Robin Schone

by The Lady's Tutor

  Tears stung her eyes. She wanted to weep for the pain she had caused him, but now was not the time for tears.

  “I cannot change the past.”

  He tilted his head back, as if the sight of her were more than he could bear. “I cannot change the past either.”

  But he wanted to.

  A pulse throbbed at the base of his throat, or perhaps it was the flicker of gaslight.

  “You never told me what bahebbik means.”

  Dark shadows slashed his cheeks—his eyelashes. “You didn’t stay.”

  No. He had asked her to come home with him even after she had thrown unforgivably cruel accustations at him, and she had rejected him. Like Lord Inchcape. Like Rebecca Walters.

  It was not supposed to be like this.

  Hands trembling, she released the buttons on the cloak. Warm silk slithered down her back, her shoulders, her arms, leaving a trail of goose bumps in its wake. Velvet puddled around her feet. And still he would not look at her.

  A spark of anger warmed her skin. “I cannot seduce you if you will not look at me.”

  Ramiel lowered his head and opened his eyes.

  Elizabeth remembered the marble clock ticking on the mantel in Rebecca’s house. It had been far less frightening facing her mother than it was now, standing naked in front of this man who had once trembled with passion for her but who now stared at her as if she were a stranger. Or a horse to be sold at auction.

  Cold, relentless eyes weighed the heaviness of her breasts, judged the fullness of her hips, fastened onto her pubes, as hairless as the day she had been born—the manner, the countess had assured her, in which all Arab women greeted their men.

  His turquoise eyes snapped upward. “What if I do not want to be seduced?”

  Elizabeth faced the very real possibility of his rejection and knew that she would not turn back. She had the knowledge and she had the courage—she hoped.

  Reaching up—his gaze flickered to her armpits, hairless as was her pubes—she released the pins that loosely secured her bun, dropped them to the Oriental carpet. Warm, heavy hair cascaded down her back, familiar as her role of seductress was not. “Then I will make you want to be seduced,” she promised with a confidence she was far from feeling.

  Acutely conscious of the sway of her breasts and the friction of her thighs pressing in on lips that were not meant to be so boldly exposed on an Englishwoman, she kicked off her slippers and closed the distance between them. Stepping around the massive mahogany desk, she knelt on the floor, hid a grimace. The carpet was cold and rough on bare knees.

  Ramiel swiveled the chair around, legs slightly spread, eyes veiled. His hands rested on the arms of the chair, fingers curved to fit the wood instead of her body. One side of his face was in shadow, the other cast in flickering gaslight. “Are you not curious, Elizabeth? Do you not want to know the difference between a man and a woman?”

  He was trying to drive her away—as she had driven him away two weeks before.

  “Would you tell me if I did?”

  Darkness glimmered in his turquoise eyes. “The Uranian fellowship is no longer a part of the Eton curriculum.”

  “You said you would keep the secret.”

  That ugly smile curled his lips again. “And so I did. Richard is much like you. He does not run from the truth. He told the dean of his experience.”

  “But he told you first.” Things he had not told Elizabeth, any more than he had told her about informing the dean of the fellowship. Ramiel, she realized, was the “someone” who had made it “all right” for her son.

  His lips tightened in harsh betrayal. “He was not supposed to tell you.”

  “He did not. You did.”

  “I don’t want your gratitude,” he grated.

  “I know what you want, Ramiel.” He wanted what she wanted. “And I am going to give it to you.”

  Ramiel could not hide the bulge in his black trousers. “What do you think I want, Elizabeth?”

  What could a woman like her possibly know about the wants of a man like him? is what he really said.

  Elizabeth took a deep breath, placed her hands on his thighs. His muscles underneath the broadcloth were rock hard—he was not as removed as he pretended to be. “I think . . . that you want me to unfasten your trousers and take your life into my hands.”

  The muscles underneath her hands jerked, recollection instantaneous. “The second lesson.”

  “The second lesson,” she agreed. And wrestled with his buttons.

  It was not at all a dignified struggle—undressing a man who sat as still as a statue was as difficult as dressing a squirming three-year-old boy—but the rewards . . . Dark blond hair filled the widening vent.

