Rising to the challenge

You know your day is going to suck when your bra clasp breaks during your 8:30 conference call. How badly it's going to suck depends on what else is going on around you when that happens. I was taking a sip of hot coffee.

I had just taken a sip and inhaled the fantastic aroma as the spicy, sweet cinnamon late percolated around my taste buds. The SNAP!

I wasn't wearing a normal bra, of course. I was missing Lexor, the love of my life and had put on the lacy little slip of nothing much he'd given me for Christmas. It had a front clasp made of wire that was only sort of tacked on to the fine French lace of the cups. I am a well endowed woman, though you can't tell from the conservative cloths I tend to wear. A large lung full of coffee fumes was just too much for it. Damn.

My name is Dori, by the way. Just Dori. I'm somewhere in the area of 4,000 years old. I don't know exactly as the Ancient Persians didn't keep track of time the way they do now and until this past year, I haven't made a habit of walking in the human world enough to need to count time. After a few thousand years, exact age is kind of irrelevant, anyway. After spitting boiling hot coffee onto my bosom, I was even less inclined to care about my age.

I handled it well, all things considered. The private investigator I was an the line with didn't notice. Or if he did, he didn't comment, so I didn't comment, either. The point of the call was not to discuss my coffee or underwear--it was to find what the hell had happened to Lex.

Lex. The love of my life and at times the bane of it, too. He was about the same age I was but he was Egyptian. If you know anything about males or Egyptians, you'd understand my dilemma. He was Small, wiry, well muscled, and had enough sex appeal to make me forget all about my religiously conservative upbringing. I missed him.

Did I mention that it's my fault he's missing? Well, sort of my fault. My father is actually to blame, but that's not going to matter much to Lex. Nearly 4,000 years ago, when we were both still very young, I had betrayed Lex at my father's insistence. It took me maybe ten minutes to figure out that I had screwed up and almost all of the next 4,000 years to win his trust back. Last summer, my father laid a trap for Lex and used me as bait. I should have realized what was about to happen, but I hadn't. And I haven't seen hide nor hair of the sexy, sinful Egyptian cat god of my dreams since. I really need to find him, too. Partially for my own peice of mind but mostly because he's the only one who can stop the coming war.