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

not feel weak. Desire forced him to take a few halting steps forward as the tempting Goddess drew closer, her hips grinding, her hands grasping swollen, flushed breasts.
    He reached out to her, but she moved with the quickness of a playful cat from his grasp. The drums beat more frantically and the other men and women began to take up the amatory dance, twisting their bodies around each other as the Goddess of Desire inflamed them. Antony pushed his way through the sensual masses like a charging bull.
    He would have this woman.
    After the endless teasing and frustration he had endured at the hands of the Bacchantes, he could stand no more. He caught a glimpse of her, moving in a trance to the sound of the pounding drums, her honey skin gleamed with sweat. She was caught in the primitive urges of the dance, giving herself up to it completely, her head thrown back, black hair streaming to her hips.
    She saw him approaching through the sea of people, his eyes blazing with sexual hunger. She darted through the red curtains, casting a quick feverish glance behind her. Their eyes locked for one moment before she disappeared down a shadowy stairway into the belly of the ship.
    Antony tore through the curtains and down the stairs after her. He paused for a moment at the bottom, his eyes adjusting to the dim light. The chamber was a small torchlit temple. Amber incense, smoldering in a brazier, cast a heavy narcotic haze at the foot of Isis’s golden statue. Beneath the Goddess, Cleopatra lay draped across a silken pallet sprinkled with crushed night-blooming jasmine. Her jade eyes were glazed over in a heated trance of desire, her head thrown back in surrender, unbound hair falling in loose waves to the floor. Her full breasts strained against the fabric of her tunic with every panting breath of need that escaped her parted lips. She rested before him in all her sensual glory, her inviting ripe body an offering on the altar of the God.
    Tonight he was the God.
    Antony met her yearning eyes and the heat between them washed over him like a wave as his sword clattered to the ground and he went to her. Never releasing his gaze, the Egyptian Queen slowly drew the gold tissue from her shoulders, inching it down to reveal the soft swell of her naked breasts. She leaned back against the cushions and opened her arms, welcoming him into her embrace.
    Antony tore off his cloak, savagely pulling her into his grasp. His hand wound into her black hair as his lips burned across Cleopatra’s throat. He was intoxicated by the musky scent of her deep rose perfume, the weight of her breasts under his palms, the warm melody of her sighs in his ear. He was deranged with desire, drunk with the energy of the God, and somewhere deep inside, Antony the man was desperate to possess Cleopatra the woman, whom he had lusted after for so many years.
    A low moan escaped her lips as his hot breath on her breasts made her flesh rise up, begging for the touch of his warm tongue on nipples as dark and sweet as wine, but he pulled back and held her by the shoulders for a moment, just drinking in the beauty of her dusky face, hot flushed cheeks and the soft ripe mouth he had yearned to kiss since the moment he first set eyes on her.
    She was his––at last. He brushed his lips against hers, reveling in the molten burst of passion the feel of her mouth on his sent through his hungry body.
    Drugged with desire, and the power of the Gods, she clung to his broad shoulders, pressing her ripe body against him so his hard flesh rubbed against the damp warm silk of her tunic. “Please, please take me,” she begged in a throaty whisper.
    He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her into a kiss that blotted out all thought, all awareness of anything but the sweet warmth of her, Cleopatra, Isis––this divine black void of melting passion binding them together.
    All rational thought dissolved, like pearls melting in the wine goblets of Cleopatra’s fabled banquet