Mortal Temptations (23 page)

REBECCA worried about getting to the oases quickly, until Demitri told her he had a private plane. They’d fly out to Dakhla and be there in a few hours.

Andreas hadn’t spoken much to her at all. She’d cleaned up and dressed without seeing him, fuming that he hadn’t tried to get into the shower with her.

In the plane, she had a seat to herself, with Demitri across from her and Andreas behind her. She pretended to ignore Andreas and talked to Demitri instead.

“So, you’re a demigod, too?” she asked him.

He nodded. “My father was Apollo, my mother a magic woman from the Indus Valley. She could take the form of a tiger, and she taught me to as well.”

“And you’ve been friends with Nico and Andreas since . . . ?”

“Since forever, as people like to say now. We met as young men. When Hera trapped the two of them with her curse, I wasn’t there. I decided to stick around and help them as I could.”

Rebecca saw guilt in his eyes that he’d been elsewhere when Hera had taken her vengeance. He’d stayed not only because he wanted to help his friends but to atone for escaping.

Andreas didn’t contribute to the conversation, and when Rebecca looked behind her, he seemed to be asleep. She set her jaw and looked out of the window in silence.

They landed first at Bahariyya but found no evidence that Nico had come this way. Demitri insisted they continue to Farafra and then Dakhla. It was getting late by then, so they opted to stay in a small hotel and continue their search the next day.

Rebecca found it strange to walk on cool, green grass under palm trees when, not far away, the stark desert spread across thousands of miles. This was a beautiful place, an island in the desert, but it frightened her that Patricia might be lost somewhere in the endless sands.

Demitri discovered quickly that Nico had been there. The villagers here knew everyone, and everyone had heard the story of Ahmed shooting a godlike man out of the sky. They scoffed at the story but agreed that Ahmed’s family had found a man in the desert and driven off west with him.

Demitri went to hire a car and guide, while Rebecca pored over a local map in her hotel bedroom, trying to decide which way they should go.

She heard Andreas enter and stand right behind her. He smelled of sweat and the diesel of the car that had brought them here, and his own male musk.

“Why did you come back?” he asked abruptly.

She kept her gaze on the map, pretending his nearness didn’t unnerve her. “To help Patricia. It was ridiculous for me to stay home when I knew what the inscription on the wall said and maybe how to help her.”

“No other reason?”

Rebecca turned around, suppressing a shiver as she looked up at his tall, powerful body.

“Do you want me to tell you I came back for you? After you fled the scene in the tomb?”

His blue eyes darkened. “I had to. I knew Hera would never let me go. She’d trick Bes into giving me back to her if I stayed. I went back to Olympus to talk to the other gods.”

Rebecca had never thought in her life she’d be with a man who so casually mentioned that he talked to the gods of the Greek pantheon. “And what did you talk about?”

“I got a promise made that if Nico and I were free, we’d be free for always. And that Hera couldn’t take her revenge on you. You are not to be hurt.”

“That was nice of you.”

Andreas growled, his leopardlike temper returning. “It wasn’t
nice
. It was necessary.”

“I meant it was kind of you to make sure I’d be all right.”

“Damn it.” Andreas grabbed her by the elbows and pulled her tight to him. “I’m not kind. I don’t do things to be
kind
. I wanted you to be all right so when I saw you again, I could have you back. I want you to be all right because—I want you to be.”

Why did he always take her breath away? No man had ever wanted her like Andreas wanted her. It was a heady feeling, and frightening, too, because she didn’t want it ever to stop.

“You’re not under the curse anymore,” she said, trying to hold her voice steady.

“No kidding.” Andreas put his thumbs under her jaw and turned her face up to his. “I don’t care about the damn curse. I just want to find out what it will be like with you without it.”

Her heart hammered. “You mean like an experiment?”

“I don’t care what you call it. I want you to be safe, but I want to be with you. It’s driving me crazy. Why didn’t you stay in New York?”

