She squeezed her eyelids shut. Steam misted her face, dripped from the tip of her nose. “I did not know a man could enter a woman this deeply.”
He kissed the drop of steam off her nose. “This is just two fingers, taalibba. There is more. Much, much more.”
Slowly, gently, he withdrew, feeling her body clutch him as if to keep him in her special place, their special place now, no one had ever penetrated her as deeply as he had, as deeply as he was going to enter her. He eased out of her vagina, slid upward, and found her swollen little bud. It pulsed frenetically underneath his wet fingertips.
“Tell me to touch you, taalibba,” he whispered thickly into her mouth.
“Touch me, Ramiel,” she whispered back, breath searing his lips.
“Where? Tell me where to touch you.”
She clutched his shoulders, straining closer toward his caressing fingers. “There. Please. There.”
“You don’t want me to touch you inside?”
She panted softly into his mouth, body bearing down against his circling fingertips. “Yes. Please touch me inside—oh there, yes, please don’t stop!”
“Tilt your hips.”
He deliberately strummed the turgid little shaft of her clitoris through the soft, moist lips of her labia while he lightly licked the seam of her mouth. She tilted her hips forward, arching into the palm of his hand to gain the pressure she needed.
“Now tell me to stick three fingers inside of your special place.”
“Three—”
Ramiel could hear her unspoken words, too much, she could not accept a third finger, she had barely taken two. “Tell me, taalibba.”
She licked her lips, encountered his. “Please stick three fingers inside of my special place, only please, please—”
Savage pleasure surged through Ramiel. Slanting his mouth over hers, he sucked her tongue inside his mouth . . . and thrust three fingers inside her body, open for him in that unguarded moment, anticipating a caress instead of invasion.
She grabbed his hair and pulled, sharing her pain as he butted up against the dimpled cervix.
“Tilt your hips, Elizabeth. Take me, taalibba. If you can’t take three fingers now, you’ll never be able to take all of me later.”
A little sob filled his mouth, and then she tilted her hips forward and he found the special place inside her body. She clamped down on his fingertips so tightly that he could not withdraw even if he wanted to.
He buried his face into the crook of her neck; steam and sweat dripped off his forehead. She smelled faintly of gas; overriding it was the scent of her, of hot, moist skin and even hotter desire.
“Why didn’t you come home with me last night?” The tight inner core of her pulsed in time to his heartbeat. Slick feminine desire leaked from her body, pooled in the palm of his hand. He tightened his fingers around a deliciously soft, plump cheek—How could she think that she forced herself upon him when all he wanted was for her to come to him, for him, with him?—and pulled her closer, needing the reality of her sex, the assurance of her body. “Why did you risk death rather than come to me?”
Moisture trailed down his shoulder, steam, sweat, tears. She rubbed her cheek against him, skin slick against skin, outside, inside. “My sons. Edward threatened to take my sons away from me.”
Salt burned his eyes. “Would you have come to me last night . . . if it had been only you?”
“Yes.” He felt the word all through his body, the movement of her lips against his shoulder, the dark heat of her breath, the soft sigh of sound.
“Just for this?” He wiggled his fingertips deep inside her.
“No, for something more.”
“You would bond with a bastard?”
“I would bond with you.”
Ramiel buried his face more deeply into her neck, melting, his fingers, the last nine years of his life, the anger, the jealousy borne of fear. He was a man. For her he was a man, and that was more than enough.
“I will not let him take your sons away from you, taalibba. As long as we are together, you will be safe. You must trust me.”
“I have three of your fingers inside me, sir.” The tart primness of her voice was spoiled by an inner trembling. “I must trust you, or I would not be here.”
He would protect that trust. No matter what the cost. He had the knowledge. Petre had given him the means.
“Let me bathe you.”
Let me remove the last remnants of Edward Petre from your skin.
“Now?”
Her body had relaxed around his fingers; she was almost ready.
“Now.”
