In Pursuit of Prey: Of Gods and Consorts, Book 1 (11 page)

The condition of his apartment doesn’t matter—I’d made do with far less during times of war.
 

Mace pushes the door open, stepping back. But when I move forward to enter, he scoops me up into his arms. I clutch his shoulders when he turns sideways and carries me over the threshold.
 

“I know we’re not married,” he says, “but it’s tradition to carry your wife, your soul mate, over the threshold and into your home.”

“It is a fine tradition.” My feet hit the carpeting when he puts me down. I lean in close and kiss him. I’m not sure I’ll ever have enough of his lips and how they feel on mine. “I am not your wife, but you can remedy that situation someday.”

“Wife…” A silly grin breaks over his face. A hand comes up to his forehead. “Wow.”

“Is that bad?”

“Oh, hell no. That’s good. This, by the way,” Mace says as he turns on the lights, “is my living room.”

It’s small, barely an aperture in my Temple. It may be a little cluttered, but it isn’t as bad as he made it out to be. Plus, there are as many instruments in the room as pieces of furniture. Piles of sheet music lay scattered across the floor.
 

“It’s not that bad.”

“Maybe not,” he argues. “But it isn’t a Temple.”

“I can change that.” I toss my hair over my shoulder, and give him a weak smile. “It would be a frivolous expenditure of power, though. We will not be here for long. Your band is going to be getting a contract soon…” It’s as pure a knowledge to me as his love is.

“Well, we can talk future tense later,” Mace says, hitching at his jeans. “Mind if we take a shower now, though? These pants are...”

“A shower sounds fantastic. Then we can ‘christen’ the bedroom.”

“Like I said before,” he laughs, “you are gonna kill me!”

Mace wraps his hand around mine and guides me through the apartment to the bathroom. A big orange tabby body is curled on the floor of the shower when Mace pulls back the curtain.
 

“You never told me you had a cat.” I can’t hide the delight in my voice.
 

“Yeah, well.” He scrubs a hand down the back of his head, then flings a dirty towel under the sink. “Jonesy can be kind of irritable. He might not like you. Hell, half the time I think he hates me…”
 

I’m a feline goddess, even if stuck in a human form. Cats will always be soul familiars. I bend down and scoop the cat to my chest. His eyes open, a glowing, beautiful gold, then he nuzzles closer and purrs. A language that goes beyond speech and one I love to use. I purr too, and rub my face on his.
 

“He,” I say in a jesting tone, “certainly doesn’t seem ornery to me.”
 

“Heh,” Mace snorts. “Make a liar outta me eh, Jonesy?” Then, as a seeming afterthought, Mace asks, “Do you have anything to put on after our shower? I kind of noticed that you didn’t bring any clothes.”

I can manifest them anytime I want. But there’s something wistful, perhaps hopeful, in his expression, so I say, “I do not have clothes.”
 

“Well, then, follow me down the hall and we’ll find you something of mine for now.”

I pad close behind him, with the orange ball of fur rumbling contentedly in my arms. The door to the bedroom stands open. Mace steps in and flicks on the switch. I follow, then stop.

It’s as if I’ve stepped back into the inner sanctum of my Temple. The walls are tan, penciled in gold with images of Egyptian gods and ancient hieroglyphic charms. Mock columns stand in the four corners. Sheers obscure the window, as mine had in the Temple. Mace walks the perimeter, lighting incense cones in sconces affixed to the walls. A ceiling fan circulates the scent of lilies and spice. Even the bed resembles my modified altar in Egypt. The fabrics are similar. The pillows match exactly.

I don’t realize I’m crying until a tear wets the corner of my smile. Mace smiles too, before wiping a drop from my cheek.
 

“Mace,” I sigh, tears welling quicker. “Did you do this for me?”

“In the hope of you.” His gaze courses the walls, then shifts back to me. He taps a hand on his chest once. “In the hope that the goddess of my dreams would someday step through that door. The room has been this way for over a year now. I knew I needed a soul mate, and I began the pursuit. I prayed, begged, beseeched, opened my artist’s soul to the visions… You have been in my heart and on my mind, affecting me for a very long time.
 

