Fascinated

Chapter One

She wanted a man-if just for one night.

The man who stood before her was willing to pay a woman-just for one night.

He blocked the door, six feet tall to her own five-feet-four-inch frame. His face was harshly handsome; it looked as if his features had been hewn out of sand and sun. Lines bracketed his mouth and radiated out from the corners of his eyes-eyes so dark they appeared to be black.

Muhamed, the innkeeper had called him. Mr. Muhamed.

He was an Arab; she was an Englishwoman.

He was garbed in a white robe and turban; she was shrouded in a black dress and veil.

They had nothing whatsoever in common save for their physical yearnings, yet here they both were in Land's End, Cornwall.

Megan knew what she had to do; it was the hardest thing she had ever done. Slowly, deliberately, she lifted her veil and hooked it over the crown of her Windsor hat.

Bracing her spine, she mentally prepared for she knew not what: rejection, acceptance.

The Arab had ordered the innkeeper to procure him a whore; instead, a forty-eight-year-old widow had knocked on his door.

And he had let her in. As if she were, indeed, the prostitute she pretended to be.

And perhaps she was.

No respectable woman would engage in the charade she now played.

Her chest rose and fell, lungs filling, emptying-she could not draw enough air into her oxygen-deprived body. The harsh wool of her gown chafed her nipples. She did not have to glance down to know that they stabbed her bodice.

His black gaze raked over her face, her breasts-they swelled underneath his perusal, fuller than those of a young girl, heavier-dropped down to study her stomach and hips that with the rest of her body had rounded over the years. Slowly his gaze raised back up to her face and the lines there that owed nothing to sand or sun, but everything to a woman's age.

She clutched the side of her skirt and the pocket within that held the key to her own room just down the corridor.

Now he would accept her, or now he would reject her…

"You are too old to be a whore," he said flatly.

But she was not too old to want a man.

Inwardly, she flinched.

Outwardly, she held his gaze; her green eyes, at least, were unchanged by time. "Some would say, sir, that you are too old to need the services of one."

Faint color darkened his cheeks-or perhaps it was her own shamelessness that colored her vision. "You are naked underneath your gown."

The warm color tinting his angular cheekbones leaped blazing hot into her more rounded ones.

She defiantly tilted her chin. "Yes."

Megan wore no bustle, corset, chemise, drawers nor stockings. None of the apparel that respectable women wore.

Nothing that would impede the purpose of her visit.

She wanted this night.

She wanted to lie naked with this man.

She wanted to experience again the closeness found in an intimate embrace.

Megan was fully prepared for-everything. The vinegar-soaked sponge crowding her cervix burned and throbbed, a reminder of-everything.

Possible pregnancy. Potential disgrace. Purgatory….

A coal exploded in the fireplace.

Tension prickled her skin. The rectangular bit of the key jabbed through the wool of her skirt and the silk of her glove.

A muscle jumped at the corner of his mouth. "You are not from around here."

Native west Cornish folk spoke with an unmistakable singsong cadence. During the past thirty years, Megan had learned to speak like a gentlewoman, just as the Arab before her had at some point in his life learned to speak like an English gentleman.

"No, I am not from around here," she acknowledged evenly.

"Have you come from another man?"

Megan fought down a spark of-anger? Trepidation? How would the painted prostitute whom she was a substitute for respond to such a question? "No."

She suspected no man would pay for what she now offered.

His gaze remained colder than a starless night. Searching. Probing. Looking for a remnant of the youth she no longer possessed.

A cold sheen of anxiety broke over her.

How could she have been so naive as to believe that for lack of choice, this man would take her?

Megan jerkily offered, "I fully understand if you prefer someone who is young-"

"I am fifty-three years old, madam," he interrupted. His dark, chiseled features hardened. "I do not want to lie with a child; I want a woman. As you said, you are a woman. I will pay you one gold sovereign."

Relief coursed through her. It was followed by alarm. Desire. Surprise, that he would so generously compensate a woman for the use of her body.

A gold sovereign was equivalent to twenty shillings. The prostitute whom she had intercepted in the hallway had greedily snatched the double florin-equivalent to a respectable four shillings-which Megan had offered her. A sure indication that she had expected to receive considerably less from her waiting client.

Why would this man-this Arab-be willing to pay more than an Englishman?

Forcibly, she relaxed her fingers around the wool-padded key. "Thank you."

"You may call me Muhamed." His black gaze did not waver; something briefly flickered deep inside his eyes-indecision? Aversion? "What name are you known by?"

"Meg-" She paused.

Robert Burns' poem, "Whistle O'er the Lave O't," rose up from the depths of her conscience in a mocking litany: "Meg was meek, and Meg was mild / Sweet and harmless as a child."

But there was nothing meek, or mild, or harmless about her actions this night.

She was a woman, not a child.

"Megan," she said more forcefully.

He pushed away from the door.

She involuntarily shrank back.

A whirl of white robe and elusive spice swept by her; the tantalizing aroma seemed to emanate from the Arab's clothes.

Darkness abruptly cocooned her-he had doused the oil lamp.

A ridiculous pang of hurt ricocheted through Megan. Obviously, he had no desire to see the naked body of a forty-eight-year-old woman.

Fear chased feminine pique.

She remembered every rumor she had ever heard about Arab men: they were exotic; they were erotic; they purchased women as if they were chattel.

The rustle of cloth alerted her to movement.

"Men use you for their pleasure." His terse voice snaked down her spine-it came from behind her, near the bed. "Do you take pleasure in the men you service?"

Megan swirled around, blood pumping, heart pounding.

An endless white ribbon undulated in the darkness. She realized he was unwinding his turban.

Remembered passion clenched her stomach.

"Yes," she said.

It was not a lie. She had taken pleasure in her husband's arms.

The undulating white ribbon soundlessly floated to the floor. All at once, the man's white robe reared up over his head; it hovered there for a long second like a ghostly specter before it, too, silently drifted downward.

Megan did not doubt that he stood before her naked-just as she was naked underneath her dress. She strained to see an outline or a gleam of skin: she could not. It was as if he had been swallowed up by the night.

A soft creak shot through the darkness, bedsprings adjusting to sudden weight. It sharply recalled her to who she was, where she was at, and what she was doing.

She was Mrs. Meg Phillins, the virtuous widow of a vicar.

She was at Land's End, a place to which she had sworn never to return.

She was about to engage in carnal relations with a man whom prior to this day she had never seen, and whom she would never see again after the night.

Tension swirled about her.

He watched her.

She did not know how he could see her in the darkness, dressed all in black, but she knew that he did. Just as surely as she knew that if she bolted now, she would never again have an opportunity to experience a man's passion.

Megan peeled off her silk gloves and stuffed them into the pocket that contained the key to her solitary room and lonely virtue. Her ring finger on her left hand tingled, as if it called out to the gold wedding band she had abandoned for a night of sexual satiation.

The bedsprings creaked again; the penetrating noise was followed by a dual clank, as if metal rubbed metal, struck metal.

Her breath snagged in her chest.

There was no accompanying stir of air, no indication that the Arab had stood up.

She licked her lips; they felt drier than the desert sands he had been born to, but that she had never seen. Her hat weighted down her head, heavier than an anvil.

Megan did not need light to illuminate her actions.

His room was much like hers-no doubt like all the rooms at the small inn. The floor was bereft of rugs; the whitewashed walls bare of paintings. Beside the locked door stood a bureau topped with a pitcher of water and a basin. Opposite the foot of the bed, a cane-bottomed, ladder-back chair guarded a small iron fireplace.

She pictured his narrow sleigh bed with its turned down covers, the man who wore no clothes, and the nightstand that stood between them.

