"But you have gained release when a man's verge penetrated you," he insisted.
White dots danced behind her eyelids; white-hot sensation danced along her skin. "Yes."
"When you touch yourself, here"-he pressed hard on the bud of her femininity; a jolt of pleasure hurtled through her womb-"do you not yearn for more?"
"There is a difference between a man's touch and a woman's hand," she said in a parody of his earlier response.
"Arabic women cut off the genitals of young girls."
Megan's eyes snapped open. All she could see was darkness.
Horror shot through her. Her muscles clenched-denying the truth of his statement, resisting her gathering orgasm.
"Why?" she asked involuntarily. "Why would any woman do that to a young girl…?"
How could a woman survive without a means of gaining feminine satisfaction?
"It is tradition," he replied.
His callused fingertip lightly rubbed first the left side of her clitoris, then the right.
"It is a rite of passage."
Fire ripped through her.
"It makes women subservient to men rather than their own desires."
His finger radiated heat. His voice was bleaker than a winter-shrouded moor.
Megan listened in mounting horror while her own pleasure licked higher and higher, hotter and hotter.
In Arabia, the men who guarded harems were called eunuchs. They, too, were reputed to have their genitals cut off.
So that they remained subservient to men… rather than their own desires.
A hard, hot hand imprinted her buttocks. A fine tremor racked her.
He was trembling.
Or perhaps it was she who trembled, poised on the threshold of the most intense orgasm she had ever experienced.
"You are growing harder," he said.
Harder. Wetter.
While he recalled practices she could not even begin to imagine.
His persistent finger slipped and slid, left side, oh-the very tip, right side, the engorged tip again.
The pleasure his touch engendered was frightening.
What he had told her was frightening.
"Please stop."
He did not stop.
"Did you lie to me, when you said that no man has ever brought you to orgasm in this manner?"
Megan strained-not to escape, but to get closer. "No, I did not lie."
Her only lie was in allowing him to believe she was the prostitute the innkeeper had summoned.
"Does my touch please you?"
"Yes."
She had not thought such pleasure existed simply from a man's touch.
"Then I will not stop until you give me your release and we both discover if a man's fingers are as good as his verge."
Megan tensed. The night tensed.
What had they done to this man?
Suddenly the darkness exploded; Megan exploded with it, gasping, falling, grabbing. Bed creaking. Legs straddling his legs.
A wave of energy swelled over hers, swallowed hers, throbbed with a life of its own.
"I felt your release," Muhamed rasped. A hard hand grasped her left hip, finger wet from her body; another hard hand bolstered the small of her back.
Megan struggled to catch her breath, inhaling the almond scent of his breath and the moist, spicy heat of his body. Her left knee was embedded in thick wool; her right knee indented a coarse cotton sheet. Aftershocks of pleasure rippled through her; cool air bathed her naked, exposed nether lips.
Her vulva was open. Utterly accessible.
Her vagina gaped.
Open. Utterly accessible.
Hard, muscled thighs supported her buttocks; they were not cushioned with hair. A hardness bridged their bodies that owed nothing to a callused digit and everything to a man's tumescence.
It felt like rubber.
A rubber prod with a large, blunt head.
Her fingers convulsively dug into shoulders that were as tautly muscled as the thighs underneath her buttocks.
"Do you miss having a verge inside you?" His almond-scented breath scorched her lips. "Would you be satisfied if touch was all that a man could give you?"
It dawned on her that it was his need that had only seconds earlier swelled over hers, swallowed hers.
He might deny that he needed sexual release; his body told its own story.
"Yes." Megan gulped air. What he had given her was far more than she had previously had. "I would be satisfied."
But be would not be.
There was so much pain inside her Arab.
She did not want him to hurt. Not tonight.
Megan had suffered through enough pain in her life, and so, she suspected, had he.
She slowly inhaled, deliberately calming her thundering pulses so that she could say the words that needed to be said. "I do not judge you, Muhamed."
"Do you not?"
His rubber-sheathed manhood throbbed.
Her womb throbbed.
"No, I do not," she said, and reached between their bodies to gift him with the same pleasure he had given her.
He filled her hand. He overflowed her hand.
He grasped her hand.
"Don't!" he ground out.
Everything about him was iron-hard-his voice; his thighs; his shoulders; his fingers holding her right hand; his rubber-sheathed manhood.
Whatever Muhamed suffered from, it was not impotence.
"You said you wanted me to show you how to please a woman," she said, undeterred.
"I did not procure you for this."
"Yes, you did," she countered… and wondered what gave her the courage to do so. The pleasure he had given her, or the pleasure he so obviously wanted to experience?
His fingers tightened around her wrist; there would be bruises there tomorrow. "I did not want you to know."
"You did not want me to know… how hard you are?" she asked boldly.
Megan could feel his surprise. A gentle power filled her.
Tomorrow she would be mortified at her audacity, not tonight.
She had always wondered if men came in different sizes, as women's breasts were sized differently. Now she knew.
They did.