“I already told you why.”

“How are you supposed to stay safe if you don’t do what I tell you?”

She started to laugh. This tall, strong male had come to her in her little room at the B and B and made her take off her bra and give it to him. Then he’d pleasured her in a shower in London to wash away her fear of the Dyons. Her heart began to thump as she thought that maybe they’d finally consummate their relationship in this exotic oasis in Egypt.

She reached up to kiss him, intending a brief, tempting kiss, but he pulled her into it and took her mouth in hunger.

He always bowled her over with his extreme masculinity. Walking in to see him sticking his tongue into Demitri’s mouth had only stoked the fires. Andreas was everything that was masculine and dominant and wild and exciting.

“Make love to me,” she whispered. She’d gotten to the point where she wasn’t above a little shameless begging.

He drew back with a hot smile, reverting to the Andreas she knew.

“How do you want me to do it? On your back, me on my back, me behind you? I can think of many exotic ways.”

Rebecca’s pulse sped. “However you want it.”

He slid his arms around her and gently bit her ear. “Don’t tempt me like that. I have a demigod’s power, unrestrained now. The things I could make you do . . .”

“I mean that I can’t decide.”

“Hmm.” Andreas stepped back, his ice blue gaze sweeping her body. “Why don’t you let me call the shots, then?”

Her cleft was warm, aching, while her imagination spun. “That would be good.”

“Strip.”

The abrupt command made her blink, but in another second, Rebecca started tearing off her clothes.

Andreas pointed at the bed. “Lie down.”

Rebecca breathlessly climbed onto the bed and bounced onto her back. When she looked up, Andreas was naked, his lovely body glistening with sweat. His hard face and cool eyes made a contrast to his thick cock lifting for her in wanting.

“Spread for me, baby,” he said softly.

Rebecca spread her legs, bending her knees and sliding her feet to her hips. “Like this?”

“You’re beautiful.” Andreas climbed on the bed and positioned himself between her thighs, his body heavy and warm. “You’re so beautiful.”

His lips found hers. He playfully nipped them, but she sensed most of his playfulness had fled. He was all business now, all man, and he wanted her.

“Have me,” she whispered. She lifted her hips, her pussy full and hot for him.

She felt his fingers swirl over her and dip into her moisture. “You’re a sweetheart to be so wet for me.”

“I’ve been wanting you for a long time. Ever since you came in my room and told me to take off my bra.”

“You wanted me before that.” His eyes sparkled. “You wanted me when I was licking your breasts.”

“I thought that was a dream.”

“Nope. It was real.” He drew his hot tongue around her nipple. “You tasted good.”

“You were a leopard.”

“And you were a sweet thing. I wanted to bury myself between your legs and lick your pussy clean.” He shrugged. “But I didn’t want to scare you.”

His words made the pool of heat inside her boil over. “Fuck me,” she begged. “Please, Andreas. I’m dying for you.”

“You look pretty healthy.” He smiled, slow and sensual. “But all right.”

He took her lips in a hard kiss at the same time he lifted slightly and pushed inside her. He was a tight fit, and he spread her and stretched her until she gasped.

“I can’t take all of you.”

“Yes, you can, sweetheart.” His eyes were half closed, his voice ragged. “You’re so beautiful, Becky.”

She lifted her legs and wrapped them around his back. He pushed inside, farther, farther. He would tear her apart.

Andreas groaned. His eyes closed; his mottled white and black hair fell across his flushed face. “Damn,” he breathed.

He started to ride her. They moved together, body to body, her hands on his back, his mouth opening hers in heated, bruising kisses.

“I love you,” she whispered. “Oh, gods, Andreas, I love you.”

“Love you, too, Becky,” he said hoarsely. “You sweet, sweet woman.”

She lay back, beginning to come under him, but he rocked into her for a long time. By the time he finished, she was laughing, sore, bruised, and happy.

