Robin Schone

by The Lady's Tutor

  Ramiel sucked in air. The third lesson. She remembered verbatim how he liked to be held.

  His fingers tightened about her shoulders before he released her and stepped back, heart pounding as if he had raced his stallion across the desert sands into the sunrise. “You do not have to do this, Elizabeth. If all you want is a bath, then I will bathe you and that will be an end to it. You came to me for help. You may stay here as long as you wish. I do not require that you sacrifice your virtue for payment.”

  “I am not sacrificing my virtue. I am trying to make sense out of what is happening. Last night in your coach I experienced something that was—quite wonderful. I have driven one man to murder. I need to give you pleasure. I need to know that I can bring wonder to someone too.”

  I need to give you pleasure reverberated in the semicircular bay of windows. It was silently chased by Ramiel’s thoughts. But not enough to come to me freely without the threat of death.

  He closed his eyes against her raw desperation and fought down the encroaching bitterness. The sun burned the right side of his face; the left side of him was ice cold.

  Elizabeth offered him more than any other woman had ever offered. The past nine years had taught him to take what he could get.

  Opening his eyes, he lowered his head and stared at her lips. “Do you know what you are asking, Elizabeth?”

  Her lips tightened, as they had the first morning he had asked it. “Yes.”

  And she lied to herself again.

  He held out his hand. “Then, come.”

  She took his hand, her fingers cold and uncertain.

  He padded down the mahogany-paneled hallway inlaid with mother-of-pearl, impervious to the scratchy wool of the cold Oriental runner beneath his bare feet, aware only of her hand in his, the heat of her skin, the swish of her skirts, and the blood pulsing in his manhood.

  With each step the anger built. At Edward Petre. For hurting Elizabeth. At Andrew Walters. For threatening his own daughter’s life. At himself. For wanting Elizabeth to flaunt society and come to him for no other reason than because she wanted him.

  He came to a door, opened it. Relinquishing her hand, he reached for a switch, found it. Harsh light flooded the stairwell.

  “You have electricity.” Her voice was a hollow echo.

  “A recent acquisition. Someday soon I plan on replacing all of the gas fixtures. Electricity is less hazardous.”

  “Yes.”

  Ramiel winced. She would not have been nearly gassed if Petre had invested in electricity. He would make certain that the rest of his house was wired within the month.

  He gestured for her to descend the spiral staircase. At the bottom she did not wait for him to open the door. She turned the knob herself and stepped into the cavernous pit that was the bathing room.

  Ramiel followed behind her, guided by the heat of her body and the icy tiles underneath his bare feet. He searched the wall for—

  Blinding light clicked into being. Ramiel had installed electricity because of the added convenience and privacy of not having to rely upon servants to light gas fixtures whenever he wanted to swim. He stepped up behind her and tried to see the room as she might see it—the large swimming bath wreathed in a thin haze of steam, the floor that was a mosaic masterpiece of intertwining fauna, the empty black marble fireplace in the far right-hand corner, a small porcelain tub painted in delicate yellow, blue, and red against the outside wall.

  It belonged to her now. Everything he possessed was hers.

  He would not let her go again.

  “It’s—colder here than it was at your mother’s.”

  Ramiel nudged her toward the porcelain tub. “My mother is lazy. She prefers to relax in her swimming bath, whereas I prefer to swim. I keep the water warm but not as hot as a regular bath. I wash here.” He reached down and put a stopper into the porcelain tub before twisting twin gold faucets; hot and cold water gushed from the dolphin-shaped spout. “And then I swim.”

  Straightening, he untied the silk belt holding together his robe.

  Elizabeth stared fixedly at the water cascading into the tub. A pale pink flush infused her cheeks.

  Ramiel shrugged out of the robe, let it slide off his body until it puddled around his feet.

  The flush in her cheeks darkened. “I have never done this before.”

  Steam coiled around the two of them. “You swam at the countess’s.”

  “Yes, but I undressed behind a screen.”

  “I don’t have a screen.”

