“So you were wishing—”
Amon ran his fingers down my hair, golden light spreading across the strands, adding more highlights to my dark brown tresses.
Stepping back, Amon let out a sigh. “To see you again before I departed this world.”
I waited a heartbeat or two, giving him time to add to that comment, but he didn’t. Lily and Lilliana fought a war inside my mind. In the end I didn’t know who won. Was it the weak side of me that wanted to repair and forgive, or the strong side? Did Lily have unresolved business with Amon, or was Lilliana desperately clinging to the hope that she could be something more, mean something more to someone like him?
Either way, I decided to let him off the hook. He was saving the world, after all. The least I could do was not obsess over him like a typical teenager.
“Can I see? Your eyes, I mean?”
He considered for a moment and then shook his head. “It is not the image of me I’d like you to remember.”
“You don’t think I can handle it?”
“You balked at Asten’s raising.”
“Well, yeah. It was my first mummy revivification, you know. You should have seen me at Ahmose’s. I handled it much better.”
Amon smiled, and I sensed that he, too, did not wish to part on a bad note. “Perhaps you should tell me about it.”
“Have you eaten?”
“I was hoping to feast with you a final time,” he said.
“I suppose that’s the least I can do. We’ll call room service and order up a farewell feast. I wonder if they serve breakfast at this time of day.”
“Do you think they will have some of those circular breads filled with sugared fruits?”
“Danishes? I’ll check.”
We fell back into our familiar companionship, yet there was an unspoken tension that lingered between us. I overanalyzed every word for hidden double meaning. Each touch burned my skin as if I had pressed a hot poker to it. My emotions were all there just beneath the surface, bared, raw, and prickly.
Once our food arrived, Amon’s spirits seemed to lift. We ate together, him pushing plate after plate toward me, often cocking his head to listen for the sounds of me eating, while I told him about the quicksand and finding Ahmose’s sarcophagus. When I couldn’t eat another bite, I moved my plate away and sipped a glass of sparkling water.
I groaned. “I feel like I ate a rhinoceros.”
“Impossible,” Amon said as he took the last date-filled Danish and cut it in half, offering a piece to me. “If you had, there would be a horn protruding from your body.”
Laughing less easily than I once had now that I knew our separation was imminent, I said, “How do you know there isn’t one?” I immediately felt sorry that I’d said something like that to a person who’d just lost his eyes.
Amon took my comment in good stride. “I may not know, but I know a way to find out.”
“Oh, really. How?” I eyed him suspiciously.
Reaching out, Amon took hold of my arm, pulling me to my feet, and ran his hand slowly up my arm. Pausing at my elbow, he rubbed it with his fingers. “Hmm, this piece feels as scaly as a rhinoceros, but a horn would be much sharper.”
I smiled, making a mental note to pack a bottle of very expensive lotion the next time I went on an Egyptian holiday. Amon ran his hands over my shoulders and up my neck. He spent a moment prodding at my cheeks and tweaking my nose, and we both laughed. Sobering, he swept his warm hands down my back.
When he got to my waist, his fingers found the side slit on my tunic and caressed my bare skin. His thumbs drew little circles before his fingertips trailed over my quivering stomach to my belly button.
Tiny warm pulses shot into my belly and I sucked in a breath.