Even if after they found Patricia, Andreas decided to disappear to his demigod world, or wherever he went, Rebecca would have this. She’d always remember.

They emerged from the bedroom hours later, dressed again, as Demitri returned to tell them he’d arranged for a car and driver to take them out into the sands.

AHMED drove the jeep to the end of the track at first light, and they proceeded on foot over the dunes. Ahmed had a stick that he kept running over the sand, swearing that it would point their way to the ruins.

Nico wasn’t sure he believed that, but he let Ahmed lead the way. The brothers had grown up in this country and knew it, and Nico hadn’t been this way in thousands of years, since Roman times. Amazingly, it didn’t look much different.

After about half an hour of searching, Ahmed’s stick thumped on something hard under the sand. He broke into a grin.

“It’s here.”

Nico and Faisal joined him on their knees to start scraping away sand. Nico’s pulse quickened with sickening fear. Patricia couldn’t be buried in a ruin here. She’d never survive.

The land was covered with sand as far as the eye could see, no outcroppings or man-made edifices poking through. If Patricia was under here, she’d have no way to breathe.

They dug quickly, the sand sliding and spilling back as fast as they moved it. Faisal had brought a shovel, which helped, but the final uncovering they had to do by hand. What they found was a square, flat stone that had obviously been hewn by an ancient chisel.

“You see?” Ahmed said. “I know where all the ruins are.”

Nico lay down and put his ear to the hot stone. He could hear nothing, feel nothing. It was too damn thick.

“How big is this place?” he asked.

Ahmed shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never uncovered all of it.”

“I need to get inside this. I need to find her.” He broke off in fear and frustration. “She might not even be here.”

Yesterday, he’d heard her voice loud and clear, echoing across the emptiness.
I love you, Nico. Love you so much.

He’d thought he’d imagined it, but now he wondered again. Patricia was psychic. What was to say she couldn’t project strong psychic energy that his own magic picked up?

Ahmed suddenly screamed. Nico jerked his head up in time to see Ahmed leap from the top of the building, his face white with fear.

Nico and Faisal stepped hurriedly back into the sands, Faisal holding his shovel high. From the corners of the building, dozens of snakes had emerged: desert vipers, thin and deadly. Their yellow, slitted eyes beamed hatred.

“Stay back,” Nico told the two men.

His first beat of fear turned to one of grim satisfaction. Hera had just signaled loud and clear that Patricia was here, unless this was another decoy.

He didn’t think so. The snakes began to coil on the hot rock, then one by one rose into the forms of Dyons.

“Demons,” Ahmed cried. He unshouldered his rifle, bringing it up in his hands. Faisal stepped behind him, eyes wide, shovel ready.

Nico wasn’t quite sure of their odds against an army of Dyons, even with Ahmed’s rifle. Dyons couldn’t kill Nico, but they could tear him apart enough that he would be a bloody, useless wreck for some time, and of course they could kill his human companions.

Wind whipped up behind him and the two men, sand rising in a deadly cloud. But this was no ordinary sandstorm. It was something malevolent, a whirlpool of sand with the three men and the Dyons in the vortex.

“Go back to your jeep,” Nico shouted at Ahmed and Faisal. “You’ll die here. Go back.”

Both men looked like they wanted to run but held their ground. “I’ll not leave a friend to die,” Ahmed said.

It would more likely be Ahmed who died, but Nico had no time to argue. The Dyons attacked at the same time the sands whirled to swallow them up.

Nico fought, reverting to his true form as the Dyons reached for him. His true form was mostly light, the shape of the winged man solidifying it. Nico was at his most powerful in this form, able to fuse the magic of his divine half into something deadly.

But keeping that form took its toll. He tired more quickly, which would leave him vulnerable, and the slave chain made everything more difficult.

