He was gratified by her eagerness. “Penbuy’s son Ptah-Seankh will leave for Koptos in a few days and will take over his father’s task. He will have completed it, I am sure, before bringing Penbuy’s body back to Memphis. But I do not intend to wait until then to bring you home, Tbubui. A suite has been prepared for you in the concubines’ house, and your own rooms are even now rising from the lamentable chaos and dirt of construction on the north end of the house. I am, of course, in mourning, but you may take up residence as soon as you wish.”
Her eyes lit up, then she frowned. “No, Khaemwaset,” she said. “I will not risk tempting you to commit a sacrilege by celebrating such a joyous moment while you are in mourning. I will wait until you return from Thebes, but I intend to visit Nubnofret this very week and assure her that I understand the position of Second Wife very well.”
“You will not come south with us?” Khaemwaset could not contemplate the prospect of the miles that would stretch between them if he was forced to go without her, and he reached out, pulling her roughly against him.
“No, I will not,” she said firmly. “It would not be seemly. We have many years ahead of us, dear one. What are a few more weeks? Come. Let me pour you wine.”
But he would not let her go. “I do not need wine,” he whispered against her ear. “Nor do I need massage. The oil of lovemaking will loosen my muscles, Tbubui. Let us while away the afternoon ruining the neatness of the couch your servant has so carefully made.”
She did not comment, and he pulled her towards the dusky expanse of sheets, his hands already tugging at the straps that held up the sheath, which sweat had pasted to her stomach and thighs. When he rolled them past her wrists she raised her arms with a strangled sound, half laugh and half sigh, then leaned towards him, cupping the full breasts he had exposed.
All moderation fled. Jerking away her hands he forced them both between his legs, under his kilt, to where his penis was already fully engorged, and as she began to stroke it, his mouth found her nipple. Together they collapsed upon the couch. She was groaning softly, eyes closed, body lifting to his tongue, his touch, a low sound that sharpened his need even further. A dream, he thought incoherently as her hand tightened on him. An orchard … a woman behind a tree … was she beckoning? And I woke full of desire, full of sap, so painful, so glorious … He lifted his head to kiss her, exploring her yielding mouth, then he stopped to survey her face. “I love you, Tbubui,” he whispered. “You are my sister, my disease, the longing of my heart, the fruit for which my body yearns. I love you.”
She murmured something in return, but so low, and through lips so slack with passion, that he could not make out what she had said. Then all at once her black eyes opened wide and she began to smile. “Make love to me, Mighty Bull,” she said aloud. The title belonged to every pharaoh, it was not Khaemwaset’s to carry, but the words, heavy with sexual meaning, with virility and power, almost caused him to ejaculate immediately. Suddenly the sight of the lazy, all-knowing smile, the exquisite face below him now flushed with her own need, was more than he could bear.
With an oath he grasped her by the hips and flung her over onto her stomach, entering her from the rear with unthinking brutality. His action unleashed a torrent of savagery in him and he completed the act like a rape, pounding into her again and again and cursing aloud with each stroke.
When he came to himself he was lying beside her, panting, the sweat running from his body to stain the purity of her now rumpled sheets. She was propped on one elbow, still smiling at him but faintly, bemusedly. He did not apologize for his actions. “I shall return and make love to you often,” he said curtly, remembering as he spoke that he had just broken the proscriptions of mourning. “Will you like that, Tbubui?”
“Yes,” she replied, and that was all, but the word acted on him like a drug and instantly he wanted her again. He knew that he had not stopped wanting her even during his moment of release, that the act had not assuaged the fever of desire burning and scouring away all else within him. It was as though for months he had been drinking an aphrodisiac that clouded his mind while sharpening his appetite for this woman, this woman, until possessing her had nothing to do with the clamorous demands of his body. Mighty Bull, he thought, licked by the flames of her black hair plastered in wet tendrils on her neck, the rivulet of sweat inching into her cleavage, her bitten, swollen mouth, Mighty Bull, Mighty Bull, and a dim presentiment of his fate came to him so that he groaned aloud and closed his eyes. She neither spoke nor moved, and presently he rolled from the couch, wound his linen around his waist and left her.