A thick, almost black stain of wine in the joint between the palace flagstones would not sink into the stone. To David it looked like a pool of blood, and his mind, still clouded, answered the pressing ache in his temples with a dull echo, unable to recover its accustomed, supple clarity, to string events like beads upon a thread that now kept breaking.
He did not remember the spring that had set it all in motion. Did not remember giving the order. He remembered only the smell of olive oil striking his nostrils, and the faint, bitter fragrance of almond blossom from the hills. In the glints of the evening sun he had noticed below, on one of the rooftops, an unearthly, naked goddess of dark gold, splashing gaily in streams of water that sparkled in the light. Reality cracked, and in the crack that skin was made flesh, and the light on the curves of the divine body.
He blinked, but the vision did not dissolve like a heat-haze. His world, built of the measured lines of psalms, the straight lines of walls, and clear commands, began to sway.
He wanted to possess, and in that instant his desire became law.
She was brought to him. The clouding became final, dense as fog spreading along a ravine. His head grew heavy. His thoughts slid down toward his belly, becoming one continuous, swollen lust — the roar of the flesh, implacable as fate.
Thighs of matte gold, still holding a scatter of sun-drops like precious dust; breasts — heavy, ripe, with dark, sharp nipples; the curve of the back flowing into firm, perfect buttocks, converging in lines of forbidden geometry upon her womb — hidden and manifest at once, summoning him with a mute yet imperious whisper that drowned out everything in his head. Black silken curls streamed over her shoulders, and every ringlet was a snare in which his reason tangled.
The chapter goes on in the book.