Slowly she ran her thumb over the blunt tip of him; it pulsed underneath the nippled rubber sheath. "You did not want me to know… how large you are?" she asked breathlessly.
"Do not play the whore with me, madam," he said harshly, rebuke a blast of almond-scented breath.
She stiffened. "I am what I am."
"I will not have you lie to soothe my vanity."
It occurred to her that it was not her actions he castigated, but his own body. "I assure you, sir, I do not lie. I have never before held a man as large as you."
Long seconds passed while he assessed the truth of her assertion. His banding fingers pulsed around her wrist: he wanted to believe; he was afraid to believe.
"Do you not find me… distasteful?" he asked, plainly finding himself distasteful.
"No, I do not," she said firmly. And forced herself to ask: "Were you repulsed by me?"
"A woman's body is not repulsive."
Relief coursed through Megan.
"Neither is yours," she asserted.
A hiss of air escaped from between his lips. "I do not know if I can satisfy a woman."
"I assure you, I am very satisfied."
"I do not know if I can find satisfaction in a woman."
"If you will release my hand, sir, you will soon have your answer."
The sound of their breathing momentarily halted-even the waves bathing the surf seemed to pause.
He released her.
She exhaled; he exhaled. The ocean resumed its relentless rhythm of advance and retreat.
Megan bowed her head and stared down at the long, thick appendage she held. All she could see was the dark chasm that separated their bodies, and her own ineptness.
She had never before put a man inside her. The thought
of doing so now was both humbling and empowering.
Carefully, she guided him to her vulva. Heat bumped her forehead-his forehead; it was slick with sweat.
He clasped her hand, hard fingers cupping her softer fingers, helping her, urging her. A callused palm slid down the small of her back. He grasped the right cheek of her buttocks, fingertips wedging deep inside her crevice. At the same time, blistering heat grazed her gaping vagina.
Together, they found her portal. Together, they notched his blunt, masculine flesh into her open, feminine flesh.
Megan couldn't breathe. Couldn't move.
Perspiration dripped down her forehead, her nose, plopped onto her chest. She did not know who it came from-her or him.
In all of her twenty-eight years of marriage, she had never experienced the type of intimacy she now experienced, straddling a man's lap while his breath laved her breasts and his manhood kissed her womanhood, sharing sex, sharing sweat, hands joined, body joined.
"I'm not… come closer," he grated.
Steadily he pulled her closer, fingers digging dangerously deep inside the crevice between her buttocks, while with his right hand he directed his rubber-sheathed manhood. Rubbing. Pulling. Prodding.
Megan's knees slowly inched across the covers, thighs spreading wider while her hand followed his motions as if she were a marionette. Rubbing. Prodding.
Breaching. Piercing. Spitting.
She threw her head back, voice high and shrill, directed up to the ceiling. "Oh, my God!"
"Allah akbar!" His voice was low and hoarse, directed down to parts that could not answer back.
She instinctively released Muhamed's manhood. Using both his shoulders, she tried to lift up.
Grasping her hips with both hands, he pulled her down and forward until he gorged her very womb.
"I did not know a woman was this small," he gritted.
"I…" Megan desperately tried to compose her thoughts when all she could think about was the long, hard, thick, rubber-sheathed flesh that impaled her very heart. "You are penetrating me very deeply."
Hot, almond-scented air gusted against her cheek. "Does it cause you pain?"
Yes.
"No."
But it sounded as if he suffered.
She had forgotten how physically close a man and a woman were in conjugal intercourse. Or perhaps she had never really known.
Her breasts molded his chest; her thighs saddled his hips; her groin locked with his groin.
One breath.
One body.
One heartbeat.
"I have never…" Her internal muscles convulsively clenched around him. "I cannot… move. I do not understand how it can be done in this position."
"Grind your pelvis against mine."
He ground her body down onto his. At the same time he thrust his pelvis up.
He gasped.
She gasped.
The surge of heat that shot through her was far more agonizing than pain. Far more intense than pleasure.
Her nether lips were flattened against smooth skin-he had no pubic hair. The hardened bud of her femininity rubbed bare, naked flesh.
Megan impulsively spanned the short inches that separated their mouths and kissed him.
Lips closed. Eyes open.
He froze.
His lips were dry. Firm. Softer than a sigh.
The heat radiating through her pelvis leaped to her mouth, her breasts that stabbed his muscled, hairless chest, and bolted back down to her vagina that milked his rubber-sheathed manhood.
She jerked back, breathing hard.
"I have never kissed a woman," he said stiffly. He, too, breathed hard.
"Did you like it?" she asked, feeling invaded, feeling vulnerable, feeling as if she were far younger than a woman her age had a right to feel.
"Yes," he said shortly.
Megan was not deterred by his shortness.
Releasing his shoulders, she cupped his face in her hands- his skin felt as if it had been freshly shaved-and deliberately pressed her mouth to his.
His lips clung to hers. And then they possessed hers.
Shocked pleasure washed over her.
He was-probing the seam of her lips with his tongue. As if he wanted her to open her mouth.
Megan opened her mouth.
