“Come,” she said, laughing. She took his hand (so hot, her fingers)
and whirled him, dizzied, through halls and rooms.
Her scent teased at his nose.
She brought him to a dining hall,
chandelier winking overhead,
the long table spread with roast pheasant, rack of lamb,
simmering soups, heaps of rolls,
and an entire pig, skin browned to a ruddy glow.
“Eat,” she said, giving him a playful push. “Anything you like.”
He found his voice. “Anything?” He stared at her,
his hand tingling where she’d held it.
Delighted, she laughed, teeth sharp and white and even. “Anything
that doesn’t eat you first!”
Her hands curved around his neck,
Her breasts pressed against his chest.
She took his lip between her teeth, tugged—
gently, then like a wolf worrying a bone.
Before he could draw away, she released him, set
her lips to his throat.
“You are flushed,” she murmured. Her lips and breath warmed his ear.
He seized her, pulled her against him,
his body chilled, craving her heat.
“Where?” he asked, or tried to. It escaped his lips
as a sigh, a moan.
She licked his neck, then suckled hard against his throat.
His breath left him — he could not even gasp.
When she released him, his skin chilled in the absence of her touch.
She took one end of the golden belt around her hips,
placed it in his hands.
“Follow,” she whispered. Her throat pulsed fast, light and shadow.
She led him by the golden chain to a room of midnight blues—
walls, carpet, ceiling. A wooden table held a dark blue bowl.
A bed with a gauzy blue canopy sat against the wall.
She pressed him down onto cool, smooth sheets.
“Here,” she said, turning slowly.
The belt he held unwound from her body, fell to the carpet.
The sarong bellied like a sail in a breeze.
“Here will be our first place.
And our last.”
He hardly heard her.
She moved toward him. A tanned thigh peeked
between the sarong’s silken folds.
She stood before him, pulled his hands up around her neck.
He drew them down smooth, uninterrupted silk.
She arched against his touch, breasts lifting.
He reached inside the folds of her sarong,
stroked her curved belly, lifted the underside of a taut breast.
His thumb brushed a soft nipple, tightening beneath his touch.
“How sweet,” she murmured, “how delicious and cool.”
She untied the knot behind her neck.
The sarong whispered down, curving like a snake,
to her hips,
where it stopped.
A shimmy, and it flowed to the ground, revealing a nest of embers, of live coals.
He held his hand an inch in front of that auburn cleft.
Waves of heat licked his palm.
“Not yet,” she said, pushing him back onto the bed with her body.
She wound her sarong around his hands, looped it around a bedpost.
“First, you must watch.”
She drew back the gauzy canopy to reveal
a marble man, ice-white,
captured in a moment of yearning, straining — mouth parted,
hands outstretched,
phallus so swollen it glistened in the blue light.
She moved to the bedside table, bent over. Her buttocks curved against her back.
She picked up the dark blue bowl.
“Watch,” she said, voice airy as butterfly wings—
“watch, and if you like what you see — why, then, perhaps …”
Her fingers clipped into the bowl, came up glistening.
With deft strokes, she painted the statue with scented oiclass="underline"
its hands,
its smooth chest,
its thighs—
its cock.
He strained, his groin afire, but the silk held his hands fast.
His hips, of their own accord,
writhed, grinding against confining cloth.
She stroked the statue’s cheek, kissed it tenderly,
suckled its stone nipples, gazed into its vacant, yearning eyes.
Kneeling before it, she put her tongue to its navel, then down the length
of the shaft below.
He groaned and struggled. His body burned. He cursed,
but she was lost to him, sliding the marble prick
in and out of her mouth.
He could not bear to watch. He could not look away.
She raised up, slid her skin along the statue’s oiled chest,
lifted on tiptoe, her buttocks centered over the stiffened stone,
and sank down with a sigh.
She gripped the marble arms, wrapped her legs
around its back,
and began a rhythmic dance that revealed
and concealed
by turns
the gleaming stone cock.
He could not breathe. His head thundered. His eyes swam.
He wrestled the smooth silk binding him, but
could not find release.
“Please,” he growled, whispered, wailed—“please.”
Her arms locked around the statue’s neck,
she pressed her red lips to its white ones.
Did she murmur? Did it answer?
She moved faster, faster, until—
she stopped.
Poised on the brink, her skin twitching,
she disengaged from the statue
and returned to the bed.
Scented oil streaked her skin,
and beads of oil glistened
in the auburn nest beneath her belly.
“And?” she said with a smile. “Did you want to be that statue?”
Her hands lifted to her breasts, traced circles around her nipples.
“Yes,” he hissed between locked teeth. His vision blurred red.
She unbuckled his belt, slid his trousers down his legs,
lifted the elastic of his briefs over his wagging prick.
“Are you sure?” she asked, sliding her hot hands beneath his shirt.
“Yes.” His breath bucked at her touch.
She tore his shirt from his body,
ripped the sleeves from his arms.
“Very sure? Careful — this one’s three,
and that’s the one that counts.”
Though he heard the warning, his maddened
mind could think no other thought.
“Yes. My God, yes.”
She laughed, long and free.
Releasing his hands from the confining silk,
she slid onto the bed, onto her back.
She held a hand to him.
“Well, then,” she said, flushed and smiling. “Come to me.”
He wanted to drive inside her, to pin her to the bed,
but his body, raised to such a fever pitch, would not last long.
He wanted to prolong his pleasure, so
he kissed her, rubbed against her oiled skin.
The air chilled him.
He drank of her mouth, her throat, her breasts, her belly.
He tasted the oily beads in the nest that opened to his tongue, tasted
the oil and tang of the folds within, the hard nubbin
that crowned them.
Her legs locked hot around him, her voice reduced
to animal gasps, primal cries.
His skin grew cold,
his fingers tingled,
his toes numbed.
Craving heat, he slid up her body, her skin like lava,
like sunlight.
He suckled at her warm breath, but grew
colder still,
and his cock, coldest of all.
Blindly, he drove toward heat—
and found it.
Roaring flame engulfed his phallus, fire
fanned at his hips. He drove and thrust
toward that blaze.
Her body grew hotter still, searing his skin,
burning his hands.
Her scalding breath tickled his neck,
sent chills through his legs.
Desperate for warmth and for release, he grunted and thrust