The click of her heels were overloud in the taut silence; the trail of her gown an audible drag; the distance to the night-stand impossibly long…

Megan kicked hard wood. A lancing pain shot through her right toe. Simultaneously, the chimney of the extinguished hurricane lamp rattled, a discordant implosion. Lingering oil smoke stung her nose while embarrassment at her clumsiness burned her ears.

The Arab remained silent.

Or did he?

She could hear breathing, a soft, relentless cadence.

His?

Or hers?

Underlying the primal rhythm was the distant wash of the tide-swelling, ebbing, the eternal pattern of desire.

Awkward as she had not been in many years-not since she had been eighteen and a simple Cornish girl-she reached up and slid the pin out of her hat. The accelerated rise and fall of her breasts matched the rhythmical soughing of air that filled the chamber.

Lowering her arms, she carefully slid the hat pin into the flat felt crown. Extending her left hand for guidance, she bent down, fingers splaying, arms reaching, and encountered…

A small, shallow, rectangular-shaped metal box.

Megan frowned. It had not been there earlier.

Or had it?

Prior to this night, she had not known of her whorish tendencies.

Or had she?

Dropping the hat down over the tin, she straightened.

The carved bone buttons lining the front of her bodice were too large; they did not want to slide through the buttonholes. Hours passed, coaxing one button free, two, three… and all the while that unremitting breathing cautioned her, cajoled her, became her.

Did Arab men love differently than did Englishmen? she wondered, breath and pulses racing against one another.

Would he kiss her?

Would he caress her?

What would he feel like, this naked stranger, when his body strained against hers?

Would he penetrate her deeply… or shallowly?

Would he be rough… or gentle?

Would she please him?

Would he please her?

She shrugged out of her dress; heavy wool scurried down her back, over her hips, swooshed down her legs and collapsed about her feet. A trail of chill goose bumps followed in its wake.

All that prevented her from joining the man were her shoes.

She had prepared for this moment, too.

Using the rounded tip of her right shoe, she dislodged her left slipper. Using the bare toes of her left foot, she dislodged her right slipper.

Megan stepped out of the circle of her gown onto cold, unyielding wood.

The darkness throbbed with sexual heat.

She took one step forward. Her breasts lightly bounced.

Would he take pleasure in their fullness?

She took a second step forward. Her hips gently swayed.

Would he find them lacking?

She took a third step forward, thigh rubbing thigh, friction building, chest constricting.

The teasing aroma of exotic spice enveloped her. Out of the corners of her eyes she espied the faint, red glimmer of burning coals.

Why couldn't she see him?

A grain of dirt gritted beneath her left heel. Her right knee collided with ungiving bone and sinew-a naked leg, a muscled leg, a leg that was far smoother than her own. At the same time her foot came down on-a foot.

Moist air scorched her skin. "You smell of vinegar."

Megan froze, held immobile by the impact of his leg, the weight of her foot on his, the heat of his breath, and the jarring repercussion of his words.

Never had she imagined that a man would notice… or comment on… a prostitute's use of a prophylactic.

And perhaps an Englishman would not have noticed; or having done so, he would have courteously refrained from commenting.

"I…" She swallowed, acutely aware of his bare foot underneath hers and her breasts that jutted out from her chest, only inches away from his mouth "I have inside me a… a sponge that is soaked in vinegar."

"There is no need for that," he said brusquely. "I have prepared myself with a French letter."

The tin on the nightstand-did it contain more French letters?

Did the prostitute whom Megan had replaced rely upon a man to protect her?

Did she use a solution that smelled more pleasing than vinegar?

Did she use a syringe after intimacy, rather than inserting a sponge before?

Exactly what did a man from Arabia expect from a woman that an Englishman would not?

"Nevertheless, this is the form of protection which I chose to use," Megan said with a calm certainty that she was far from feeling.

Chill awareness traveled up her ankles. He could yet reject her, this Arab who was as terse as any Cornishman.

Megan nervously shifted her right foot, cautiously lowered it. Her toes butted the tips of his. The wooden floor was icy; the heat emanating from his digits was scorching.

"I have never been with an Englishwoman," he said shortly.

Electricity crackled around them, as if a storm brewed outside.

It did not.

She realized that the ragged soughing of air came not from one pair of lungs, but two. They breathed in unison.

"I dare say women are much the same, regardless of their nationality," she said carefully.

But were men?

Her heartbeat clocked the passing seconds. It pulsated inside her breasts, her temples, her vagina, her toes that bridged his.

Why didn't he touch her, take her?

Surely the coupling between a man and a prostitute was no different than the coupling between a man and his wife. He would initiate contact; she would quietly submit.

Wouldn't he?

"I have never been with a woman."

The harsh confession came out of nowhere, yet everywhere. Never been with a woman imprinted her chest.

Megan mentally reeled backward.

She had expected him to be experienced; he expected her to be experienced.

He had never been with a woman; she had only ever been with one man.

She was not prepared for this eventuality.

Dim light flashed in the darkness-the white of his eyes. "That is why I procured you."

Suddenly the black veil of obscurity lifted, and Megan could make out the bleached darkness that was the sheet, the ebony crown that was the Arab's hair, and the dusky silhouette that was his upturned face.

She felt as if she teetered on the edge of a precipice, afraid to move, afraid not to move.

Why would a fifty-three-year-old man-an Arab who lived in a country reputed to cloister women in harems for carnal convenience-be a virgin?

Why had he come to Land's End-on this, of all nights-to end his abstinence?

"You procured me to… to find physical satisfaction," she managed to say.

"No."

No?

What did he want, if not sexual gratification?

Arabic men trafficked in beautiful, young women, not matrons who were well beyond middle-age.

Didn't they…?

For the first time Megan did not feel protected by the relative proximity of the inn's inhabitants.

"I am afraid I do not understand." She swallowed the fear rising in her throat; her toes touching his continued to throb and pulse. "Why would you procure a"-no, no, she could not call herself a whore, even if others would-"a woman, if not for satisfaction?"

"I want to know a woman's body," lashed the darkness; almond-scented breath blasted her face. "I want you to show me how to bring a woman to orgasm. I want you to show me how to bring you to orgasm."

A door slammed shut somewhere in the inn, more a shudder of wood than an echo of sound.

Megan could not have heard the Arab correctly.

"You want me to show you how to bring a woman… how to bring me… to orgasm?" she repeated slowly, heart thundering, toes throbbing.

"Yes." His voice was intractable. Heat licked her spine. "That is why I procured you."

"A woman takes satisfaction in a man's… a man's possession," she said shakily.

"You are a whore. You of all women should know that a man's member is not a woman's sole source of satisfaction."

But she wasn't a whore.

Dear God. He could not be inferring what she thought he inferred.

"A woman has many places on her body that when touched by a man give her pleasure," Megan countered.

"I have never touched a woman," he said stiffly.

"I have never tutored a man," she said compulsively.

Megan bit her lips-too late, the words were out of her mouth.

"No young boy has ever come to you seeking instruction?" he asked bluntly.

Megan suspected her husband had been a virgin. He had never discussed his sexual experience, or lack thereof.

The back of her neck tingled in warning. She should end her charade now, so that the Arab could find a woman to give him the knowledge he sought.

"Englishmen do not readily admit their inexperience," she heard herself say instead.

"Do you think that a man is less of a man, then, because he admits his inexperience?"

"I think…" Her heart slammed against her ribs. "I think it is not a man's inexperience that displeases a woman, but his arrogance in not asking what gives her pleasure."

"Do you think that a man is a man, then, because he asks a woman how to please her?"

The Arab's voice was a curious blend of harshness and vulnerability; his face a dark, unfathomable blur. Only the whites of his eyes were visible.

They gleamed in the darkness.

"I believe that it requires courage for a man to acknowledge a woman's needs, yes," she said more firmly.

