Robin Schone

by The Lady's Tutor

“Women . . .” Her voice was husky. She would sound like that, he thought, when he was buried deep inside of her. “They take a man into their mouths?”

  Ramiel closed his eyes in acute physical pain, imagining Elizabeth’s mouth, Elizabeth’s hair, Elizabeth’s pleasure. “Yes, Mrs. Petre. Women do that.”

  “What does it taste like?”

  Ela’na. Damn. She could not know.

  He opened his eyes, stared at her rapt curiosity. No, she did not know. He briefly mourned the innocence that he would be instrumental in destroying. “I am afraid that is something you will have to test for yourself,” he said impassively.

  “What does a woman taste like?”

  What would Elizabeth taste like?

  “Sweet. Salty. Like . . . a woman. Soft and hot and wet and passionate.”

  The gas flame in the lamp pulsed with heat, luring, warning. Passion could burn, badly.

  How far would she go before her Western propriety pulled her back? How far could he go without losing control?

  “What did you think when you saw a woman for the first time?”

  What had he thought, at the age of thirteen, when the experienced concubine his father had provided him with had laid down on her back and spread her legs?

  “I thought . . . that a woman’s vulva was the most fascinating thing I had ever seen. Like a pink iris. When touched, it grew moist. When excited, its petals unfurled to reveal a secret little bud. It was the ultimate toy.”

  Elizabeth’s gaze skidded away from his. She bowed her head. “It is impossible, surely, for a woman to fully take a man into her mouth.”

  But she would try. When the time came, she would give him everything and more that he had ever wanted.

  “A woman does not have to swallow all of him, just the crown and the first couple of inches. She may squeeze and fondle his shaft while she kisses and suckles him.”

  Kisses and suckles vibrated in the air between.

  Like a nipple.

  Like a clitoris.

  “Has a woman ever taken you fully into her mouth?”

  Ramiel remembered the pleasure of a woman’s lips and tongue. The memories were fueled by her manifest interest in performing fellatio. Sexual heat flooded his cheeks. “No.”

  “Would you like that?”

  Only if you can do it without injury to yourself, taalibba, he thought.

  “I would rather that a woman take me fully inside of her vagina.”

  An ember popped inside the fireplace. Ramiel tensed, preparing for her next question. He had given her the reins; would she run with them?

  “Have you been with women who could not . . . fully take you inside their vagina?”

  “Yes.” The word was dragged out of his chest.

  “Virgins.”

  “Yes.”

  “Women who have long been abstinent.”

  “Yes.”

  “But not women who have borne two children.”

  “No,” he agreed softly, emphatically. “A woman who has borne two children will fully accept me.”

  He would not be able to live if she did not take all of him.

  Ramiel stared at her bent head, waiting, watching the dark play of auburn lights in her hair.

  “What things can a man do with a full-breasted woman that he cannot do with a less generously endowed one?”

  Ramiel sucked in oxygen, not enough; the need for more burned inside of his chest. He stared at her breasts, covered by black velvet, remembered how white and soft and deliciously full they had been, spilling over the modestly cut green silk ball gown when they danced.

  “He can position his manhood between her breasts and press them together . . . so that he is buried between them . . . as if they were a vulva.”

  She instinctively hunched her shoulders, pressing her breasts together as if to protect them from his sight . . . or to facsimile the pressure of his hands.

  “What is this?”

  Ramiel glanced down at the phallus cradled in her hand.

  A shaft of pure heat raced along the length of his manhood, as if she wrapped her fingers around him and not the unfeeling leather. He forced himself to concentrate on her stroking finger and not his own body. “That is called the glans. It and the crown—the plum-shaped head—are the most sensitive parts of a man’s body.”

  Her head snapped up. “More sensitive than a man’s lips?”

  The memory was clear in her hazel eyes, the lightning jolt of sensation that had coursed through their bodies when she had touched his bottom lip.

  He imagined what it would be like, her fingers lightly strumming the crown of his manhood. And did not doubt in the least his answer. “Yes.”

