Rebekah squeezed a pillow against the eunuch’s mouth to stifle his howls. She uncapped the tumbler of coconut oil she carried in her pocket and lubricated her fingertips, rubbing his neck and shoulders, softening the knots, her touch soothing, never rushed. His lids were growing heavy, his eyes drunk. Her fingers circled his temples; the slightest pressure kept him alert. She needed his concentration.

Her breath was warm. “You are a man; feel yourself hard inside a woman. She wants you, is tightening around you, cries with pleasure….”

Animal moans sprang out of his mouth. His fingers searched between his legs to grab the absent penis Rebekah had rendered life to. She prevented the shattering of his fantasies by holding his hands back, licking his fingertips, burying them between her breasts. “Feel the contractions; she can’t restrain herself….”

Saliva dripped from the corner of his mouth as he bit on his tongue, sucked on his lips. Rebekah understood the vacuum there. She must fill it up or he would tear his lips and return to the harem bleeding. She guided her nipple into his mouth. Her touch slipped down his stomach, circling his navel, into his hairless pubis, around the urethra, testing, appraising. His writhing and moaning led her to his sensitive points. She searched for the anal cavity, his muffled groans rising, her touch caressing, probing, pressing, advancing deep where the eunuch himself had never dared. He bit on her nipple, puncturing the skin. Her fingers played faster, a pitiless, fiery, sacrificial dance hatched by the enormity of her pain and her desire to triumph.

His moans turned to wails as he pleaded for a relief that seemed remote. Rebekah wavered. Her life and that of her daughter depended on this instant.

She unlocked his teeth from her nipple, turned him around, and came down on her knees, spreading his mounds. A shudder ran up his spine. The thrust of her tongue let loose the raging fire he had repressed all of his adult life.

He stiffened, let go of the pillow, sighed, went limp. She wrapped him in the covers. He would need hours to recover from the deep orgasm she had induced from his lust gland. She straightened up, her veil draping her shoulders, her face damp, her mark flushed.

“You are mine, Narcissus,” she whispered. “You are all mine!”

11

The shriek of peacocks came from the gardens and echoed off the walls, as Gold Dust rushed through a set of swinging partitions and found herself in Pearl Hall. The bright array of colors and the glitter of precious stones mesmerized her. Everything seemed suspended in time, every motion lethargic, every word a mystery. Was this the harem? Engulfed in a cloud of opium. Overwhelming in its strangeness. Calming in its sluggishness.

A sultana pointed at her. Heads turned. Whispers developed into murmurs. Little girls, dressed like adults, abandoned their mothers’ laps. The spell broke. Gold Dust whirled around to escape. A eunuch appeared behind her to guard the swinging doors.