"How do you judge a man, madam, if not by his sexual experience? Do you judge him by the number of orgasms he gives you? Do you judge him by the hardness of his male member? By the length of it? Do you judge him by his ability to spurt his seed?"

Pain streaked through Megan-hers, his.

It dawned on her that this man was afraid.

But of what?

"I cannot bear children," she impulsively offered. "Ii I judged a man for his inability to produce seed, then I must also judge myself for being unable to carry a man's seed."

Megan's jaws snapped shut. She could not possibly have admitted to this stranger what now echoed inside her ears.

That she was barren.

That she was alone.

That she had failed as a woman.

But she had.

"Do you?"

The question took her by surprise. It sounded as if it had been ripped from some place far deeper than the Arab's chest.

She did not pretend to misunderstand him.

Did Megan judge herself?

Why did it seem perfectly natural to discuss her personal feelings with this man?

Why had not her husband, in all their years of marriage, asked her what this Arab now asked her?

"No." Her throat tightened. "But others do."

Just as no doubt others judged him, an Arab traveling in a foreign country.

"You do not wonder, sometimes, if they are right in their judgment?" he asked hoarsely.

Yes.

But those thoughts were for another time.

"I think… when a man and a woman come together- that the closeness they share-I think that is life's true miracle," Megan said shakily.

An ember sparked; red light flared, briefly revealing an ear, a jaw. Human flesh bled into dark shadow.

"You have loved a man," he said flatly.

The tightness constricting Megan's throat spread to her chest. "Yes."

"Yet you are a whore."

She should have expected his judgment; she had not.

Hot emotion erupted inside her, hearing the echo of another man's judgment.

"You think a woman is a whore because she has physical needs?" she flared, forgetting that he rightfully thought her a prostitute. Forgetting that she had come to him out of loneliness, not to debate women's morality. "You do not think that women are entitled to take comfort in a man's embrace?"

"I do not know." His grating honesty shattered her anger; his breath lapped at her breasts. "I do not know what either men or women are entitled to. All I know is what I want." To know a woman's body. To learn how to bring a woman to orgasm.

"Surely you must also wish to… to experience your own release," Megan said rashly. "Would you not like a woman to touch you?"

"I have no need of a woman's touch."

"We all need to be touched," she riposted.

Surely, all men and women needed the intimacy of touching, of holding, of being touched and held in return.

"There are worse things than physical frustration," he finally said, as if he begrudged her question.

"What?" she asked.

What could possibly be worse than sleeping alone, without even the companionable press of buttocks against buttocks to alleviate the ache of loneliness?

"Knowing that there is no release," he bit out, "is far worse than aching with need."

"But there is always release…" Her heart somersaulted at her near confession.

An Englishman was not interested in that part of a woman's body which society did not acknowledge.

An Englishwoman did not admit she possessed a place which brought her release that did not also culminate in a man's ejaculation.

"Do you pleasure yourself, madam?" he asked jarringly, a blatant reminder that he was not English, no matter how much he might sound it.

"Yes." Stinging heat flooded her cheeks, her ears, crawled down her throat. She stiffened her spine, refusing to lie. "Men… do they not… pleasure themselves?"

The silence was complete save for their breathing and the remote lap of ocean waves, teasing, promising, retreating, never fulfilling.

"There is a difference between a man's hand and a woman's body," he said tersely.

"But do you?" she insisted, suddenly wanting to know, no, she needed to know that men required the same release that women did.

"I have done so."

He was embarrassed-she could feel the heat of it against her breasts and in her toes, hear the roughness of it in his voice-but like her, he would not lie. Not tonight.

"What do you hope to gain from this encounter, Mu-hamed?"

His name slipped unbidden from between her lips.

It should sound awkward, an Arabic name spoken with an English tongue. It should be awkward, an Arabic man discussing with an Englishwoman what no man had dared say to her, and what, she suspected, he had never dared say to another, be they English or Arabic.

Why didn't it?

"I have told you what I want."

"No, you told me what you want to know," she said, gaining courage from the anonymity of the night, "not what you yourself want."

For a long second she did not think he would answer.

"I want to know that I can give a woman pleasure."

His voice rebounded off of her breasts. Hot, moist air fanned her nipples.

"I want to know what other men know."

Megan was riveted.

By the raw intensity inside him.

By the passion emanating from him.

"I want to know that I am like other men."

Chapter Two

The air was sucked out of Megan's lungs.

What could possibly cause the agony she sensed inside this Arab?

Men who contracted mumps were sometimes rendered sterile, she remembered. Had he suffered from some illness that had incapacitated him?

She took a steadying breath. "I do not think any woman need demonstrate that you are a man, sir."

"Then do not demonstrate it, madam," he said brutally. "Prove it."

The darkness closed around them. It shrank the distance between his mouth and her painfully engorged nipples.

Megan's heart skipped a beat, galloped to escape the confines of her chest.

There was violence in this man. Born of need. Loneliness.

Fear.

Emotions she understood all too well.

If she were wise, she would flee his room now, naked.

If she were wise, she would not now be in his room, naked.

She thought of her past, and the empty bed she had slept in.

She thought of her future, and the empty bed that awaited her.

She thought of this Arab, sleeping alone in his empty bed. For fifty-three years.

"I have only ever asked one man to touch me," she blurted out.

"And did he?" he asked intently.

She wanted to lie. She found that she couldn't.

"No, he did not," she said.

"This is the man whom you loved?"

She tensed against the barrage of unwelcome memories. "Yes."

The pale gleam of his eyes did not waver. "He did not wish to experience the closeness you spoke of?"

An invisible hand squeezed her heart. "No, he did not."

"His rejection still pains you."

"Yes." Tears pricked her eyes. "It still causes me pain."

"Tell me where you asked him to touch you."

His voice was peremptory; underlying the command was a masculine plea.

To not reject him, as she had been rejected.

To share with him the special bonding that was a man and a woman's joining.

Scalding perception rushed through her.

Here, in the dark, with this stranger, she could be the woman she had been twenty-two years earlier.

He could fondle her breasts, in their current position.

He could kiss them.

He could lick them.

He could suckle them.

He could do all the things she had secretly desired that a man do, but had been afraid of requesting.

Afraid she would shock.

Afraid she would repel.

Afraid she would be rejected.

By her husband.

By any man other than this Arab.

Megan had never before fantasized about teaching a man how to touch her for her own gratification. She did now.

It was seductive.

It was Adam offering Eve the forbidden fruit.

It was the promise of far, far more than a quick, anonymous coupling.

She struggled to control her breathing; her breasts quivered with each intake of air, each outward exhalation. "I asked him to touch my… to touch my breasts."

Megan did not recognize her voice.

The darkness reached up.

She inhaled sharply, cupped by callused hands, right breast, left breast, heart pounding, skin tightening. Liquid desire pooled between her legs; her nipples hardened to the point of pain.

"Like this?"

"Yes."

Oh, yes, exactly like that.

Ten fingers pounded in time to her heartbeat. Rough yet gentle. Hesitant yet hungry.

Tears pricked her eyes, receiving now from the hands of a stranger what had been denied her twenty-two years earlier- a man's caring touch.

"Tell me what else you asked him to do," he hoarsely commanded. His voice matched hers.

Heat bridged their bodies: his breath, her breath, his toes, her toes.

His desire.

Her desire.

For one brief moment she stared down at the two of them: she standing above a naked man; he sitting below a naked woman.

Both wanting.

Both waiting.

Both willing.

Just for one night.

There was no time for propriety. No room for shame.

"I asked him… to kiss my nipples," she said raggedly.

It was not a lie. In her thoughts, she had begged for him to kiss her nipples. In reality, she had asked him to come to her bed.

The callused heat cupping her left breast dissipated. Seconds later, it grasped her left hip.