“Ramiel, I hardly think—”
“Trust me, taalibba.”
“But I need to remove my stockings and shoes—”
“When it is time I will remove them.”
“Ramiel, I am afraid.”
“Not of this, Elizabeth. Don’t be afraid of this.”
Her hazel eyes flickered with uncertainty. “Do you tremble with passion, Lord Safyre?”
The memories of their lessons were there, a part of her as surely as his fingers were now a part of her.
“I tremble with passion, taalibba. For you.”
“You will bathe me . . . how?”
“With my tongue. While my fingers hold you open for me.”
Her muscles reflexively tightened. “A woman trembles in her passion too.”
A pained smile twisted his lips. “I know.”
“What if I fall?”
For answer he knelt down on the wet bundle of her clothing and breathed in the scent of her, savored the sight of her, embracing him. The dark skin of his fingers disappeared inside a rose-tinted ring of flesh. Glistening drops of feminine desire dripped down his palm.
A flash of flesh-colored stocking folding inward caught his eyes. At the same time, her muscles clenched around the base of his fingers.
His left hand shot out, grabbed her thigh. “Keep your foot on the tub, taalibba.”
“You can see me.”
“And smell you.” He leaned closer. “And taste you.” He nuzzled her damp auburn fleece with his nose, flicked her with his tongue. “And kiss you.”
She tangled her fingers into his hair. “I will fall.”
He raised his head and met her stare. Fear. Recognition. A need that was as much pain as pleasure. It was all there in her hazel eyes.
“I won’t let you fall, taalibba.” Leaning forward, he sucked the swollen bud of her clitoris between his lips, bathed the petal-soft folds of her flesh with his tongue, explored the hardness of his hand and the hot, wet opening stretched paper-thin to take his three fingers. He licked her, licked her off his hand, licked her until he knew every nuance, every fold, every texture of her. Spreading his fingers, he licked through the spaces and tasted the very essence of her. Ramiel licked and licked until all that held her up was the pillar of his fingers between her thighs and his hand gripping her buttocks.
Elizabeth suddenly yanked so hard on his hair that his head tilted back. “I need you, Ramiel. Now. Please. Come inside me. You. Not your fingers. Please don’t let me be alone now.”
Her hoarse voice matched his need.
“I don’t have anything down here to protect you.”
Comprehension dawned on her flushed face. The thought of pregnancy had never crossed her mind.
She released his hair, soothed the small pain away. “The Perfumed Garden . . . did it not include preventive measures?”
He leaned his head into the softness of her gently rounded abdomen and imagined it big with his child. And damned himself for the thought that if he impregnated her, she would give him the same devotion that she had given Edward Petre. “They are not infallible.”
“And what you have upstairs is?”
“No.”
Forcing himself to look up, he watched her swollen, reddened lips. They were compressed.
This was the reality of bonding with a bastard. Disgrace. Social ruin. Bearing the ch
ild of a bastard sheikh.
“I can give you this, Elizabeth.” He agitated his fingers inside of her; more moisture spilled down his hand. “But I cannot give you respectability. Not even if I wanted to.”
“What would you do if I . . . if we . . . if I did become pregnant?”
“I would watch you suckle our child. And then I would drink the milk our son or our daughter did not drink.”
Her lips quivered, relaxed. Her vagina tightened, pulsed. “I want you, Ramiel. Now. I am tired of sleeping alone. I want to feel your body inside mine. I want to know what it is like to give and take pleasure.”
Now she was ready.
“Then you shall have what you want.”
Chapter 20
One second Elizabeth was impossibly stretched with three fingers inside her while she gazed down into eyes so intensely turquoise, it was painful to look into them; the next second she was impossibly empty and her entire world turned topsy-turvy.
She clutched Ramiel’s shoulders, taut and corded from the strain of lifting her, half afraid he would drop her, half wishing he would. Was it not enough that he had seen every flaw, every stretch mark? Must he also know her weight? Must he continue to tease and taunt her? “I am quite capable of walking on my own,” she protested stiffly.