  “Does it quiver . . . like your lip did?”

  It quivered just talking about it.

  “Call it by a name, taalibba,” he commanded.

  “El lezzaz,” she responded promptly.

  “The unionist.” So named because once inside a woman, it pushes and grinds until pubic hair meets pubic hair and still it pushes and grinds as if trying to force even the testicles inside of her.

  The sixth movement.

  The ache inside his groin traveled up to his chest.

  Her wants . . . His wants . . . They were becoming increasingly difficult to keep separate. And over the both of them loomed her husband.

  Of all the people to choose as a lover, why would he choose the person Ramiel had seen last night?

  “How long will you continue to remain celibate, Mrs. Petre?”

  She clenched the artificial phallus so tightly, her knuckles paled.

  Ramiel winced.

  “How long will you continue to remain celibate, Lord Safyre?”

  “As long as it takes.”

  “Likewise.”

  He studied her intently. “Everyone deserves to be loved just once, Mrs. Petre.”

  Even a Bastard Sheikh.

  Confusion shone in her clear hazel eyes; it was followed by dawning comprehension; that by unmitigated horror.

  In her haste to escape him the previous morning, she had forgotten about writing on the paper he had instructed her to take notes on.

  Elizabeth remembered now.

  She remembered what she had written . . . and she remembered thrusting the paper onto his desk. Where she had left it . . . and he had retrieved it.

  Forty ways to love—lebeuss el djoureb—please, God, let me love just once.

  Without warning she dropped the phallus inside the velvet-lined box and slapped it onto the desk beside her cup. “I have to go now.”

  “There is no shame in needing love, taalibba.”

  Clutching her gloves and reticule, she stood up.

  Ramiel reached out and plucked the phallus out of the white box. It was still warm from her touch. He cradled it in his palm, a mere handbreadth long, as she had cradled it in her palm.

  She stared at his hand and the artificial phallus. At the dried leather and warm, living flesh.

  Her thoughts were so plain that he felt as if he violated her privacy by looking at her.

  “Objects such as this are harem favorites.”

  Her spine stiffened. She glanced up, eyes filled with revulsion . . . and so much more. “You mean—women use these—”

  “Yes.” He suggestively curled his fingers around the leather, making of them a sheath. “There are too many women and only one man.”

  She stepped back. The burgundy leather chair shot across the carpet.

  “I obtained this one in a shop yesterday; they are as much in demand in England as they are in Arabia.”

  She pivoted, fled for the door.

  “A woman always has choices, Mrs. Petre,” he called after her, knowing that she would understand that reference too.

  Yesterday morning she had said that she was a woman and that her choices were few, that she must make her marriage work because that was all she could ever have.

  Elizabeth was wrong.

  She had choices . . . if she o
nly had the courage to make them.

  Chapter 12

  Elizabeth’s skin felt tight, like overripe fruit. Her heartbeat raced the sour-smelling hack.

  She had wanted it. She had held the phallus in her hands and imagined the plum-shaped head nudging her most sensitive flesh, pushing up into her body and filling her like she knew the Bastard Sheikh would fill her.

  Mochefi el relil. His member would be like that, large and strong, completely satisfying a woman’s amorous wishes.

  She squeezed her eyelids together. Why had she told him about the statue? Now he would know that her unnatural desires were not triggered by the shock of discovering that her husband kept a mistress—she had always had them.

  Oh, my God. He had read her notes. Scribblings listing her most secret sexual desires, to be taken from behind, to be taken, period.

  What kind of a woman was she? What kind of man could possibly want a woman who was filled with such uncontrollable lust? Like the beasts in the fields . . .

  How could she be married to one man and lust after another?

  When the hack rumbled to a stop, she stumbled out and tossed the cabbie she knew not what—a groat, a sixpence, a florin, a half crown, a crown, it did not matter as long as she was free to gain the sanctuary of her bedroom. She raced off into the nebulous ribbons of yellow fog, away from the woman she had become.

