“Sleep with me.” Zuleika’s command slithers through the evening air, her hands grasping Joseph from behind with the certainty of one who has never heard ‘no.’ The darkness in the chamber thickens like wax, heavy with dangerous promise.
Her skin radiates heat like sun-warmed stone, her hips swaying with the practiced rhythm of palace dancers. Joseph’s muscles coil tight as defensive prayer. The air grows heavy with frankincense and myrrh, luxury’s perfume threading through his nose, down his throat. But beneath these courtly scents, something else rises – the memory of earth and rope, of brothers’ hands claiming flesh as property. The same possessive grip, wrapped in different perfume.
Time stretches like pulled honey, golden and viscous. Joseph’s heart thunders against his ribs – a warning drum, a calling to flee. Her olive-brown skin glows in the lamp light, every movement a dance of shadow and flame. The frankincense grows stronger, threatening to dissolve his resolve like sugar in wine, but that other scent persists – dust and betrayal, the bitter aromatics of being owned.
“Nobody will know.” Her whisper carries the weight of secrets kept and broken, of power that writes its own truth. Her fingers trace paths across his shoulders, mapping territories she considers already conquered. Each touch leaves trails of fire that burn like memories of another claiming, another surrender demanded without asking.
Was there ever armor strong enough to resist such siege? His breath catches as her lips brush his ear: “We’re on our own.” Something in her voice echoes across years – the same tone his brothers used when the pit’s mouth gaped beneath him, when hands that should have protected became hands that possessed.
With strength born of remembered chains, Joseph tears himself from her grasp. Zuleika’s smile curves like a serpent’s arc, triumph already tasting his resistance. “I know you want it too,” she breathes, voice dropping to velvet depths. The chamber’s shadows lengthen, reaching for him like hungry hands. Only flight remains – his feet find their own wisdom, carrying him toward door’s mercy.
Her fingers catch his cloak, fabric stretching between them like truth pulled thin. Joseph feels the tear before he hears it, the sound sharp as betrayal’s tooth. The garment slips from his shoulders – another coat sacrificed to another escape. Behind him, Zuleika’s disappointed desire transforms into something darker, more lethal than lust.
Later, in his cell, Joseph traces the wall’s familiar roughness. His shoulders bear no cloth but shadow, yet the scent of frankincense still clings to his skin like a ghost of temptation. In darkness thick as myrrh, he remembers how possession wears many faces, speaks with many voices, but always leaves the same bitter taste of chains.
