Books by Maggie Shayne (327 page)

And she saw him, looking more God than man, and more king then he had in his crown and royal vestments. “Eannatum,” she whispered, “what is this magic between us?”

“This is what is meant to be,” he told her. “What will be, from now on. I’ll not let you leave me again, Nidaba. Not ever. Not now.” He knelt over her, cupping her face in his hands. “I love you.”

“I am a High Priestess,” she whispered.

“And I am a king. But I love you, Nidaba.” He lowered himself atop her, and she opened to him in an instinct born of nature. When he nudged himself inside her, he did so slowly, gently, kissing her face, and her neck and shoulders, whispering love words to her the entire time. She felt stretched as her body accepted his, then pain flared through her when he pressed past her maiden’s barrier. She bit her lip, but it was brief, that stab of pain. And then he was moving gently, slowly, in a rhythm that made her body respond. That made her hips begin to move in answer to his call. That made the fire in her belly flare up anew. And soon she was clutching him to her while he fed at her mouth. She moved to a faster pace, and he followed. His hands slid beneath her then, closing on her buttocks and holding her to him as he thrust deeper inside her than before. And finally, his powerful movements sent her again into spasms of ecstasy. Only this time, she did not go alone. This time she felt the answering tremors racking his muscled frame. She heard that pained pleasure in his low moaning of her name. He filled her ... and she embraced him. And then he relaxed bit by bit, slowly rolling to the side and folding her into his strong arms.

He held her for a long time, and finally, his voice still hoarse, he asked her, “Nidaba, why did you leave me in the dead of night the way you did?”

She frowned, lifting her head from his chest, and staring into his black, moist eyes. “Why does it matter? It was what was necessary. We both came to realize it, didn’t we?”

He didn’t reply to that. Perhaps he’d changed his mind, then? Hope flared in her breast, but she went on. “They told me you wished to marry Puabi, and do your duty as king. They told me you regretted your promise to me, but were too noble to break your vow. That you would wed me, only because you could not hurt me by refusing to do so, but that it was not what you wanted. And they made it clear I had no choice but to leave Lagash, to give you a way out. They even implied that Lia would pay the price should I disobey.”

As she spoke he sat up, staring down at her in horror. “Who told you these things?”

She lowered her eyes. “Your father, Eannatum. The king told me. And Lathor. And even Lia.” She felt her heart break again, and tears surged into her eyes. “I’d have doubted the others, but Lia—I knew she would not lie to me—or not unless her very life depended on it.”

“By the eyes of the Gods,” he said softly. “They
did
lie to you, Nidaba. And to me as well. I knew nothing of any of it. I told my father I would wed you and none other. And the next day you were gone, and I had only a stone tablet, its markings in your hand, telling me you had decided to serve your Goddess rather than your heart.”

She blinked up at him. “You mean ... you didn’t want me to go?”

“I wanted you to be my queen.” He pulled her to him, cradled her in his powerful arms as if he would never let her go. “And by the time I found you, you’d already taken your initiation as a priestess. Sworn to remain unwed. To break such a vow ...”

“It would be death, Eannatum,” she told him. “I would be stoned for such an offense.” She kissed his strong neck, and wrapped her arms around his waist. “But it doesn’t matter. We did what we did for the good of Sumer. Even if we were tricked into it, at first, we soon saw that it was the only way. And now, you ... you are about to wed another. You have your queen.”

“A woman I barely know!” he snapped.

“Oh, come now, Eannatum. You journeyed to Ur, you met the woman. The arrangements have been made. I have heard of the passionate Princess Puabi. Do not tell me her embrace left you cold.”

“Her embrace only left me wishing it were yours,” he told her fiercely, his voice coarse with passion.

“On the morrow,” Nidaba whispered, “your queen will arrive at her new home. You will speak your vows to her. It will be her bed you share. Her face you see in the morning.... There is no place for me in your life now, Eannatum.”

“I won’t let you go,” he said. “Nidaba, please, please don’t do this. Don’t leave me again. I cannot live if you do.”

Sitting back from him, she searched his face. “What would you have me do?”

“Stay. I’ll make you High Priestess of the temple here. And send Lia to take your place in the temple at Mari.”