  “Would you turn your back, please?”

  “No,” he said baldly.

  He would not allow her to genteelly hide behind a screen or false modesty. He wanted what she offered too badly to accept anything but naked honesty.

  She stiffened her spine and studied the array of brushes and soaps on top of the mosaic-tiled shelf above the tub. “I have had two children.”

  “So you have said.”

  “My body is not . . . what it used to be.”

  “Elizabeth, I want the woman you are now, not the girl you once were. If you want to please me, then undress for me.”

  “If you do not like what you see, you must tell me.” He strained to hear her over the muted roar of the cascading water. “I would not force myself upon you.”

  As she had her husband. Someday, perhaps, she would tell him what Petre had done and said when she tried to seduce him.

  Elizabeth clumsily took off her bodice. She wore the same chemise she had worn the night before, the square neckline cut low over the curve of her breasts.

  Ramiel’s breathing quickened.

  Averting her face from that place on his body that amply showed what a fully erect man looked like, she glanced about for a place to hang the velvet bodice. Ramiel calmly took it from her. He tossed it toward the fireplace and waited, the roar of the water filling the tub loud in the silence.

  Head bowing, she unhooked the waist of her skirt and let it fall around her feet. Untying the flattened horsehair-stuffed bustle, she let that drop too, the thud muffled by the velvet covering the ceramic tiles.

  Ramiel’s body tightened, in anticipation, in apprehension. She had almost been murdered; no doubt she was still in shock. He should stop her from taking this step until she was recovered, because once she gave herself to him there would be no going back. She had said she would regret dancing with him last night. He would not stop at a quick waltz around the swimming bath. He would not stop until they had fully explored all forty positions of love plus all the other variations that Ramiel had learned in the past twenty-five years.

  One by one she untied the two petticoats and he still did not stop her. White cotton mounded over her feet.

  Without thinking, he reached over and bunched the shapeless chemise in his hands. His knuckles rested on her ribs; her skin was taut underneath the flimsy cotton. “Lift your arms over your head.”

  He pulled the chemise over her head and froze, her arms still in the air, the chemise holding them captive.

  Magnificent, Joseffa had said. Ramiel had never seen anything more beautiful in his life.

  Her breasts were creamy white with puckered rosebud nipples, swollen and tender from his kisses the night before. She had a slender waist that flared to generous hips, concealed only by clinging cotton drawers.

  Sexual heat flushed his face; it traveled all the way down to his feet—

  “Ela’na!” He jerked the chemise over her arms and tossed it he knew not where. Bending down, he twisted the gold faucets to the off position.

  The tub had overflowed. Elizabeth stood as if she did not know what to do with her hands while the clothing at her feet soaked up hot water.

  Ramiel knew what she could do with her hands. She could pump him, stroke him, suckle him. . . . All the things she said she wanted to do to him but which she had planned to do for her husband.

  He straightened. “Turn around and look at me.”

  Slowly, slowly, she turned around.

/>   Tensed, body hard as the stone leaf she had once tried to remove from a statue, Ramiel waited for approbation.

  He could hear her intake of breath, could see the widening of her eyes. “You—have pubic hair.”

  The observation momentarily took him by surprise . . . until he remembered that she had bathed with his mother. Apparently, the countess was more Arabic than what she led others to believe. “My English half. I am not inspired by the Muslim faith. It is a risky business when a man removes hair from certain body parts.”

  Her gaze was rapt. “You—are longer than the artificial phallus.”

  “Yes.”

  “And thicker.”

  “Yes,” he gritted, impossibly lengthening and thickening even more.

  “It has a reddish-purple head, like a plum, only larger. Are you certain I will be able to take all of you?”

  Ramiel’s body involuntarily flexed. He drew a shaky breath. “There is a special place inside your body behind the mouth of your womb. It allows a man to fit more deeply inside a woman who might otherwise be unable to accept all of him.” He willed her to raise her head, snared her gaze. “I could show you this place.”

