“I know how to be gracious, Enet.” Seth's voice flowed like honey. “Would you like me to grant your request and bring Ram back? Since he’s the one you desire?”
I pressed my palms against his chest, intending to push him away, but my hands betrayed me, lingering against the warm bronze of his skin. Beneath my fingertips, I felt not a heartbeat but a thrumming power that made my own pulse race in response.
"Let me prove to you how much better I am—the God of Egypt itself." Seth’s fingers traced along my jaw with devastating precision, barely touching yet leaving trails of fire that seemed to sink beneath my skin.
"Ram would worship you like a temple goddess—distant, untouchable, sacred. But I know what you really are beneath that careful control." His hand moved to my throat, not squeezing, just resting there with possessive certainty. "You're fire waiting to burn, and I'm the only one who won't fear your flames."
The words struck something primal within me, a truth I'd been denying all along. There was darkness in me—born from years of rejection, of being deemed wrong simply for existing. Ram's gentleness soothed that darkness, but Seth... Seth celebrated it.
"This is wrong," I whispered, my last defense crumbling.
"By whose measure?" Seth's hands moved to my waist, his grip possessive but not harsh, inevitable as the tide. "The gods who cast me out? The mortals who deemed you unworthy? Or perhaps by Ram's careful morality that keeps him eternally conflicted?"
He lifted me suddenly, my back meeting the bed's silk covering with controlled force. His body caged mine, not trapping but claiming space, making the very air between us feel charged with divine intent.
"There is no wrong between us," he continued, his voice dropping to a register that seemed to vibrate through my bones. "Only inevitability."
When his lips found mine, it was nothing like Ram's desperate kiss in the garden. This was dominion and challenge combined—Seth kissed me as if he were rewriting the very nature of desire.
His tongue swept into my mouth with absolute authority, tasting, claiming, allowing no hesitation or retreat. One hand tangled in my hair, freeing it from its elaborate arrangement until golden waves spilled across the dark silk beneath me.
"Exquisite," he murmured against my mouth, pulling back just enough to study my face with those impossible eyes. "Do you know how long I've waited? Not just months in dreams, but centuries. Watching, searching, knowing you would come."
His lips moved to my throat, finding the pulse that raced beneath thin skin. Each kiss was deliberate, placed with the precision of one who had studied pleasure since before mortals learned to speak.
When his teeth grazed my collarbone, just above where my birthmark pulsed with increasing heat, I couldn't suppress the sound that escaped me.
"Yes," Seth breathed against my skin, satisfaction coloring his tone. "Let me hear you. No one else exists tonight—just this."
His hands moved with practiced expertise, finding the clasps and ties of my garments as if he'd undressed me a thousand times before—and perhaps in dreams, he had.
Each inch of skin revealed was immediately claimed by his touch, his mouth, his focused attention.
"Look at me," he commanded when my eyes fluttered closed, overwhelmed by sensation. I obeyed, meeting that crimson gaze as his fingers traced patterns across my bare stomach that felt like they were writing ancient scripts into my flesh.
"Tell me you want this," he said, his hand stilling just above where I ached for his touch. "Not because of destiny or dreams, but because you choose it. Choose me."
The request from a god, from someone who could take whatever he desired, broke through my last resistance. "I want…" I breathed. "I want this, Seth."
His smile was triumph and tenderness combined, a contradiction that somehow made perfect sense. Seth touched me as if my body were an instrument he'd spent lifetimes learning to play.
His hands knew exactly where to apply pressure, where to tease with lightness, where to grip with possessive strength that left me gasping. He seemed to exist everywhere at once—mouth on my breast, hand between my thighs, his presence overwhelming every sense I possessed.
"You're soaking," he observed with dark satisfaction, his fingers moving with deliberate slowness that made me writhe beneath him. "Your body knows its master, even if your mind still protests."
"Please," I gasped, though I wasn't sure what I was begging for—mercy or more.
"Please what?" He withdrew his touch entirely, watching with those burning eyes as I arched seeking contact. "Tell me what you need."
"You," I admitted, past pride, past shame. "I need you."
"Good girl," he purred, and finally, finally gave me what I craved.
When he entered me, it was with one smooth thrust that claimed me completely. I cried out, my hands clutching at his shoulders as my body adjusted to the invasion.
But there was no pain, only a sense of completion, as if I'd been hollow my entire life and only now understood what I'd been missing.
"Perfect," Seth groaned, his composure finally cracking as he held himself still above me. "You feel perfect."
He began to move then, each thrust deliberate and deep, setting a rhythm that seemed to match some cosmic dance I'd never known existed.
My birthmark blazed with silver-white fire, but instead of pain, it brought transcendence. I felt myself expanding beyond flesh, touching something infinite and ancient.
Seth's own divine nature rose to meet mine, and suddenly I could see him—not just the body he wore, but the vast, terrible, magnificent truth of him.
Power that had existed since chaos first stirred in the void, desire that had shaped civilizations, a loneliness that spanned millennia. His pace increased, each movement driving me higher, closer to some edge I'd never approached before.
My nails raked down his back, leaving marks that healed instantly—gods didn't scar, but the gesture seemed to inflame him further.
"Yes, just like that." he hissed. "Mark me, claim me as I claim you."
The possessiveness in his tone should have frightened me. Instead, it anchored me as reality blurred, as my vision filled with colors that had no names, as pleasure built to levels that threatened to tear me apart.
"Let go," Seth commanded, his hand finding my throat again, not choking but holding, grounding. "Let go and give all of yourself to me—your body, your mind, your mortality. You and your soul entirely belong to me."
And I did, I sacrificed myself, every drop of me, every moan and every breath. Release crashed over me with the force of divine revelation—wave after wave of pleasure so intense it bordered on transcendent.
I heard myself scream his name, felt my body convulse around him, saw the universe fracture and reform behind my closed eyelids.
Seth followed me over that edge with a roar that seemed to shake the very foundations of the palace, his body going rigid above me as he spent himself within me, claiming me in the most primal way possible.