Nico heard Ahmed and Faisal both cry out, and he did his best to defend them. The Dyons swarmed him, and sand stung and scoured him. The sand would rip his flesh from his bones, and the Dyons would finish the process. Only a god could kill Nico, but when the Dyons finished, he knew he’d wish himself dead.

Ahmed’s cries turned to shouts. Dimly Nico heard the whirr of an engine, and he wondered who could have driven out here amid the sand cyclone.

Then new shapes entered the fray, a lithe, white snow leopard followed by a huge tiger rippling with muscle. Nico laughed, getting sand in his mouth, but he fought through Dyons to stand side by side with his friends.

“Join with me,” he yelled over the storm.

Andreas and Demitri couldn’t answer in their animal forms, but he felt their surge of magic. He joined his to it, and the Dyons closest to them crumbled into dust before the onslaught.

The other Dyons, mindless beings, converged for another attack. The three demigods struck again, breaking the first line.

But they’d keep coming, again and again, until Nico, Andreas, and Demitri were worn down. He couldn’t see Ahmed and Faisal anymore and hoped they’d had the sense to run for safety.

The three demigods continued the battle without speaking, their magics fused into one. Nico loved the feeling, having his two best friends part of him, a bond unlike anything else. Sometimes the three of them got close to this during sexual play, their power flowing into one another through hands, tongues, and cocks, but mortal bodies were limited.
This
joining was joy.

He marveled that his mortal body and Patricia’s could come together with the same joy. That’s what love did, he decided; it expanded what was physical into something magical and powerful.

He needed that with Patricia even more than he needed his godlike powers, his immortality, and his wings.

Nico heard a grinding sound and gleeful shouting, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ahmed’s jeep break through the sands of the cyclone. The jeep landed on a line of Dyons, breaking them down into their snake forms, which hurriedly crawled away.

Andreas and Demitri leapt forward, their big-cat forms taking down the last two Dyons. The whirling sand suddenly stopped, the last particles raining down on the gathered group and the jeep. The blue sky arched serenely overhead as though nothing had ever happened.

The jeep was full of sand, and sand piled on the heads of the grinning Ahmed, Faisal, and Rebecca.

“Whew!” Rebecca called, brushing sand from her face. “I didn’t think that would work.”

THE next problem was how to get into the ruin beneath their feet. The storm had dumped most of the sand they’d labored to sweep from the top of it back on.

With Andreas and Demitri to help, they cleared it again, only to be faced with a slab of blank stone.

“We could drill,” Ahmed suggested. “Or get explosives.”

“No!” Rebecca cried before Nico could. “This is an artifact. It needs to be properly excavated.”

“Patricia might be in there,” Nico snapped. “No explosives—or an excavation that could take two years,” he added, looking pointedly at Rebecca.

“Of course I want to get Patricia out safely,” Rebecca returned. “But if we could disturb this as
little
as possible?”

Faisal ruined that idea by banging on the top of the stone with the point of his shovel. Little chips of stone flew out, to Rebecca’s distress, but it didn’t make much of a dent.

“It will take too long without the proper tools,” Faisal concluded.

“We’ll have to dig down the sides,” Ahmed said. “Find a door below the sand?”

“I could send for a backhoe,” Demitri offered. He and Andreas had resumed their human forms and their clothes, which Rebecca had brought in the jeep. Rebecca winced at the word
backhoe
but kept silent.

“Could heavy equipment get here on these roads?” Andreas asked.

“I have to admit I don’t know.”

Ahmed looked off to the west and sighed. “It looks like another sandstorm coming. A real one.”

Nico stood staring at the slab of stone, bright in the sunshine, his heart like lead.

Was this his test? What would he do in order to retrieve Patricia? Endanger his friends and strangers who tried to help him? Endanger Patricia herself trying to get to her?

“You need to go,” he said abruptly.

Andreas started to snarl, his eyes flashing dangerously, and Demitri broke in. “Why?”

“Because this has to be me, alone.”

