Nude-Muse Magazine Magazine

The haveli had been built to contain a woman the way a temple contains fire: in carved stone, behind screens, under the watchful eyes of ancestors. In the morning pavilion, where intricately carved arches and pillars threw lace-like shadows across polished marble, Shakti stood at twenty-one years old like a bright blade laid across a bed of silk. Her dark hair was pulled back from a face so pretty that even the strictest aunt could not find fault with it, only with what she might do next; a small white flower rested in her hair, and traditional gold jewellery glinted at her throat, wrists, and nose...more>

The jungle breathed around them with a slow, wet patience, as though it had been waiting for centuries to swallow the sound of human voices and then found them disappointingly small. The air lay upon the skin like a second garment, thick and warm and faintly sour with rotting fruit and damp earth. Above, the canopy closed in a green vault so dense that the sunlight came down only in broken places, pale coins scattered across the forest floor.

Julia stood beneath one of those coins, her long blond hair falling over one shoulder in a loose wave. She was twenty-one years old, and she had learned to be comfortable with being looked at. As a nude model, she knew how a...more>