I did as she asked. I scrambled out of them, shucking them with more fervor than grace. I did not feel the coldness of the air. All I felt was anticipation. Shayat leaned over me, and ran her hands across my chest. She smiled, and she tucked her face into my neck, peppering my throat with bites. Each one sent a shock wave through me, this delicate dance of pain and pleasure, of her careful control rising and lowering like a tide. I ran a hand along her, jaw to neck to shoulder and down her arm. She caught my hand and held it, tight, and pinned it against the blankets. She took my other hand and moved it to her breast. I rolled the hard knot of her nipple in my fingers, and she sighed. She took me inside her when she wanted. She took me at her pace, and I moved with her, for her, locked in her rhythms. I touched her when and where she wanted; she moved my hands to her hips, her back, pinned them again on the floor. She touched herself, she touched me, and she did it with an intoxicating sureness and right to her own pleasure. She crested a shuddering wave of pleasure, her muscles taut, hard, and then suddenly lax. I would have stopped then and been grateful, but she turned her attentions then to me, and I could not understand my luck.

She brought me to the edge of it and over with her hands. When it was done, she handed me a canteen and a ripped rag. She stretched out beside me, catching her breath, watching me while I cleaned myself. She ran a finger down my spine. I lay down beside her. I laughed, ebullient, knowing I had these memories for the rest of my life. “What?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

She tucked an arm behind her head. The fine hair of her armpit brushed against me, light as a moth’s wing. She lay with one leg drawn up, one knee jutting into the dark. The light illuminated the hollows and swells of her torso, but her face and legs were beyond it, merging into the darkness. I could see the flash of her white hair and white teeth. “Not bad, professor.”

“Oh, don’t call me that.”

“Not bad, Ariah.” She stretched out and rolled onto her side facing me. She grinned, and I basked in her attentions. “It’s rare to find a man who knows when to be led,” she said.

I grinned back. “Your route,” I said, “your rules.”