to her toes, her
fingertips, her scalp, filling her with joy. She was so happy that she
wanted to cry.

As the blaze of ekstasia died down, she felt Manfred driving deep inside
her. She felt his hardness, his separateness, as she could not feel it a
moment ago when she was at her peak and they seemed to melt together,
one being.

His rhythm was insistent, inexorable, like a heartbeat. His hands under
her back were tense. He was fighting for his climax.

She delighted in the sight of his massive shoulders overshadowing her.
It was almost like being loved by a god.

Manfred's face was pressed against her shoulder, his open mouth on her
collarbone. She turned toward him and saw the light in his white-gold
hair. She slid one hand up to his hair and stroked it, while with the
other she rubbed his back in a circular motion.

She felt the muscles in his body tighten against her. He drew in a
shuddering breath.

"Yes--yes--good," she whispered, still stroking his hair, still
caressing his back.

He relaxed, panting heavily.

_He never makes much noise. Nothing like my outcries._

They lay without moving, she pleased by the warm weight of him lying
upon her, as if it protected her from floating away. The feel of him
still inside her sent wavelets of pleasure through her.

Still adrift on sensations of delight, she opened her eyes to stare up
into the shadows of the canopy overhead. On the heavy bed curtains to
her left, the late afternoon sun cast an oblong of yellow light with a
pointed arch at the top, the shape of an open window nearby. She knew
well the play of light in this unoccupied bedchamber in an upper part of
the castle. Manfred and she had met here many times.

They rolled together so that they lay side by side in a nest of red and
purple cushions. The down-filled silk bolster under them whispered as
they shifted their weight, and the rope netting that held it creaked.
Manfred propped his head up with one arm. His free hand toyed with the
ringlets of her unbound hair. She slid her palm over his chest.

She remembered an ancient sculpture she had seen in a home outside
Athens. The torso of a man, head missing, arms broken off at the
shoulders, legs gone below the knees, the magnificent body had survived
barbarian invasions, the coming of Christianity, the iconoclasts, the
Frankish conquest, to stand now on a plain pedestal in a room with
purple walls, the yellowish marble gleaming in the light of many