Cleopatra's Secret: Keepers of the LIght by LYDIA STORM Read Free Book Online

dressed in gowns light as sea foam, placed a goblet of wine in his hands. Their words echoed vaguely through his hazy consciousness.
    “Drink this, my lord, which comes from the Temple of Isis at Alexandria. It was prepared that you may enjoy the rites of the Sacred Marriage.”
    In his dream state, he put the wine to his numb lips. Its fire burned down his throat and rushed through his veins, restoring energy and vigor to him.
    As he became more alert, and some clarity of thought returned, a part of his brain rebelled. This was Cleopatra’s ship. All of it was an elaborate charade, with Antony serving as a pawn, in a game orchestrated by the Egyptian Queen. He wanted her and her gold, but not if meant falling like a fool into her snare. An urge to march off the vessel and never look back brought him to his feet.
    Where was she, anyway?
    He searched the crowd of revelers, but Cleopatra was nowhere in sight. Yet surely this was her ship? Her game?
    A tray of fragrant saffron-infuse oysters was placed before him and he found himself seated again. The wine had restored his hunger and he attacked the dish, washing it down with more of the vital libations.
    As the feast continued, the fair-haired girl who had greeted him earlier took up a lyre and began to sing. Her fingers danced along the strings, plucking magic from the air and a hush fell over the crowd. She incanted the song of the dead God, Osiris, his body torn to pieces by his jealous brother, and at last discovered by his mourning wife, Isis. For a moment the barge, and all its revelers, fell away as the music carried Antony to the Land of the Gods. He saw, in his mind’s eye, the Goddess kneeling in the Nile mud weeping over her dead lover.
    A shudder ran up his spine. He was this God who had been ripped apart, torn sinew from sinew in a fury of exquisite pain.
    His head spun.
    The swirl of obscuring mist hid the path of the murky Nile but Antony could make out a slender rowboat gliding silently through wispy tufts of fog. The dark Jackal God was its oarsman. Anubis turned his bottomless black eyes on Antony and a jolt of fear surged through him, but he found himself powerless to turn away from the Jackal’s hypnotic gaze which drew him deeper and deeper, into the darkness of the blackest void….
    But as the last strum of the lyre vibrated through the hall, his mind snapped back to his present surroundings. The room seemed overflowing with revelers, more lively and full of laughter then before, yet the most important guest at the banquet had yet to appear.
    Where was Cleopatra?
    He stood again, determined to search the vessel top to bottom until he found her, when the music changed. The drone of a horn and the slow erotic beat of a single drum filled the room.
    A fever crept into his blood at the sound of the music. The crimson curtains separating the hall from the deeper recesses of the floating temple slowly parted to reveal Cleopatra in all her glory, shining with the light of the Goddess from every pore of her body. Her magnetism radiated across the room. For a moment Antony forgot to breathe.
    Her distant eyes, so bright and clear in the darkness of her face, sizzled with intensity beneath the veil of her trance. Slowly, with the grace of an uncoiling serpent, she danced to the low droning music, her body swaying with the tide of notes. Moved by the call of the Goddess, she began to turn, gyrating her full hips in a sensuous rhythm, her golden veils one moment hiding, the next revealing the luscious curve of her bare belly, a gleaming pearl adorning her navel, her inviting round arms and thighs, the circle of her taut nipples pushing against the fabric of her shimmering tunic.
    The music grew faster and more violent as she danced in time with the increasing beat, bowing and arching, twirling and skipping to fan the blaze that had erupted in Antony. The room began to sway with her movements, with each twist of her hips, each flash of her burning eyes, but he did