SIN and HONEY: Seven Years of Longing

Sin and Honey: The Touch of Betrayal

Both times that Delilah ran for her life, the bodies she left behind weren't yet cold.

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Everyone in Sorek had gone to bed hours ago, but Delilah could not sleep. Heat clung to her in a glittering sheen. Her one set of linen sheets were soaked through, and the dampness at the back of her neck made the undermost layer of her hair heavy and thick with curls. When she grew restless, she crept out of her one-room hut made from mud and stone and walked to the riverbank to bathe.

The moon glared down at her. Defiantly, Delilah stared right back. She'd spent so many years keeping her eyes low to the ground in the crowded city, to avoid being seen, and she was tired of hiding from the light. Bathed in the blue-white glow, she remembered her father—whose memory was now as obscure as the spires of smoke that rose from the rooftops in Shiloh—saying there sometimes appeared a face in the surface, if she looked closely enough. When she was a child, she could almost find it by closing one eye, or squinting them tight and thin like a cat. But tonight the moon shimmered like a smooth bright pearl against the black curtain of night.

She had loved pearls, once, in her former life. Admiring them, hiding them, selling them. The man who had given them to her—an Arabian gem tradesman who spoke with a coarse voice coated by ash—liked to string the ones with the smoothest edges together on invisible thread and slide them between her legs, teasing her to release. But now Delilah had nothing. No pearls, no gemstone merchant, no money—no man.

The valley evening was silent. Coming from the capital, Delilah was used to being consumed by noise: rickety wooden wheels creaking on stone, the agitated cries of merchants haggling with customers, the chorus of worshipping songs from the Tabernacle of the Ark of the Covenant at the center of the city. But here, the silence was like an open door, and through it memories rushed in: the feculent, spoiled odor of stray cats on Shiloh's narrow, twisting roads; the sweet fried sage in the marketplace; the salt of other people's sweat and the spices from their ovens; iron on fire in the metal shops, scraping orange sparks into the air, and forges coughing thick black smoke—the sounds and perfumes of people, not nature. Even at night, Shiloh seemed to breathe; like the sounds of desperate lovers, the city's exhalations rose and fell in uneven time.

Here in the valley when the sun went down, all signs of life disappeared with it. The houses in Sorek were tidy and evenly spaced in rows, like the tiny white seeds her mother used to place in the dirt of a ceramic pot. Delilah remembered sitting in front of the pot waiting for the seeds to bloom, drowning them in water hoping it would make them grow, only to be reprimanded and told such things didn't happen so quickly. Delilah was always impatient, staying up to see the sun and the moon kiss in the sky, somehow never needing sleep.

The water was bubbling sleepily, halfway through its journey from the eastern hills over the valley to the sea. Slipping off her leather sandals, Delilah stepped out of her night robe. She lowered a toe into the water slowly, testing the temperature. It was cool, but not so cold that she couldn't swim. The water rose to her calves, then her thighs. When it sent a chill across her stomach she lowered herself deeper, curling her legs into her chest. She enjoyed the feeling of the smooth moss-covered rocks on the soles of her feet. Delilah sighed, instantly relieved; the one thing she didn't leave behind in Shiloh was the heat.

With her arms stretched wide, she floated like a lily, hovering on the surface of the water. She shivered slightly as her chest was once again exposed to the air. The brief chill made the buds of her nipples grow firm. As she fluttered her feet back and forth, kicking up small splashes of water, her thighs brushed one another smoothly, as though coated by butter. Though the water was cool, each kick sent a rush of pressure between her legs as the current flooded towards her, and then crept away. The moon illuminated her stomach and the curves of her breasts, and Delilah knew she should be worried about being caught ... but that was her problem to begin with, wasn't it? Not being worried, and then getting caught. In truth, part of her liked to be seen. She wanted to feel the gaze of another on her body. It hadn't even been long, but she was already starving for it.