Read Online Naughty Bits 2 by Megan Hart, Saskia Walker, Charlotte Featherstone, Portia Da Costa, Cathryn Fox, Lilli Feisty, Elliot Mabeuse, Jenesi Ash - Free Book Online Page A

how important it is to us, and to all of Egypt. I’ve worked very hard to get you this appointment. It’s almost certain now that Great Pharaoh will have Prince Nekhet marry the Mitanni princess to cement the two lands’ alliance, and so Pharaoh has set his mind on making a home for this princess in Egypt, and that means a home for her gods as well, though I hear the funds for her new temple are not quite flowing as freely as could be wished, what with all the other building he is doing. In any case, it’s very important that you be accepted into this temple, and that we establish once and for all that this foreign goddess—this Astarte—is our Hathor, not Isis. You know how I feel about Isis.”
    â€œYes, Kheneb.”
    â€œI mean, I have nothing against her. Nothing at all. But she is not Hathor, and I will not have anyone confusing the two, least of all my little sister. How would that look?”
    Tia didn’t understand this rivalry between the gods, but thenshe took a much simpler view of their religion than did her learned brother. In her mind, Hathor was the goddess of joy and fulfillment, the goddess of happiness, just as Kheneb had always taught her. Isis embodied something completely different, a more troubling mixture of love and loss, altogether more human. Whereas Hathor was joy and beauty, Isis was grace and mercy. Both goddesses were ancient, and, of course, as a priest Kheneb honored them both, but Tia knew that he always thought of Isis as being something of an upstart.
    â€œNow,” Kheneb said, clearing his throat and drawing himself up. “As for the role of hierodule or sacred prostitute, we shall most certainly have to make some arrangements about that. Such barbarian practices are foreign to us Egyptians, we who dwell in the Happy Land. It’s quite unacceptable. And I won’t have you doing anything you don’t want to do, or anything that will bring shame upon our family.”
    Tia felt a little surge of excitement in her stomach. In truth, this was the crux of the entire matter and what made her so nervous and yet strangely excited. Sacred prostitution was the rule with the goddess Astarte; Tia had known this since she was a girl, and that was already long after the time when soldiers from the army of Thutmose the Third had brought back tales of the practice. She and her friends used to tease and scandalize each other with the idea of giving oneself away to a strange man for a night. And in the name of what was holy, too! But that had been in the days before the foreign goddess had been brought to Egypt itself, back when her worshippers were still strangers far away in a faraway land. Now that she might serve as a temple prostitute herself, Tia wasn’t sure if there wasn’t something wonderfully exciting about it in a wicked sort of way. On the one hand she was horrified, but on the other…to be the conduit of a goddess, to feel her power and beauty in your own body—that was something she was frankly quite curious about. She didn’t reject it out of hand as Kheneb thought she did.
    Now, walking along with her noble elder brother, dressed in her new things and made up by Hathor’s own priests, she felt very beautiful and desirable. Cosmetics and perfume were also sacred to Hathor, and there was no doubt in Tia’s mind that she was one of the most beautiful women in the entire town. The thought of a tryst with a total stranger—someone strong and handsome and exotic—was not unappealing.
    She knew the rumors: as temple prostitute she would have her pick of the supplicants who came begging for her services, spying on them in private as they presented themselves. Only the ones she approved of would be brought to her, bathed and perfumed and blindfolded. They would be brought to her chambers where she would recline, dressed in fine robes, and there they would make love to her, treating her as a goddess, caressing her