He felt her slowly withdraw, but then her mouth took his breast, till it had drawn away the musk. At last, perhaps to signify repletion, she lightly brushed his lips with the tip of her tongue. "You have pleased me." Her voice was quiet now, almost a whisper. "Now we will please each other." A hand worked at his loins, methodically applying a viscous, harshly scented oil. "Would you could see with my eyes. The _lingam _of the fabled Shiva was never garlanded such as this, or anointed so lovingly." Then her voice turned harsh as she spoke short staccato commands in an unknown tongue. Bangles sounded and silk rustled as the room emptied. Now he caught a new scent, the harsh smell he remembered from the box the governor had offered. "I will tell you my secret." She whispered close to his ear. "There is no more exciting way to experience the ecstasy of love than with _affion_, the essence of the poppy. But I have a way to receive it no one else knows. It is like the burst of a lightning stroke. Its power envelopes the senses." He felt her smooth a thick paste along the sides of his phallus, and sensed a tingle as she clasped it carefully with both hands. Again she moved above him, but curiously there was no touch of her body. Only the presence of her scent. A tight ring seemed to circle his flesh, and he felt the weight of her rounded buttocks slide down onto his thighs. He startled upward in shock and disbelief. Never will I . . . "You must lie still, my love. In your surrender, only I may have my will." She began at once to move above his thighs, and again muted sounds struggled stillborn in her throat. With deliberate regularity her rhythm mounted, while an overwhelming sensation spread upward through his body. Slowly he felt his new _Resolve_ slipping from him. The convulsions started in his lower thighs, as muscles tightened involuntarily. And then the precipice grew near and he was at its edge and he was falling. He felt the surge, as though drawn out by the twist of her buttocks. Then again and again, each spasm matched by her own as she worked to envelop him completely. He was scarcely aware of her nails fixed in his breasts. At that instant he seemed to drift apart from his body and observe mutely as it was consumed by its own sensations. Until numbness washed over him, stilling his sense. As he lay in exhaustion his mind sorted through her words, and in the dream's darkness he vowed to take her again. The next time, it's you who'll surrender, woman called Kali. To my will. And you'll find out the meaning of surrender. But his thoughts were lost among the gilded panels as she pulled the silk from his eyes and quietly whispered something he did not understand. In that instant he thought he saw where a tear had stained a path across one cheek. She looked at him longingly, then touched his lips with her own for a long moment before slipping quietly into the dark. The dream dissolved in sleep. And she was gone. . . .