“And then one day I see you, as if you’d stepped from my heart into reality. I took up pursuit, followed you. And then when I should have confessed my feelings, I shied away. I couldn’t easily accept that I was meant for a goddess. Even when she was right in front of me.”

His words strike with the power of a storm, and settle into me. I am no longer lonely. I left my Temple in pursuit of prey, to find this singing siren has been stalking me.
 

“I am in front of you now,” I say, placing Jonesy on the floor to take Mace’s face in my hands. “And I will always be by your side.”

About the Author

Ever watch the movie
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar
? Remember the little old lady dressed as a drag queen? She looked at the cop and said, “Nothing this pretty could be real.” Well, that’s me—I am not real. I am the erotica writer lurking in the mind of a fantasy and paranormal author.

You can catch up with my wild side on my blog
savannahjordan.blogspot.com
.

And you can contact me at
[email protected]
.

Look for these titles by Savannah Jordan

Now Available:

Melting the Ice Queen

Vengeance Moon

Can a god of fire melt the heart of an ice queen?

Melting the Ice Queen

© 2008 Savannah Jordan

When a mysterious package shows up on the doorstep of self-proclaimed frigid bitch Cassandra Moore, she’s more curious about who could have sent it to her than about the statue of the Egyptian god inside.

That night, the human spirit of her statue appears in her dream, giving her hottest sex she’s ever had in her life. Emin is every girl’s dream lover. He’s mysterious, sexy as hell, and eager to satisfy every erotic whim Cassie entertains.

Yet Emin has secrets as deep as the myths of Egypt—he has sacrificed his magick and his life in the spirit world to be with Cassie.

The fires of passion blaze hotter with each encounter. But if Emin cannot melt Cassie’s heart and convince her to love a fantasy, he is doomed to the hell between the realms.

Warning, this title contains the following: explicit melt-your-panties sex, graphic language, ménage a trois, and a demigod that will make you gasp and swoon.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Melting the Ice Queen:

Cassandra Moore

903 Memphis Avenue

The rest of my address, and a return address, were both absent. Curiosity overtook caution, and I clutched the box tightly to my breasts, crushing my eyelet blouse as I fished house keys from my bag and opened the cherry wood door.

Bastet, my black cat, shot out of the shadowed hallway and then wound her sinewy body around my feet, racing to keep ahead of each step through the foyer. Her persistent nature came to the fore when she wanted something, and she made walking and carrying the package difficult. Bastet mewled in a demanding manner even before I reached the kitchen door. I sighed, and deposited the package and my briefcase on the cluttered table in my kitchen. Then I scooped up the cat with one hand and reached for her jar of catnip with the other. She always received attention first in my house—she was named after a goddess, after all.

“As you command, my goddess.” I deposited the cat in her fleece bed and gave her a queen-size portion of the dried mint.

With Bastet’s nip fix satisfied, my attentions turned to the box. Once more, I poked it. My mind ticked through people who might leave a mysterious package for me, but the Rolodex in my brain yielded no names—it was a short list, anyway.

I don’t have many gift-giving friends.

I’ve always been a bitch and I could admit it—few people have ever seen my softer side. I sighed, and turned the box up on its side, as if it would help solve the quandary of who, what, why. My mind was still blank and my resistance to curiosity depleted.

“Ah, hell with this!”

I might be cautious at times, but patience was never one of my virtues.

The hemp twine fell away after I cut it, and brown paper strips flew as I stripped the package. Curls of natural coco fiber packaging material filled the box, so I pulled away the first layer and tossed it into a waiting trash bag. Then, my fingers met a hard cold surface.

A charge of energy coursed through my hand with the contact. Hair stood on my arms, my scalp tingled. Chills swept my skin even as primal heat flooded me. My heart skipped into an erratic beat and breath caught in my throat. A vision flashed in my mind so swift that I could not grasp it—but I felt it. The love and lust was unfamiliar to me, but its passage was so powerful I was left weak and trembling.