“You won’t be,” he murmured, brushing her lips with his. His mouth was hot and moist from her essence.
Searing heat shot through her body at the image of him watching her nurse . . . then drinking milk from her breasts.
“What . . . what type of preventive measures are you going to use?”
Ramiel tilted his head to one side, eyes lighting with familiar mockery. She was acutely conscious of his arm underneath her bare bottom. And the moisture that dripped from her breached body.
“Champagne, I think.”
“Champagne?” She stared at his chin; it was covered with golden brown stubble, the same shade as had been the hair around his manhood. “The Arabs drank champagne . . . three hundred years ago?”
“Probably.” His lips were shiny wet . . . from her.
He had seen her. Smelled her. Tasted her.
“I hardly think getting inebriated is going to prevent pregnancy.”
He smiled, flashing white teeth. “I was thinking of a champagne douche. Followed by a champagne lunch.”
She tried to squeeze the memory out of her head, failed. “At my wedding breakfast I was allowed one glass of champagne.”
“Then today you shall have an entire bottle.”
The special place that he had found inside her body burned and throbbed at the erotic image his words conjured. Surely he did not mean . . .
Her gaze leapt up to his, only a heartbeat away. Carnal knowledge glittered in their depths. Of her. Of her needs.
“You are not doing this out of pity, are you?”
His eyes darkened. “Elizabeth, a man does not taste a woman’s body because he pities her.”
“But you could do it out of kindness, I think.”
“I am half Arab. Arabs are not kind.”
“You are half English,” she insisted.
“And they are not kind either,” he replied dryly.
“You surely have known kindness from the countess.”
“Do not confuse kindness with love.” His breath was hot but a coldness settled behind his eyes. “I have known love, but there comes a time when it matters little if you are Arab or English. We cannot always be kind, especially to those we love.”
Elizabeth had known neither kindness nor love with her husband. She would not allow fear to destroy the opportunity of experiencing one if not the other.
“The champagne will not be chilled, I hope.”
The coldness in his eyes vanished. Laughter rumbled out of his chest; it shook her entire body. “It will be an experience, taalibba, for the both of us.”
A pulse throbbed at the base of his neck. “You have never before . . . administered a champagne douche?”
“There has been no need. If you prefer, we will go upstairs to my bedroom. I have condoms there.”
Elizabeth took a steadying breath. “I do not want you to use a condom. I want to feel your flesh inside of my flesh. I want to feel you ejaculate inside of me.” Out of pleasure instead of duty. “And then I want you to fill me with champagne and drink from me.”
His mouth took her breath away. She squeezed her eyelids together and opened her mouth for him. There was hard masculine intent in his kiss, but there was tenderness too. His tongue was an uncompromising invasion; it imitated the motions his fingers had established earlier.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer, wanting the thrust of his tongue, the thrust of his fingers, the thrust of his manhood. No man had ever wanted her. Virtue seemed cold compensation. Death colder yet.
An icy hardness impacted her naked buttocks. She instinctively released the warm column of a neck for the support of—a ceramic iris. He had set her down by the edge of the swimming bath.
A splash exploded in the silence; warm drops of water sprayed her breasts.
Elizabeth’s gaze darted up—Ramiel stood in the swimming bath. Dark blond hair arrowed down his abdomen and curled around the base of a large, thick penis. The bulbous purple crown of it skimmed the rippling water.
She was about to do the unforgivable. She was going to have sex with a man who was not her husband. A man society called the Bastard Sheikh. A bastard who could give her a bastard.
Elizabeth studied the solid length of him. He could hurt her. He could reject her. He would prove once and for all that there was more to the joining of a man and a woman than empty, lonely frustration.
As if aware of her thoughts, he waded toward her and grabbed her ankles. She followed his gaze, peered at the black-patent slippers and the flesh-colored stockings that bit into her thighs. There was indeed something rather lascivious in a woman thus dressed.