  Breath bated, she reached inside his trousers and delicately pulled out the thick stalk of living, pulsing flesh. He was hard and hot and filled both her hands. She did not have to pump his manhood to coax the sensitive crown out from the hood of the foreskin.

  Elizabeth studied him from underneath her eyelids. A drop of moisture pearled the tip of the engorged purple head.

  “I think you want me to take you into my mouth and lick and suckle you like a nipple.” She lifted her eyelids, snared his gaze. “Like you did my clitoris.”

  The fifth lesson.

  Ramiel’s intake of breath filled the silence. An ember popped in the fireplace. His manhood, lovingly cupped in her hands, flexed. Lowering her head, she inhaled his scent, musky with a hint of Eastern spices, tasted the essence of him with the tip of her tongue before sucking him deep inside her mouth.

  The countess had said if she relaxed her muscles, she could take him more deeply.

  It worked.

  A low, guttural groan ripped out of his chest, pure, unadulterated music to her ears. This was a woman’s power; this was the wonder of sex—this was Ramiel.

  He arched into the wet heat of her mouth. The huge bulb of him pulsed deep inside her throat, a part of her. A matching pulse leapt to life between her thighs.

  Elizabeth took as much of Ramiel as she could, swallowing him again and again, licking him like she would a—did Arabs have lollipops? she wondered. And then she did not wonder about anything, lost in the smell and taste and the silky smooth texture of him. There was no champagne to camouflage his flavor. He was, quite incredibly, the most delicious thing she had ever eaten.

  When she could feel trembles rack his body, Elizabeth released him with an audible popping sound and was not at all concerned that it was not dignified. Ramiel’s dark face was flushed with sexual arousal, his turquoise eyes bright. He gripped the wooden chair arms as if holding the reins on a runaway horse.

  Keeping her eyes on his, she placed a soft kiss on the throbbing crown of his penis.

  The skin over his knuckles whitened.

  “I think,” she whispered, deliberately bathing him with her hot breath, “that you want me to take off your shirt and nibble on your nipples.”

  The third lesson.

  Seducing a man was strangely erotic. Elizabeth forgot that she had stretch marks on her hips or that Edward had said she had udders.

  Standing up, she pulled his shirt out of the band of his trousers. Her breasts, heavy and swollen, swayed in his face—and it felt good to be naked and unashamed. She tugged at the slick white silk until he raised his arms, a reluctant participant in his own seduction.

  His nipples were hard. As were hers.

  She touched herself briefly, a hard nub of flesh; then she touched him, an even harder nub of flesh. His skin burned.

  Suddenly, the shirt was wrenched out of her fingers. Ramiel jerked it over his head and tossed it aside. Male challenge and raw need glittered in his turquoise eyes. “Why are you doing this?”

  She would not back down. With Edward, yes, but never with this man.

  “I thought that was rather obvious. Do you not want me to nibble on your nipples, Ramiel?”

  “I want you to tell me what you think you are doing.”

  �
��I am seducing my tutor.”

  “Why?”

  She did not flinch away from his gaze. “Because I lied to you when I told you that I regretted coming to you.”

  “And when you told me I was no different from your husband and your father? Did you lie then?”

  Ramiel was nothing at all like Edward.

  “Yes.”

  “I cannot be what you want me to be, Elizabeth.”

  Kneeling again, Elizabeth rested her hands on his thighs; his heat warmed her fingers. “But you are. And now, if you do not mind, I find that I quite like seducing you.”

  Leaning forward, she delicately licked the hard bud of his left nipple before taking it between her teeth and gently worrying it. His heart pounded against her lips; his chest hair tickled her chin. Laving him with her tongue—wanting to please him, wanting to please herself, wanting to end the pain and the mistrust—she suckled him as if she could take nourishment from him.

  She could. When she touched him, he became the focus of her entire world. And it was all right.

  Heat cupped her head—his hands. Liquid warmth flowed through her body. His thighs that she blindly clenched opened; she leaned into the welcoming warmth of his veed legs until the moist crown of his manhood pulsed against her stomach and she drew and drew upon his nipple, drew until it was harder than a pebble and he tangled his hands into her hair and yanked her head back. He stared at her lips, swollen from suckling him. At her breasts, swollen from wanting him.

