Prayer-Cushions of the Flesh Read Online Free Page A

tongue between his lips. At the end of the kiss, she drew back a little and sticking out her tongue again, she pointed to it.
    ‘What do we call this?’
    ‘I do not know and I do not care.’
    ‘We call this the coral branch, or the viper, or the honey-spoon. But I can see that you are impatient to begin. So just one last lesson, just one more word to memorise.’ She threw herself back on the bed and pointed between her legs. ‘Would you like to know what this is called?’
    ‘People who are not poets call it the cunt,’ said Orkhan.
    ‘Oh, we have a prettier name for it than that. It is the Tavern of the Perfume-Makers. Come close to examine it carefully please.’
    Surely this lesson, this inspection, was absurd. But Orkhan thought that there would be no real harm in indulging the girl’s whims for now. Even if her chatter was tiresome, her body was certainly desirable. Her face was like a glorious promise of nobility and intelligence, yet her prattle was sheer childishness. How was it possible for anyone to be simultaneously so beautiful and so silly? Well, he would indulge her for now. But then, to ensure that no one else in the Harem should hear of the humiliations she had put him through, he would have her executed on the following morning. As he lowered his face between her thighs, he pictured himself watching her execution on the morrow. He would give the mutes instructions for her slow impalement. Unaware of the madness in his head, Anadil sighed and spread her legs a little further.
    ‘Does the sight please you?’ she enquired coyly.
    ‘It pleases me very much,’ and he might have said more, but she pulled his face closer yet and Orkhan found himself tasting her. The flavour was unfamiliar, bitter, strangely seductive.
    ‘Now we are ready,’ she sighed and she was indeed moist between the legs.
    But no sooner had Orkhan thrown off his robe than she sprang away.
    ‘Yes, yes, we are ready. But not here. Down there,’ she said pointing to the surface of the ice pit.
    Anadil stepped down from the marble platform and, wincing slightly, lay back upon the ice.
    ‘Come back, Anadil. Not on the ice. What is wrong with the bed? Come back here!’
    ‘It is better on the ice. That is why we are here. The coldness delays the climax and increases the pleasure.’ She wriggled seductively. ‘Come on lover.’
    ‘This is madness!’
    Anadil looked up at him sulky and disappointed.
    ‘We Harem girls heard that all you princes in the Cage were men of stone, ready for anything and invulnerable to cold, hunger or pain. But now a little girl like me can lie on the ice and you dare not.’
    ‘It is madness,’ Orkhan repeated stupidly.
    ‘Come on, don’t be boring. It is more fun on the ice. Besides I will be beneath you as your prayer-cushion or above you as your blanket. But don’t let me get cold here alone.’ She reached up her arms to him in supplication.
    Orkhan could feel a fire melting his insides. He had to have her. He descended to the ice and she fingered his torso appreciatively before wrapping herself around him. Then she reached down for his branch of plum blossom, or whatever it was she had called it, and guided it between her legs. Although, even before entering Anadil, Orkhan had thought that he was on the very edge of exploding from desire, it was as she had predicted; the ice delayed the climax as their bodies could get no purchase on its surface and she slithered about under him. Droplets of water covered both their bodies. As he kept moving inside her, he thought he glimpsed something dark and motionless in the depths of the ice below. A big fish, or just a shadow in the mind. It was a strange kind of race, he thought, between the heat of his desire and the freezing chill of their strange bed. The fun and mischief had now gone out of Anadil’s face. Her legs were now locked round his back and she was crying in frustration as he thrust within her. He, for his part, felt himself so desperate