“Ferame.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The sheikh places a great deal of importance on a specific kind of kiss, Mrs. Petre. The kiss that is intended to arouse a man or a woman is called ferame.”
The kiss that involved the use of tongue and teeth.
“I find it hard to believe that a man would nibble on a woman’s tongue, Lord Safyre,” she said repressively.
But she could imagine it....
Jagged shadows spiked his cheeks. “A woman’s tongue is like a nipple, to be nibbled and suckled. Her mouth is like a vulva, to be licked and probed. Have you ever had a man’s tongue in your mouth?”
Lightning sensation jolted up between Elizabeth’s thighs. She pictured his dark face bending to hers, kissing and licking and probing her mouth with his tongue. Immediately, the image was replaced with his dark face poised between her legs, kissing and licking and probing her vulva with his tongue.
The vision was riveting. Shocking. It caused her breath to quicken and her heart to race.
Edward was a fastidious man. Not even with a young and beautiful mistress would he engage in such an act.
“Have you ever had a woman’s tongue in your mouth?”
“Evading the question, Mrs. Petre?” he asked silkily.
“Yes.” She took a deep breath. “No, I have never had a man’s tongue in my mouth.” Or anywhere else. “Are you evading my question?”
“You already know the answer.”
Yes, she knew the answer. He had probably had more tongues in his mouth than Cook had prepared for dinner.
She studied the light and shadow molding his high cheekbones and his slightly hooked nose instead of his eyes and the erotic draw of his lips. “If a man were fastidious . . . and he were hesitant to try this kind of kissing, how would you recommend that a woman . . . broach the matter?”
“By doing this.” The Bastard Sheikh brought up a long, practiced finger and touched the corner of his mouth.
Elizabeth’s lips quivered in response. She sucked them in. “You mean touch his mouth? But where?”
“Touch yourself, Mrs. Petre.”
“I would prefer it if you demonstrate where your lips are most sensitive, Lord Safyre.”
“This is an experiment, Mrs. Petre. There is a reason for my suggestion.”
“Then, if this is an experiment, perhaps I should explore your lips.”
The gas lamp flickered, flared high.
She could not have said what she heard still ringing in her ears.
His eyes narrowed, as if he, too, did not believe what she had said.
A sharp creak of wood sounded in the silence, and then Elizabeth was staring at an ivory button instead of his turquoise eyes. He silently padded around the desk while she continued staring where but for her outburst he would still be sitting.
He stepped into her line of vision, blocking the light from the lamp. She could feel the brush of his brown leather trousers against the dark gray velvet gown covering her knees.
The leather over his crotch bulged, as if stretched across something very large and very hard.
Elizabeth threw her head back. The light shining behind the Bastard Sheikh outlined his hair so that it looked as if he wore a bright gold halo. Lucifer before the fall.
“I am at your disposal, taalibba.”
Warning bells crashed and clanged inside her head.
She had never seen a man and she wanted to.
She had never kissed a man and she wanted that too.
“You promised you would not touch me.” She hardly recognized her voice.
“In this room, yes.” His voice was all too recognizable.
Elizabeth remembered the fear she had felt only hours earlier, confronted with a man who threatened to shoot her with a shotgun. She remembered the fear she had felt plowing through London streets and into the occasional lamp pole. She remembered the fear she had felt defying her husband after he had telephoned the constable because she had inconvenienced him.
She did not want to die without once touching someone other than herself.
Pushing back the leather chair, she stood up.
Her head came to the top of his shoulder. He was too close. She could feel the heat of his body, could almost hear the beat of his heart.
“You—you’re too tall.”
He promptly perched on the edge of the desk, eyes nearly level with hers, gaze never wavering. His knees spread out on either side of her so that she could step between them . . . if she dared.
She dared.
Heat radiated from the V of his legs. Elizabeth studied his mouth, glad of an excuse to escape the intensity of his eyes.
She had never before scrutinized a man’s lips. Had never realized what a masterpiece of sculpture they were, as if chiseled out of human flesh, the top lip sharp, concise, the bottom one fuller, softer. Slowly, tentatively, she reached out a finger and brushed that sensuously rounded bottom lip.
Electricity shot through her body.
He jerked his head back. She simultaneously snatched away her hand. “I’m sorry. I am so sorry. I did not—”
“You did not hurt me, taalibba.” His breath smelled of coffee and sugar, familiar smells, hot, exotic, like the man himself. A lock of wheat-blond hair fell across his forehead. “The lips of a man are as sensitive as those of a woman.”
“But if they are that sensitive”—she tried to regulate her breathing, but failed—“how can two people bear to kiss?”
A stillness settled over his dark face. The golden halo that edged his hair alternately blazed and waned. “Your husband has never kissed you,” he said flatly.
She bit her bottom lip, struggling to keep her relationship with her husband anonymous.
What would the Bastard Sheikh think, learning that her husband lacked even the simple desire to kiss her?
No waltzing, no sex, no kisses. No bonding.
“The truth, Mrs. Petre.”
She did not know what the truth was anymore.
She tilted her chin. “Once. He kissed me when the minister pronounced us husband and wife.”
