Anubis Nights by Gary Jonas

rest.
    Our servant led us through the night to the residence. Oil lamps were already lit inside, so we could easily see where we were going. As soon as Sadek left us, I ushered Kelly into the bedroom.
    “Time for you to crash,” I said.
    “You too.”
    “I think we’re safe here for the night. If they want to kill us, they’ll do it tomorrow during the war games demonstration. You take the bed; I’ll sleep on the floor.”
    “Like hell you will. Scorpions are nocturnal, and the species they have here are poisonous, so you’ll sleep in the bed with me.”
    It was hard to argue with her logic but I tried. “The bed is small.”
    “We’ll make do.”
    “Okay.” I didn’t say I tried hard. From the moment she mentioned scorpions, I wanted to jump into the bed. Of course, the damn things could probably climb the legs and join us.
    “I didn’t have a change of clothes with me at the dojo, so these are all I have,” she said.
    “What’s your point?”
    “My point is that we should sleep in our underwear.”
    “Good thing I didn’t go commando,” I said.
    She removed her boots and pants while I pulled off my shirt and kicked off my shoes. I took off my jeans while she hesitated. I started to ask if something was wrong, but she pulled off her shirt, and I saw she didn’t have a bra. Her breasts were small, firm, and lovely. I averted my eyes because it felt wrong to be looking at them. I also felt a stirring, and I didn’t want to climb into bed with her sporting wood. I used the old standby of thinking about baseball for a moment until I had myself under control.
    We folded our clothes and placed them on the adobe ledge.
    “I want the outside,” she said.
    I nodded, removed the weird headrests, and climbed into bed first. I scooted over as far as I could to give her some room.
    She crawled into bed with me. I used my right arm as a pillow and placed my left along my side. Kelly kept her back to me, but there was so little room on the bed that we were forced to spoon.
    “Well,” I said. “This is awkward.”
    “Can you do me a favor?” she asked.
    “Of course.”
    “Don’t make any jokes. Just go to sleep.”
    “Okay.”
    She reached back and pulled my left arm around her waist.
    I tried to think about baseball some more, but I found myself half-chubbed. I knew she could feel it pressing against her, and that made it even harder.
    “Sorry,” I whispered.
    “It’s all right. I’d be disappointed if I didn’t have some effect on you. Now let’s just sleep.”
    She drifted off. I closed my eyes, but sleep refused me.
    Kelly was a beautiful woman. I’d never considered her as girlfriend material. My friend Patrick O’Malley once asked me about it because he had the hots for her. I made a joke about not wanting to date women who could kick my ass, and he accepted that. For whatever reason, I treated Kelly more like a sibling and a business partner, but lying in bed with her, my thoughts were in a completely different place.
    Kelly was in a relationship with Brand, though I suspected they were on the outs, and I was in a relationship with Rayna.
    Brand and Rayna weren’t here.
    Brand and Kelly were near the end of their relationship until Brand sacrificed himself for her, and now I wasn’t sure how things stood, but they were no longer touching each other all the time, so it was probably over. Rayna and I were at the beginning of our relationship.
    I didn’t know whether or not we’d survive our time in Egypt. I didn’t know how long we’d be in Egypt either. Days were passing for us at the same rate they were passing for Brand and Rayna even though they were in different times. The link and the magic meant that if it took us a few months here, and then a few months in the nineteenth century, I’d be away from Rayna longer than I’d even known her. I liked her a lot, but at this point, I wasn’t sure I was really in love with her. I thought maybe things were growing toward the L word,