The Book of the Seven Delights (30 page)

She had never imagined that sex could seem so pleasurable and so honorable at the same time… so reciprocal… so tender… so
loving
. She looked at his face lying so close to hers on the pillow and felt an overwhelming desire to share him—no, to share the pleasure and joy she found with him—with the whole, entire world. If she could somehow pull everyone into their embrace, bring everyone into the sense of connection she now felt with him…

Apollo Smith was nothing that she in her buttoned-up, dead-language-loving, book-obsessed core would have expected to want. But he was everything that mattered to her now, everything that brought her joy and pleasure and made her want to grow and experience and give. This, she realized with a growing sense of awe and humility, must be what her mother had felt for her father.

This must be
love
.

When she opened her eyes the next morning, he was lying beside her, propped up on an arm and watching her.

"How do you feel?" he asked, running a hand up her naked side.

"Good," she said, self-conscious and edging toward embarrassment.

"Just good?"

"All right,
very
good."

"Must be losing my touch." He shook his head. "Maybe the old girls can give me a few pointers."

Reaching down to the floor beside the bed, he picked up the loosely rolled book and placed it on her stomach. "Read to me."

"Now?" She pushed up to lean against a pillow and yanked the sheet up around her, dislodging the scroll from her lap. "This is hardly the time for—"

"
Au contraire. "
He set the scroll squarely on her lap a second time. "It's the perfect time. After last night, you'll have some basis on which to judge it."

Her jaw dropped.

"You think last night was merely an exercise in validating a manuscript? How could you even think I would—" He stopped her words with a hand.

"Last night was between you and me, and about you and me," he declared. "And it was better than good, it was
great
. But then, isn't that what the old girls claimed to write about? Men and women loving each other and somehow learning from it?"

She looked at him in confusion. He had to be the most infernal—

"Read," he demanded. "How else are you going to know if it's immoral and degraded and needs to be destroyed?"

"It's not my place to say what is or isn't immoral. And a true librarian would never, ever advocate destroying published works on such a basis."

"Really? I was beginning to wonder." He stretched out across the bed and propped his head on his hand. "Lucky for you, I happen to have a little experience with immorality. I'm pretty sure I'll know it if I hear it. Read."

Curse him—he was challenging her to live up to her precious ideals. She glared at him, then at the manuscript. She did want to know—
needed
to know—what was in it. She would have to read it sooner or later. Shifting to take better advantage of the morning light, she began to parse out the words.

" 'From the priestesses of the Goddess Athena, lovers of wisdom but also lovers of humankind… to all of those children of humanity who would seek wholeness and enlightenment. Since the dawn of time…

when humankind's spirit was split in two… there has been a yearning of the soul, a desire in the heart to join with another… to become one… to be whole again. And the great Goddess Athena in her perfect wisdom, has shown us the way.'"

"Sounds perfectly high-minded to me," he interjected.

She gave him a silencing look.

" 'The capacity for physical pleasure is a gift from the divine and must be treasured and cultivated. In discovering and mastering the Way of the Seven Delights, a man and a woman will find not only pleasure, but unity. And the great paradox of such communion is… when two become one, each discovers a clarity of being, a new awareness of self in that union.'"

"Something of a twist on the old 'the-whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of the-parts' notion," he murmured.

"And?"

" 'The first delight is
Seeing
. Seeing the beloved in all the ways and shapes and moods that can delight the eye and entice the heart… studying the form of the body… which is so marvelously created and wonderfully made. Let the lover remove his beloved's garments, one by one… adoring each part of the body unveiled… the lobe of her ear… the hollow of her throat… the slope of her shoulder… the curve of her breast…"

Her cheeks were hot enough to glow in the dark. She raised her head and found he had shifted closer and was staring at her with darkened eyes.

"Go on," he said, his voice lower than before.

