some reason it calmed her to know he was smiling. It was a ridiculous reaction, but it was there just the same.
“I want to tell you a story, Marissa. Short and sweet. Something to help answer a few of the questions swimming around in your head.” He lifted a hand away from the wall and brushed cool fingers across her lips. The coolness turned to fire, as though he’d turned to flame against her, only this reaction was all her, coming from within her. Could he manipulate her body? With all she had seen him do … what couldn’t he do?
“Once upon a time, a very long time ago, when pharaohs walked this earth and built tremendous monuments in the scorching desert sands, there lived a powerful and intense man … a king … named Menes. Menes was a great warrior as well as king. His great campaigns unified upper and lower Egypt. Brought disparate nations together under a single monarchy. It began a long age of Egyptian prosperity … and he was revered for it. They called him Scorpion … deadly … respected … acknowledged.
“And though he had two wives, he never knew love in his original lifetime. No …” She felt him breathe a sigh across her cheek. “He didn’t even know the love of his son. He was foolish. He was focused on conquering the lands within his reach, thinking that was a value that was needed to make a life truly satisfying.” once againag.
“But what …”
“Shh,” he said against her ear. “Wait for it, angel. You’ll ruin the story.”
The truth was, his story was having a calming effect. Although how calm she could be with all that intense male power against her back was relative. But he was distracting her from her fear of him. And it occurred to her that this was probably precisely why he was doing this.
“Do you know what happens to great men of such hubris?” he asked her, his lips moving against the shell of her ear as he spoke.
“They fall,” she answered breathlessly.
“They fall,” he agreed. “They die in ignominious ways. They fail to be remembered for what they wanted to be remembered for. They become a punch line. Did you hear about the great pharaoh? Oh, yeah … didn’t he get mauled by a hippo?”
She didn’t want to laugh. At least she didn’t understand how she could possibly find humor at that moment. But the breathy laugh escaped her just the same.
“Life can be so bitterly amusing,” he said, and she could imagine the grim expression to match the tone of his voice. “But death can be ironic. As can rebirth.” His lips turned against her ear once more. “I was given a second chance I did not deserve. I was given a love for the ages that I did not deserve. I was given all of this, angel, and all I had to do was trade away ever knowing the finality of peaceful death. Instead I live forever, and die again and again and again. Each time more painful than the last … or so it seems. This time I was reborn in this body, my soul sharing this space with the man you know as Jackson Waverly. We have since become one in most ways. And we are called the king of all of our kind. We are pharaoh of all the Bodywalkers.”
It took a long minute after he stopped for her to grasp that he was dead serious about this claim.
“Okay, wait a minute. A pharaoh? A king? Jesus Christ, I would never have taken you for having a god complex,” she spat out. “This is preposterous!”
“This is real. As real as the strength and body pressed against your back.” He leaned forward into her to illustrate his point. “As real as the heat of life that burns inside of me. A heat that rises every single time we lay eyes on you.”
“Will you stop calling yourself a we?” she barked at him, trying to throw her temper at him in order to cover the liquid burn of arousal that splashed up against her every nerve ending just from the feel of him. “I swear to god I’m going to have them put a psych hold on you!”
“And what about you, Marissa? Are you crazy? Or did you really see what you saw only a little while ago? Did what you see have any human explanation? When you tell someone else about it, will they believe