her hips, her arm. Beauty was excited and afraid and half amused by what was happening.
When they reached another door, Inanna opened it and immediately bolted it behind them. They came to another screen, and beyond it was another bedchamber. All the doors were bolted.
The room seemed royal to Beauty because it was immense, its walls covered in delicate flower mosaics, its windows screened and draped in sheer gold cloth, its great white bed strewn with gold satin pillows. Thick white candles burned in their high stands. The light was even and the air warm, the entire room, in spite of its grandeur, soothing and inviting.
Inanna left Beauty and advanced to the bed. With her back to Beauty she took off the emerald robe and hood, and she knelt and hid them beneath the bed, smoothing the white drapery carefully.
She turned around, and the two women looked at each other. Beauty was stunned by Inanna’s loveliness, the deep violet of her eyes flaming now on account of her violet garments, the tight thick bodice perfectly revealing the outlines of her nipples. The girdle was gilded metal and higher, tighter than the one she had worn before, coming to a point beneath her breasts and descending in another point almost to her sex, which was covered in tight little pants of fabric as thick as that of the bodice. Her loose pantaloons shimmered as they veiled her naked legs to the cuffs at her ankles.
Beauty took in all of it, took in Inanna’s dark hair and the jewels that studded it, and the way that Inanna’s eyes fixed upon her, considering her. But Beauty’s eyes returned again and again to the girdle. She wanted to open the long row of tiny metal hooks and release the body within. How terrible it was that the wives of the Sultan were like slaves, that they wore this ornate instrument of binding and punishment.
She thought of the women of the harem who had played with her, given her pleasure, worked her as if she were a jointed doll, yet never revealed anything of themselves. Were they denied pleasure?
She looked at Inanna and said silently, with all her being:
“What is it you want of me?” Her own body was full of craving and curiosity and renewed vigor.
Inanna came forward and looked at Beauty, looked at her nakedness. Beauty felt natural, suddenly, and free. And she reached out tentatively, and felt the hard metallic bands of the girdle. Why, the thing was actually hinged at the sides, she realized, and the fabric binding Inanna’s breasts and sex looked unbearably hot, confining.
“You took me out of my wrappings,” Beauty thought. “Should I take you out of yours?” She lifted her hand, and with her first and second fingers made a gesture that mimicked the cutting of the scissors. She pointed to Inanna’s garments. She raised her eyebrows inquiringly, repeating the motion as if she were snipping.
Inanna understood, and her face radiated delight. She even laughed. But then her face went dark. Bittersweet again. “What a terrible thing to be so pretty when you are sad,” Beauty thought. “Sadness shouldn’t be pretty.”
But Inanna took Beauty’s hand suddenly and led her to the bed. They sat down together. Inanna stared at Beauty’s breasts, and slowly Beauty lifted them with her hands as if offering them. Her body shivered with sensuous feeling as she cupped the flesh and turned it towards Inanna, and Inanna flushed darkly and her lips quivered, her tongue appearing between her teeth for an instant. As she looked at Beauty’s breasts, her hair fell down in her face, and the sight of her bent slightly forward, the hair cascading over her shoulders and the tight metal girdle binding her, made Beauty simmer with desire inexplicably.
Beauty reached out and touched the metal girdle. Inanna drew back just a little, but she kept her hands still as if she were powerless. And Beauty closed her hands on the hard cold thing, and this too inexplicably excited her. She opened the clasps one after another. Each made a tiny clicking sound. But now the girdle was ready to come off. She had only to slide her fingers under it and pull it apart.
She did so suddenly, gritting her teeth, and the metal shell released Inanna’s waist and the fine wrinkled cloth gathered around it. Inanna shuddered, and her cheeks went crimson. Beauty drew nearer and tore the violet cloth of the bodice, all the way down into the tight