  “What else do you think I want?” His voice was a dark rasp.

  “I think you want me to sit on your lap, dok el arz, so that I can take you inside my body so deeply that our pubic hair meshes. So deeply that you cannot withdraw, not even an inch. I think you want me to grip you so tightly that your testicles ache for release, so tightly that the only thing you can thrust inside me is your tongue while you grind your pelvis against mine.”

  Ramiel’s nostrils flared. “You don’t have any pubic hair.”

  Elizabeth was abruptly, agonizingly aware of the fact that he wore trousers and she was naked—of both clothing and body hair. She had been so intent upon showing him that she could please him as well as a woman from the East that she had forgotten the one simple precept: In the fourth lesson he had specifically told her that he wanted a woman’s pubic hair to blend with his.

  She stiffened. What had ever made her think that a woman like her, a woman who was not in her prime, could seduce a man like Ramiel? “I’m sorry.”

  “Will you marry me?”

  She had forgotten . . . so many things. “Muhamed would not approve.”

  Ramiel’s fingers tightened in her hair, not causing pain exactly, but not exactly gentle. “Muhamed is gone.”

  She had not meant to come between the two men.

  “Will he return?”

  “Perhaps. He went back to Cornwall. To see his family.” Loneliness reverberated inside Ramiel’s voice; he had lost the last living remnant of a country that had exiled him. “Perhaps he will find some peace there. Will you marry me?”

  Marry . . . the Bastard Sheikh.

  “I would be honored.”

  A sharp creak of protesting wood cracked the air and suddenly Elizabeth was straddling his knees and the wet heat of her penetrated the broadcloth of his trousers. She grabbed for his shoulders.

  “Lift your legs and put them over the arms of the chair.”

  Elizabeth squeezed her eyelids shut to block out the blazing light in his beautiful turquoise eyes. “It is not going to work, Ramiel.”

  Coldness. Elizabeth had never known that heat could turn into ice between one heartbeat and the next. Even though his arms continued to hold her securely, she could feel his withdrawal. “Why not, Elizabeth?”

  She forced her eyes open and confronted the truth. “The wooden arms of a chair simply are not designed to accommodate a woman’s legs.”

  Laughter glinted in his eyes. Without warning, he grasped her right thigh and lifted it for her, hooking it over the wooden arm of the chair. She dug her fingernails into his shoulder.

  A woman was not made to sit in this position. It was uncomfortable; the wood dug into her soft flesh. It forced open the lips of her denuded vulva so that no flaw was concealed. “Ramiel—”

  His turquoise eyes waited, all laughter gone.

  Elizabeth took a deep breath. And awkwardly lifted her left leg over the wooden obstruction. She was totally open, totally exposed for his perusal. The length of his manhood lay between them, purple tipped. It pointed toward her glistening pink vulva.

  She dragged her gaze away from the evocative sight of a man and a woman’s passion—and met his. “I want to make you knock at my door.” Her voice shook with the force of her desire. “And when I put you inside me I want you to know that I accept you for who and what you are.”

  “Do you, Elizabeth?” The gas lamp flared, throwing the right side of his face into sharp relief.

  “Yes, I do,” she said firmly. “And you will demonstrate that you trust me implicitly by allowing me to put you inside me.”

  Moisture oozed out of her splayed body. He glanced down; she did not have to look to see what he saw: her flesh, her needs. Darkness suddenly seemed to envelop both sides of his face. “Then make me knock, taalibba.”

  Before she could discern his intent, he grasped her buttocks and lifted her up and inward until her breasts pressed into the scalding hot wall of his chest and his manhood lay directly underneath her. Cold air invaded flesh that was not meant to be invaded; it matched the chill that plied her dangling feet.

  Biting her lip, she released his right shoulder and wormed her hand between them. Ramiel audibly gritted his teeth when her fingers fastened around the electrifying heat of him. Burying her face against the prickly haven of his neck, she guided the plum-shaped head of him to her vagina, so wet and vulnerable, his own flesh so hard and unyielding. She nudged and pushed and nudged and pushed until she ached, and she knew that he must ache too, holding her up. His arms were corded with strain; they trembled, or perhaps it was she who trembled, poised on the verge of a new life.