He did not seem to mind the softness he found there.

Silken flesh, gentle as the wings of a butterfly, skidded across her nipple.

Lightning shot through her chest and out of her toes. She slammed back into her body, and once again she stared down at one head rather than two.

Megan instinctively reached up-and grasped warm, electric hair. It clung to her fingers, alive as the current of heat that raced through her breasts.

"What else did you ask him to do?" Moist breath seared her breast where the Arab had kissed her, but the man whom she loved had not.

She fought for courage; found it.

"I asked him to lick my nipple," she said. In her thoughts. In reality, she had asked him to hold her.

He had not.

A hot, wet tongue tentatively rasped her flesh, there on the very tip of her breast.

Once. Twice. Thrice…

He licked her, like a greedy cat licking the inside of an empty milk pail. Top side of her nipple, underside, the very tip again…

Her vagina clenched; hot liquid dribbled down her thigh. She instinctively curved her hands around him, such a personal embrace, cradling a man's head while he laved her with hot, wet swipes of his tongue.

Hot air suddenly serrated her nipple. "What else?"

Megan's heart thumped against her chest; she could hear it, feel it-an internal knocking, an external quiver of her breast. Had Muhamed felt it, when he kissed her, licked her…?

"I asked him to… to suckle me," she said. In her thoughts. In reality, she had asked him to comfort her.

A hot, wet furnace latched on to her nipple.

Oh…

Megan clutched thick, soft hair and held on while he suckled her, hesitantly at first, then strongly, as if he gained sustenance from her breast.

It was-breathtaking.

It was-overwhelming.

It aroused yearnings she had never before experienced: to be squeezed, bitten…

She arched her body, begging for acts she had no words for.

His hands tightened, squeezing, kneading-her right breast, her left hip. A textured swirl of scalding heat encompassed her nipple; at the same time sharp teeth sank into her aureola. Her womb contracted-in pain, in pleasure.

She leaned forward, fingers fisting in his hair, lost in the erotic sensations he was engendering and the memories he had invoked…

"I asked him to touch me between my legs," she whispered. In her thoughts. In reality, she had merely begged him to love her, to need her as she had needed him.

Heat grew inside her breast, there where Muhamed suckled her, an inescapable knot of truth.

He had not loved her. Needed her.

Warm air feathered her stomach. Gentle fingers touched Megan, a whisper of sensation.

Arabic fingers, not English.

A small, inelegant pop pierced the darkness-his mouth releasing her nipple. The shock of cold air was replaced with a gust of hot breath. "Your pubis is covered with hair."

It took a moment for the meaning of his words to register. Every nerve in her body was focused on her fingers that throbbed against his scalp and his fingers that combed through her private hair.

"Yes." Her breathing accelerated-too fast, she would surely faint, she who had never before fainted. "Of course."

Scalding heat punctuated his words. "Muslims remove their body hair."

His leg that had briefly impacted her knee, while hard with muscle, had been silky smooth…

"Do you remove your body hair?" she asked unbidden.

"I have done everything that the Muslim law commands," he said rawly.

Scattered thoughts flitted through her mind: did his religion forbid him to touch a woman? Was that why he was still a virgin at fifty-three years of age?

Was his pubis bare of hair?

"It is written that a woman's vulva grows moist with her arousal, and that at her moment of enjoyment, her flesh rises hard like the comb of a cock," he said gruffly. "Are you moist with need, Megan?"

Moist. Swollen.

She felt as if she were drowning in the scent of spice and the heat of his body.

"Yes," she said unsteadily. "I am moist."

"And when you reach your moment of enjoyment, does your flesh rise hard like the comb of a cock?"

"You may touch my vulva"-Meg cringed at the bold words, a whore's words, surely; Megan spread her legs in brazen invitation, a woman shamelessly opening herself to a man.-"and discover for yourself what a woman's flesh feels like."

Night air rushed up, chilling that part of her body that was swollen like overripe fruit, the original sin-a woman's sex. The cold was immediately displaced by pulsing heat.

He cupped her, shaped her, weighed her.

Megan held perfectly still: wanting approbation, fearing aversion.

Her husband's fingers had grazed her only in passing, when he guided his manhood to her portal. He had not lingered when he brushed against her.

What had he thought when he accidentally touched her?

What did this man think, now touching a woman for the first time?

"You're dripping with moisture."

"I'm sorry," she said quickly, defensively, body tensing, preparing for his rejection of her womanhood.

"Why do you apologize?" His breath branded her stomach-he was looking down, as if he could see her in the dark. And perhaps he could. "Do you not get this wet when you are with other men?"

A long finger sank between the slippery wet folds of her vulva.

It was hard. Callused.

She abandoned Muhamed's head for the more secure anchor of his shoulders. They were tensed, as she was tensed. Strong. Solid. Utterly masculine.

Megan waited: for his next observation, for his next exploration.

His finger burned her. His breath burned her.

The very air was ablaze with sexual heat.

"The opening to your vulva is very small."

Gently, he prodded.

Steadfastly, her body resisted.

"Is this where you wanted to be fondled, when you asked to be touched between your legs?"

Megan squeezed her eyelids closed, blocking out the darkness that was his hair and the pain of the past. "No," she said, more a sigh than a word.

Slowly, he drew his hand back, parting her, tunneling through her slick nether lips until he touched the very tip of her femininity with the very tip of his finger.

It was hot. Wet.

His heat. Her moisture.

A pulse wildly leaped inside her to greet the pulse of his finger. She locked her knees to prevent them from collapsing.

"Did you ask to be touched here?"

"I simply… asked to be touched," she said unevenly.

"You're already hard." His breath matched the pulse that beat inside her nether lips, her toes, her breasts. "It is like a small bud. Is it fulfilling, when a man touches you here? When you are brought to release by the manipulation of your clitoris, is it not a male member that your body yearns to feel, rather than a man's finger?"

Clitoris. Megan had never before heard the word; there was no mistaking what he referred to.

She sank her fingernails into his skin, impervious to the pain she might inflict, completely absorbed in the heat and the hardness of his finger "I do not-" know. "I am sure most women appreciate…" The truth refused to be denied. "No man has ever brought me to release with just his finger."

He gently defined the hardened kernel of flesh that was the most sensitive spot on a woman's body, measuring its size, outlining its shape, his touch a slippery rasp of sensation.

"But you have gained release when a man's verge penetrated you," he insisted.

White dots danced behind her eyelids; white-hot sensation danced along her skin. "Yes."

"When you touch yourself, here"-he pressed hard on the bud of her femininity; a jolt of pleasure hurtled through her womb-"do you not yearn for more?"

"There is a difference between a man's touch and a woman's hand," she said in a parody of his earlier response.

"Arabic women cut off the genitals of young girls."

Megan's eyes snapped open. All she could see was darkness.

Horror shot through her. Her muscles clenched-denying the truth of his statement, resisting her gathering orgasm.

"Why?" she asked involuntarily. "Why would any woman do that to a young girl…?"

How could a woman survive without a means of gaining feminine satisfaction?

"It is tradition," he replied.

His callused fingertip lightly rubbed first the left side of her clitoris, then the right.

"It is a rite of passage."

Fire ripped through her.

"It makes women subservient to men rather than their own desires."

His finger radiated heat. His voice was bleaker than a winter-shrouded moor.

Megan listened in mounting horror while her own pleasure licked higher and higher, hotter and hotter.

In Arabia, the men who guarded harems were called eunuchs. They, too, were reputed to have their genitals cut off.

So that they remained subservient to men… rather than their own desires.

A hard, hot hand imprinted her buttocks. A fine tremor racked her.

He was trembling.

Or perhaps it was she who trembled, poised on the threshold of the most intense orgasm she had ever experienced.