  “But what about tomorrow mornin’? Should I—”

  The cabbie’s voice was swallowed in the cold twilight. The tiny dots of burgeoning gray light that comprised Elizabeth’s vision through the black veil blurred with tears.

  A woman always has choices, Mrs. Petre.

  She fumbled with the key to the front door of the town house, fingers nerveless—oh, no, she almost dropped the bit of metal, caught it, and jammed it home.

  Pulling her cloak about her, she raced up the stairs, a foot landing on a weak board—she knew better than to step there; she used to lie abed and listen to Richard and Phillip creep down the stairs for a midnight snack. A muffled shh! had always accompanied the creak of that board. Only this time it was Elizabeth sneaking up the stairs, and she had raided rather more than a biscuit jar.

  Tonight was the night of the charity ball; surely Edward would be home, please God, let him be home. She needed to see his face, to replace the image of warm, tanned skin and turquoise eyes with Edward’s cool, pale skin and brown eyes.

  She needed to see his body instead of the artificial phallus cupped in the Bastard Sheikh’s hand.

  Edward’s drapes were closed, his bedroom dark and silent. Empty again—

  No. A sound alerted her of his presence, the rhythmic soughing of his breath.

  Nausea churned in her stomach.

  There would be no forty positions of love in Edward’s bed.

  Six days ago the knowledge would not have bothered her. Six days ago she had not possessed such knowledge. Now she needed Edward to wipe away that knowledge.

  She needed to know that she could obtain satisfaction in her marriage.

  Laying her reticule on the dark monolith of a chest, she peeled off her gloves and dropped her cloak onto the floor. She could hear the release of each button as she unfastened her velvet gown, certain Edward would awaken any moment.

  And what if he did? she wondered half hysterically. They were man and wife. Why shouldn’t he see her naked?

  Why shouldn’t she see him naked?

  The air was icy against her arms. It was as cold in Edward’s bedroom as it had been in the Bastard Sheikh’s library that first morning. There had been no welcoming fires lit for her either then or now.

  Her petticoats sloughed off like the skin of a garden snake. Her chemise followed, leaving her breasts bare, exposed, but not nearly as vulnerable as her hips and thighs felt when she stepped out of the protection of cotton drawers.

  Her stockings were snug around the tops of her thighs. Briefly, she debated leaving them on. For some reason, though, it seemed more decadent approaching a man wearing only stockings than it did wearing nothing at all.

  Removing stockings, however, was not a graceful process. Too late she realized she should have undressed in her room.

  Standing stark naked in the darkness, she felt more nervous than she had been on her wedding night. Where she had been warm and wet but an hour earlier, captivated by Ramiel’s husky voice and the discovery of a man’s body, she was now cold and dry.

  The carpet underneath her bare feet was thick and soft; it cushioned her steps. The bedcovers folded back without protest, the comforter a muted whisper of velvet, the quilt and top sheet a coarse sigh.

  Edward’s nightshirt was even whiter than was the bottom sheet. He lay on his back, still as a corpse, limbs neatly arranged as if he controlled his dreams as easily as he did his waking life.

  Hand trembling, heart pounding, Elizabeth reached out and encountered cold cotton and even colder fear.

  It should not be like this, her husband lying insensate while she attempted to seduce him. The Bastard Sheikh would not just lie there. He would welcome a woman’s needs.

  Carefully, slowly, she eased up Edward’s nightshirt, revealing forbidden male flesh, a knee, a thigh. His legs were darker than the nightshirt, darker than hers. Wiry hair brushed the backs of her knuckles—who would ever have thought that a man was so hairy? Or so warm—

  Unyielding fingers grasped her wrist. Elizabeth gasped.

  “What are you doing, Elizabeth?”

  She fought back a laugh, spoke with calm resolve. “What do you think I am doing, Edward?”

  “I think we are both going to catch our death from cold.”