  Raising her head, she looked into his turquoise eyes, only inches away from hers, and all resistance vanished from her body. She opened up and swallowed him in hot welcome and yes, it was a moment of bonding. Her breath whooshed from her lungs.

  “Would you go to Arabia with me?”

  Her muscles convulsed in protest, in greed. “To live?”

  The countess had said that women were worth less than a horse.

  “Perhaps.”

  “But my sons . . .”

  “Can join us.”

  Fear. Uncertainty. His. Hers. Theirs.

  “Yes. I would go to Arabia with you. Phillip said he wants to become a jinni.”

  The heat that flared in his eyes almost blinded her. “You will be very sensitive with no hair to cushion you.”

  She gulped air. “Is that a hindrance?”

  His smile was a sexual promise. “Not for me,” he whispered. And slowly, inexorably, lowered her onto him, pushing deeper, deeper yet, until his pubic hair nestled her clitoris and a button burrowed into her buttocks.

  She had forgotten how deeply a man could occupy a woman. Or how vulnerable was a woman’s swollen flesh.

  Elizabeth inhaled sharply, button forgotten, fingernails digging into his shoulder, body clenching to forestall further invasion, but there was more. He gave her his breath, then took hers when he hooked his arms underneath her outstretched thighs and pushed them higher, wider, grinding the last two inches inside her so that he could find their special place, and she took him.

  “It was not my preference,” he gasped.

  She gasped with him when he ground up inside her, caught between pleasure and pain. “What?”

  “My half brother. I did not realize how jealous he had always been of my relationship with the sheikh. When I . . . bought something that he wanted . . . he sneaked into my chambers while I slept . . . a
nd he . . . toyed with me. When I woke up, his eunuchs held me down and he raped me. I killed him.”

  A month ago she would have been shocked. Horrified. Now she felt only compassion at the pain he had endured.

  “You did not tell your father.”

  “No.”

  But he had told her. Implicit trust.

  Self-loathing dulled the passion in his turquoise eyes. “In sleep, Elizabeth, the touch of a man is as pleasurable as that of a woman.”

  “But you felt no pleasure when you woke up.”

  “No.” Events and emotions that she could not even begin to fathom reverberated inside the simple word.

  Elizabeth leaned her forehead against his. “I enrolled Richard and Phillip in Harrow today. Just before I left, Richard said, ‘I love you, Mum. Please don’t blame yourself for what happened. I don’t.’

  “I love you, Ramiel. Please don’t blame yourself for what happened in the past. I don’t.” Angling her head, she swiped his cheek with her tongue, tasted tears. “Let me make it better for you. Let me love you.”

  His head swooped down; he captured her breath into his mouth then gave her his when he ground his pelvis against hers, body grinding, tongue thrusting, dok el arz, belly to belly, mouth to mouth, her desires, his desires, they were one. He ground and ground into her, dok, until they were both slick with sex and sweat and her climax erupted inside her body while words erupted inside her mouth. “I love you.”

  She forced her head up and her eyes open. “What?”

  “Bahebbik. I love you.”

  No. She would not cry. “How does a woman say it . . . in Arabic?”

  “Bahebbak.”

  “Bahebbak, Ramiel.” And then, before all reason was again lost in the churning, grinding motions, “Do the Arabs have a word for lollipop?”

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  The first English translation of The Perfumed Garden of the Cheikh Nefzaoui was published in 1886 in a series of small volumes. They did not give credit to the translator, who is, of course, Sir Richard Burton. Neither did the second edition, which combined the series into a single book that was released later that same year.

  It is this second edition that I refer to and, indeed, quote from in The Lady’s Tutor. I took poetic license in the fact that my book opens up in February of 1886, with my hero presenting the second edition to my heroine as a textbook for learning how to give a man pleasure. In actuality, the second edition came out later that year. Also, in order to avoid confusion, I anglicized the spelling of ‘Cheikh’ to ‘Sheikh.’