"You are growing harder," he said.

Harder. Wetter.

While he recalled practices she could not even begin to imagine.

His persistent finger slipped and slid, left side, oh-the very tip, right side, the engorged tip again.

The pleasure his touch engendered was frightening.

What he had told her was frightening.

"Please stop."

He did not stop.

"Did you lie to me, when you said that no man has ever brought you to orgasm in this manner?"

Megan strained-not to escape, but to get closer. "No, I did not lie."

Her only lie was in allowing him to believe she was the prostitute the innkeeper had summoned.

"Does my touch please you?"

"Yes."

She had not thought such pleasure existed simply from a man's touch.

"Then I will not stop until you give me your release and we both discover if a man's fingers are as good as his verge."

Megan tensed. The night tensed.

What had they done to this man?

Suddenly the darkness exploded; Megan exploded with it, gasping, falling, grabbing. Bed creaking. Legs straddling his legs.

A wave of energy swelled over hers, swallowed hers, throbbed with a life of its own.

"I felt your release," Muhamed rasped. A hard hand grasped her left hip, finger wet from her body; another hard hand bolstered the small of her back.

Megan struggled to catch her breath, inhaling the almond scent of his breath and the moist, spicy heat of his body. Her left knee was embedded in thick wool; her right knee indented a coarse cotton sheet. Aftershocks of pleasure rippled through her; cool air bathed her naked, exposed nether lips.

Her vulva was open. Utterly accessible.

Her vagina gaped.

Open. Utterly accessible.

Hard, muscled thighs supported her buttocks; they were not cushioned with hair. A hardness bridged their bodies that owed nothing to a callused digit and everything to a man's tumescence.

It felt like rubber.

A rubber prod with a large, blunt head.

Her fingers convulsively dug into shoulders that were as tautly muscled as the thighs underneath her buttocks.

"Do you miss having a verge inside you?" His almond-scented breath scorched her lips. "Would you be satisfied if touch was all that a man could give you?"

It dawned on her that it was his need that had only seconds earlier swelled over hers, swallowed hers.

He might deny that he needed sexual release; his body told its own story.

"Yes." Megan gulped air. What he had given her was far more than she had previously had. "I would be satisfied."

But be would not be.

There was so much pain inside her Arab.

She did not want him to hurt. Not tonight.

Megan had suffered through enough pain in her life, and so, she suspected, had he.

She slowly inhaled, deliberately calming her thundering pulses so that she could say the words that needed to be said. "I do not judge you, Muhamed."

"Do you not?"

His rubber-sheathed manhood throbbed.

Her womb throbbed.

"No, I do not," she said, and reached between their bodies to gift him with the same pleasure he had given her.

He filled her hand. He overflowed her hand.

He grasped her hand.

"Don't!" he ground out.

Everything about him was iron-hard-his voice; his thighs; his shoulders; his fingers holding her right hand; his rubber-sheathed manhood.

Whatever Muhamed suffered from, it was not impotence.

"You said you wanted me to show you how to please a woman," she said, undeterred.

"I did not procure you for this."

"Yes, you did," she countered… and wondered what gave her the courage to do so. The pleasure he had given her, or the pleasure he so obviously wanted to experience?

His fingers tightened around her wrist; there would be bruises there tomorrow. "I did not want you to know."

"You did not want me to know… how hard you are?" she asked boldly.

Megan could feel his surprise. A gentle power filled her.

Tomorrow she would be mortified at her audacity, not tonight.

She had always wondered if men came in different sizes, as women's breasts were sized differently. Now she knew.

They did.

Slowly she ran her thumb over the blunt tip of him; it pulsed underneath the nippled rubber sheath. "You did not want me to know… how large you are?" she asked breathlessly.

"Do not play the whore with me, madam," he said harshly, rebuke a blast of almond-scented breath.

She stiffened. "I am what I am."

"I will not have you lie to soothe my vanity."

It occurred to her that it was not her actions he castigated, but his own body. "I assure you, sir, I do not lie. I have never before held a man as large as you."

Long seconds passed while he assessed the truth of her assertion. His banding fingers pulsed around her wrist: he wanted to believe; he was afraid to believe.

"Do you not find me… distasteful?" he asked, plainly finding himself distasteful.

"No, I do not," she said firmly. And forced herself to ask: "Were you repulsed by me?"

"A woman's body is not repulsive."

Relief coursed through Megan.

"Neither is yours," she asserted.

A hiss of air escaped from between his lips. "I do not know if I can satisfy a woman."

"I assure you, I am very satisfied."

"I do not know if I can find satisfaction in a woman."

"If you will release my hand, sir, you will soon have your answer."

The sound of their breathing momentarily halted-even the waves bathing the surf seemed to pause.

He released her.

She exhaled; he exhaled. The ocean resumed its relentless rhythm of advance and retreat.

Megan bowed her head and stared down at the long, thick appendage she held. All she could see was the dark chasm that separated their bodies, and her own ineptness.

She had never before put a man inside her. The thought of doing so now was both humbling and empowering.

Carefully, she guided him to her vulva. Heat bumped her forehead-his forehead; it was slick with sweat.

He clasped her hand, hard fingers cupping her softer fingers, helping her, urging her. A callused palm slid down the small of her back. He grasped the right cheek of her buttocks, fingertips wedging deep inside her crevice. At the same time, blistering heat grazed her gaping vagina.

Together, they found her portal. Together, they notched his blunt, masculine flesh into her open, feminine flesh.

Megan couldn't breathe. Couldn't move.

Perspiration dripped down her forehead, her nose, plopped onto her chest. She did not know who it came from-her or him.

In all of her twenty-eight years of marriage, she had never experienced the type of intimacy she now experienced, straddling a man's lap while his breath laved her breasts and his manhood kissed her womanhood, sharing sex, sharing sweat, hands joined, body joined.

"I'm not… come closer," he grated.

Steadily he pulled her closer, fingers digging dangerously deep inside the crevice between her buttocks, while with his right hand he directed his rubber-sheathed manhood. Rubbing. Pulling. Prodding.

Megan's knees slowly inched across the covers, thighs spreading wider while her hand followed his motions as if she were a marionette. Rubbing. Prodding.

Breaching. Piercing. Spitting.

She threw her head back, voice high and shrill, directed up to the ceiling. "Oh, my God!"

"Allah akbar!" His voice was low and hoarse, directed down to parts that could not answer back.

She instinctively released Muhamed's manhood. Using both his shoulders, she tried to lift up.

Grasping her hips with both hands, he pulled her down and forward until he gorged her very womb.

"I did not know a woman was this small," he gritted.

"I…" Megan desperately tried to compose her thoughts when all she could think about was the long, hard, thick, rubber-sheathed flesh that impaled her very heart. "You are penetrating me very deeply."

Hot, almond-scented air gusted against her cheek. "Does it cause you pain?"

Yes.

"No."

But it sounded as if he suffered.

She had forgotten how physically close a man and a woman were in conjugal intercourse. Or perhaps she had never really known.

Her breasts molded his chest; her thighs saddled his hips; her groin locked with his groin.

One breath.

One body.

One heartbeat.

"I have never…" Her internal muscles convulsively clenched around him. "I cannot… move. I do not understand how it can be done in this position."

"Grind your pelvis against mine."

He ground her body down onto his. At the same time he thrust his pelvis up.

He gasped.

She gasped.

The surge of heat that shot through her was far more agonizing than pain. Far more intense than pleasure.

Her nether lips were flattened against smooth skin-he had no pubic hair. The hardened bud of her femininity rubbed bare, naked flesh.

Megan impulsively spanned the short inches that separated their mouths and kissed him.

Lips closed. Eyes open.

He froze.

His lips were dry. Firm. Softer than a sigh.

