Beside her in the berth, Nathaway Talley was still asleep. A stripe of sunlight lay across his bare shoulder, as if the day were caressing him, as infatuated as she. Gazing at him as he slept, she loved everything about him: the bony angles of his body; the texture of his exotic, pale skin against hers; the way his untrimmed blond bangs fell in his eyes. She loved his smell, she loved his private parts for giving her so much entertainment. With that in mind, she bent down to kiss them awake. He gave a startled little noise and reached out as if to make sure it was really her being so personal. She straddled him then, and watched as his nearsighted blue eyes focused on her with that look of complete surrender that only one other person had ever given her. If Spaeth had been a person given to reflection, it might have troubled her that his devotion, while sincere, was not entirely voluntary. She was now the beneficiary of the slavish dhota-bond she had sought so hard to avoid herself.