“No,” Rebecca said. “I saw the wall. You should be helped by a tiger and a leopard—”

“And I was. You helped me defeat the Dyons and Hera’s defenses, but I can’t endanger you any more for this. Please go.”

“What happens if you can’t?” Andreas asked. His eyes betrayed his worry.

“Then Hera destroys me.”

“Like hell,” Andreas said.

Nico faced him, his friend for an eternity, the man who’d struggled by his side all these years, never leaving him.

“I stay here until I find a way to save her,” Nico said. “I won’t walk away. If that means I stay here forever, chained to this place, then so be it.”

“She’ll never set you free,” Andreas said. “That’s the real point, isn’t it? Hera will make you search forever, enslaving you forever.”

“I don’t care about that anymore.” Nico put his hand on Andreas’s shoulder, squeezing. “I want to make sure Patricia is all right. Hera can do what she damn well pleases: keep me a slave, kill me. I don’t care anymore. I just want Patricia safe.”

Andreas started to speak, then he saw what was in Nico’s eyes and subsided.

He put his hand on Nico’s shoulder and pulled him close for a brief, hard hug.

“Take Rebecca out of here,” Nico said. “Go on.”

Andreas nodded. He turned away, but not quickly enough for Nico to miss the tears in his eyes. Andreas reached for Rebecca and led her down into the sand.

“Yell if you need us,” Demitri said. He gave Nico the same kind of heartfelt hug.

“I won’t.”

Demitri only nodded and followed the others, but Nico knew they’d wait for a long time before they gave up and went home.

Ahmed and Faisal were much easier to convince. If the story said the winged man had to save the great lady by himself, then he did. You didn’t mess with a story.

They left him water and wished him luck, then spun the jeep around and ambled down the dune.

Once they were gone, Nico knelt on the top of the stone slab. He spread his wings out, fanning the hot air, sweat trickling down his face and half-naked body. He crossed his wrists in front of him, as though offering himself to be bound.

“All right, Hera,” he said in a conversational tone. “I’m here. I’ve found her. Do whatever the hell you want with me. Just let her go home and be all right.”

For a moment, nothing happened. He felt only the soft breeze touching his hair, the threat of storm gone, heard only the slither of sand as it settled on the dunes.

He waited, knowing Hera could make him kneel there for years, but as he suspected, she was too impatient for that.

A shaft of light manifested from the sand, and Hera stood in its protective glow, her robes and dark hair not even stirring.

“Do you mean that, shallow demigod?” she asked. “You’d sacrifice yourself to me to save her?”

“Yes.”

Nico refused to meet her eyes, refused to grovel and plead like she wanted him to. His only concern was saving Patricia, and to hell with anything else.

“Your life for hers?” Hera prodded.

“If necessary.”

The goddess put her hands on her plump hips. “Well, I can’t do that. Your father has made it clear that I am not to kill his offspring, even though he has followed the rules and not interfered with my vengeance.”

Dionysus had always been an indifferent father as far as Nico was concerned, paying little attention to him after he’d fathered him. Nico wondered if things would have turned out differently if Dionysus had cared, or if Nico had tried harder to make him care. Lessons learned.

“Then do whatever you want,” Nico said. “But let Patricia go safely home.”

Hera watched him, her head tilted to one side, dark eyes curious. “You truly think you would do anything to save her, don’t you?”

“I do,” Nico said quietly. “I love her.”

“You love nothing. This is a game. I am making you feel what you feel.
Me
.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Hera straightened up, her face softening into a smile. “He thinks he’s learned something after all.” She leaned to Nico, the glow still surrounding her. “What if I let her go, and she doesn’t remember you? What if she’s indifferent to you and doesn’t love you? Would you still want me to save her?”

Nico knew in that moment that he’d lost Patricia forever. Hera had never intended to let Nico have her. She had spun out this test because it amused her, and because she’d wanted to remind Bes that she was far more powerful than he was.