The heat radiating through her pelvis leaped to her mouth, her breasts that stabbed his muscled, hairless chest, and bolted back down to her vagina that milked his rubber-sheathed manhood.

She jerked back, breathing hard.

"I have never kissed a woman," he said stiffly. He, too, breathed hard.

"Did you like it?" she asked, feeling invaded, feeling vulnerable, feeling as if she were far younger than a woman her age had a right to feel.

"Yes," he said shortly.

Megan was not deterred by his shortness.

Releasing his shoulders, she cupped his face in her hands- his skin felt as if it had been freshly shaved-and deliberately pressed her mouth to his.

His lips clung to hers. And then they possessed hers.

Shocked pleasure washed over her.

He was-probing the seam of her lips with his tongue. As if he wanted her to open her mouth.

Megan opened her mouth.

He touched the tip of his tongue to hers, simultaneously piercing both her upper lips and her nether lips.

A wave of heat ripped through her.

Megan climaxed, mouth sucking in his breath, vagina drawing on his manhood.

When she moved to jerk away, to escape the unexpected jolt of sensation, Muhamed grabbed her by the back of her head and held her in position. A sharp hairpin jabbed her scalp, a distant pain.

He licked her as if he could taste her pleasure, underneath her tongue, the roof of her mouth.

Light exploded inside her head.

Gripping her behind with his left hand, he ground her against him, making her ride out her peak of enjoyment until she could not distinguish between pain and pleasure, or even between an Arab man and an Englishwoman.

She tore his mouth away and rested her cheek against the hot slipperiness of his. Gasping. Still spasming.

"In sha' Allah." The foreign phrase scalded her ear.

Without warning, Muhamed stood up in a crouch, taking

Megan with him. The motion drove him deeper inside her, knocking the breath out of her lungs. Then he turned, and he was slipping out of her, and she was falling…

The bed creaked and groaned. Coarse wool bit into her buttocks; her head sank into a pillow, unmercifully driving hairpins into her scalp. Megan blindly clutched-with her hands, her knees, and then she had him. Muhamed's hips sank between her thighs; at the same time he surged hard and deep inside her.

Again.

And again.

And again.

The creaking of the bed matched the rasp of his breath in her ear. Their bodies were slick with perspiration. For a terrifying moment she could not tell who possessed whom.

She arched her hips, demanding more.

He gave her more.

A series of feminine cries randomly penetrated her consciousness: "Oh." "Please." "Oh, God." "Love me." "Harder." "Love me harder." "Oh, please." "Don't stop." "Please don't stop."

Muhamed gave Megan her third orgasm. Her forth orgasm. Her fifth orgasm. When he gave her a sixth orgasm, he gasped words she did not recognize. "Allah. Ela'na. LowsamaHt. Mara waHda." And two words she did recognize. "Goddamn you. Goddamn you. Goddamn you."

She dimly realized that it was not all sweat that dripped down Muhamed's face and splattered onto hers; his tears mingled with their combined perspiration. When he bonelessly collapsed on top of her, she held him as tightly as she could- as tightly as she wished she had been held twenty-two years earlier when she had cried in the night.

Chapter Three

The smell of Megan's sex permeated the air: it was more potent than the most expensive perfume.

Light filtered through the drape covering the window, turning faded cloth to luminescent green. Beside him, dark hair threaded with silver peaked out from underneath the covers.

His lips burned in memory of her kiss; his body burned from the contact of hers, shoulder to ankle.

A long, thick braid snaked across his pillow; metal pins glinted in the dim light. Her hair had been secured on top of her head when she straddled his lap; it had come undone during the night.

He thought of the discomfort she must have experienced, sleeping on sharp pins. He thought of the tightness of her vulva, clasping his sheathed verge.

His chest constricted in memory.

She had kissed him, this woman whom he had accused of being too old to be a whore.

She had cradled his head, while he learned the taste a,nd texture of her breast.

She had shared with him the miracle of a man and a woman's joining.

Mingled wonder and shame coursed through him.

He had never felt more like a man than when he had been buried inside her body. He had never felt more vulnerable than when confessing four decades of fear: that he could never please a woman; that no woman could ever please him.

In the end, it had been she who had taken his life in her hands.

Megan's leg rode his upper thigh; her head was pillowed on his shoulder. Flyaway hair snagged his chin.

She slept as innocently as a child, a whore who had offered comfort as well as pleasure. Her cheeks were pale-from sleep? From exhaustion? From satiation?

Her clitoris had risen against his finger-once. Her vulva had clenched about his verge five times, tighter than his fist.

She had reached her peak six times in total.

He watched the stillness of her face, and thought of the man he had nearly betrayed-El Ibn, "the son" of his heart, if not his loins.

He studied the fan of her lashes, and thought of the woman he had silently loved-safe in the knowledge that she had loved another.

And knew he would never again be the same.

He had experienced sexual union.

One night. With one woman.

Sexless duty was a pitiful substitute.

His biceps and calves ached. Dull pressure radiated inside his groin.

The first would ease with time and exercise; the latter with simple voiding. All he had to do was find the strength to get out of bed, he who had not lingered between the sheets since he was a thirteen-year-old boy, secure in who and what he was.

Moving slowly, so as not to awaken Megan, he slid out from under her head, her leg, and then the covers.

His toes curled. The wooden floor was icy.

Briefly he stood over the bed and watched Megan sleep. Her echoing cries of pleasure rang in his ears.

She had begged him. To not stop. To fill her more deeply. To love her harder.

Never had he been so humbled, yet felt so powerful.

Her black dress lay in a heap where she had stepped out of it to come to his bed. His white turban and thobs, a loose ankle-length shirt, was sprawled on the floor farther away, a visible reminder of the road he had traveled and the distance he had spanned.

Prior to that night, he would have neatly folded his clothes away before retiring.

Prior to that night, he would scoop his clothes up now and fold them away.

Bending down, he grabbed the chamber pot from underneath the wooden slats of the sleigh bed. Crumpled rubber shone in the corner of his eye-the French letter he had used to protect himself from disease. Thin fluid congealed in the bottom of the sheath, proof that even he was capable of ejaculating.

Plucking up the used prophylactic, he crossed the plank floor. Setting the heavy porcelain down on the chair by the fireplace that no longer emitted even a vestige of warmth, he lifted the lid in his right hand.

Chipped black print stared up at him.

Use me well, and keep me clean, And I'll not tell what I have seen.

A slight smile hitched up his lips. There was a certain bawdy charm about the English.

Dropping the condom into the bowl, he reached down with his left hand to guide himself. For the first time the term manhood came to mind.

She had praised him for his size-he who had never thought to receive praise from any woman.

Hot urine arced into the chipped porcelain; it steamed in the chill morning air. Cursorily shaking himself dry, he replaced the lid.

Megan would need to make use of the chamber pot when she awakened; he turned, leaving it on the chair for her convenience.

Shadowy eyes stared up at him from the depths of the narrow sleigh bed. He did not need to see their color to know what it was: they were moss green. Verdant with life as the desert was not.

His first instinct was to hide himself. For the first time in forty years he did not.

His head felt oddly light, with no turban to protect his black hair that was liberally streaked with gray. But it was not his head that snared her attention.

Gaze oddly hesitant, she stared at his groin.

A prickle of heat rushed down his spine.

He stood still, waiting for her to laugh-as women in the harem laughed. Afraid to move, lest he invoke the very laughter that he feared.

"I did not know that men in Arabia shaved their private regions." Megan's gaze skidded up to meet his, danced past him. "Is it not chilly in the winter?"

Her sally fell flat in the chill morning air.

She had not judged him in the dark of night. But she did now in the light of day, else she would not make sport of his condition.

The surge of rage took him by surprise.