"This is… indecent." It wasn't so much a professional opinion as it was a personal feeling. She was going all hot and itchy, deep inside. Reading matter that made her feel like she had to rip off her clothes and drag him naked onto the bed just had to be wicked.

"Looking at someone and adoring them is indecent?" He gave a
tsk
of disapproval. "Shakespeare wrote worse. Read on."

" 'Do not touch, except to remove barriers to vision. And be not hurried in this adoration,'" she said, tracing the line of script with a finger that was beginning to tremble. "'The world has nothing more important for you to do than to discover the fullness of your pleasure in one another.'"

"Nothing is more important." He pushed himself up until he sat staring intently at her earlobe and the nape of her neck. "Sounds like wisdom to me."

She stiffened, unable to retreat as he leaned closer to nudge her hair away from the back of her neck.

"It is beautiful, you know," he murmured, lowering his face so that she could feel his breath moving her hair. "Your skin. Sleek. Soft."

A cobra watching a snake charmer would have had more control at that moment than she had. Her breath was growing shallow, her mouth was going dry, and her skin prickled with expectation. He was practicing the old girls' suggestions for seduction… absorbing her with his gaze, bathing her skin in admiration. And she couldn't summon the slightest desire to object.

He dragged a finger up the side of her neck and out along her naked shoulder. Knowing now where those delicious sensations could lead made them both alarming and irresistible.

"Read on." The vibrations of his voice ignited a slow fire under her skin.

"It's probably just a list of body parts." She shivered.

"Then
really
read on."

" 'The eyes are the windows of the soul,'" she read, glancing up at his eyes… the color of forest and earth… glowing with possibility.

"To know the beloved, the lover must peer through these windows to learn the depth and beauty of the beloved's heart. Let the lovers face one other and look long and patiently through the windows of each other's souls… naming what they see… adoring all that the beloved is… pain and pleasure, sorrow and mirth… righteousness and compassion… yielding and steadfastness…"

Again her gaze sought his before she forced it back to the scroll.

" 'But let nothing be hidden… by garments, or shyness, or shame.'"

"The old girls must have written this in their
younger
days," he quipped.

She couldn't help the laugh that bubbled up through her or the gasp of surprise she uttered as he wrenched the scroll from her hands.

"Hey!" She tried to cover herself as he pulled the sheet from her body and dragged her up onto her knees with him in the middle of the bed. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Trying out the old girls' 'first delight.'" He grabbed her hands and refused to let them go. When she reluctantly met his gaze, he smiled. "How else will you know if it's a fraud or true and worth all of this effort?"

She sat on her knees with her arms over her breasts, feeling exposed and uncertain of what he intended and of how she should react. Even after what passed between them in the night, there was still a part of her that held back, wary of yet another surprise.

Determined, he faced her on his knees and held his arms out at his sides.

"Here I am, Boston. Look at me. See me as I really am."

It took a moment or two for curiosity to begin to overcome modesty. Her gaze wandered awkwardly, almost reluctantly over his naked frame, trying not to linger on any one feature. Then he dipped his head to capture her gaze in his and she was unable to free it. Soon she was falling heart-first into those dark-centered gold-and-green eyes, entering the uncharted depths of him.

The longer she looked, the more fully she absorbed the impact of what she saw… the sum of the pain and pleasure he had experienced… his sorrows and losses… his irreverence, pride, stubbornness, and irrepressible spirit. He was a very complicated man, and yet had a way of making things oh, so simple.

And he seemed appealingly simple just now. All there. Open to her. Offered to her. Nothing held back.

Her heart stopped for a moment. She couldn't breathe. It was a revelation. And an invitation. To accept, she would have to take the same risk and open herself in the same way and allow him access to the longing, the desire, and the love in the deepest core of her.

Her mother's example had taught her that love could be difficult and demanding. But, as annoying and challenging as Apollo Smith could be at times, loving him was turning out to be liberating in ways she could never have imagined. It opened her to new ideas, new attitudes, and new delights… along with all the new complications it brought into her life. Loving him had changed her, was still changing her…

opening and freeing parts of her she hadn't realized existed. And in the end, it was those changes that made the difference.