The derision she expected did not come.
“Lick your lips.”
“What?”
“The purpose of a kiss is the same as that of coition—to incite moisture so that the lips move freely without irritation, just as a man’s toying excites wetness in a woman’s vulva so that his member will more easily thrust back and forth inside her body.”
She had been dry when Edward had come to her bed.
The Bastard Sheikh’s long, dark lashes were clustered in thick spikes. She concentrated on that instead of on the wet heat that was building between her thighs. “Is it painful for a man if a woman is not . . . moist?”
“Yes, although probably not as painful for the man as it is for the woman. A vagina is easily bruised, like a ripe piece of fruit. Care must be taken in plucking it, fingering it. . . .”
Elizabeth instinctively licked her lips, her saliva hot and slick.
Satisfaction glimmered in his eyes. “Now touch your lips . . . glide your finger over them . . . gently.”
Her lips were moist and slick; the delicate tissues inside her mouth throbbed in time to the pounding pulse in the pad of her fingertip. She stared into his eyes, blue, green; the longer she looked into them, the more she could discern tiny individual flecks of color.
“Lick your finger.”
She obeyed him unhesitatingly.
“Now touch my lips.”
Slowly, slowly, she again reached out. The sensation was less shocking this time, more sensuous, like touching wet silk. Heat rose to the surface, stoked by the slick glide of her finger.
“Your top lip is not as sensitive as your bottom one.” Her voice was hushed. “Is it the same with every man?”
“Perhaps.” The word was hot, moist; it seared the entire length of her finger.
She raised her left hand and touched her own top lip while she tou
ched his, gliding, stroking, the corners, the chiseled peaks. His lip twitched, her lip twitched, so sensitive. She had never known lips were so sensitive.
Curiously, breath bated, she explored the seam of his mouth. She had never felt anything so soft or smooth. At the same time, she explored the seam sealing her mouth, lost in sensation, the texture of their skin, the prickly heat that trailed her lips and the pad of her—
Wet heat leapt up from between her legs and flicked the tip of her finger—his tongue.
She jerked her hand back. My God, what was she doing?
“Do men and women kiss in the same manner?” she abruptly asked, bringing her clenched hands safely to her sides. He had agreed not to touch her; perhaps he should have demanded the same of Elizabeth. “That is . . . are there things that a man is required to do that a woman does not, or vice versa?”
“That is the beauty of sex, Mrs. Petre. A man and a woman are free to do anything that gives the other pleasure.”
His lips glistened with her saliva; they looked swollen, as if she had bruised them, Eve manhandling the forbidden fruit.
She stepped back, bumped into the leather chair. It skidded out from behind her.
Mortified, she snatched up her gloves and reticule that had decanted onto the Oriental carpet. “Please forgive me. I seem to be unusually clumsy this morning. Perhaps I should go home—”
The Bastard Sheikh loomed over her, behind her. Something nudged the backs of her legs—the chair.
“Sit down, Mrs. Petre.”
Elizabeth sat down, a graceless whoosh of bustle and leather.
As if nothing untoward had taken place, he resumed his position behind the mahogany desk. “The sheikh describes forty positions that are favorable to the act of coition.”
“Yes.” She could feel her heartbeat—in her lips, between her legs, her nipples.
“Did you take notes?”
“No.” She had been too busy reading and wanting.
He opened his top desk drawer and produced the gold pen. She had no option but to take it from him . . . and remember how she had compared her own pen to his. And how she had wanted even that small comfort.
A stack of thick white paper was pushed across the mirror-polished desk, along with the brass inkwell.
“Take notes, Mrs. Petre.”
Another time she would take umbrage at the order; now she was just grateful to concentrate on something other than the pulsating ache her entire body had become.
“Unless one is inclined for acrobatics, there are only six positions that a man and a woman may use. A woman may lie on her back with her legs either raised to various levels or not; she may lie on her side; she may lie on her stomach or kneel with her buttocks raised—”
Buttocks raised . . . like the beasts in the fields.
“She may stand; she may sit, and if she sits, the man may either be lying on his back or sitting also.”
Belly to belly, mouth glued to mouth.
She clenched the thick gold pen between her fingers and stared down at the black ink scribbled across the white paper. “Which position is most enjoyable for a man?”
“If a man is tired, he will prefer to lie on his back and let the woman straddle his hips.”
Rekeud el aïr, “the race of the member,” as if a man were a stallion.
She tried to imagine Edward lying back with her straddling his hips . . . and could not.
“Have you engaged a woman in all positions, Lord Safyre?”
“All forty, Mrs. Petre.”
All forty vibrated deep inside of her body. As if it had a life of its own, the steel nib scratched a dark line of words across the paper.
“What is your favorite position?”
A harsh intake of breath sounded over the pounding of Elizabeth’s heartbeat. She did not know if it came from him . . . or her.
“I am fond of several.” The Bastard Sheikh’s voice deepened. “My favorite positions are those where I am free to touch a woman’s breasts and her vulva.”
Kissing. Licking. Suckling. Touching. Plucking.
“And your least favorite, Lord Safyre?”
“The position which does not please the woman.”
