Only moments before, she had been reading of her experiences of lovemaking from three thousand years ago. She found the experience unchanged. When one is immortal, she had written, one does not claim the touch of another in a desperate way. One is not fearful of losing it and so one does not seek to contain or restrict or describe it in language that must fail.
"Take me," she whispered, closing her eyes. "Take me and make me forget the tragic heat of mortal lovers, the taste of death that always comes with their kisses, the taste of loss that darkens their embrace."
They lifted her and laid her down on the soft scented bed.
Aktamu kissed her, his tongue passing between her lips, his fingers caressing her nipples, caressing the underside of her breasts. At once, she was heated through and through, loving the weight of his hips against hers, loving the pressure of his organ against her nether lips.
She abandoned herself to him utterly as he rode her until she was crying out in that divine agony that was always so like pain.
"My Enamon," she said, groping for the other man with her eyes closed.
And now came these familiar hands, so much rougher than those of Aktamu, and these harsh kisses, Enamon's hands beneath her, lifting her, as he penetrated her, his breath filled with broken whispers, My mistress, my queen, my beloved and beautiful Bektaten.
Roused again, unable to hold back, Aktamu took her face in his hands and drew her away from his companion, but that companion would not relinquish her and she felt Enamon's mouth on her belly, and then on her left breast. She felt his tongue on her nipple, and his fingers groping through her hair. Aktamu sought to pull her closer, Enamon to drive her passion to the peak.
She delighted in this tangle of their bodies, in being utterly lost to their contest with each other to possess her, lost to their frantic efforts to vanquish her with pleasure, to conquer her completely as they might never do in life. It thrilled her, this helplessness at the hands of those whom she commanded day in and day out, this surrender to those who worshipped h
er with an awe she had never fully understood.
Aktamu pulled her up to her knees, embraced her from behind, holding her breasts roughly for Enamon to suckle, and she collapsed against them, all sense of time and place lost to her, all burdens released.
And we are this, this only, this ecstasy that flesh can give to flesh.
With each shattering orgasm that followed, there came visions to her, visions of the garden rustling in the courtyard below, with its great shoots and blossoms brought to life by the same elixir that had turned what was once for her, long ago, a painful and perfunctory ritual--into an unbridled celebration of the body and soul.
These immortal lovers knew the map of her body, the map of her senses, better than any god who might have claimed credit for her creation. These immortal lovers understood her hunger, her endurance, as no mortal lover ever could.
Life, she thought again. Life made ceaseless. Life made unrepentant.
All this from the elixir.
All this a reminder of why the elixir must be protected forever, why this glorious magic must never ever be stolen from her again.
Finally, it was finished. They lay together, silent, spent, and divinely empty of all longing. In a little while they would bathe together, and dress one another. But for now, they nestled against one another in sublime exhaustion. And in the ancient language of Shaktanu, they confided endearments, pledges of everlasting loyalty, kisses of pure affection, and soft laughter and tears.
"Sealed in ecstasy," murmured Aktamu in his deep baritone voice.
"Bound to you forever," said Enamon.
Suddenly she was sobbing, shaking with sobs. She pushed her face into Enamon's neck. "Beloved, beloved, beloved," her hand all the while clutching the back of Aktamu's neck.
"My precious one," Aktamu said. "All that I am is yours."
Enamon kissed her closed eyes. "Your slave, always and forever. The true slave who has given you his very soul."
In the hours that followed, they became her servants once more.
After the long and leisurely bath, they braided her hair.
They gathered small handfuls of the springy mass of tightly curled strands and made them into long thin braids--carefully threaded with fragile glistening gold chains studded with the tiniest pearls. It was a laborious task, so many fine long braids to be woven, but these two males did it as patiently and lovingly as had her mortal female servants of old. And when they brought the mirror to her so that she could see the finished result--ah, the perfection and clarity of these modern mirrors--she felt she was gazing on an Egyptian queen of times long before Ramses, when so many noblewomen had worn their hair in this style. Around her head they put a final circlet of hammered gold, a weightless crown.
And then came those last adoring kisses before they withdrew at her tender command.
Once again came her sobs. She lay against the pillows and wept with all her heart. She wept for them and for her and for all the bodies and souls living locked in alienation and forever seeking union, union that could only end again and again in this sweet and terrible pain.
17
RMS Mauretania