Free Cleopatra�s Perfume by Jina Bacarr Page B

perfume between my breasts, around my nipples, pinching them, then down my rib cage, massaging my pubicmound before parting my thighs and anointing my labia with the scent. I sighed over and over, letting go, not caring if I revealed to the Egyptian the intense hunger I possessed for sensual gratification.
    Be aware, dear reader, though I choose to pursue a sexual life outside the ordinary, I’m cognizant of the fact I invite criticism and what can be conceived by others to be mystical and audacious. Call me a sybarite, if you will, but fate handed me a life most women only dream about in their imaginations or read in novels.
    I wasn’t about to let it go.
    I became aware of a tingling sensation beginning at my toes then edging up toward the inside of my bare thighs as he continued dabbing perfume behind my ears, on my throat, between my breasts, then snaking his finger into my anal hole, twisting it, then pushing deeper, deeper. I spread my legs wider, the urge to engage all my senses in this adventure dominating my will. How did he come into the possession of such an atar? I asked Ramzi. And why anoint me with its intoxicating scent?
    He didn’t answer me but merely smiled, then showed me a large ruby-and-pearl ring he swore he’d taken from an antechamber said to contain Cleopatra’s personal jewelry, including the legendary pearls she wore to seduce Caesar. He eased the ring onto my forefinger then slipped his hand between my legs. The white heat singeing my flesh with his touch was so extraordinary I nearly swooned. I willed myself to remain conscious, not only to revel in the frenzied sensations shooting through me, but to listen to him reveal the mystery of the evocative scent.
    I will tell you the story of Cleopatra’s perfume as Ramzi told it to me, word by word, for I’ve never forgotten it.
     
    He came into possession of the perfume from a dragoman in Cairo, a guide and translator who had led an antique-mad American into the Valley of the Kings some months ago. Filling the man’s head with stories of mummies adorned with strings of amulets and ornaments of gold at their throats, coverings wrought with gold and silver and inlaid with precious jewels, he led the man down the lonely and desolate highland path leading into a darkened tomb. Then, in a heated whisper, his torch shining into the open sarcophagus, he expressed surprise to find it empty, its treasure pilfered by robbers.
    When the disappointed tourist became angry and demanded his money returned, the guide assured him he knew of a secret tomb hewn in the wall of the rocky basin of Deir el-Bahri, a site where a mass grave of kings had recently been discovered. What he didn’t tell the American was that what had once been a sepulcher for royal mummies for three thousand years to hide them from ancient tomb robbers was now his personal cache of rare artifacts. One by one, the dragoman led unsuspecting foreigners to the hidden opening in the cliffy massif between the Valley of the Kings and Deir el-Bahri, each time “discovering” a statuette or mummy wearing a golden collar or mask. Once he’d arranged with the foreigner for the artifact to be smuggled out of Egypt for a high price, he replaced it with another artifact for the next unsuspecting modern-day robber.
    What the guide didn’t know was that he wasn’t the first to discover the hole in the side of the mountain covered with stones. At the end of the nineteenth century, a British occultist and Egyptologist named Edward Thorndike stumbled onto the cache of dead Egyptian kings hidden away by high priests thousands of years ago.A desperate man, besieged by grief at the loss of his young bride killed by marauding desert tribesmen, he was in possession of a great treasure, a gift to Cleopatra VII, queen of Egypt, from the High Priest of Emon, her personal emissary. And a man in love with her. A perfume said to transport the body of its wearer to the safety of a secret room in the queen’s