"Take another look, madam," he bit out. "It is more than 'private' hair I am missing."

Her eyes widened. With uncertainty? Alarm that she had offended an Arab dog?

He had offered her a gold sovereign. How much more money would it take for her to accept him in the light of day, as she had accepted him in the dark of night?

She glanced back down and studied him for long seconds.

Her tongue flecked her lips, a darker shadow in shadowy twilight. "You are not as… as large as you were last night, but that is understandable, surely."

Megan's response was naive; it was not manufactured.

His head snapped back.

She was a whore. How could she not see the obvious?

How could she not have felt it last night-that lack of flesh which made a man, a man-when she had grasped him in her hand? How could she mistake him for anything other than what he was, after he had lain between her thighs, buried so deeply inside her vulva that not even the night air had come between them?

Unless…

"Who are you?" he snapped.

Her gaze leaped back to his. The paleness of her face bleached into stark white. "I told you who I am."

"You're not a whore," he said baldly.

No whore could fail to observe what she had apparently missed.

His stomach clenched.

But if she wasn't a whore, why had she come to his room?

What was she doing in his bed?

He had cried, when he orgasmed, the tears he had not cried for forty years. She had held him, comforted him, loved him as if she were used to men who cursed and cried while they fought to find release inside a woman's body.

Who was she?

Tense seconds passed. A man's muffled shout for an ostler penetrated the outside hotel wall, a blaring reminder that the night was over and a new day had dawned.

"I am a widow," she said finally, evenly. "A patron of this inn, as you are."

His eyes narrowed, remembering his observation-that she did not sound as if she were from around Land's End; remembering her answer-that she was not. Why hadn't he ques-tioned her further?

"How is it that you came to my room last night?" he bit out.

"I overheard you order the innkeeper to find you a… a prostitute." Her breath fogged the air, blurring her face. "I intercepted her in the hallway. I knocked on your door in her stead, hoping you would mistake me for her."

And he had.

A shrill whinny carried on the air; it was followed by a short, sharp, canine bark.

It dawned on him that he should be cold, standing naked before a woman in a chill English inn, but he wasn't. Blood pumped through his veins; vivid memories flashed through his mind like colored sand in a kaleidoscope, changing, shifting. Questions he had asked, thinking she was a whore; reassurances she had uttered, encouraging his abandon.

Had she been disappointed by his ignorance… or had she reveled in her sexual superiority?

Ten half-moons throbbed to life in his shoulders, the imprint of her fingernails.

Had her flesh clenched around his in enjoyment… or frustration?

She had lied to him, no matter that he, too, lied by inad-mission. What did the likes of him know about women?

How did he know if he had pleased her?

"Exactly what had you heard about Arabs that incited your curiosity, madam?" he lashed out, masking his vulnerability. "Did you hope that my verge would be larger than that of an Englishman? Arab men are reputed to be masters at pleasuring women. Tell me. What did you hope to gain through your deception?"

She had not cowered from his curtness the night before, nor did she cower before his anger now.

"One night, sir. I hoped to gain one night of pleasure." Her head slid back on the pillow, braid coiling, chin mutinously thrusting forward. "I thought that was what you wished, too, else I would not have taken up your time."

A woman lying naked among crumpled bedcovers, with her hair unkempt and her face shiny with dried sweat, should not manifest dignity. But Megan did.

Unexpected pain ripped through his rage.

This woman had not belittled him. Ridiculed him. Pitied him.

I do not judge you, she had said.

Why not?

She was an Englishwoman, if not of good breeding, at least from a respectable family.

How could she accept what harem women did not?

"I am hadim," he said brutally.

"I am English," she returned.

Literally translated, hadim meant hairless; in any other language, it meant only one thing.

He gritted his teeth and forced out the hated word-a word he had hoped not to use with this woman; a word that had haunted him for forty years. "I am a eunuch, madam."

The desert was a place of treacherous sand and shrieking wind; it was also a place of stillness and perfect quietude. He had never before witnessed such stillness in an Englishwoman, but he witnessed it now, in Megan.

Her gaze did not waver from his. "I would say, sir, that your performance last night attests otherwise."

Silently, he cursed the heat that blistered his cheeks. He had not blushed in forty years. Twice now this woman had caused him to blush.

"They cut off my stones," he said crudely, hoping to shock her. To horrify her.

To prove that he was not the man she believed him to be, but which he had felt like for one single night.

She regarded him calmly. "By stones, I take it you mean your ballocks?"

The tips of his ears pricked hotly at her blunt English. "I have no seed."

I have no seed reverberated inside his head-the cry of the thirteen-year-old boy he had once been, irreparably altered. The excuse of the Muslim he had grown up to be, filled with rage.

His heartbeat pounded in his temples and his groin, counting the seconds, preparing for defense.

"My husband was a vicar," Megan said in a clear, dispassionate voice. "When the surgeon told him I was fashioned in such a manner that I would never be able to carry his children, he refused to share my bed. He did not want to endanger my life, he said, by causing me to have any more miscarriages. The local midwife apprised me of certain prophylactics that would prevent conception. My husband refused to use them, even though their use would have allowed us to be together. He said such devices were immoral, and that marital pleasure was solely for the benefit of procreation."

The faint protest of a carriage squeaking and the dull clip-clop of hooves broke the stark silence that followed her words; just as suddenly the external sounds faded.

"I would to God that my husband had had no seed-or that I had been barren," she concluded with cool decisiveness. "It would have been far more preferable than the loneliness he condemned us to."

He stood still, remembering her admission that a man had rejected her.

Not a young swain, as he had thought. But a man who had shared with her the sexual intimacy that was indeed one of life's true miracles. A man who had given her pleasure and who had seeded her womb with children she could not bear.

A man who, by her own admission, she had loved.

A tide of emotion swept over him: jealousy, at the depth of her affection for her deceased spouse; envy, at the long years of companionship she had shared with him; uncertainty, at how to comfort a woman whom he had admitted into his life solely for his own comfort.

Anger came to his rescue, that he should feel the need to comfort and, feeling it, did not have the wherewithal to express it.

Eunuchs could not afford softer emotions.

"How long have you been a widow?" he asked curtly.

"Two years."

"How many men have you been with since you were a widow, or were you in the habit of slipping into other men's bedchambers before your husband died?" he asked, cringing at his cruelty, yet wanting to prove that she was a whore in flesh if not profession.

Wanting to destroy the bond that had been forged between them in the night lest she expect more than he could give, eunuch that he was but did not want to be.

"My husband is the only man I have ever been with, save for you," she said stiffly. Her face, framed by her dark hair and white bedding, was ashen. "We were not intimate the last twenty years that he lived."

Twenty years. Two years.

She had been abstinent more than half the number of years he had been a eunuch. Yet she had come to him, a man who was no man.

"It was your husband whom you asked to touch you," he said flatly.

To kiss her. To lick her. To suckle her.

All the things he had done to her last night.

Had she imagined that he was her husband?

"Yes."

"He was the man you loved."

"Yes. I thought he loved me, too, but he could not have, could he? A man cannot love a woman if he does not respect the needs of her body."

She rapidly blinked back tears.

Of pain. Of anger. Of betrayal.

Megan, too, knew loneliness.

Memories of their joining washed over him: the hot core of her vulva; the silky-soft hardness of her feminine bud; the prickle of her pubic hair grinding into his pelvis while she swallowed him whole and did not once judge either his inexperience or his lack of testicles.

"Women in Arabia use vinegar-soaked wool-plugs," he said abruptly.

"I beg your pardon?"

Heat crawled down his neck. "As a prophylactic," he explained shortly.

"I see."

Tension thickened the air.

Any moment now she was going to get up, dress, and leave. Never knowing what the night had meant to him.

He desperately strove to divert her. "Is Megan your true name?"