Shaking her head sadly, she sighed. “I would have to see you with your new bride every day if I stayed here, Natum. It would surely kill me.”

“No. No, it will not kill you, Nidaba, because you are strong and fierce. And you will know it’s you I love, not Puabi. You will know that every moment I spend with her, I wish for you. And you will know that every night, under the cover of darkness, I will come to your arms, not hers. In our secret places, we will be together. I know it is not enough. I know you deserve a great deal more. But it is all we have.”

She closed her eyes. “And what of Puabi? Would her heart not be wounded by this?”

“Puabi knows I’ll never love her. Our marriage is a treaty. A pact between city-states and every bit as cold as one.”

Nidaba said, “You’ll need to produce an heir with her.”

“Perhaps. In time.” He caught her face between his palms. “The king of Sumer may have any woman he desires. By law and divine right! It has always been so. Puabi knows this, and she knows too that I love another. She agreed to this arrangement with the truth presented to her. Fidelity was not a part of our agreement. And you know full well it is not forbidden for a priestess to love, only to marry. Nidaba, I thought I could live without you for the good of Sumer. I’ve found that I cannot. It’s not possible. Please, stay with me.”

She bit her lip, searching his eyes. “I may not be as strong as you think I am, Eannatum. But I do love you. More than my own heart, or my own soul.”

“Then .. . then you’ll stay?”

“I will try. That’s all I can promise. To try. And we must be discreet. Legal or not, acceptable or not, nature is nature, Natum. I’ll not be the cause of another woman’s pain.”

He pulled her securely against him, kissed her gently. “We’ll find our happiness, Nidaba. I promise you we will.”

But she knew even then that she would find only misery in being his mistress. His concubine. Only misery.

She couldn’t have guessed, though, just how much.

* * *

It was no less than an hour before Sheila talked herself out, took another pill, and fell back into a troubled, restless sleep. After tucking her in, Nathan finally dragged himself back to the master suite, walked into his bedroom, and saw the door to the adjoining room closed tightly. He knew before he even tried the knob that the door would be locked. And he was right. Sighing, he rested his forehead on the cool wooden door. Dammit, he needed to talk to Nidaba, to get all of this out in the open once and for all.

She was lashing out at him. Hurting him, or trying to, because of the way she had been hurt by him. He didn’t understand fully just why, but he knew one thing. She did not believe he had killed his own son. Nidaba knew him far better than that.

Or at least... he hoped she did.

Without bothering to turn on the light, he tugged at the buttons of his shirt and moved toward the bed, feet dragging. There was no denying it, he was exhausted. Unused to so much excitement and intrigue, he was wearing himself down emotionally, mentally ... perhaps even spiritually. Dammit, he’d just dumped a body into the sea. How much lower would he have to sink before all of this played itself out?

Maybe this was just the price he had to pay for all these years of solitude and relative contentment. Living like an ordinary mortal man when he was anything but. He was a pretender. And now the world was extracting payment for his make believe existence.

He peeled the shirt from his body, dropped it onto the floor, heeled off his shoes and kicked them aside. His hands went to the snap and button of his jeans, freeing them, sliding the zipper down. Finally, naked, he crawled into his bed and sank almost at once into blessed sleep.

He didn’t know how long he slumbered. A breath on the nape of his neck woke him, though, from the very depths of sleep.

He rolled over, groggy and puzzled, blinking in the darkness.

Nidaba lay in his bed, naked except for the sheet that came up only to the narrowest part of her waist. Her breasts swelled full and inviting, round silhouettes in the darkness.

“Nidaba,” he murmured, “what are you ...”

“Ssssssh.” She held a finger to her lips and, reaching out, caught his head and tugged him forward. He started with surprise when she kissed him voraciously. And he responded at once, kissing her back. He felt himself growing hard with arousal, hungry with need ... and yet something tickled up his nape and coiled in his belly.

“We need to talk, Nidaba,” he said, breaking off the kiss, but it came out gruff. She dragged her nails over his nipples, and he lost the ability to speak at all. Then she leaned down, and replaced her nails with her lips, and her tongue. Her hand stroked a sensuous path down his abdomen. “God, Nidaba,” he moaned, thoughts of discussion fleeing.