She leaned forward, widening her eyes, lowering her last defenses, inviting him into her heart.

"Here I am, Apollo. See me."

"Earnest," he said as he gazed intently into her soft gray eyes. "And honest. Sometimes too honest for your own good. Rigid at times. But careful and diligent and dependable. Hellishly stubborn. But too softhearted to ever be fully arrogant." He smiled as incidents from their time together surfaced in his mind as a response to each conclusion. Each memory brought yet another realization. "Dutiful. Gentle. Tough.

Hungry. Proud. Tender. Compassionate. Proper…" He paused for a moment, absorbing her, searching her shimmering eyes, looking for the one thing that would change his life forever.

And there it was.

"And
loving
." Relief and joy both collected in his throat, making his next words sound strangely hoarse.

"
Loving me
."

The smile that brought to her lips put the Mona Lisa's to shame.

"Good God, Abigail Merchant—it took you long enough."

He wrapped both arms around her, bore her laughing back onto the bed, and loved her until she not only saw stars, but felt them exploding in the very core of her. There wasn't a particle of her body that wasn't moved and somehow transformed by the experience.

As they lay together later, exhausted but far from sleep, it occurred to her that the old priestesses' first delight had offered a perfect way to lower barriers and defenses between her and Apollo. Surprise filled her as she glanced at the rolled parchment now tucked safely away at their feet. It was almost as if the book had been written all those centuries ago just for—

She stilled and held her breath as the realization struck. It
had
been written for them… and for all the other couples striving to love fully and discover the depths of their hearts. And if it worked for them, then it just might work for others, too.

"I think the old priestesses knew what they were writing about," she said with an edge of reverence.

"Holds out hope for the other six jars." He chuckled and stroked her bare breast as she lay snuggled against him. "And makes you wonder what they consider to be their
second
'delight.'"

Recognizing the light struck in his eyes, she shoved up onto her elbow and teased him with a lingering kiss.

"If I translate it for you… I don't want to hear you ever complain again about my desire to do things 'by the book.'"

Touching, it turned out, was the next "delight" prescribed by the priestesses in their guide to attaining wisdom. By day's end, Abigail and Apollo had explored a few of the wide range of tantalizing contacts that employed the sense of touch. Time seemed to stand still while they embraced and caressed…

tickled, scratched, raked, tweaked, brushed, and kneaded. They made it through only a small part of an exhausting list before passion flared wildly and irrevocably between them, and they were forced to rest for a while afterward.

Cousin Topsel, their compassionate host, delivered a tray of food to their door that evening and suggested they might like to dine on the roof, under the stars. With tray in hand, they ascended the stairs and found a rooftop haven spread with Persian rugs and fat silk pillows, and furnished with brass lanterns.

They ate hungrily of coucous with almonds and currants, stuffed squash and roasted lamb, then he doused two of the three lamps, lay back on the cushions and made a place for her beside him.

"Look there," he said, pointing to a constellation in the night sky as she nestled beside him. "That's Orion the Hunter… the Pleiades, which figure in a lot of local stories… and over there is Canis Major, the brightest of which is Sirius, the Dog Star. And that's Mars. See how red it looks compared to the others?

Back that way, near the horizon"—he pointed over his head, past the intervening walls—"is the North Star that the sailors used to steer ships. And the Big Dipper that points the way."

"How did you learn about stars?" she asked studying his profile even as he studied the sky above. He chuckled.

"I got tired of lying on the hard ground, night after night, staring up at the stars and knowing nothing about them. So—" He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. "When I finally got paid, I bought a book about them. I carried it with me on patrol and made friends with the night sky. Crocker and some of the others in the company gave me a bad time about spending money on books instead of whiskey.