Books by Maggie Shayne (326 page)

She met his eyes, and hers were smoky and dark. “Giving me pleasure would take far more than a glittery gift, Eannatum.”

His blood heated at the double meaning of her remark, the teasing warmth in her eyes. She was a heartless tease, just as she had always been. “We’ll get to that,” he promised her, leaning close. And when she didn’t push him away, he brushed his mouth lightly over hers, lips apart, his breath fanning her.

Her breath stuttered, stopped, and her eyes fell closed expectantly. So he wrapped his arms around her waist, pulled her to him, and closed his mouth more completely over hers. He felt her lips part in invitation, and he slid his tongue between them in reply. He tasted her. Gods, he hadn’t tasted her in so long!

Fire blazed between them, as it always had. The physical response when they touched, when they kissed had always been explosive, and that hadn’t changed. His blood rushed and his heart pounded. Her hips arched against him, rubbing his erection to a state of painful need. His hands closed on her buttocks, tugging her harder to him, and he thrust his tongue deeper, drinking from her mouth the way he wanted to drink from every part of her.

Finally, he lifted his head, and stared down into her sparkling eyes.

And she blinked, then closed them, and turned away. “What in the names of the Gods am I doing?”

“Nidaba?”

“How could I?” She faced him again, tears brimming in her eyes. “I will not love you, Eannatum. I swear I will not love you again.”

Gods, that she could still hate him this much simply because he had married another. “What I did, I did for my country, Nidaba. For Lagash. For all of Sumer.”

Her face went stony and cold. “Then you admit it?”

“What is there to admit? I did it. You know I did it. And it was a sin against my own heart, Nidaba, and against you—one I have paid for ever since.” Frustrated, Nathan sighed and paced away. “Choose a dagger,” he told her. “You need to be armed.”

“If you gift me with one of these blades, Eannatum, I’ll likely use it to cut out your heart.”

Spinning to face her again, he said, “All of this venom! All of this hatred, simply because I wed another woman to avoid a war that would have destroyed us all?”

She frowned fiercely. “No! For the love of the Gods, Eannatum, marrying Puabi has nothing to do with my anger at you! Are you so blind you do not realize that?”

“Well, what, then? What, tell me, am I guilty of doing to so wrong you that you would continue to hate me after four millennia?”

She stared at him in disbelief. “Eannatum, your soldiers hunted me down. Under your orders, they hounded me for years, until they finally caught up to me.”

“I sent them after you because I couldn’t bear to live without you, Nidaba! I wanted them to bring you back to me.”

She shook her head very slowly. “And I was gullible enough and deeply enough in love to believe that, Natum. Until they finally caught up to me. Attacked me. They tried to murder me, Eanntuam. And they
did
murder my son.”

She lifted her head, met his eyes.
“Our
son.”

He stood there staring at her, struck motionless by what she had said.
“Our son?”

Swallowing hard, she nodded.

“And for this, you held me responsible?”

She turned away from him.

He caught her shoulders and turned her back. “Tell me. Tell me you honestly believe I could have ordered such a thing.”

She couldn’t even seem to look him in the eye. “I don’t know what I believed. You chose Puabi over me. Your kingdom over me. Even when the threat had ended, you remained with her. I thought I knew the power of your love for me, Natum. I thought it was more powerful than anything in the world. And I knew that if you would give me up for the sake of your kingdom, there could not be many other things you wouldn’t do for its sake as well.”

Stunned, he released her, cut to the bone.

“An illegitimate son with a claim to the throne would have been a far greater threat to the well-being of Sumer than an affair with a temple priestess ever could have been,” she said, driving the blade of her words straight through his heart.

He couldn’t speak to her. He was so angry he was trembling with it.

She looked into his eyes, and when she did, she went pale.

He opened his mouth, then closed it, almost too furious to think. “I don’t even know what to say to you.”

Her face changed, regret swimming in her eyes, but he held up a hand, saying nothing. Instead, he reached into the glass case, drew out a gold-handled Sumerian dagger and its leather sheath. He handed it to her, closed and locked the case, and strode back through the building, out the front to his car, vaguely aware that she followed. He drove her back to the house, all without uttering a word.

He didn’t dare speak. He’d have cursed her, he’d have lashed out and cut her to the quick the way she had cut him. Only when they returned to the house and he’d battled his fury into some semblance of submission did he dare to speak at all. He stopped her on the way inside. “Wait. We need to finish this.”

But then the front door was flung open, and George stood there, waving his hands. “Nathan! Nathan, come, please! Sheila’s crying in her sleep and I can’t make her wake up!”

“Dammit, George, not now.” Nathan gripped Nidaba’s shoulders, but she shook her head, and her face remained stony.

“Go. See to Sheila.” She strode into the house ahead of him.

He followed on her heels, having to push past George to do so. “The hell I will! Damn you, Nidaba. I’m angry as hell at you right now. You’ve got no right to accuse me of something that vile. All I ever did was love you, and I think you know that. Whatever you think happened—no, by the Gods no. You
can’t
believe any of that. You
can’t.
You don’t.”

