She loved cashmere sweaters, not because they were expensive, but because the fabric felt so exquisite against her skin, like a thousand fingers caressing her arms, and the cool slip of silk undergarments against her flesh, smooth and releasing all that heat and fire, and the way a gold bracelet glinted and flashed in the sunlight and made the tone of her blue-black flesh so lush, as if right below the skin there were layers of indigo and ochre, a vortex of deep black in which you could lose yourself. Beauty and longing provided the essential architecture of her existence. Her genius was
...more
