Her flesh frantically tightened around him, too late. It burned. It stung. He felt as big as a fist and she was not prepared for this melding.
Ramiel glanced up from where he pierced her and captured her gaze. Purposefully, he eased another inch inside her while her body strained to accommodate him.
“Can you still feel me pulsing?”
“Yes.” It matched the beat of her heart. She gritted her teeth. “I do not think we are going to fit, Ramiel.”
“We will fit, taalibba.”
Still holding her gaze, he slowly pulled out of her; she was so wet, she heard as well as felt him when he exited her, the tinkler, and he was right—the English language did not do justice to the Arabic reality. She burned and throbbed where he had penetrated her. He made her burn and throb even more, rubbing and rubbing the hot, pulsing heat of him against the hard little bud that she had never seen before, only felt, holding it exposed as her portal was exposed.
Elizabeth could feel herself sinking, sinking into a world where there was only a man and a woman who were named Ramiel and Elizabeth. How could this be wrong?
“Tilt your hips.”
She involuntarily raised her hips to increase contact with her clitoris; there; she had never imagined a man could be so soft yet so hard. At the same time, Ramiel glided through the glistening pink lips of her labia and thrust, one man’s duty another man’s desire.
Why would anyone kill... to stop this?
“Wait . . . talk to me.” She panted as if he plugged her very lungs. “I feel like . . . I am falling.”
“That’s good,” he crooned. “That’s the way I want you to feel.”
She did not want to be the only one experiencing this incredible beauty. This was not what she had came for, to indulge her own selfish needs. “But what about you? I want you to feel what I feel.”
“Then take more of me, taalibba.”
“Oh . . .” Elizabeth braced herself against the tiles, body stretching, burning, taking him deeper, deeper. She desperately cast about in her thoughts for support. “What does El Ibn mean?”
“The son.” Slowly, slowly, he drew out of her—she could feel her flesh collapsing behind him. He returned to the swollen lips and her throbbing clitoris, she could see it pulsing, could feel the same pulse in him. “Tell me what you dreamed about.”
“What? . . .”
“This morning, you said you dreamed about me. Tilt your hips.”
He tunneled more deeply inside her.
She threw her head back in agonized pleasure and stared at the twenty-foot-high ceiling, at the turquoise ripples of water reflected off the white enamel paint.
“I dreamed that you suckled my breasts. And that I cradled your head against me while I nursed you.”
“Did you give me milk?”
“No.” The sound that escaped her mouth was more of a groan than a word.
“Would you like to?” She barely recognized his voice; it was strained and hoarse.
“Yes.” Even her voice matched his, she realized dimly.
It was not enough.
“Tell me.”
He held himself still. “Tell you what?”
“Tell me . . . how meritorious you are.”
The flesh pulsing inside her flexed. “Two of my handbreadths.”
Ten inches.
“Tell me how much of you is inside me. I want to know everything. I want to remember every detail of this.”
And maybe, just maybe she would be able to forget the long, lonely nights she had lain in a bed purchased by a man who had never wanted her. All of it made possible by a father who would kill her because she wanted more.
“A handbreadth, taalibba.”
Five inches.
“I want more. I want all of you.”
He gave her more.
“How much was that?” she gasped.
“An inch. Now take another.”
One more heart-stopping inch. And then—
“Oh, my God!” She scrambled for more purchase, for a firmer hold on reality.
“Look. Look at us.”
With difficulty Elizabeth brought her head back down and stared where they were joined. The hand holding her lips apart moved down and under her hip to provide her with an unobstructed view. Slippery moisture oozed from her body around the thick stalk that penetrated it. Their pubic hair, his dark blond, hers auburn, met but did not mingle. Two more inches to go.
“Do you feel the pulse, Elizabeth?”
“I feel it, Ramiel.” It throbbed against her cervix, a hot, blunt pressure.
Air rushed out of her lungs. He was drawing out of her, taking the pulse. She felt as if she were being cleaved in two, as if he were taking half her soul.
“Please come back.”
“In a moment.” He teased her with the plum-shaped purple knob that glistened with her slick desire, swirling around and around her clitoris, nudging her vagina, swirling, nudging, swirling. “Did you think of this when you rotated your hips on the mattress?”
Elizabeth had thought of many things that night. “Did I think of what?”
“Did you think that you would lie with me?”
She bore down on a spasm of pleasure. “No.”
Her voice was that of a woman enduring unbearable pain. Or pleasure. Elizabeth could no longer tell the difference.
“But you wanted to.”
“Yes . . . oh, my God!”
“Tilt your hips,” he hoarsely ordered, and then he was sinking inside her and her body opened up and swallowed him until her auburn pubic hair meshed with his dark blond hair and she was falling and there was nothing to catch her.
She had taken all of him and nothing in her life had prepared her for this melding, this bonding. He was a part of her, there was no room to catch her breath. “ ‘. . . Big as a virgin’s arm . . . with a round head . . . Measuring in length a span and a half,’ ” she quoted, half crying, half laughing.
Warm breath gusted the top of her head. “ ‘And, oh! I felt as though I had put it in a brazier,’ ” Ramiel finished the verse.
