Lion Head Mesa everybody loves you, baby [m]

They were alone again, and in several feral strokes they were undone. The man in his pleasure bit possessively at his wife’s ruff. No other. In much the same way Rashepses was dispelled of ire and cast in the buoyant mood of his woman’s breathy affection. Together they lay slaked in one embrace.

“I love you, my golden Goddess,” he grinned into her cheek, grooming the salt from Toula’s still-damp furs. But too soon she stole away from his arms, coming to stand over their marriage bed with an alien look shrouding her radiance.

“What is it?” Rashepses growled before she had an opportunity to give answer, taking her chin swiftly in his palm. Despite all their precautions, he was uneasy. Already he feared her exhaustion, that the consequences of their love for one another had harmed the children she was carrying. And then that smile broke from her lips and the man needed no further illumination.

“Now?” For he could scarcely fathom the magnitude of what was to come! The king’s suspense rekindled, even as Toula carried off labor with her usual aplomb. In all the time he had known her, Rashepses had never seen his wife so calm. He had barely a second to rise to his feet before he grunted for the waiting handmaids. “Go! Get @Tavina and @Izaiah!”

They funneled into the halls with a solid stream of fellahin, turbulent as the serpent in spate. Rashepses doted at the side of his mate, gaze fastened on the belly from which their miracles would in short time emerge, and bracing her each time she was seized by an overpowering convulsion.

When she asked of his readiness, he hesitated, searching her earnest eyes like a man suddenly bereft of senses. “Yes,” came instinctively. He was ready to be their father; for every trial and thrill that came with parenthood. Because he was doing this with Toula.

As they turned the corner for the Pharaoh's quarters there was not a soul in Akashingo who had not heard the call of Rashepses’ voice and eagerly awaited the birth of their princes and princesses.

Semer-wati remained a truss of nerves at the side of his Pharaoh. Damned if he’d be parted from her for even a single breath.