A crash came from upstairs, causing them both to look up sharply. Nathan sighed. Sheila was no doubt thrashing in the grip of some nightmare. She’d stopped having them six months after coming to live with him and George, but apparently they’d come back full force. No wonder, considering recent events in this house.

“Go,” Nidaba said, her voice deep, her tone firm. “This discussion has waited a long time. It can wait a bit longer.”

“Not a hell of a lot longer, it can’t. And it won’t.” He had to go. But dammit, he didn’t want to. “Come along, then,” he said to Nidaba. “I’m not leaving you down here alone with this maniac on the loose.”

“I won’t argue with you.” She preceded him and George and the lumbering, ever attentive dog through the house and up the stairs. But she stopped at the master suite’s door and said, “I need to get some rest if I’m to be fully recovered any time soon. If there is anything I can do for Sheila, don’t hesitate to come for me. Otherwise, though, I... would prefer not to be disturbed tonight.”

She didn’t wait for his argument, though she had to know it was coming. Instead she just went inside and closed the door on the dog that tried to follow.

Nathan grated his teeth and stalked along the hall to Sheila’s room.

Nidaba closed the bedroom door behind her, leaned back against it, and covered her face with her hands. She knew, deep down in her heart, what the truth was. She had always known. But Gods, the pain had been so much easier to bear when she’d had someone to hate. Someone to blame.

He’d scorned her, chosen another woman and his royal duty over her. She had no one to blame for that but herself—she knew that. She was the one who’d convinced Natum what his duty was. But she couldn’t accept that, and so she had punished him by pretending to believe him capable of the most vile crime imaginable. She may even have fooled herself into thinking she truly did believe that of him. But she knew now that she never had. She never had.

Natum had seemed truly shocked by her revelation, that her child, her Nicodimus, had been his own son. Perhaps he hadn’t even known that much for certain. And yet his soldiers had hunted her endlessly, tirelessly, for years on end. And when they had finally found her...

She didn’t want to go back to believing Eannatum’s love had been real. Not when it had hurt her so to trust him with her heart, only to have it broken time and time again!

She heaved a sigh, swiped angrily at her eyes. She was too tired to contemplate it right now. Her body, still weakened, needed sleep to heal. Nidaba couldn’t have fought it had she tried.

No more than she could fight the dream ... the memory, so vivid and fresh.

She waited in the sacred bedchamber—a special room on the uppermost level of the palace. Small it was, but lined with silk pillows and spreads in rich jewel tones. Deep green and scarlet and midnight blue. Censers burned with sacred herbs, and a hundred candle flames danced, lighting the room with a soft illumination that was alive and ever-changing. As she picked her way between the pillows and spreads, it seemed she walked among a dozen living shadows that danced around her in celebration. She breathed the incense smoke, and tasted the other fragrances. Fruit and flowers. The table on the far of end of the room had no room for anything more. The most prized fruits in all of Sumer filled golden bowls to overflowing. Wine jugs and jeweled chalices stood at the ready. And blossoms littered every bit of space in between.

At the very center of the table stood a small stone image of the Goddess Inanna. She who would come to inhabit Nidaba’s body this night. It was good, Nidaba thought. She would likely not even remember what transpired. She would likely not even feel it, or be aware of his touch ... his kiss ...

Something clenched tight in her belly.

She had no one to ask. The previous king’s
lukur
was an elderwoman, an honored crone, living in a palace all her own in the mountains to the north. There had been no time to travel there, to consult with her. And no other woman alive had experienced this rite.

Kneeling before the image of the Goddess, Nidaba breathed deeply, slowly, filling her lungs with the sacred smoke and emptying her mind. Softly, she began to chant.
“Inanna me en, Inanna me en, Inanna me en. Uta am i i ki. ”

Over and over she spoke the words until they became a litany in her mind, running together, and making no sense. She lifted her arms to her sides, and upward, tipped her head back, and closed her eyes. She waited for the Goddess to fill her.

“Nidaba,” Eannatum said softly.

Her eyes opened. Slowly she lowered her arms and turned her head to see him standing there. The door was closed tightly behind him. His dark eyes gleamed in the candlelight. He came closer, and she wanted to tell him to stop. To warn him that she was not yet ready, that she was still Nidaba—not miraculously transformed into the Queen of Heaven. And yet to do that would be to admit that she had failed.

And even had she been willing to confess it to him, she couldn’t. She couldn’t form a word to save her life. His gaze moved freely over her barely clothed body, and she burned with wanting him as she had wanted him for most of her life.

She loved this man.

He came to her, standing while she knelt, and slowly stroked his hands over her hair. “So long, Nidaba. So long I have waited for this.”

She shut her eyes at his touch, wondered why if he wanted her so badly, he had not come for her, even though it would have spelled disaster for everyone else in Sumer.

But it didn’t matter. Suddenly none of that mattered. He was hers tonight, not Puabi’s. He was hers. And she was utterly his. She leaned forward, and pressed her lips to the hard bulge between his legs, with only the royal robes between his flesh and hers. “My king,” she whispered.

