. “You can accept our temptations. You would never see your love again, but you would not be doomed to have your soul devoured. That is only for true failure, for there is more to your trials that weighs your heart.”
“I will admit to your allure, my lord,” I answered honestly, “for you are certainly a unique and giving lover, with a tender and calming countenance, but I could never choose to stay with you. I love only my Meryt.”
He nodded, giving no otherwise clear reaction to my rejection.
“I do not need to hear your other temptation. I want only—”
“You must hear it,” he said. “That is nonnegotiable.”
I supposed it would not be a temptation if I never heard it. “So be it. Tell me. What is my lord Anubis’s offer?”
“Life.”
“I don’t understand. I am already alive, and there is no appeal in living without Meryt.”
His fingers wrapped more fully around my neck. “Even as a free man?”
“What?” I anticipated a squeeze, which I had endured with many of Pharaoh’s elite, though all knew to temper themselves beyond that, for only Pharaoh held our lives in his hands.
And the gods.
But instead, Anubis drifted his nails up along my scalp. The heat in my belly had not dwindled, for the swell of his knot endured.
“You could have it all over again,” he said, “the things you cherish but better. A mother’s comb brushing through your hair by her hand, with both of you free.” He guided me to look toward the pedestal with my comb, and continued in kind with the other items, while gently cradling my head. “Your dancer’s belt, to wear with a free man’s clothes or to place upon your own dancer as a nobleman with slaves. The lotus cup to drink from whenever you wish it instead of when granted permission to have wine. And the chance to find a new love, a free love, with anyone you choose, to fill your scroll for years to come.”
I stared with the most longing at the scroll, for did it not already have the epitome of love poems upon it because so many had been written for Meryt? Could a new life truly compare with this one, despite there being much about this life that I might change? “I could have all that?”
“And a long life with it. So answer me, Nakht.” He tilted my head forward to meet his carnelian stare. “Would you cling to life if you could have a better one, or could you leave all of that behind?”
I doubt I considered the offer for more than a breath, though I was not blind to the appeal. “Destroy it all if you must and any hope of that false existence. No trinket, no matter how precious to me, is more precious than Meryt. And not even a free life would truly be free if it wasn’t with him by my side.
