[POV Neferet]

My thighs shifted, desperate, pleading without words, but Amen only chuckled again. A dark, sinful sound that promised sweet torment.

“So eager,” he murmured, his hands sliding possessively up the insides of my thighs, parting me further for his mouth. “So beautiful when you beg for me.”

“Amen,” I whimpered, the ache between my legs turning sharp, almost painful with want. “Please… I need—”

“You need me,” he growled, the words vibrating against the most sensitive parts of me. “Only me. Always me.”

And then he gave me what I needed the most right now.

His tongue swept over me in one slow, devastating stroke that stole the very breath from my lungs. I cried out loudly and unrestrained, my hips jerking against his mouth.

He licked, sucked, teased until I was sobbing his name over and over, the world narrowed to the feel of his mouth and the wild, reckless pounding of my heart.

“You taste like heaven,” he whispered between kisses, his voice hoarse with desire. “Like everything I have ever wanted.”

I tangled my fingers in his long hair, dragging him closer, desperate to fall apart under his touch, desperate to drown in him.

“Don’t stop,” I gasped. “Please… don’t… stop…”

His mouth answered me with even more intensity, his tongue flicking against that aching bundle of nerves until I saw stars behind my eyelids, my body quaking as pleasure tore through me like a sandstorm.

I shattered on his mouth, my cries filling the chamber, my body arching helplessly into his waiting hands.

He didn’t move away, didn’t rush. He stayed with me through every aftershock, every quiver, lips still brushing softly against my inner thigh like he was tasting every breath I exhaled.

When I finally opened my eyes, Amen began to rise over me, his body moving with feral grace, the muscles of his chest and arms glistening in the moonlight.

His mouth was wet with me, his lips curved in a triumphant, hungry smile.

“Well,” he murmured, brushing a strand of damp hair from my temple, “either that just made the gods weep… or they’ve finally stopped trying to keep me from you.”

I laughed softly at that as I brushed the damp hair from his brow. His smile deepened, and he leaned in to press a lazy, reverent kiss to the tip of my nose.

Amen kissed me again – slower now, less urgency, more savoring. Then he rested his forehead against mine, still catching his breath.

“You’re even more addictive than I remembered,” he said teasingly. “And I’m afraid now that I’ve finally had you in my arms like that… I won’t be able to stop.”

I arched into him slightly, a slow smile blooming on my lips. “Then don’t.”

He groaned, low and husky, the sound sending a fresh ripple of heat through me.

“Careful, sweet lotus flower,” he murmured, his mouth brushing mine again. “Say things like that and I might never let you leave this bed.”

I nipped at his lower lip in return, playfully. “Who says I want to?”

Amen’s eyes darkened – heat blooming in their depths as if my words struck something deep inside him.

He kissed me again, slower this time, letting it unfurl like a secret across my lips. His hand slid up my thigh, featherlight, teasing, fingers drawing lazy, circling patterns over skin still tingling from his mouth.

As our lips moved, his body lowered over mine, the weight of him grounding me, warming me. My legs wrapped around his waist, and when I felt the thick pressure of him pressing at my entrance, I gasped softly

He slid into me with one slow, agonizing thrust, filling me completely, stretching me, claiming me in a way that no darkness could ever erase.

We both cried out, the sensation so intense it bordered on pain.

I didn’t want to forget this. I couldn’t let myself forget this.

He followed me with a hoarse shout of my name, his body stiffening, his hands grasping my hips as if he could fuse us together permanently.

I expanded outward, beyond skin and bone, my consciousness melting into Amen’s. I saw his life laid bare before me – not as memories glimpsed through a veil, but as lived experiences.

I felt the crushing weight of Osiris’s legacy on his young shoulders. I felt the moment he first saw me, a stranger in the crowd, and recognized something so vital, so necessary in me that it left him breathless.

‘I have been waiting for you and always will,’ his soul whispered to mine, across the vastness between stars.

I wept openly, the tears mingling with the sweat on my skin, my heart breaking open wider than it ever had before.

“I love you,” I gasped against Amen’s sweat-slicked skin as we collapsed together, still joined, still shaking with the aftershocks. “With everything I am,” I choked, my mouth brushing his collarbone, “everything I will ever be.”

His arms tightened around me fiercely, almost bruising.

“I know. Me too,” he whispered back, his voice thick and ragged. “I felt you, all of you. Just you.”

We lay there, tangled together, bodies cooling in the soft breath of the night air. Neither of us spoke again for a long while. Words would have been too small, too clumsy to contain what we had just lived.

Something had changed between us. Irrevocably. Something like a bond forged and not only of passion but of shared soul – of defiance against the gods who would tear us apart.

“I wish we could stay like this forever,” I whispered, pressing a kiss to the center of his chest, feeling the echo of our shared heartbeat still thrumming under my lips.

He turned his head, brushing a kiss to my temple, his hands never ceasing their slow, protective strokes along my spine.

“We will find a way,” he promised, his voice fierce and unyielding. “Whatever price must be paid.”

I closed my eyes, pressing myself closer to him, breathing in the scent of his skin, memorizing it, hoarding it.

Because already, far in the corners of my mind, I felt the first stirrings of the darkness returning.