“He is a facsimile, yes, but a flawless one,” Ptah said, as the doll of Meryt reached beneath the fall of my loincloth, “and he will remain perfect, young and vibrant and obedient for you, always.”
Behind the doll’s eyes was nothing.
“Obedient…” I repeated.
The doll dropped to its knees, smiling emptily at me, and took my length out from behind my cloth, guiding it toward his mouth.
“Stop,” I ordered with far more bite than I had used when denying Ptah, holding the doll back with a hand on its shoulder, “I do not want this.”
“Nakht?” Those familiar butwrongeyes fluttered their painted lids at me. “My love—”
“I wantmyMeryt.” I stepped back from the kneelingfakeand looked at Ptah seated on the daybed. “Real and flawed and able to choose for himself. It isn’t fair to call any part of him flawed anyway. I wouldn’t have himperfected. I would have him as he was, as he chooses to be, even if we age and change beyond the beauty of youth. Even if we fight. And we do. We will again if I save him, I am sure of it. And I would welcome that. Is choice not what it means to truly live and love?”
Ptah’s expression was neutral. “Even if you fail and earn no version of Meryt at all?”
“Yes,” I said, not needing to look at the doll again to answer.
Ptah snapped his fingers, prompting the doll to immediately stand, its face becoming equally as neutral as it awaited its next order. “I commend you, Nakht, for I believe you were tempted by this trial.”
“Only because I miss him.” I dared glance at the almost right face. It was nice to see it. “But a fake is still a fake.”
Ptah rose and stepped between me and the doll. He was tall but only just slightly taller than I was.
I was undeniably hard, ashamedly so, still pooling prerelease from how close I had come to succumbing to desire over sense, as Ptah reached beneath my loincloth to take me in hand.
“Agreed,” he said, “but I cannot very well leave you like this when you might yet choose to stay and serve me.”
“My lord—”
“I have many trinkets and toys you might enjoy, Nakht. I do so enjoy creating. Shall we see what else your maker god can offer to tempt you?”
The lines along Ptah’s skin swirled in constant motion over every part of him, including his fingers and the palm of his hand that he used to grip me. I swallowed, body aflame but mind clear. “You can try, my lord, but I will not be swayed from my path.”
Ptah grinned, not even needing to stroke me, for the movement of his strange, miraculous skin was enough. “A confident creation too.Thisis another of my creations.” He reached with his other hand to grip his false beard and twisted it off with a snap, removing it, however it had attached to him.
I still was not certain how it did, for what was left behind on Ptah’s chin was a thin blue strip like lapis lazuli fused into it, instead of allowing any real hair to grow.
He had none, I realized then; he was utterly smooth, even above his eyes.
“Feel it,” he said, holding the beard out to me, as the oscillations of the skin on the hand fondling me continued to bring me to further hardness.
I took the beard, oblong like others I was used to of these false but fashionable adornments. I had taken it for gold and other metals or stone, but it was more pliable than I expected, like it was molded from something softer.
In truth, its size and shape, and now feeling its texture, made me certain of what Ptah planned to do with it before I looked up to see the stretch of his grin.
“Shall I show you what it can do?”
I frowned. “You might try to tempt me, my lord, but understand that I only shared pleasures with Anubis because Meryt was watching us.”
“Oh, he still does.”
“Not the doll—” I scowled.
“Notthe doll,” Ptah interrupted. “But because you requested it, Meryt sees all you want him to see even when you do not see him.”
The urge to look for him again, therealhim, was strong, but I did not think it would be that easy. Not yet. “In that case, knowing this remains part of my trials and all the temptations I have yet to weather... show me as you have asked to, so I might continue to please my beloved.”
Ptah nodded. He took the false beard back from me, reached around beneath me, and I widened my stance to better allow the slow insertion of it where I had so recently been taken by Anubis. While I had been cleansed, I was still stretched and wet from that encounter, and the object entered me as smoothly as any toy or cock ever had, as if its material was made to be used in this manner.
