d out
around her head on the pillow.

"I must look like Medusa," she said.

"Who?"

"A woman with snakes for hair. Men who saw her were turned to stone."

He remembered now: In a bazaar at El Kahira he had listened to the story
of the she-monster.

"The sight of you would bring a stone to life," he said.

"Ah, but part of you is already hard as stone. How long are you going to
stand there? I want you." The yearning in her voice made something
vibrate inside him, as if she had plucked a taut string in his very
soul. He was seized by a violent urge to throw himself upon her and take
her at once. And she would welcome it, too, he knew.

But this moment was too precious to be allowed to pass so quickly.

He sank to his knees and reached out to pull her hips to the edge of the
bed. She squirmed across the bed to help him.

* * * * *

Just after he grew out of boyhood, when he was very wild and afraid of
nothing, Ayesha, the youngest wife of Emir Faruk abu Husain, discovered
that he existed, and showed him a way to come to her in abu Husain's
harem. He knew he would die writhing on a spike if the emir's slaves
caught him, but he was also quite certain that such a thing could never
really happen to him.

With a boy's eagerness and excitability, he had spent himself an instant
after he joined Ayesha in the darkness on her couch.

"The emir is very old and has many wives," she purred. "Rarely can we
slip a beautiful young man like you past the harem guards. So we must
learn how to pleasure each other. There are many things that will
delight a woman's body besides a man's rumh. Shall I show you?"

He was curious, and at his whispered agreement she pushed his head down
between her legs and told him what to do.

"And put your fingers _here_ at the same time. Ah, that feels very
good."

* * * * *

He looked at Sophia lying open before him and said again, "How like a
flower." He saw dew on this flower, and he bent to taste.

He did to her the things he had learned from Ayesha and later on from
other harem women.

As he worked upon Sophia the magic of the harem, he listened to her
breathing as it grew faster and faster. He watched her breasts rise and
fall, her chestnut-color nipples standing up.

She groaned and tossed her head from side to side, the groans turning to
screams as she reached a pinnacle. He brought her to another, and
another.

Pan