She felt like the brazier had been put into her.
“The sheikh knew even then.... A man and a woman were made for each other, to be like this . . . together.”
Ramiel had known too.
“There’s more, taalibba. Take down your hair.”
Elizabeth tore her gaze away from the indescribably erotic sight of their intimate embrace. She didn’t think she could survive anymore.
“Hold still.” He grasped her just below her breasts. “Let me hold you. Now . . . you can use both hands. Reach up. Take down your hair for me.”
More conscious of his body pulsing inside of her than she was of her own heartbeat, she slowly raised her arms. Elizabeth had never known there was pleasure that surpassed agony, but she knew it now. With each hairpin she removed, her vagina rippled around him; with each impact of a hairpin against a ceramic tile he pulsed against the back of her womb.
Her breath rasped in her throat, or perhaps it was his breath she heard. She did not know where one ended and the other began.
“Now shake your hair out.”
A warm net of flaming red silk spilled over her shoulders, her breasts, his hands. Her flesh undulated around his while the water gently slapped his thighs. Suddenly, she could no longer hold it back; she grabbed his shoulders and cried out as her entire body convulsed with pleasure. And then she really was falling.
A heavy weight pressed down on her, stealing what little breath remained in her lungs. Ramiel leaned over her, joining their bodies inside and out, crotch to chest.
Sweat glistened on his dark skin; a matching film covered her body. She could feel his heartbeat—it pounded against her breast, throbbed in the special place behind her womb. His hips spread her already splayed legs even farther apart while her inner flesh fluttered around him in the aftermath of her orgasm.
She closed her eyes against the overwhelming intensity in his.
Moisture. Breath. There was nothing that they did not share in their current position.
Why would anyone want to kill in order to prevent this intimate bonding between a man and a woman?
Warm, moist lips nuzzled her hair, her cheek, her eyes, her right ear. “Don’t cry, taalibba.”
It was ridiculous, crying over the most wonderful experience of her life. She had not been able to stop the tears last night when he had suckled her breasts either.
Elizabeth turned her face into his, into the silkiness of her own hair trapped between them and the prickly bristle of his unshaven cheek. “I never knew that a man could so fully occupy a woman. I never knew how beautiful... but what Edward did is so ugly. I couldn’t cry this morning. I couldn’t feel. It was just so . . . ugly.”
Ramiel shifted; she could feel the slight movement throughout her entire being. Hard, hot fingers soothed hair off her forehead, her cheeks.
“It’s all right, taalibba. Trust me. He will never hurt you again. I promise. Don’t cry. I will never let anyone hurt you or your sons. Don’t cry, taalibba.”
His hand trembled against her skin. With passion. For her.
He deserved more than tears from her.
She opened her eyes—and stared into his, mere inches away from her own. His gaze was dark, stark, more black than turquoise.
“When I exercised against the mattress, it was you I thought about, Ramiel,” she whispered.
He stilled.
She had yet to experience the full strength of his desire. And she wanted to.
Elizabeth threaded her fingers through his glorious mane of hair; it was far softer than the crinkly body hair that teased her nipples and abraded her stomach. “Perhaps I am a nymphomaniac. I can feel you pulsing against my womb and all I want to do is to take you more deeply inside me. Would you suckle my breasts, please?”
His body seemed to swell even larger inside hers. Between one breath and another he straightened, bringing her up with him.
She slapped her hands against the tile, but he held her securely, arms arching her back so that her chest jutted forward.
“Lift your breast. Feed it to me.”
There was no mistaking the blaze of fire in his eyes. She was about to receive everything—and more—that she had ever wanted from a man.
Hand trembling—it was all right for a woman to tremble with passion —she lifted a solid, heavy breast.
An udder.
No! Ramiel had said they were magnificent.
He bent over her, silky golden hair brushing her cheek, her shoulder, hot breath trailing down, down—he latched on to her nipple. Her hips jerked forward as electricity seemed to arc straight from her breast to her womb. A muffled sound erupted from his throat as if he felt it too, and then he was suckling her and grinding his pelvis into hers. Dok, the motion that made a man a pestle.
She gave him the female equivalent, hez, swinging her hips in lascivious accompaniment. It was impossible but the combined motions drove him deeper inside her body and it still was not enough.
Her right hand reached out, clawed at his hip, for his buttocks—she needed the pounding as well as the grinding.
Ramiel gave it to her, first drawing out and making short jabs that grew into long stabs and he was right, there was more, a hitherto unexplored world of sound as well as sensation, the slap of flesh, the ragged gasps of labored breathing, the churning of the water, the wet suction of her body that was opening like a flower in sunshine. The pop of his mouth when he released her nipple.
“Lie back,” he ordered harshly, straightening.
“Wait—”
But he did not wait. He hooked her knees over his arms and she fell with no support, nothing to hang on to but the hard, breath-whooshing drive of his thrusts slamming into her. A sharp thud echoed off the rippling ceiling; it was followed by another—she had lost her shoes. Her stockinged feet, thrust up into the air, jerked and kicked with each slap of his body against hers.
