The wine had saturated his mind, but now he found the pleasure of desiring of her body overwhelming. He moved across her lightly with the tip of his tongue, first tasting her lips, then her dark nipples, then the ivory-smooth arch beneath her arms. There her skin was soft as a child's and so sensitive he caused her to shudder involuntarily. He teased her slowly, languorously, until she erupted with cries of pleasure. Then he moved his tongue slowly down her body, trailing the circle of the navel lightly to find the few light wisps of down she had failed to banish. These he teased lightly with his breath until he sensed she could endure it no longer. Then he traced his sex along the inside of her thighs, upward to the fringe of her silk wrap, until at last they were both lost in desire. With a quick motion she rose and drew astride his body, still scarcely touching him. The silk at her waist came away in her hands and without a sound she twined it into a moist rope. Kneeling above him now she drew it slowly across the tips of her own nipples, then across his. Then she pulled the binding of jewels from her hair and with a toss of her head spread the dark strands across his chest. As he watched, she seized the ends of her hair and began to draw them slowly, expertly, against the sensitive underside of the phallus that stood beneath her. Her breath came in short bursts as she drew close enough to tease her own sex as well. He knew he had lost when he felt his last attempts at restraint dissolve. Then her breath told him she had lost as well. With their eyes joined, each exquisitely aware of the other's imminent resolution, she quickly slipped her left hand beneath her and caught the uppermost tip of the phallus with her nails, holding it taut, the pain intensifying his pleasure. She had directed the pulse at the point of her own ecstasy, guiding the warm seed exactly as she wanted, against her own hard bud. As it struck her, she gave the _sitkrita _cry of release and with a hard shudder fell across him, loin against loin, exquisitely replete. As the drummer pounded the final _sum _of the raga, Hawksworth realized she used his resolution to bring her own. Without their bodies touching. The room lay silent about them, as though enfolded in their content. Only their hard breath remained. "I never knew lovemaking could be so intense." He startled himself by his own admission. "Because I loved you with more than just with my body." She smiled at him carefully and reached out to touch the marks on his chest. "But that was merely the first stage of _kama_. Are you ready now for the second?" CHAPTER NINETEEN Nadir Sharif studied the pigeon as it glided onto the red sandstone ledge and rustled its feathers in exhausted satisfaction. It cocked its white-spotted head for a moment as it examined the prime minister, then waddled contentedly toward the water cup waiting just inside the carved stone pigeon house.