“And what did the Cult of the Immortal do?”
“Oh, God, I cannot believe I’m even telling you this,” she said.
“You brought it up.”
She mock-sighed. I couldn’t help but think she’d intentionally manipulated the conversation in this direction. She said, “It’s mostly stuff about what it must be like to be you. All the things you must know, what you must have seen… how you kiss…”
“Excuse me?”
“Yeah! You’re an experienced older man with the body of a thirty-year-old. How cool is that?”
I never thought of it that way, in no small part because I’d never been with a woman who went into the transaction knowing in advance that I was immortal. If I ever told—and I rarely did—it was after the fact.
“Are you telling me I’m some kind of sex symbol?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t put it that way.”
“How would you put it?”
She thought about it. “Okay, I guess that’s about right.”
“Please tell me this cult is all women.”
“I think it might be. There’s no way to be sure.”
I didn’t know whether to be fascinated, aroused, or nauseated. “Maybe I should be glad you’re the one who found me.”
Clara smiled. Mischief danced in her eyes. “How glad?”
Before I could think of an appropriately pithy reply, she leaned forward and kissed me. Not a peck, but a man-the-guns-and-take-no-prisoners kiss. The kind that comes off as aggressive and soft at the same time, leaving you to wonder how that’s even possible. It was a very good kiss, in other words. I held up my end of the exchange pretty well once my mind registered what was happening and got all the blood flowing in all the right places.
After a good twenty seconds, we separated. Mainly for air.
“Oh my,” I said.
“Yeah,” she agreed. Color had rushed to her face and her nipples were erect and, well, so was I.
“It’s been a while,” I admitted.
“I’m sure you remember how.”
She pulled off the shirt that had only barely covered her in the first place.
“I think I can figure it out,” I agreed.
She leaned in for a gentler, less manic kiss, while my hands found their way to her naked breasts.
A word about breasts. I have gazed at, held, touched, squeezed, tugged on, licked, or otherwise fondled a lot of them in my lifetime, and I am no closer now to understanding their appeal than I ever was. One might think I’d have grown tired of them after all that time, but these elegant curves still hold more fascination for me than the entire Alexandrian Library ever did.
Clara’s breasts were firm and fantastic. She pushed herself forward, rubbing up against my bare chest, which is another exciting sensation I can’t seem to get enough of. I leaned back on the bed and pulled her on top of me, kicking the blankets away as expertly as I could, considering my hands were still occupied. Then we took turns removing each other’s underwear and I thanked God for twenty-first century clothing. Until you’ve attempted to undress a Victorian era noblewoman, you can’t possibly understand how wonderful a simple pair of cotton briefs is.
As I found my way into her, we worked up to a complementary rhythm, with her doing most of the work while I held onto various body parts, eyes open, appreciating the way the rivulets of sweat on her body glistened in the sun.
She was right about me. I do know a lot about a lot of things, and sex is one of those things. It’s difficult to have lived this long and not gotten good at something you enjoy doing as much as I enjoy sex. Given a decent supply of fresh water, I could probably prolong the act for a couple of days. Not that I’m bragging, just pointing out that while it had indeed been nearly thirty years since my last sexual encounter, I was fully capable of pausing to admire things like sweat glistening in the sun, or the jiggle of a pair of well-formed breasts as the toned muscles beneath them flex with increasing ferocity. Or the mixed expression of pleasure and pain on a woman’s face as she reaches her first climax.
I have probably not always been a great lover. I think a turning point for me was the discovery that women can actually find sex enjoyable, too, if one does one’s job properly. I know that sounds terribly naïve, but you have to appreciate where I’m coming from. In terms of pleasuring equally, I was at least a millennium ahead of the curve.
Once she’d reached her first orgasm, I dutifully took my turn on top, and then we tried out a few inventive positions that it definitely helps to be in shape for. More than an hour passed—as measured by the sun’s movement—before I gave in to my own climax. I could have continued for a good deal longer but I didn’t think she could. Again, not bragging. Just being honest here.
Moderately exhausted, we lay still on the bed for another ten minutes before Clara spoke up again.
“Goodness,” she whispered.
“I guess the Cult of the Immortal had a few things right,” I said. Now I was bragging.
“I’ll say,” she agreed, which was good to hear. “This will certainly help recruitment. Nice to see infertility hasn’t hurt your drive any.”
“Nope.”
“Hey, maybe I can loan you out to other cult members.”
“The female ones? I’m game.”
She punched me lightly on the shoulder. “Hey! I’m keeping you to myself, buddy.”
“Your customs are so strange to me,” I joked.
“Cut it out.” She rolled out of bed and walked to the kitchen, returning with two bottles of water. She tossed me one of them, and I drank eagerly while she polished off the other bottle. “God,” she said. “I’m wiped.”
Curling up beside me, she nuzzled her head under my arm and dozed off with a pretty little contented smile on her face. I watched her.
I tried to imagine what might be going on inside that lovely head of hers. Like how much she really knew about me and where that information had come from. I wondered how much of what she’d told me about the MUD was even true. Because a great body and an afternoon of marathon sex might drive me to distraction, but not enough to recall that I’d never told her I was sterile.
Chapter 17
I wish I could say I’m naturally more trusting of women with whom I happen to be sleeping, but invariably I find just the opposite to be the case. It’s not that I think anyone who would willingly engage in intercourse with me is therefore untrustworthy—although the idea has merit—it’s just that I’ve been burned before. And betrayal at the hands of someone I’m intimate with ends up being more memorable for some reason. One might even call it “intimacy issues,” if one were so inclined.
I think I developed this problem after I was forced to leave ancient Egypt. This was around the time of what’s now called the fourth dynasty, under the rule of King Khufu. (We didn’t call them Pharaohs back then. Nor did we call it Egypt. It was Kemet.) I had been living in and around the Nile Delta for quite a long time by then, because for many centuries there was simply no better place to be.
I started out there on the losing side of a local conflict during the first expansion of the Kemet Empire and ended up introduced to the Nile region as a slave, the property of a landowner named Hefuz. Hefuz was a brutal, unpleasant man who treated women and slaves more or less the same and who sired more than two dozen legitimate and illegitimate children in his time on Earth before passing things on to his eldest son, Hefiz.
The son was only slightly less brutal toward women and considerably nicer to the help—especially the male ones—as Hefiz clearly swung in that direction. In the latter years of his life, Hefiz was kind enough to grant me a small plot of land and my freedom, Kemet being one of the few places where a slave could work his way out of
