Days of High Adventure by Elliott Kay Page A

appreciative smiles in return—and, more often than not, invitation.
    She wasn’t used to that, either. Men and women alike plainly admired her appearance and commented openly on her sensuous body and her lovely face. The hardships of her weeks of captivity and slave labor had some minor effect on her weight, but when she looked in the mirror, her body looked much as it had ever had. The face that stared back at her was still the one she’d always known. She wondered what others saw in her now.
    For all the madness she’d been through recently, she had to admit to herself that it was nice to be looked at like this.
    Perhaps it was the wine. Perhaps it was the incense in the air. Maybe it was the warm, friendly smiles and soft touch of her hosts in passing conversation, or the constant music wafting through the air, or the frequent, barely-muffled sounds of passion...but the longer Amanda stayed, the more the nature of her distraction shifted from discomfort to interest.
    Reclined on her bed of silk sheets and pillows, Amanda tried hard to synthesize the lore provided in a pair of scrolls unfurled before her. It was tough work; the languages were different, the authors were five hundred years removed...and not far down the hall, two women were having an awfully good time. Given the thick curtain of beads separating each room from the hallway, it wasn’t as if anything muffled the sounds.
    “More, Paulus!” one of them wailed. “You drive me mad! More!”
    “Take her, my stallion!” the other urged Paulus, whoever he was. She let out a long, loud moan. “Her passion drives mine! Take her!”
    The dialogue made her cringe, and yet the tone of their voices left her in no doubt that it was all genuine. Amanda let out a quiet laugh at her situation: Weeks of toil and fear, only to escape to the Temple of the Forbidden Orgy.
    For all the awkwardness, though, she couldn’t help but fantasize about joining in.
    “Amira?” came a low, feminine voice. It was the name Amanda had given everyone in the temple.
    “Yes?” Amanda replied, sitting up on her narrow yet comfortable bed.
    “May I enter?” the voice of the high priestess wasn’t difficult to recognize. Salatis had shared only a few conversations with “Amira,” seeming to respect her privacy—such as it was in a place like this. The older woman had seemed at once kind and hungry every time she spoke to Amanda; the former was a relief after all she had been through, while the later made Amanda feel more than a little excited.
    Amanda had wondered for a long time if she might be attracted to other women as well as men. Salatis and the rest of the temple acolytes had settled that question for her quite firmly.
    “Of course,” Amanda answered.
    The beaded curtain was parted by a slender, elegant hand. Stepping into Amanda’s room was the most majestically beautiful woman she had ever seen, dark-haired, deeply tanned and endlessly confident. Her dark eyes seemed to see straight through Amanda. For all her newfound arcane power and inner strength, this woman left Amanda feeling small and vulnerable.
    “How does the evening find you?” Salatis asked, her voice taking on a note of kindness once more.
    “I’m fine, thank you.” Amanda found herself mesmerized by those dark eyes. Breaking herself of the reverie, she resolved to focus on something else, then found her gaze falling to the high priestess’s chest, and then forced herself to look in the other woman’s eyes again.
    Salatis tilted her head somewhat. She reached out to touch Amanda’s auburn hair, running her fingers through it gently. “More half-truths,” Salatis said.
    Amanda swallowed hard. Despite her comment, though, the priestess showed no change in demeanor at all. “I’m sorry,” she explained nervously. “I just don’t know...I don’t really know what I should say.”
    “Is that why you keep to yourself here? All alone?” Salatis glanced down at the scrolls on the bed, then