The hard heat banding her ankles tugged her across the cold ceramic tiles that separated them. “Scoot forward, bend your knees, and plant your feet wide apart on the edge of the bath.”
Her head snapped up. He had seen her when she had one leg raised onto the tub, but this—“I will be—indecent.”
“You will be wide open and totally accessible. Lebeuss el djoureb, taalibba. Only I will be standing instead of sitting. With you spread out before me . . . so that I can rub my verge against your vulva . . . and knock at the door of your vagina . . . until you are so wet . . . and so open . . . that you will swallow me whole.”
The note.
He remembered.
She had her own memories. He wanted a warm, wet, wanton woman who was not afraid of her sexuality or ashamed of satisfying her needs.
“Is this a part of bonding?”
Ramiel did not pretend to misunderstand her. “Lust is a part of bonding, taalibba. But lust is easily satisfied. It does not require that a woman open herself so completely to a man that she is vulnerable to his every touch, his every desire.”
As he wanted her to be open for him.
Watching his darkly intent face, she scooted forward, bent her knees, and spread them wide for his delectation.
The moist heat rising from the water was a warm caress. She felt as if he could see inside her body, as if her flesh pouted open where he had penetrated her with his fingers. He firmly positioned her feet on the edge of the tiles; she supported herself on the heels of her palms.
“No regrets, Elizabeth.”
Her breasts shimmied with the force of her pounding heart; she sucked in warm, misty air.
“No regrets, Ramiel. I did not regret dancing with you last night. I regretted only that we did not do this.”
His fingers tightened around her ankles; he stretched them even farther apart. “Lean back on your hands.”
She would not look away from his desire . . . or hers. “I want to watch. I want to know—everything.”
Every little touch that she had been denied the
last sixteen years.
He reached down and lifted his erect manhood for her perusal. The purple head was far larger than had been the artificial phallus.
Slowly, deliberately, he guided himself to her splayed body. “Then watch.”
Scalding heat notched her vagina.
She gasped. He gasped.
Electricity had singed her fingertip when she had touched his lip. This—this was like being rent apart by lightning.
Her gaze shot up from where their bodies touched.
His gaze was waiting for hers.
“You—it’s hot.” Almost as hot as his turquoise eyes.
“So are you, taalibba.” Scalding heat spread up from her vagina, nudged apart the lips of her labia, rubbed back and forth until she was totally open and her passion mingled with his. “Like molten silk.”
She struggled to regulate her breathing, failed. “I can feel you pulsing against me, like a tiny heartbeat. Will it be like that when you are inside me?”
His eyelids drooped; she followed his gaze. Her glistening pink lips were spread wide by the engorged purple crown. Even as she watched, it slipped lower. The bulbous knob of him notched the slick heat of her, a kiss of sex, pressing but not entering, making her feel the muscles in his body straining to thrust while he felt the muscles of her body straining to adjust.
“Do you feel me pulsing now?”
“Yes.” Oh, God. Yes.
His pulse. Her pulse. She could feel it all. See it all.
He rocked gently against her, her wetness lapping at the crown of him while the water lapped around his thighs. As if drawn by her delicate folds and creases, he again sandwiched himself between the lips of her labia. Reaching out with his left hand, he spread them wider, revealed the little hard bud of her clitoris. He twirled the bulbous knob of his manhood around and around it, the most sensitive part of him against the most sensitive part of her.
Liquid heat surged inside her. She was melting. Or he was. They were both wet and hard there.
“Tilt your hips.”
Elizabeth automatically obeyed, watching the miracle of a man and a woman, her auburn curls pressed flat by his dusky brown hand while his other hand guided the purple knob of his verge, bigger than a plum, harder, hotter . . . It slid down the wet slide he had created, and then there was pressure that was more than pressure followed by an internal popping sensation and the thick bulb of him was fully encased inside her.
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