Her hand glided over his body with the gentleness of a feather, and in moments his ambassador's ensemble slipped away like some superfluous ancient skin. He looked at her again, still overwhelmed by her physical perfection, and reached to touch the curve of her breast. Her hand stopped his in midair. "Shiva, in his dance, had four hands. But he did not use them for touch. Do you want to feel the touch of my breasts? Then feel them with your body." She guided him over, across the round bolster, then rose above him. "Your body is hard and firm, like the stone lingam of Shiva. But your skin still has a hidden softness, like a covering of raw silk." He felt the hard touch of her nipple as it began to trace the crease of his back. It moved slowly, tantalizingly, trailing just at the skin. Now the musk of her perfume had begun to hover about his head, fogging his mind even more. But the sensation of her touch, and the knowledge it was the breast he wanted exquisitely to hold, attuned his starved senses to everything around him, even the quiet rhythm of her breath. Suddenly, without warning, she slid the tip of her long red fingernail sharply down the same crease in his back, where his nerves strained for sensation. He felt a delicious burst of pain, and whirled to meet her smiling eyes. "What . . .?" "Do you see now how your sense of touch can be awakened? Now you may touch my breasts, but only with the nails of your fingers. Here." She drew him to his feet and twined one leg about his body, her heel in the small of his back, enveloping him with her warmth as though it were a cloak. Then she embraced him with her thighs and took his hands in her own, forcing a pattern of scratches on each of her breasts with his nails. Each was different, and each time she pressed his hand, she named the shape of, the mark. Her breathing grew increasingly rapid from the pain, and soon both her breasts were decorated with a garland of hard red lines. At last Hawksworth tried to speak, but she seized his lower lip between her teeth while her nails quickly imprinted a pattern of identical scratches across his own chest. He found the pain oddly exhilarating. It seemed to flow between their bodies, attuning them deeply one to the other. Instinctively he moved to take her, but she twined herself even tighter about him, unattainable. Then, when he thought he could endure it no longer, she lowered herself easily against the bolster. He scarcely noticed as the pace of the drum intensified. "Remember, you cannot touch with your hands. Anything else is allowed."