Elizabeth had never felt so open, had never known a woman’s body could withstand so much punishment and ache for more, too much, not enough, too hard, not hard enough, too deep, not deep enough. She could not breathe. There had to be an end—a woman could not survive such protracted pleasure.
When it ended, she did not think she would survive the culmination.
She cried out; every muscle in her body cried out with her, convulsing, contracting. Dimly, she heard a hoarse, answering cry. “Allah! God!”
Body slick with sweat and steam, Elizabeth held perfectly still, eyes closed, heart pounding, and felt a burst of scalding liquid deep inside the very core of her, the gift of Ramiel’s pleasure.
Home.
For seventeen years she had lived in the house of her parents; for sixteen years she had lived in Edward’s house. And she had never, ever once experienced this rush of homecoming.
She opened her eyes and stared up into his turquoise gaze. “Thank you.”
Sweat clung like raindrops to the stubble of his beard. Expression unreadable, he scooped her up, bodies still joined, and wrapped her stocking-clad legs around his waist. Turning, he waded into the swimming bath until warm water swelled her stockings and lapped her breasts. It rippled about them while her vagina rippled about his spent manhood.
“I can feel your seed. It’s hot.”
He gently twirled her around in the water, not answering, just staring into her eyes.
“What are we going to do?” she whispered, suddenly shy, remembering the echoes of her cries as she found release.
Perhaps she had disappointed him. Perhaps she had misread his invitation the night before. Perhaps she should have gone to a hotel.
His expression remained enigmatic. “What would you like to do?”
She would like to stay here with him, like this, until the insanity went away.
Elizabeth concentrated on the lapping waves of water instead of his impenetrable stare. “My maid is sleeping with the new footman and yet I am certain that it is she who alerted Edward to the fact that I was sneaking out of the house to meet with you. It is ironic, is it not? She found happiness, yet she would not allow me the same privilege. I think Edward hired someone to frighten me when I spoke for the Women’s Auxiliary. I am frightened. And I do not like being frightened.”
He continued to lazily circle around and around, the water caressing her on the outside, his manhood caressing her on the inside. “You are safe with me, taalibba. When did you speak for the Women’s Auxiliary?”
“Last Thursday night. I told you about running into the lamppost in the fog. But before that, after the meeting, the custodian mistook me for a prostitute and threatened to kill me. When I got home, Edward was waiting with the constable, as if he expected me to have been in an accident.”
Ramiel lowered his head; at the same time he hoisted her up higher in his arms. Flesh bridged flesh—his forehead annexing her forehead; the crown of his manhood butting her cervix. “What did the constable say?”
Elizabeth’s arms reflexively tightened around his neck. It was becoming increasingly hard to be frightened. “He said Edward was right to be worried over a wife who risks her life by not taking a companion with her and who then proceeds to get trapped in the fog.”
He kneaded her buttocks; the rhythmical motion alternately pushed and pulled at other, more vulnerable parts of her body. Water leaked into her stretched vagina.
“What did Petre say?”
“He—” She convulsively tightened her muscles, trying to cut off the flow of water. Ramiel’s manhood abruptly thickened, effectively stopping the leak. “He wanted me to dress for a dinner party. What are you doing?”
A smile crooked his lips. “I am plugging up the dike.”
She sucked in his breath, smelling his sweat, her sweat, the moist heat of the swimming bath. “Having plugged up the dike, what are you going to do next?”
His verge lengthened until it had nowhere to go; he tilted her hips and deftl
y thrust into the tight pocket behind her cervix.
“I am going to ring for champagne.”
Her breath caught in her throat. “And then?”
“I am going to give you a douche. Then I am going to lick you out and engage in the twenty-first manner, rekeud el aïr, riding the stallion. And you are going to straddle my hips and work your body up and down my kamera until you scream your release again and again.”
Chapter 21
Elizabeth awoke slowly, reluctantly. Muscles ached that had not ached since she gave birth to Phillip almost twelve years ago, yet she had never felt more relaxed in her life. A bubbly effervescence fizzled inside her body.
The sheets were warm, soft as silk. She took a deep breath, smelling musk, sweat, and—
Her eyelids snapped open. The sheets were soft as silk because they were silk. Her flesh fizzled because it had been a goblet for two bottles of champagne. Ramiel had filled her with sparkling wine and then he had teased her with the bottle until she had begged him to give her his tongue, his fingers, or his kamera and not necessarily one at a time.
A cold chill swept over Elizabeth’s body, bringing with it the memory of gas, its smell, its taste.
Her husband had tried to kill her.
The bed beside her was empty. It smelled of her, of him, of their unique scents commingled. Edward had never left his scent on her sheets.
Muted sunlight filtered through crimson silk drapes. Slowly, carefully, she sat up—it felt as if she had indeed been pierced by a “virgin’s” arm. Vanilla silk sheets and a crimson satin comforter puddled around her waist.
Her hair hung down her back in tangled disarray. Ramiel had wrapped it about his hands and pulled her face down to his when she straddled his hips and rode him like a stallion. She glanced down at her breasts. Her nipples were dark and swollen, from his suckling, from the abrasion of his fingers and from the prickly hair matting his chest.
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