time?’
‘Plenty,’ Peter said.
‘Very well.’ He looked as though he was itching to tell them – again – not to touch anything, but finally he replaced his hat and waved goodbye as he left the tomb.
They listened until they heard the jeep’s engine rev and then drive away. They were alone at last.
‘How awesome is this!’ Val exclaimed with a little spin as she took in their surroundings.
Peter smiled and slipped his arms around her from behind. He cupped her breasts beneath her light cotton dress, squeezing them firmly. The heat outside had been phenomenal but inside the tomb it was cool. Her nipples stiffened at his touch and she leaned her head back for a kiss.
Peter obliged her, then gently pushed her away. ‘We’d better get started so we have something to show for our adventure.’
Val glanced back at the doorway and listened for a moment to make sure the jeep wasn’t coming back before pulling her dress off over her head. Immediately the cool air of the tomb caressed her sweat-dappled skin and she shivered with pleasure. She folded the dress neatly and laid it on top of her bag in a corner of the room. Then she unhooked her bra and slipped her knickers off. The simple act of undressing here felt wildly transgressive, if not blasphemous. But the feeling was so erotic she didn’t care. She kicked off her sandals and tiptoed, naked, over to the sarcophagus.
‘Beautiful,’ Peter said, admiring her body. ‘Just beautiful.’
‘As beautiful as Akhe– … as her, do you think?’
‘A vulture priestess?’ Peter scoffed. ‘How could she possibly compete?’
Val laughed but she felt a little uneasy mocking the lady in whose tomb she was standing stark naked. She glanced nervously up at the winged figure over the doorway and smiled meekly at it as if to apologise for their behaviour.
When she looked back down Peter was opening the oversized first-aid kit he’d brought with them. A flurry of anticipation ran the length of her body as she watched him take out the first roll of bandages.
‘Are you ready, my dear?’ he asked, giving her his most wicked smile.
She nodded, nervous and excited.
Peter crouched down and began winding the gauze carefully around her foot, then up around her calf, then her knee, then her thigh. When he reached her pelvis he split the trailing end of the gauze down the middle, wrapped it back around her leg and tied it off. Then he grabbed another roll of bandages and started the same process on her other leg.
Val sighed at the sensual pleasure as the gauze swallowed her inch by inch. It was soft as silk against her bare skin. There was something strangely soothing in the constriction of the material tightly wound around her, both minimising and intensifying her sense of touch.
When he reached the delta of her sex again she moved her hips in a sinuous figure eight, gyrating like a belly dancer. Peter grinned and kissed the shaved mound of her sex, teasing her for a moment with his tongue before returning to the first-aid kit for another roll of bandages.
‘Not yet, my sweet,’ he said. He held out his hand. ‘Your arm, please.’
Val gave a little moan of desire and frustration before doing as she was instructed.
All around them the figures on the wall stared with inscrutable eyes, their bodies in stylised profile, their heads cloaked in fantastic headdresses, their feet and hands sensuously bare. In one corner a woman played a harp while a jackal-headed god lay, large and imperious, above her. They were surrounded by arcane symbols, as though they had somehow tumbled inside a book written in a code they could never hope to break. Falcons and owls, ankhs and ostrich feathers, gods and goddesses whose names they didn’t know. Her uncle had mentioned funerary texts. Were they prayers? An epitaph? A history? Or possibly – as her romantic and adventurous imagination couldn’t help but wonder – a curse?
Peter had finished wrapping both arms, hands and each individual finger and now he was winding a new roll of gauze around her neck. He paused to give her a kiss before feeding the bandages under her arms and around her chest. When he pressed the gauze against her breasts Val gasped and writhed a little at the teasing contact. She felt her nipples tighten and she whimpered, widening her eyes pleadingly at Peter, urging him to touch her. But he remained focused and carried on with his work, manfully ignoring her entreaty as he encased her torso in bandages.
André had said that servants and pets were often mummified along with their masters and mistresses, so that they might continue to perform their duties in the afterlife. Val closed her eyes and imagined that she was the favourite slave of a powerful pharaoh. She would be wrapped like a gift for him, a plaything to take with him into the underworld. She would dance for him and pleasure him and serve him throughout all eternity.
Suddenly she felt the pressure of the gauze between her legs and she gave a little cry as Peter pulled the bandages tight up against her sex and tucked them into a strip he’d looped around her waist. He made several passes, winding the gauze tighter and tighter before tying off the end. The tension made her cunt throb with desire and the slightest movement was almost unbearably stimulating. She pressed her thighs together, flushed with heat. Her heart began to race as she realised they were nearly there.
He took her face in his hands and kissed her deeply before starting again at her neck and this time working upwards. He wound the bandage around her mouth, her upper lip, her nose. Val tried to slow her breathing and calm herself as she felt herself disappearing bit by bit. He left her eyes till last, winding the gauze over the top of her head and underneath her chin before bringing it back around the back of her head again, pulling it tight so it wouldn’t come undone.
‘I love you,’ he whispered. Then he drew the last strip across her eyes, blindfolding her.
Val stood very still, balancing in the dark as she waited for what she knew was coming next. She relaxed as Peter gathered her in his arms and laid her down on the sarcophagus. The stone was rough and cool beneath her. She could feel both through the bandages but she could no longer feel the movement of air in the tomb.
With her ears covered, all sound was distorted. She thought she heard the harsh cry of some animal out in the desert. The rush of blood in her ears might be the currents of the Nile and the clicking of Peter’s camera the beating wings of great birds soaring above the pyramids. She could make out flashes of light behind her eyes with each photo Peter took and these she imagined were the blinking eyes of the sun god, Ra. How strange that depriving her of her senses should only serve to make them more acute!
She squirmed atop the stone coffin, wondering if the lady sleeping beneath her – Akhenekhbet, that was her name! – had had a lover like hers. She was a priestess, so perhaps sex was denied to her. Did she then pleasure herself in secret and ask forgiveness of her goddess? Or did she surrender to the temptation of her beautiful handmaidens and stroke their soft wet folds, kiss their dusky pink nipples?
Val’s body tingled with every stimulating thought. She flexed her feet, wriggling her bound toes. She arched her back against the unyielding stone, relishing the extreme denial of her senses.
After a while she heard a peculiar muffled sound and it took her a moment to realise that it was Peter’s voice. His voice seemed to reach her telepathically. He was asking her something. No, he was asking her to do something. Spread her legs.
She felt herself grow warm as she obeyed, gripping the edges of the stone lid with her bandaged hands. In her mind the little slave girl obeyed too, splaying her long shapely legs for her master.
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