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Gold takes on a strange cast in the moonlight. The golden hieroglyphs painted up the sides of the throne fade into the deep brown wood, obscuring Pharaoh's sacred name; the golden lion's heads topping the throne's armrests snarl. Imhotep grips the metal lions tighter, as if the beasts might come to life and bite him.
In the moonlight, Anck Su Namun glows. She approaches the throne and the light draws into her warm skin and shines back at him through her dark, bold eyes. She is gilded and painted too - another of Pharaoh's possessions. Not for him to touch, just like this chair. As she straddles his lap, he leans back farther into the Pharaoh's seat and feels her shiver against him.
The first touch always shoots through them both like lightning, like the moment the ka begins its journey through the Underworld. His calling is with the dead, and most of the skin he touches is cold and empty of blood. Being touched by her is touching life and power itself, offering up his own body to be ripped apart and sewn together like those of the corpses he prepares for the final journey. She strokes a light finger along his cheek and draws a quick breath, and he knows she can feel that power too, and loves it as he does.
He cannot touch her as he would truly like, with his own hands - the paint would smudge - but he relishes her touch on him, instead. To have her hands sliding up his shoulders and gripping the back of his neck is a marvel; to have her legs gripping his thighs and her groin grinding against his is nearly god-sent. (He cannot believe that the gods sanction any of this, but the blasphemy of it only makes his own blood course faster).
She must be desperate tonight, for it only takes a minute or two of brief never-enough touching before she moves aside his linens and slides him inside her. She sets her own pace as she rides him, utterly in control in a way she never is under Pharaoh's eyes, her hands clutching his shoulders for balance and her legs on either side of his. Her face is so close to his that their breaths mingle, and Imhotep thinks this is another way we can touch.
When they are finished she leaves as she came, without a word. Imhotep waits in the seat of the god and king of Egypt, straining to watch her as she slips into the darkness.
In these moments, Pharaoh's possession possesses him.