Then the doorbell rang. Damn!
“Don’t answer it,” he said, pressing kisses along my jawline. “Let’s hit the floor, and I’ll show you where that third kiss goes.”
A quiver of desire shot through me.
The doorbell rang again, and I sighed. “That might be Noah,” I said, sliding away from him playfully.
He gave me an irritated look and pulled the towel back around his waist. “All the more reason not to answer it.”
I ignored his snide comment and headed for the door, unlocking it.
Noah stood in the doorway in a freshly pressed suit. He smiled at me, holding up two coffees and a bag of doughnuts. The man knew my weak spots. “Good morning, Jackie. May I come in?”
“Of course,” I said with a smile.
He stepped in past me, stiffening when he saw Zane on my couch, clad in nothing but a towel. “I see you have company.”
“Well, he doesn’t have a place to stay, what with being exiled and all,” I pointed out, a blush rising on my cheeks.
Remy had been right. The constant bickering between the two men was pretty darn irritating, since each one was surprised to see the other at any given time. I scowled as Noah grabbed my chin and tilted my head up to his, searching my eyes for blue.
They were bleached silver, of course. I’m not crazy, and Zane’s damn hot.
“I see you haven’t been missing me much.” There was a rigid set in his tone, and I noticed how blue his eyes were. He’d definitely been missing me.
Zane stretched out on the couch, looking rather pleased with himself. “Maybe you should leave.”
“Maybe you should let Jackie decide on her own,” Noah said in a deadly voice. Then he flicked a glance back to me and my silver eyes. “Though it seems as if you’ve already decided.”
I took the doughnuts from Noah’s hand and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I’m a normal, red-blooded succubus who’s trying to repair the hole in her middle. Your turn will come in about two hours.”
Since I’d been wounded, my body had responded by trying to refuel itself more frequently. Like every eight hours. With two very sexy men at my beck and call, though, I wasn’t complaining.
“I don’t like him being here,” Noah said, his teeth gritted. He crossed his arms and glared at Zane, looking like an angry dog defending his territory.
“Goes double for me, Angel Boy.” Zane glowered at him from the couch. “She’s my girl.”
I rolled my eyes. “Will the two of you leave it be? I’m nobody’s girl.”
But both men had gotten their hackles in a rise.
“I think you should decide who you want to be with, Jackie,” Noah said. “Decide which one you want to choose.”
“Yeah, Jackie. Put this loser in his place and let me get to sleep.” Zane got up from the couch and stood next to Noah, glaring at him. His towel threatened to fall from his waist, if not for the hand holding it there.
My hand.
“Choose, Jackie,” they both said.
Good lord-that was like asking someone to pick which hand or leg they liked better.
“I can’t choose. You both annoy me in completely different ways.”
Two sets of astonished eyes focused on me.
“Noah, you’re a bit too stuffy and set in your ways,” I began. “You want me to be obedient, proper, and ladylike.”
“That’s not true,” he began, a scowl darkening his face.
I raised my hand. “I’m not finished. You’re a bit stuffy, but I like you. You’re always there for me when I need you. You’re my rock, and you’re practical and reasonable even when I’m not. I need you in my life.”
Zane’s face had taken on a shuttered look, and he grabbed a cigarette from the nearby table and lit it. “So this is it for us?”
“No. I like you, too, Zane. You’re impetuous and slick, and you make me do crazy things-things that I like doing. You take my breath away.” He smiled. “But I don’t know you, and I can’t trust you.
“Hence, my problem,” I told them. “I simply can’t choose.”
“Well, you have to,” Noah said, his voice unyielding.
“Pick one,” Zane agreed.
Annoyed, I snapped, “Fine! I pick neither of you.”
“What?” they said jointly.
I shrugged. “If I can’t have both of you, I’ll just have to go with option C: none of the above.”
Two scowls focused on me and I raised my hand, stopping their arguments before they could start. “I’ve actually given this a lot of thought. My new life flows between both of your worlds, so it only makes sense to have both of you in my life, helping me where you can. Your paths will only intersect for a few hours each day, and if you can manage to avoid each other, so much the better. I can’t pick a favorite, and I don’t think you should try to make me choose. We have unusual circumstances, and I believe they call for an unusual solution. So what’s it going to be?”
Zane grinned and winked at me. “You know my answer.”
Noah was silent, then grudgingly said, “I can share.”
“Ditto,” said Zane. “Just not at the same time.”
My eyes glazed over at the thought of being sandwiched between two delicious men. Hmm-if they could come around to the relationship I was proposing, maybe I could get them to come around to that, as well.
A girl’s got to have a goal, right?
AFTERWORD
I’ve always been a bit of an armchair Egyptologist, and a lot of scattershot, offhand research went into some of the historical elements of this book. The Temple of the Aten is generally believed to be one of the first-if not the first-monotheistic temples known in history. I thought this might be a pretty perfect setting for the back story of my fallen angels and Queen Nitocris. Not much of current-day Amarna is left standing, and no stonework, as it was likely cannibalized for other projects during later reigns.
The passage about Herodotus’s The Histories that Jackie and Remy read off the internet is more or less paraphrased from the original. It was too awesome and bizarre not to use.
To make my story flow, I also adjusted a few other bits. The most famous bust of Nefertiti is actually in a museum in Berlin. That didn’t suit my story, so Jackie viewed a similar one in the Cairo Museum. The wings/black cloaks mentioned on the wall paintings are as completely imaginary as my Serim and vampires are. The real Nitocris and real Nefertiti existed over 800 years apart-impossible if you’re a mortal, but not such a stretch if you’re immortal.
Also, visitors to the Amarna site today must ferry in across the Nile, but I’ve no idea if you can actually take a speedboat from Cairo to the site. In all my research, this was the most difficult piece to find out. I found nothing that said you could, but nothing that said you could not, either. Given that and the distance between the two cities (about 200 miles), I made the artistic decision to make such travel possible in the boundaries of the story.