Chapter 25 Humming 4

• I glance around, uncertain. The Buddha sits with closed eyes on the altar, minding his own business. The silks spread under him are the color of the soft iner tissues of the body; they glow richly red and rose in the candlelight. On large scroll painting hangs on the wall. It depicts a female deity dancing. She is nude except for a rope of jewels that snakes down between her breasts and laces across her thighs. Her body is silvery, her face golden. Her eyebrows sweep up like birds above wrathful eyes. Her headdress depicts a pig carved of gold and encrusted with jewels.
• But Jeanine is touching me, coaxing me, drawing me down until I look up to see the dark ceiling covered with paintings so old their colors have muddied. Now we lie breast to breast, and the heat of my body that has been so unwelcome all day intensifies. “Yes,” Jeanine murmurs against my throat. “Oh, yes, love. . .” Her hands have lifted my loose dress to move beneath the cloth, cupping my breasts, her thumbs fluttering against my hardening nipples. She kisses me, her tongue moving deep in my mouth, and I feel myself opening to her, giving in to the heat of my body until it becomes a steady surge, powerful as an ocean wave. Jeanine rides the wave, swimming closer and closer to my center. Her hips move against mine, the firm mound of her pubic bone thrusting ever so subtly, tantalizing me with its pressure.
• Then she pulls away a little, and I see that she has caught my heat, her cheeks flushed darkly, her eyes wildly shining. “We've got to take off your dress,’ she murmurs, “or it'll get all wrinkled and damp”