  There was neither revulsion nor fear in her eyes, just a woman’s curiosity and a yearning to experience the closeness of sexual union. “How?”

  “Take off the rest of your clothes.”

  Her hands trembled as she fumbled with the two buttons at the waist of her cotton drawers. He wondered if she was aware of the commitment she would make by giving herself to him. And then he did not wonder at anything, because she stood naked save for flesh-colored stockings and shoes that were buried underneath the pile of damp clothing.

  Her fleece was dark auburn, like the hair on top of her head. Her thighs were voluptuous. Dimpled knees tapered down to slender ankles.

  He imagined himself cushioned between those soft white thighs, imagined her slender ankles locked around his waist, taking all of him, every single inch.

  “Put your right foot onto the edge of the tub,” he ordered hoarsely.

  Modesty and titillation warred inside her. “Should I not . . . take off my shoes and stockings?”

  Later, he thought. But then, perhaps not. With the stockings circling her thighs she was every man’s sexual fantasy.

  “Not now. Now I want to show you that special place inside your body.”

  Her breasts quivered with the force of her breathing. “Is there not a more dignified position I can assume for you to show me this place?”

  Her response was so quintessentially Elizabeth that he bit back a smile. “Elizabeth—”

  “Ramiel . . . I am embarrassed.” She tilted her chin, daring him to mock her. “I have never been naked . . . like this.”

  “You said you wanted to give me pleasure,” he challenged her rawly. “That you wanted to bring wonder to someone.”

  Her chin lifted higher. “I did. I do.”

  “Then, let me be that someone. Tell me to touch you, taalibba. Raise your leg and open your body so that I can reach inside of you and tell me to touch you.”

  Her pulse raced in her throat; steam trickled down between her breasts. She stood poised for an endless heartbeat before awkwardly freeing her right foot from the trappings of her drawers, sodden petticoats, and velvet skirt. Lifting her leg, she perched a square-heeled slipper onto the edge of the water-rimmed tub.

  His body clenched at the sight of the black patent-leather shoe, lingered on the black silk bow fastening across the top of her narrow foot, slowly traversed the length of the flesh-colored stocking to the V of her thighs and the delicate inner lips peeping out from auburn curls, rose-tinted like her nipples. A drop of pearly moisture glistened on the inside of her thigh.

  Sharp need stabbed through his groin. That pearl of moisture did not result from shock.

  “Please touch me, Ramiel.” Her voice shook. With nervousness. With desire at this unfamiliar game between a man and a woman. “Reach into my body and show me how to take all of you inside me.”

  Heart slamming against his ribs, he stepped closer, closer yet, until he felt the heat of her exposed body. Curving his left hand about her right hip to steady her, he feathered her auburn bush with his right hand, tested the plumpness of her lips and the slickness of her feminine moisture.

  She grabbed his shoulders, forging a primordial link, man touching woman, woman touching man.

  There was passion in her eyes and there was him, two miniature blond heads, two sets of bastard turquoise eyes. He combed through her damp fringe of pubic hair, lightly sawed a finger back and forth until her lips parted and furled about him like a hothouse flower.

  “Did he touch you like this?” he asked in a low, choked voice, hating himself for asking but unable to stop the question. If Petre or her father had not tried to kill her she would still be with her husband.

  The desire dimmed in her eyes. She wedged her hands between their bodies—she was going to push him away.

  He touched her hot, wet portal, fingertip circling the place that she had offered Petre after Ramiel had aroused her. “Did he touch you here?”

  Elizabeth stilled, sensing the danger of his mood. “Edward has not touched me—ever. He came into my bed and shoved himself into me, then it was over and he was gone. And he has not even done that in twelve and a half years. All he wanted to do was to make me pregnant. No one has ever touched me, Ramiel. No one but you.”

  Ramiel closed his eyes, blocking out her pain, his pain, his fingertip swirling and swirling against the hot wetness of her, teaching her to accept his touch, preparing her for the moment when something far larger would seek entrance. “But you would have taken him inside you last Saturday. You used the things I had taught you that aroused me to seduce another man.”

