Dealers of Light Read Free Page B

clothes. The need for comfort directed his thoughts to the past, a place he usually avoided. Confusing scenes of pyramids, obelisks and sailing barges crowded his mind. Tiredness kept him from making any sense of the whirling images. The darkness of sleep descended with blessed oblivion.
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    When he opened his eyes, he gazed on a stone balcony in golden sunlight. Where am I? The dryness of the air scored his face, arms and chest. He ran his palms down his exposed chest and his fingers touched a jeweled leather belt holding up a pleated linen skirt. Puzzled, his hands grazed the golden bands circling his upper arms. He wiggled his toes in comfortable worn leather sandals. Before him, the rounded dunes of desert sand stretched to the horizon.
    Turning from the desolate view, he strode back through the doorway, past gauzy linen billowing in the breeze. Inside, his beloved waited for him. My Sakhet. Surging beyond its broken pieces, his heart swelled with tenderness and joy. Her brown eyes swept over him, love mirrored in their depths. His chest tightened to a dull ache of loss. The thin linen of her shift revealed the luscious curve of her hips and the firm swell of her breasts.
    “Bes,” she whispered through full, red lips. The sound of her voice slipped over him like the sweetest honey, rich and full of promise. The ache in his heart throbbed, wanting, needing, with such intensity he stifled a groan and grabbed his chest.
    He strode forward and gathered her in his arms, crushing his lips to hers in a harsh kiss of longing. He welcomed her warm, lush body to his like rain on parched ground. An eternity had passed since he’d held her. The need and loneliness tightened his muscles, his hands flattening her against him in a spasm of desire.
    H is kisses intensified. He traced his hands down her spine, over the curve of her buttocks, cupping them against him. She gently pressed her palms to his chest, severing their connection. The ache morphed into unfulfilled passion, which burned like glowing coals, threatening to consume him if he gave in.
    But she’d refused him. They were life-mates. She’d never failed to meet his passion with her own of equal intensity, and he’d never needed her more.
    “My love.” Her gaze darkened. “Love making is not why I am here.”
    He touched her cheek, grazed the silky contours of her face down to her slender neck. His fingers dove under her curtain of hair and settled at the nape of her neck, ready to share his Light. Her eyes widened. So soft and delicate, he stroked the skin and fixed his fingers to his portal. She stepped back, breaking the connection. He shivered at the loss, his heart falling. She took his hand in hers and led him to the balcony.
    Heat hit him and the intensity of the sun exploded in a bright white ball. Blinking and shading his eyes against the blinding glow, the desert disappeared. In its place, the lush delta of the Nile River spread out, the light green of new growth with tall grass and swaying date palms, the air redolent with the musty peat from the marsh. This was wrong. Where was he?
    “Bes, I came to warn you.” Sakhet’s fingers biting into his forearm broke through his confusion. “You are in great danger.”
    He clasped her to his chest, glancing about for an assailant. “Danger? What do you mean?” Reality burned away any remaining fog, he wasn’t back in Egypt.  Sakhet wasn’t alive. Pain seared into his heart with the same blazing despair as when he first lost her.
    “The Takers. They will try to destroy you this time. I am afraid for you.” She put her hands on either side of his face, forcing him to meet her gaze. “I have seen the future and there is great danger.”
    “My love, you are dead. I don’t understand .” The fiery coals in his chest turned to icy shards, slicing open his heart. He swept her black hair away from her face, searching her eyes for some meaning in this torture—in having her before him, but knowing she