His fingers clenched in her hair, and he closed his eyes.

Nidaba rose slowly to her feet and stood before him. “The dance,” she said softly. “Was it pleasing to you?”

“You
were pleasing to me. I saw no others.” His eyes opened, skimming her from head to toe. “This ...” He lifted a hand, ran his fingers over her belly and the chain wrapped around her waist, with its dangling curtain of precious stones. “Is it heavy? Uncomfortable?”

“The metal is cold... or perhaps it is my flesh that is warm.”

He lifted his gaze to lock with hers. His hands, though, remained at her waist, and he fumbled with the clasp, found its release, opened it. Then he slowly took the girdle of stones away, letting it fall with a jangling sound into the nest of pillows on the floor. “Better?”

“Yes. Better.”

His eyes roamed down her body, all but naked to his hungry gaze. Everywhere he let that gaze linger, her skin seemed to heat, and tingle. “Yes,” he said. “Much better.” He reached out to the
nunuz
stones that dangled from the tips of her breasts, stroked them slowly, then set them to swinging with a flick of his fingers. “And these? Are they unpleasant?”

The tiny clamps bit into her nipples with minimal pressure... but the weight of the stones tugged with every swing, every touch. “They pinch only a little. And their weight pulls somewhat. Though it is not... unpleasant, exactly.”

“No. Not exactly.” His smile was slight. He reached up and gently removed the stones from her breasts, but he didn’t toss them aside as he had done with the girdle. Instead he tucked the clamps into some hidden place within his royal robes.

Sensation rushed into her nipples, where before the flow of blood had been pinched off. They throbbed and burned. He kept his eyes focused on her there, and she saw the blatant desire in them. Lifting his hands again, he cupped her breasts, running his calloused thumbs over her nipples repeatedly. The flicking motion over those sensitized peaks made her bite her lip to keep from crying out loud.

Frowning, Eannatum took his hands away. “You feel... sticky.”

“It was part of the preparation,” she said. “I was painted with honeyed wine for you.”

His gaze snapped to hers, widening, blazing. “Well, now...”

Hands closing on her waist he lifted her, setting her on the edge of the table, knocking bowls of fruit aside. Flower petals were her cushion. Standing back, examining her at his leisure, Eannatum lowered his head, and she knew what he would do even before his tongue snaked out to taste her breast. “Mmm,” he said, and then licked again. He caught the peak in his lips and suckled her. He took her nipple into his mouth and drew hard on it, flicking his tongue over the very tip as he sucked hungrily at her. He licked her breast clean, and continued even then, nipping with his teeth and pulling at her as if he would devour her whole.

Nidaba felt sensations she had never felt before. A sharp pleasure such as she had never imagined tingled through her. It bordered on pain and intensified unbearably when he bit down. Then he moved to the other breast, and devoured it even more frantically. And while he fed at it, he caught the other in his hand, drew his fingers together at the tip and pinched her deliciously. She braced her hands on the table behind her, let her head fall backward as her body clenched and tightened and liquified low in her belly. She arched her back and whimpered and he responded by exerting still more pressure with his fingers and his teeth.

Eannatum drew his head away then, looking into her eyes. He leaned down, kissed her long and deeply, thrusting his tongue into her mouth and lapping it as if it tasted as sweet to him as her honeyed nipples had done. She could taste the honey and wine on his tongue.

Then he straightened away and his hands crept up to her breasts again. She sucked in a breath of surprise when she felt the bite of the clamps closing once more on her nipples. The teeth felt sharper than before, their grip tighter now that those tender crests were stiff and throbbing. A cry was wrung from her.

And Eannatum whispered, “Trust me, Nidaba.” Then he knelt, his hands pressing to her thighs, shoving them wide, and exposing her very center to his probing eyes. With his fingers, he parted her folds. Then he touched her, fondled her there in her most private places. He even thrust his long finger inside her, then drew it slowly out again. He brought it to his lips, tasted it. “Mmm, just as I thought. More honey.”

Before she could know what he intended, he pressed her thighs wider, and buried his face between her legs. His lips, then his tongue, swept over her, flicking, licking, stroking. He licked up inside her, seeking every drop of the honeyed wine with which she’d been coated. And he laved her in places where the eunuch’s brush had never dared touch.

Nidaba fell backward on the table, tipping fruit bowls over and sending their contents helter-skelter. She twisted and writhed while he fed at her. And then he found the tiny kernel of her most frenzied need and sucked at it, stabbed at it with his tongue, bit at it with his teeth. And she felt as if her body would shake itself to pieces. His hands came up then, caught the
nunuz
stones, and as his mouth worked her even more hungrily, he tugged on them. The clamps pulled painfully at her nipples, stretching them, biting deeply, and his teeth closed on that pulsing nub at her center. And her body shattered in screaming, trembling release. She cried his name, shuddered uncontrollably, and finally pushed him away from her, panting and sweating.

Natum gathered her into his arms, though, and carried her to the cushions on the floor. He lowered her into them and again took the stones from her breasts, tossing them aside this time. As she lay there, shaking, breathless, shattered, he removed his robes.