  His voice was equally calm and so much more reasonable. And not at all amorous.

  She did not pull back her hand; he did not release her wrist. “I am trying to seduce you, Edward.”

  “By sneaking into my room and groping underneath my nightshirt while I lie asleep?”

  She flinched, suddenly feeling cheap and tawdry. It was not supposed to be like this. During their lessons the Bastard Sheikh had by turns angered and shocked and aroused her but he had never made her feel dirty. “Some men might appreciate the attention.”

  “I am not some man, Elizabeth. I am your husband. What do you want?”

  The situation was becoming increasingly farcical. How could he not know what she wanted?

  Perhaps he had poor night vision. Perhaps he did not see that she did not wear a nightgown.

  “I want . . .” Her heart gave a lurch. How did a respectable woman tell her husband that she wanted to make love? she thought. And then, resentfully, why did she have to explain her intentions when she sat naked on his bed? “I want to be intimate.”

  “You have two sons. I have done my duty by you.”

  Elizabeth felt as if she had stepped into the pages of a penny dreadful.

  Edward had a mistress, for heaven’s sake. Sex was not a duty. He must know what she wanted.

  “I do not come to you out of duty, Edward.”

  “Then go back to your room and we will forget about this visit.”

  Elizabeth’s throat ached. She felt silly and awkward and numb with cold, wearing nothing but her lust.

  Anger came to her rescue. If she could ask the Bastard Sheikh to teach her how to give a man pleasure, she could certainly ask her husband to let her give him pleasure.

  “Edward, I know you have a mistress. Please let me satisfy your needs.”

  His fingers tightened about her wrist; she would have a bracelet of bruises there in a few hours. “I do not have a mistress, Elizabeth, and you do satisfy my needs.”

  He was lying.

  She struggled to keep her voice even. “What needs do I satisfy, Edward?”

  “You are the perfect wife for a politician.”

  “Because of my father, you mean.”

  “Yes.”

  She knew that; she had always known that Edward married her because of who she was and not what she was. The knowing should make th
e pain of confirmation less, not worse.

  “I want to be more, Edward.”

  I want to experience that moment of bonding when a woman takes a man into her body.

  “I don’t need you to be more.”

  “Our sons need us to be more.”

  “Your sons, Elizabeth. I gave you children so that you would be satisfied.”

  Dear God, she did not need to hear this. Regardless of Edward’s lack of commitment to the marriage bed, they were the perfect family . . . weren’t they?

  “What if I am not satisfied by this arrangement? You have not been to my bed in over twelve years.”

  “A respectable woman does not desire physical demands from her husband. If you want more children, we will discuss it over breakfast.”

  Hysteria clawed at her throat.

  She wanted to laugh. She wanted to cry.

  Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined this response from her husband.

  A coldness settled over her that had nothing to do with the chill air. The Bastard Sheikh had known.

  “I want to discuss this now, Edward.”

  “You will not like what I have to say.”

  “I do not like it now. I cannot imagine that I will like it any better over tea and crumpets!”

  “You are getting hysterical.”

  “No.” Yes. Elizabeth took a calming breath. “I am trying to understand our marriage. You say you do not have a mistress; rumors abound that you do. Phillip is fighting to protect your reputation; Richard is sick with unhappiness. If there is anything I can do to please you, I will do it. Tell me what you want, Edward.”

  He released her wrist. “Very well. Cover yourself.”

  She fumbled for the velvet comforter, wrapped it around herself. Edward pulled the sheet and quilt up to his waist, as if afraid she would attack him.

  “I do not want your body, Elizabeth. You have great udder breasts and flabby hips. It was a chore bedding you the number of times I did to get you with children. Richard and Phillip are healthy. I will not put myself through the trouble of bedding you again just so that you can lie with a man. Do I make myself clear?”

  The pain started low in Elizabeth’s chest and worked its way up into her throat. She couldn’t breathe past it; she couldn’t swallow. She could barely talk.

  But oh, she could think. And reason. And remember.