He touched the tip of his tongue to hers, simultaneously piercing both her upper lips and her nether lips.
A wave of heat ripped through her.
Megan climaxed, mouth sucking in his breath, vagina drawing on his manhood.
When she moved to jerk away, to escape the unexpected jolt of sensation, Muhamed grabbed her by the back of her head and held her in position. A sharp hairpin jabbed her scalp, a distant pain.
He licked her as if he could taste her pleasure, underneath her tongue, the roof of her mouth.
Light exploded inside her head.
Gripping her behind with his left hand, he ground her against him, making her ride out her peak of enjoyment until she could not distinguish between pain and pleasure, or even between an Arab man and an Englishwoman.
She tore his mouth away and rested her cheek against the hot slipperiness of his. Gasping. Still spasming.
"In sha' Allah." The foreign phrase scalded her ear.
Without warning, Muhamed stood up in a crouch, taking
Megan with him. The motion drove him deeper inside her, knocking the breath out of her lungs. Then he turned, and he was slipping out of her, and she was falling…
The bed creaked and groaned. Coarse wool bit into her buttocks; her head sank into a pillow, unmercifully driving hairpins into her scalp. Megan blindly clutched-with her hands, her knees, and then she had him. Muhamed's hips sank between her thighs; at the same time he surged hard and deep inside her.
Again.
And again.
And again.
The creaking of the bed matched the rasp of his breath in her ear. Their bodies were slick with perspiration. For a terrifying moment she could not tell who possessed whom.
She arched her hips, demanding more.
He gave her more.
A series of feminine cries randomly penetrated her consciousness: "Oh." "Please." "Oh, God." "Love me." "Harder." "Love me harder." "Oh, please." "Don't stop." "Please don't stop."
Muhamed gave Megan her third orgasm. Her forth orgasm. Her fifth orgasm. When he gave her a sixth orgasm, he gasped words she did not recognize. "Allah. Ela'na. LowsamaHt. Mara waHda." And two words she did recognize. "Goddamn you. Goddamn you. Goddamn you."
She dimly realized that it was not all sweat that dripped down Muhamed's face and splattered onto hers; his tears mingled with their combined perspiration. When he bonelessly collapsed on top of her, she held him as tightly as she could- as tightly as she wished she had been held twenty-two years earlier when she had cried in the night.
Chapter Three
The smell of Megan's sex permeated the air: it was more potent than the most expensive perfume.
Light filtered through the drape covering the window, turning faded cloth to luminescent green. Beside him, dark hair threaded with silver peaked out from underneath the covers.
His lips burned in memory of her kiss; his body burned from the contact of hers, shoulder to ankle.
A long, thick braid snaked across his pillow; metal pins glinted in the dim light. Her hair had been secured on top of her head when she straddled his lap; it had come undone during the night.
He thought of the discomfort she must have experienced, sleeping on sharp pins. He thought of the tightness of her vulva, clasping his sheathed verge.
His chest constricted in memory.
She had kissed him, this woman whom he had accused of being too old to be a whore.
She had cradled his head, while he learned the taste a,nd texture of her breast.
She had shared with him the miracle of a man and a woman's joining.
Mingled wonder and shame coursed through him.
He had never
felt more like a man than when he had been buried inside her body. He had never felt more vulnerable than when confessing four decades of fear: that he could never please a woman; that no woman could ever please him.
In the end, it had been she who had taken his life in her hands.
Megan's leg rode his upper thigh; her head was pillowed on his shoulder. Flyaway hair snagged his chin.
She slept as innocently as a child, a whore who had offered comfort as well as pleasure. Her cheeks were pale-from sleep? From exhaustion? From satiation?
Her clitoris had risen against his finger-once. Her vulva had clenched about his verge five times, tighter than his fist.
She had reached her peak six times in total.
He watched the stillness of her face, and thought of the man he had nearly betrayed-El Ibn, "the son" of his heart, if not his loins.
He studied the fan of her lashes, and thought of the woman he had silently loved-safe in the knowledge that she had loved another.
And knew he would never again be the same.
He had experienced sexual union.
One night. With one woman.
Sexless duty was a pitiful substitute.
His biceps and calves ached. Dull pressure radiated inside his groin.
The first would ease with time and exercise; the latter with simple voiding. All he had to do was find the strength to get out of bed, he who had not lingered between the sheets since he was a thirteen-year-old boy, secure in who and what he was.
Moving slowly, so as not to awaken Megan, he slid out from under her head, her leg, and then the covers.
His toes curled. The wooden floor was icy.
Briefly he stood over the bed and watched Megan sleep. Her echoing cries of pleasure rang in his ears.
She had begged him. To not stop. To fill her more deeply. To love her harder.
Never had he been so humbled, yet felt so powerful.
Her black dress lay in a heap where she had stepped out of it to come to his bed. His white turban and thobs, a loose ankle-length shirt, was sprawled on the floor farther away, a visible reminder of the road he had traveled and the distance he had spanned.
Prior to that night, he would have neatly folded his clothes away before retiring.
Fascinated Page 30
