“Adam,” rasped Yasmine. Her dark eyes were inked with wings, her lips black and sultry. Hungry, they spoke in silent suggestion of desire, then curiosity, then pity by the end. “What’s wrong?” she asked, her face a reflection of his dismay. “Am I not as you imagined? To look at me so…am I too old for you to find beautiful?”
Her questions were not at all what the Messah expected, and it showed in his response, guilty and unsure. “No, it’s not that. It’s just that—what I mean is, I’ve never…I’ve not been with a woman before, and…”
“Oh,” she said, though not unkindly. Her consternation dissolved. “I didn’t realize this was your first time. And in a place like this, no wonder you’re frightened. They’ve thrown you to the wolves, a lamb. But we will make a man of you before the night’s end, Adam.” She spoke it as a command, like a spell cast from a witch’s lips. “Look at me,” was its tenor, and the enthralled Messah obeyed. Now he was the sinner, lingering on her bare legs veined and dimpled, her midriff soft and distended, the wrinkled scars ringing her breasts where they spilled out the top of her gown. She’d chosen a Tsaazaari imitation of a singer’s dress, rose-gold in the scarlet lamp light. “What do you think? Would I pass for a maiden of Babylon?”
There were no maiden singers, he might have said—if he was still a boy trying to impress his father—but they were engaged in a game, and the anticipation on her face told Adam it was his turn to play. “More beautifully than any singer I’ve ever seen,” he compelled himself to say.
Yasmine growled, prowling close, breath warm as she nuzzled his chest and sunk her claws into the back of his robe. “Adam,” she rasped, big brown eyes staring up at him making the pastor’s son feel like a giant. Slowly, she opened his robe; and slowly, his fears folded inside of him. A new feeling arose, whelming and primordial. It filled him from head to manhood, made him forget for the moment all his withholdings. Then the sound of slapping skin cut through the room—a bestial grunt, a vulgar moan—the Messah’s focus thrown to his hounding memory. She grabbed him by the hands. “This won’t do, to have you here in front of all these strangers. Yasmine wants you all to herself. Come.” She led him to the second floor and found a private chamber. It was little more than an alcove, in truth; a few cushions and a straw mat consumed most of the room, the only light inside from behind its curtain door.
And so in shadow they advanced by the sense of touch and sound. She guided him with her hands upon his, stripping away clothes, rubbing softly at first less sinful places—palms on thighs, waists, and shoulders, lips on lips—steadily progressing to breasts and buttocks, the mound between her legs, fingertips circling his throbbing manhood. Cautiously, she laid his back onto the mat and stroked with her hands, her mouth—brought him to the cusp then shied away, over and over like a cat teases its prey before finally pouncing. She mounted him, and inside her he felt himself fade as something else took over. It was something not afraid of what might or may be. It did not doubt or pause or stop. It only watched and saw and acted. It missed nothing. It felt every plunge and spasm, every involuntary release of amorous breath. When It directed, Adam listened. What It directed, Adam obeyed—without thought or interruption. By the end, it was Yasmine on her back, praying for one more day, one more night with her intrepid Messah. She pulled her legs to her chest and urged him to penetrate her depths and release there what he held bound.
“Let it go,” she said, but Adam withheld, afraid to take his pleasure for what may be forever released. He retreated as if from a demon knocking on his doorstep, yet he knew he could not escape, that It would not recede. He had to decide what kind of monster he was to be. Then she called out to him, “Adam!” and the pastor’s son threw open the door.
They lay together for a while after in the high of soft skin and pillow talk. Yasmine spoke most, confessing her wish that his seed might quicken, that she would get to keep a piece of him for her lamented return to Mephisto. She told him of the emptiness she experienced in the city, of the chasm between souls of people who believed that man was his body alone. “I learned too late the folly in that thinking, and now all I am left with is hashish and a husband who has forgotten me. If I see you again, I hope it is not in that place. You have a good life ahead of you—you and your Magdalynn.”
Magdalynn! “I have to go,” he said suddenly, though Yasmine understood. She went with him to collect from Hassan, then bid him farewell. “Promise never to forget me, Adam of Babylon.”
It was cold and dark on his way