Her head snapped up. “Why would a woman not be pleased by you?”
The Bastard Sheikh threw his head back and stared at the ceiling, as if he could not bear to look at her. Why would a woman not be pleased by you reverberated inside her head.
She stiffened her spine, no corset to help her out. What a silly, wanton woman he must think her.
“I may enter her too deeply.” The harsh words were addressed to the ceiling. “Or I may not thrust deeply enough. A woman who is new to sexual play or has been abstinent for a while would find it painful if I put her legs over my shoulders.”
Elizabeth forgot to take notes. She forgot that he was a bastard and she was the wife of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. She forgot everything but the fact that he was a man sharing with her his most intimate reflections.
He lowered his head, his stark face a study of light and shadow. “On the other hand, a woman who has borne two children will need the deeper penetration to achieve her climax. She will like it when I press and grind against her womb, knocking for entrance. She will not mind that I am an Arab bastard. She will only know true satisfaction at my touch.”
Elizabeth had borne two children.
The wood smoke and the gas fumes had obviously gone to her head. A man like him would have no interest in a woman like her.
“Why did you leave Arabia, Lord Safyre?”
The sharp lines of his face hardened. “Because I was a coward, Mrs. Petre.”
Elizabeth had heard many rumors about the Bastard Sheikh; cowardliness was not one of them. “I do not believe that.”
He ignored her shocked denial. “You, on the other hand, are not a coward. You did not run from the pain of betrayal. You took control of your life. I did not.”
A bastard sheikh was not supposed to have so much pain.
“You had the courage to leave Arabia and start a new life.”
“I did not leave Arabia; my father exiled me.”
Elizabeth had never seen such bleakness in a man’s eyes. “Surely you misunderstood him.”
“I assure you, Mrs. Petre, there was no misunderstanding.”
“How do you know? Have you ever been back—”
“I will never go back.”
But he wanted to. She could see it in his eyes, feel it resonating from his body.
“You are not a coward,” she repeated firmly.
A smile lit his face, erasing the shadow, filling it with light. “Perhaps not, Mrs. Petre. Not now, at any rate.”
“Are harem women beautiful?”
“I used to think so.”
“What do harem women enjoy?”
“Whatever the man enjoys.”
That could not be. “They have no personal preferences?”
“Like you, Mrs. Petre, their main interest is in pleasing—a man.”
He sounded as if the idea were distasteful. If a man like the Bastard Sheikh could not be seduced by his own lust, how would she ever tempt her husband?
“Is that not what a man wants . . . for a woman to put his own desires above hers?”
“Some men. Sometimes.”
“Is that not what you want?”
“I will tell you what I want, taalibba,” he rasped.
She had gone too far.
“You have already told me what you want, Lord Safyre. A woman, you said.”
A warm, wet, wanton woman who is not afraid of her sexuality or ashamed of satisfying her needs.
Leaning forward, she placed the gold pen onto the cool wood of his desk—only to have it plucked from her fingers. The Bastard Sheikh leaned forward in his chair, the pen stretched between his two dusky brown hands, five inches of solid gold.
Elizabeth recoiled, too late; his eyes snared hers.
“The sheikh writes of six movements
a man and a woman practice during coition. The sixth movement is called tâchik el heub, ‘the boxing up of love.’ The sheikh claims it is the best of all movements for a woman . . . but it is difficult to achieve. A man must thrust his verge so deeply inside her body that their pubic hair meshes. He cannot withdraw, not even an inch, not even when the woman grips him more tightly than a fist and his testicles ache for release. The only member that he can thrust is his tongue, in and out of her mouth while he grinds his pelvis against hers, dok, grinding and grinding against her clitoris until she climaxes over and over.”
As she had ground her pelvis against the mattress.
Hot moisture pooled between her thighs. She watched, riveted, as he made a fist of his left hand and slid the pen inside the sheath of his fingers until only a blunt golden tip protruded from his dark skin.
He watched her watching him; she knew that he watched her and still she could not look away.
“By giving the woman release”—he rotated the gold pen around and around inside his fist—“she will give me release.”
“Have you ever engaged in this”—she sounded as if she had raced up a flight of stairs—“sixth movement?”
The thick gold shaft slid out of the sheath of his fingers, slowly, inch by inch, as if a woman’s vagina worked to pull it back inside. She clenched her thighs together, feeling the draw deep inside her own flesh.
“Have you ever seen a man, Mrs. Petre?”
Elizabeth wrenched her gaze away from the lure of the gold pen; his eyes were waiting for hers, hot, bright, knowing exactly what he was making her feel.
“No.”
“Would you like to?”
There was not enough oxygen in the room to fill her lungs.
What exactly was his question?
Would she like to see a man? Or would she like to see him?
She licked her lips; he watched that too. “Yes, Lord Safyre, I would like to see a man.”
He stood up.
Her gaze rested on the apex of his thighs. The brown leather trousers were domed, as if a circus tent had been erected inside.
She leaned closer—
“It is time for you to leave, Mrs. Petre.”
Elizabeth remembered the cut she had delivered him at the Whitfield ball—and wondered if he had felt the same sharp pain of rejection then as she felt now.
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