Vertigo twisted my mind and took the strength from my legs. I collapsed into the wicker chair taking the box with me onto my lap. Panting, I reached in, and wrapped my fingers around an object at least the width of my wrist. I lifted the enigma from its bed of fibers and set an ivory statue on the tabletop.

He was Egyptian, in the traditional pose and garb of a pharaoh or god. One hand held a staff, while the other was extended as though beckoning the faithful to his feet.

Who in the gods’ name is this?

My heart, which refused to pick up a steady rhythm since the first contact with the statue, pounded in my chest. My mind whirred.

Egyptology was my favorite subject years ago in school. I had studied the myths and legends, gods and goddesses and I watched television specials, read every magazine article. But I’ve never seen this man. I picked up the ivory statuette, turning it in my hands, stroking the man’s form and looking for a cartouche or indicating mark to tell me whose representation I held.

No name, no dynasty. Not one single indicating mark on the statue.

“Who are you?”

He did not answer, and I didn’t expect him to—mystical happenings were just that, mystical, and the supernatural was something I had yet to experience in this lifetime. I shrugged and then dumped the remaining packaging material into the garbage. I wrapped the idol in my fingers, and the ivory warmed to my touch. Cradling my newly arrived treasure to my chest, I climbed the stairs to my bedroom.

A pile of discarded shoes cluttered the floor beside the door jamb. I skirted it and instead picked up a T-shirt dangling from the lid of my hamper in the bathroom, and stuffed it back in. Shoes were a necessity, crumpled laundry was not.

A breeze billowed my sheer linen curtains. Moonlight lay on the patchwork quilt, and left the rest of the room to shadows. The air was fragrant with lavender and cool as the breeze caressed my skin, just the way I like it. My radio, however, heralded doom. The little Sony sat on the nightstand and blasphemed about a coming heat wave, and the sweltering grip it would take on the city.

I hate hot weather.

I silenced the electronic harbinger, switched the setting to
Alarm
and shoved the clock radio back to make room for my Egyptian statue.

The statue was a mystery, but he made an excellent addition to my already Egyptianesque décor. His ivory blended well with my eggshell walls, the aged look made him appear all the warmer and more appealing. He stood, plinth slightly at an angle so that he was facing my bed. The staff he held now pointed directly into the moon outside my window, and his hand pointed at the center of my bed. Satisfied with his placement, I stripped off clothes as I walked through the room and into the adjacent bath. Then showered and in my nightgown, I climbed into bed beneath the gaze of the newcomer to my life.

A sigh escaped me and my eyes slipped closed.

“See you in my dreams.”

Somehow, I knew I was dreaming.

My eyes opened, and I was not in my bed, not in my own time.

I sat up, and was immediately in awe of my dreamscape. Golden statues of the creator god Ptah flanked the entrance, and in each corner stood life-sized versions of the statue on my nightstand. Pillars of white limestone stood in a line of silent sentinels along each wall, and draped between them hung translucent sheets of fabric. Incense drifted through the air, seducing me with patchouli, musk and spice. Torches blazed every few feet, and a balefire burned in the center of the westernmost side.

It was a temple dedicated, by looks, to the mystery man standing on my nightstand and the god Ptah, a creator deity from the ancient city of Memphis. But this temple was plusher and more inviting than any secret sanctuary. It was more like a sacred bedchamber.

A sense of wonder pulled at me, and I slipped from the raised bed upon which I sat. I stood in silent awe before the visage of the god Ptah who stepped from Chaos, and by thought and speech created all else according to early Egyptian mythology. His intent held great power. Then, I drifted the length of one wall, my fingertips trailing across the pillars, the curtains. Every tactile sensation was heightened. The pillars were smooth as glass, the fabric as light as air and the balefire, when I reached it, was intense, its heat pierced me to the core.