The bedroom door burst open, and Nidaba stood there, wide-eyed, staring at him and at the woman feeding on him like some succubus.

Like a dash of cold water, it hit him all at once.

He shoved the impostor away from him, and she landed on the floor. Her face rippled for a moment as the glamour she’d cast faltered, but she rolled and lunged out of the bedroom almost on all fours.

“Stand and fight if you want me, bitch!” Nidaba surged after her, and Nathan saw the glint of the dagger in her fist. He shot to his feet, tripping on his jeans, and pausing to tug them on again. Then he ran into the hall behind her, terrified that she’d be killed.

But in the hallway he saw no one other than Nidaba. Nothing. Still, she charged from room to room, flinging open doors. “Where are you? You damnable coward, face me if you dare!”

“Nidaba, stop!” He caught her from behind, closed his hands on her shoulders. “It’s no use. Dammit, she could be anywhere. She could be
anyone,
for that matter.”

Nidaba lowered her head, her shoulders shaking. “Oh, she’s not anyone, Natum. Don’t you know who she is?
Don’t
you?”

He frowned, shaking his head. “I—no, I—”

“How could you?” she asked, her voice laced with bitterness. “How could you do it to me yet again, Natum?”

“Nidaba, I thought it was you.”

Chin lifting, her eyes locked with his. “You thought it was me? Did you not recognize her? Her voice? The feel of her lips on you? Her scent, Natum? Because I did. I did. I saw through her glamourie when it faltered for just an instant, even if you were too blinded by lust to see anything. She was your precious bride, the one you chose over me so long ago. Your queen. The bitch was Puabi.”

The truth hit him like a mallet between the eyes. “Puabi,” he whispered. “She lives!”

“You must have known she was immortal!” Nidaba accused.

Nathan lowered his head and, sighing, took Nidaba’s arm and led her along the hall to George’s room. Peering inside, seeing George sound asleep, and no one else except the dog in sight, he turned the lock from the inside and pulled the door closed. He did the same at Sheila’s room, to be certain they would both be safe for the night. Then finally he led Nidaba back down the hall toward his room. “She was no immortal when I knew her,” he told her. “But...”

“But?”

A muscle clenched in his jaw. “She knew about immortality. She sought to gain it.”

“And you never warned me?”

“Hell, Nidaba, how could I? You forget, you fled Sumer long before either you or I knew what we were, or that such beings even existed at all!” He pushed a hand through his hair, shook his head in frustration. “Come. Just come with me, dammit. We’re far too vulnerable to attack standing out here in the dark like this.”

She stopped fighting him and let him lead her back to the bedroom, where he closed the door, locked it, and then finished fastening his jeans. The jeans had a belt in them, and a sheath hung from that belt, with his dagger inside.

Lifting the skirt of her nightgown, Nidaba sheathed her own blade, which she’d been carrying at the ready the entire time. The sheath Nathan had given her was fastened around her thigh with a red garter she must have found among the things he’d bought for her.

“It’s not safe for me here,” Nidaba said. “Short of killing anyone who comes close to me, I have no way to defend myself.”

“You’re right.”

She looked up at him sharply. “I didn’t expect you to agree.”

“Well, I do.” He looked at the bed where he’d so recently been lying naked with Puabi, and he almost gagged in revulsion. An icy chill worked its way into his bones. He turned away and went into the adjoining bedroom, holding the door open until Nidaba joined him there, and then closing it, turning the locks. “I’m sorry ... about what you saw.”

She said nothing, simply crossed the room with her nightgown flowing like ghostly tails and poured a glass of water from the pitcher beside the bed. Then she paused, glancing down at the water. “Sheila,” she said softly. “Even with all that’s happened, she came in here and replaced the water pitcher.” She shook her head slowly. “And the broken glass ... ?”

“I cleaned it up earlier.”

She nodded, and then drank the water down before she faced him again.

“When did you find out what Puabi was?”

Pacing the room, Nathan parted the curtain and looked out the window. Seeing nothing there, he checked the closet, the bathroom, and looked underneath the bed. “Just now,” he said. “I told you, I didn’t know. I know she once sought it, but I had no reason to believe she’d been successful, Nidaba. Heaven knows, if she had, I’d have expected to have crossed paths with her before now.”