“Maybe I’m just not as susceptible as the women you generally associate with.”
“No. That’s not it.”
“I’m pretty sure it is.”
He peered at me closely, his chiseled jaw inches from my face. If he’d wanted to, he could have closed the distance between us as easily as a thought, but instead his eyes narrowed, as if searching for something beneath my skin. For a moment, I thought he was looking for Tia, that he might sense her within me, but had he found something else.
Shaking his head lightly as if confused, he touched a fingertip to my chin, tilting my head one way, then another. He pressed his fingertips against my heart; then his eyes widened as he looked down at my brooch. “What is this?” he said with a tiny note of alarm. “How did this come to be?”
Horus backed away from me and stared at the heart scarab as if it were a deadly scorpion. Pointing at it, he asked, “Did you do this on purpose to trick me?”
“Trick you?” I said with a small, worried laugh. “No.” I placed my hand over the smooth scarab and felt the little tickle of Amon’s heart. Then, under my breath, I whispered softly, “Anubis warned me that immortals would react to it.”
“Of course we react to it!” Horus spat, anger coloring his handsome features as he sprang to his feet. “You nearly had me trapped under the same spell as this poor fellow who you’ve obviously tied to you unawares. Was he not enough of a conquest for you, Sphinx? Did you need to add a god to your list of supplicants?”
“Now, wait just a minute!” I shouted, angered by his allegations and feeling the need to stand up for myself, even if my accuser happened to be an all-powerful god. I stood, jabbing a finger into the air. “Amon wove this spell, not me. If anyone was unaware of it, I was. You have no right to blame me for anything. Especially when it was the action—or inaction, I should say—of you and Amun-Ra that caused Amon to do what he did in the first place. If anyone is to blame for this, it’s you and your fellow gods!”
Horus stood on the other side of the chaise, chest heaving, hands balled into fists. Roughly, he ran a hand through his thick brown hair, and then he froze, a spark flashing in his dark eyes. “By the netherworld’s darkest pits,” he muttered huskily as he vaulted over the chaise and took me into his arms. I struggled against his grip but was unable to move. He brushed his lips against my throat and groaned softly. “Even now, knowing it isn’t real, I find I cannot resist you. The sweep of your neck, the curve of your cheek, the scent of your skin, all of it is heady, evocative. You must not deny me, Lily.”
Bending me over his arm, Horus swept me up in a dramatic, knee-buckling kiss. It was passionate, drugging, and powerful, and even though I pushed against him, he wasn’t deterred in any way. In fact, my movements seemed to add more hunger to the fire fueling him.
I was struggling, trying to figure out how to slide my hands out from between our bodies and over my head to grab my weapon, when a voice rang out in the atrium, effectively cooling the ardor Horus was overwhelmed by.
The authoritative voice carried behind it the strength of a thousand suns. “What do you think you are doing, Nephew?”
And as Horus finally lifted his head, the deep pools of his eyes glazed with passion, a crack of thunder echoed in the sky above us.
“Uncle! I was…” Horus looked like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. As he hemmed and hawed, trying to find an answer to Amun-Ra’s question, there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that the man who stood before us was indeed the sun god. I continued to try to wriggle loose from Horus’s grip.
“I know perfectly well what you were doing. Unhand the maiden at once.”
A blush stained the cheeks of the god who’d been ardently kissing me a moment before, and he let me go. Horus stepped back, but his eyes kept flicking toward me as if it pained him to be even an arm’s length away. I steeled my shoulders, straightened my disheveled clothing, and curtsied to the golden god who stood before