* * *
“I feared you had given up on me,” Amun Sa said. “You’ve not been at the market for two days.”
Ashayt smiled at this idea, and she shook her head. “No, I would never leave you. I have been … unwell.”
They were walking together under the moonlight, and while Ashayt supposed that Amun Sa thought the winding path he was taking terribly clever, he could no more disguise that he was maneuvering them toward the fisherman’s shack than if he had announced the destination out loud. Ashayt, for her part, did not mind. She lacked the strength to perform as enthusiastically as sometimes she did, but she still wished to be again with her lover after two days without.
Amun Sa glanced over at her, an expression of concern on his face. “Should we turn back? If you are not feeling well, my dearest, then I do not wish to … that is, I won’t make you—”
Ashayt laughed and touched her fingers to his shoulder. “I know where you are taking me and want nothing more,” she said.
“But you—”
“I am a woman in love who feels much better than she did during the day, and I want to be with you. I might still have some fever – I feel hot inside, though Nephthys says I am cold to the touch, and I am still so very thirsty no matter how much water I drink.”
“What have you eaten today?” Amun Sa asked, and Ashayt tilted her head, trying to recall.
“I … don’t think I have eaten anything, my love. Truly, I’ve had no desire for food. Just water and more water. I spent most of the day sleeping, if truth must be told.”
“I hope the Gods will favor you with a swift recovery, my Ashayt. We have many long years ahead of us to enjoy in good health.”
Ashayt shuddered with pleasure at these words and gave her lover a brilliant smile. Oh, how wonderful that plan sounded to her ears, to her heart. She felt the sudden and overwhelming physical desire that Amun Sa so often inspired in her, swelling up from within, and realized that she wished to wait not one moment longer, much less the fifteen or twenty more minutes it would be until they arrived at the fisherman’s hut. She took his hand and slowed, then stopped, peering around her. It was dark, now, and there were few people out of doors. Surely there must be somewhere …
“What are you doing?” Amun Sa asked, perplexed, and she stood up on tip-toes to whisper into his ear.
“If we went and stood in that alley, there, we would be deep in the shadows, and no one would see.”
“My darling …” Amun Sa murmured, his tone slightly nervous as he glanced around, looking for any others who might be out sharing the evening cool with them.
“I don’t want to wait. I can lean against the wall, with you behind me, and you could cup my breasts with your hands while you fill the part of me that is empty.” She longed to feel his arms around her, his fingers pinching at her nipples, his teeth at her neck.
“Are you sure?” Amun Sa whispered back, and Ashayt felt something wild and animalistic open up within her, a ravenous desire that seemed impossible to deny.
“Take me there,” she snarled into his ear. “Take me there and press me up against the wall and … and fuck me. Hard and fast, like a beast. Like a brigand in the night. I am not yet your wife; for another five days, I am only your woman, and I wish you to lay claim to me.”
Amun Sa, visibly aroused now underneath his tunic, seemed to need no further encouragement. He led her quickly to the alleyway, away from the torches that lined the main thoroughfare they had been traversing, until all she could see of him was an inky, purple silhouette, and then he turned and pressed his lips to hers. Ashayt could feel his member against her. She made a growling noise of desire and lifted the linen fabric up, exposing him and taking him into her hands.
Amun Sa made a noise of desperate need as she stroked him, and in only a moment more he took her by the shoulders and spun her around, pulling at the sash that bound her dress at her shoulder. Ashayt felt the cool night air caress her body for a moment as her dress slipped to the ground, and then Amun Sa stepped up behind her, his hands coming up to cup her heavy breasts, and she pressed her arms up against the wall of sandstone blocks.
“Take me,” she whispered, and bent a little at the waist, and she felt him encircle her belly with one arm and pull backward even as he thrust forward. Then he was inside of her, and the force of his entry caused her buttocks to slap against his belly with a noise that Ashayt felt sure must have been heard by every living thing in this great city, but she no longer cared. She felt him withdraw and thrust again, and again came the noise, and Ashayt followed it with a long, low moan of pleasure.
Amun Sa, lips at her ear, now whispered, “Someone will hear.”
“Let them,” she hissed back, and pushed against him. “Let the whole world hear and know that I am yours.”
Amun Sa seemed to acquiesce to this, at least temporarily, and for a time there was only the sound of their coupling accompanied by rough panting and the occasional gasp of pleasure. Then he leaned in to her again and seemed to make one last, ridiculous attempt at propriety.
“We must be quiet,” he said, and Ashayt felt a sort of mad rage streak through her. Quiet? They were animals, animals like lions on the plains that mated where they pleased and when it suited them. She pulled herself from him and spun, barely registering the surprise in his eyes, and with a single shove, startling in its strength, she sent him stumbling backwards. He lost his footing and landed in the sand with a thud, and he might have voiced some protest if Ashayt had not knelt immediately astride him and stopped his words with a kiss.
She found his manhood again, hard and hot and slippery, and slid it easily back inside of her, and by the time she had finished kissing him, Amun Sa seemed no longer interested in keeping silent. He was making harsh, high grunts, his hands wrapped again around her breasts, squeezing her dark nipples with each thrust of his hips. Ashayt knew he would soon finish, wanted him to finish, wanted him to feel that pleasure.
She leaned down and in, kissing him, kissing his lips and his chin and his cheeks and his neck. She stayed there at his neck and felt a curious warmth in her upper gums, accompanied by just the slightest hint of pain, but it was distant and could not compare to the pleasure between her thighs and the unnamed, ravenous need that seemed now to fill her entire body.
“Darling …” Amun Sa said in a strangled voice, his last living word, and when he pumped again with his hips and she felt him loose his seed within her, she bit deeply into his neck, and drank his blood, and so at last satisfied the thirst that had raged within her now for so many hours.