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one that would hold a necklace of some importance. Rashid stepped back a few paces from Humayun as a courtesy to his cousin. Christos and Humayun gazed into each other’s eyes. It was not a happy or loving look that passed between them. Then Christos said, “Wear these for me the next time, and, I hope, for yourself and no one else.” Then he offered her the jewelry case.
    She hesitated, and a kind of anger seemed to emanate from her. She placed her hand on the case, and for a minute Rashid thought she was going to push it away from her. It would have been an outrageous rejection of Christos and Rashid alike, an aggressive act on Humayun’s part, completely out of character, and meriting severe punishment. Then, much to their relief, the moment of anger passed and she accepted the case, saying, “Until the next time then.” Nothing more, not a word or a gesture to express what she was feeling. There was neither a note of promise in her voice, nor one of indifference for that matter. There was a kind of thrilling silence, an inscrutability about Humayun that was part of her powerful erotic beauty.
    With those words, Rashid could actually see desire for her in Christos’s face. Desire and excitement. There was something else: a kind of decadence and even a spasm of hatred for his being so vulnerable to a sexuality so evidently feminine. Not so for Rashid. He loved and adored female sexuality, and he quickly swept her away and into the old battered Buick that had brought him to the villa. He watched the driver and Nikos, the bodyguard, as they devoured her with their eyes while they stood at the open doors of the automobile when Christos and Rashid exchanged a few last words.
    And then they were off down the drive. Quite suddenly now for Rashid, Humayun had displaced Mirella, and even his amazing success in acquiring what he had sought so long and so desperately. He hardly saw the garden as they sped through it. He had eyes only for Humayun. So he missed seeing Salome leap onto the roof of the car. Heheard only the huge thump and then a yowl as the cat rebounded through the air and landed somewhere, doubtless upright and unperturbed.
    As they passed through the gates, he waved to the four guards who were about to pull them closed. Then he turned his full attention to Humayun. First, and without a word, he removed her veil and turban. Her golden-red hair tumbled around her shoulders. He took her face in both hands and reveled in the beauty of her cream-colored skin and clever, seductive green eyes. Yet again he was captivated by the raw sensuousness of her looks. Her face was alluring with its proud patrician nose. He ran his finger down it and along the high cheekbones, held the finely pointed chin between his fingers, and drew her face to his, placing a deep and sensuous kiss upon her lips. He wanted to feel the swell of her large voluptuous breasts in his hands, to mouth their tantalizing nipples and the large halo around them decorated with henna-dyed arabesques, to lay his cheek against her lovely, seductive mound where her pubic hair had been replaced by more of the reddish arabesques.
    His heart felt full of her. He touched her hair and then raised her hand and kissed it. Humayun sensed a different kind of closeness with Rashid today which they had not shared for a very long time. A kind of loving that had happened to them only once during the first week they were together, after Rashid’s father had given her to Rashid for life as a sexual gift. She had been paid well by the elder Lala Mustapha to see that his son would be kept always sexually happy and assured. Nothing had been said about love.
    The years rolled back with every kiss Rashid gave her now, and she tried to keep her balance through those kisses as the old Buick swung down the mountain of olive groves. Mental balance no less than physical, because there was Moses now to consider. It was a losing battle. She was slipping back into her love for Rashid,