  “No.” She twined her fingers into the mat of dark blond hair that covered his chest. “No, I could not do that.”

  He opened his eyes, fighting the anger, the hurt, needing to lose himself inside her body, needing her to lose herself inside his body. “Then relax down here.” He pressed his finger against her only to have her muscles tightly clench, blocking entrance. “Take me inside you.”

  She slid her hands up his chest and grasped his shoulders, breasts rising, offering themselves to his mouth. “I am trying, Ramiel. I want to take you inside me.”

  Forbidden memories, unwanted memories flickered to life.

  Sliding his left hand over the soft roundness of her hip, Ramiel reached back and grasped her heart-shaped buttocks to hold her still. “Let me help you take me, taalibba.” Let me help you make me forget. “When I touch you here”—he slid his finger back up through the moist folds of her flesh and found the hard little bud whose sole purpose is to give a woman pleasure, caressed it for long seconds—“hold yourself open. And when I slide down here”—he matched his actions with his words, teasing her portal that was tensely closed—“push your hips forward to press your clitoris against the palm of my hand.

  “Now. My finger is on your clitoris.” She strained against his hand. It would not take much to make her orgasm, but he did not want that for her yet. “And now I am sliding down.”

  She instinctively thrust her hips upward to retain contact, portal relaxed, unguarded. His finger sank home deep inside her, stretching her where she had not been stretched in over twelve years.

  Elizabeth convulsed around his finger. “Ramiel, take it out. I am not pre—”

  He took her cry into his mouth, thrusting his tongue inside her to counteract the small invasion between her other lips. If she had fought him, if she had shown in any way that she truly was not ready for penetration, he would have eased out of her. But she did not.

  He could feel her entire body trembling, not entirely with passion. She was not prepared for the reality of a man or the intensity of his desire. But she soon would be.

  Gently, he licked the roof of her mouth while he eased his finger more deeply inside her until his progress was stopped by an inner h
ardness, the mouth of her womb. Ramiel raised his head and looked at her swollen lips, at her breasts that quivered with each breath, at the white skin of her stomach, her auburn fleece, and the dark line of his wrist disappearing between her legs.

  “Does this hurt?” He delicately prodded the hard dimple of her cervix.

  She fought for composure. “It burns. And there is . . . pressure. This is not what I came for. I want to give you pleasure.”

  He prodded again. “Shhh. Not yet. Let me show you how to take me. . . . This is the opening to your womb. Here is where a woman takes a man’s seed and later opens up to give him his child. I’m going to insert another finger inside you.”

  Her silky tissue pulsed around him. Her nails sank into his shoulder. “Please . . .”

  Please don’t hurt her. Please give her pleasure.

  Please don’t reject me.

  He lowered his head in a whisper of a kiss. “Always so polite. I am not your husband, taalibba. I don’t want your politeness. I want you to moan and groan and beg me to take you.”

  Her nails sank into his shoulders. “Intimacy is not very dignified.”

  “No, sex is not very dignified,” he agreed. And gave her a second finger. He took her cry, a high, keening sound of unbearable pleasure and unbearable pressure.

  She was so tight. Ramiel did not remember ever having a virgin who was this tight.

  He probed her mouth while he probed her body; her tongue tentatively stroked his while his fingertips firmly stroked the mouth of her womb. Pressing gently, inexorably, he explored the back of her vagina, searching, pushing higher, deeper . . . forcing his way until suddenly her body yawned open and his fingers were clamped inside the special pocket behind the cervix that affords a large man an extra couple of inches.

  Hot air filled his mouth, Elizabeth’s breath. Her inner flesh nipped his fingertips in a painfully tight vise. “This is the special place, taalibba.” He gently thrust his two fingers back and forth, careful not to withdraw from the tight pocket. “When I come inside you and the pressure or the pain becomes too great because I am entering you too deeply, remember to tilt your hips so that I will slide past your cervix and enter here.”