Even as the words left his mouth, he realized the incongruity of his question. He asked a truth from her that he was not willing to give in return.

"Yes," she said, terse as he had been terse. "If you will allow me a few moments of privacy-"

"Don't," he grated.

He could feel the stiffening of her body. "Don't what?"

Don't leave me.

"I am not an easy… man."

Megan's silent agreement was decipherable in any language.

He persevered, as he had persevered the last forty years.

"I do not know how… to talk to women." He spoke carefully, trying to soften his severity, to be what she would want a man to be. "I do not know what pleases them-"

"I have told you-"

"But I would please you, Megan," he interrupted, the harshness kicking in to block out her pending rejection. "If you would let me."

Her expression remained inscrutable. "I do not understand what it is that you want from me."

Last night she had uttered similar words.

His needs had not changed.

He wanted to know what other men knew.

He wanted to be what other men were.

"I would have no more pretense or illusions between us," he said, reigning in hope, harnessing fear.

"Are you asking me to… to spend more time with you?" she asked guardedly.

He would never have another chance to experience a woman's honest sexuality.

"I am asking you to spend another night with me," he said tautly.

"And if I did?"

His spine felt ready to snap. "I will do whatever you wish."

"My husband…" Megan shifted; the squeak of the bed-springs scraped across his skin. "I did not ask him to do the things I said to you last night."

"You did not ask him to touch you?" he asked, heart pounding, verge stirring, hope thickening his tongue.

Megan held his gaze, suddenly seeming far younger than her years. "I did not ask him to… to kiss my breasts."

"Did you ask him to touch you between your legs?"

"I did not have the courage to," she admitted.

But she had possessed the courage to come to him. To tell him what she wanted.

A eunuch had no right to feel exultation at hearing that a woman sought intimacies with him that she had not sought from a man. But he felt that rush of possessiveness now for Megan, knowing he could give what her husband had not.

He remembered her closed lips when she kissed him. Her uncertainty at how she should move on his verge when she straddled his lap.

Her blatant curiosity. Her uninhibited response.

He was inexperienced, but he was not ignorant of sexual practices.

She was both ignorant, he realized, and inexperienced.

"Would you like me to kiss your clitoris?" he asked abruptly.

"What?"

Megan's shock was not feigned.

"Men kiss women on their clitoris," he said, deliberately enticing her with the lure of her sexuality. "They lick them. They suckle them."

Until they reached a peak of enjoyment.

Awareness shimmered between them, he standing before her naked, vulnerable, she covered neck to toes with blankets, equally naked and vulnerable.

"You would… you would do that?" she asked, not quite as composed as before. More like the woman she had been last night when darkness had been their alibi and she had freely admitted her desires.

"I would," he affirmed.

"How do you know that men do that?"

How did a virgin eunuch who had never touched a woman know that men did that? was what she really asked.

He could tell her that many Arabic treatises described the act of cunnilingus, just as those same books described a woman's arousal…

"I have watched them," he replied baldly.

There would be no more sexual deception between them.

"You have watched… men and women together?" she asked, trying to conceal her surprise, but failing.

"I have watched women and eunuchs together."

The condemnation he anticipated did not come.

"You said Arabic women did not have a clitoris."

"Many women who are sold as concubines are not Arabic."

She frowned. "These concubines… they perform in front of an audience?"

"There is little privacy in a harem."

Not when there were so many men who lusted after the very thing they were denied: the pleasure of a woman's body.

"Other eunuchs…" She did not finish her sentence, that other eunuchs had touched women. Pleased women. "But you did not."

"I did not," he admitted, anticipating her next question: Why not?

"These women you watched"-understanding flickered in her eyes-"did they reciprocate the caresses they received?"

His throat tightened. "No, they did not."

Concubines were slaves, but eunuchs were… eunuchs.

A rustling of bedclothes pulled him out of the past.

"I am in a quandary, sir."

For the first time he saw true embarrassment on Megan's face.

"Why?" he asked, dreading her response.

"Either you must dress, or I must. Either way, one of us has to leave."

A band tightened around his chest.

"Why?" he repeated, not wanting to ask, unable to stop.

Clearly, she had had enough of a eunuch, no matter that he would go down on his knees to please her. Clearly, she was ready to return to a safe English world that did not harbor such as he.

Her face darkened, a vivid contrast against the white pillow case. "Because I need to take care of private matters."

"And when you have taken care of private matters?" he doggedly pursued.

"I would very much enjoy having you kiss my clitoris." She did not look away from his gaze. "And then I would like to kiss your manhood."

"You will stay here, in my room, for another night?" he asked, not daring to believe his ears.

"I will stay."

For a second he thought his knees would buckle. The surge of hot blood to his groin stiffened him.

Pivoting, verge swaying heavily, he picked up the chair- carefully so as not to tilt and upset the chamber pot-and deposited the whole by the bed, wood decisively contacting wood.

"I will tend the fire while you tend to private matters," he said peremptorily, afraid to leave her, afraid she would change her mind. "There are tissues in the nightstand drawer."

Without giving her time to debate, he turned and strode toward the cold, iron fireplace. He deliberately made as much noise as he could, knocking the ashes out of the grate with the tong, crackling sheets of old newspaper to use as kindling, pouring fresh coals from the dust-blackened coal scuttle on top of the paper. Squatting down, he struck a safety match and touched it to the newspaper.

And all the while that he performed his chores, he pictured Megan. This was an intimacy he had not believed possible when he had decided to purchase a whore.

Blue flames leaped to life.

Tossing the match into the fireplace, he stood up. Without warning, he turned.

Megan bent over, naked, holding the chamber pot in both hands to slide it underneath the bed.

His heart stopped, witnessing the pale silhouette of a breast, a gracefully curved spine and a rounded buttock. Her braid spilled down her back.

Purposefully, he padded to the water-stained bureau that shared an inner wall with the door. A white stoneware jug, glaze cracked with age, sat in a matching basin. Deftly, he lifted up the pitcher and filled the basin with water. Clumsily, he set it down on top of the bureau inside a previous water ring. The thud of glass on wood dully rang out in the silence.

Quickly, he washed his hands, a quick lathering of soap, and rinsed them before hurriedly grabbing the folded washcloth beside the basin. He dipped it into the water, then wrung it out.

His hand shook.

Holding the wet washcloth to warm it, he faced the bed.

Megan was in the process of standing, back straightening, legs stretching.

Her buttocks were pleasingly round. He caught a glimpse of her sex, of dark lips fringed with even darker hair, and then she stood, spine erect.

He knew the moment she became aware that he watched her. Her vertebrae fused; her shoulders squared.

A whore would not mind that he see her nakedness, but Megan was not a whore. Even when she pretended that she was, he had not thought of her as a whore, he realized. She had merely been a woman who, for whatever reason, had accepted the needs of a eunuch.

Slowly, slowly, she turned.

Behind her, a narrow beam of sunlight highlighted the hair that had escaped her braid, a shock of vivid color in the dullness of shadow. It was neither brown nor auburn, but a combination of both-rich chestnut threaded with silver.

He had seen naked women in the harem; he had watched them at their play, their baths, their sexual games with each other and with other eunuchs. Some had been more plump than Megan, some more slender; some had had larger breasts, some smaller; all had been younger, more beautiful, but none had stirred him like Megan now stirred him.

Small hands clenched into fists at her sides, she silently stood in front of him, awaiting judgment.

From a eunuch.

It felt as if her hands clenched around his heart.

She tilted her chin, denying her vulnerability. "I have heard that women in harems are very beautiful."

"Yes." Water trickled through his fingers, plopped onto the wooden floor. "Concubines are purchased for their beauty."

Her eyes were wary. Wanting his approval, his praise.

What did she see in his eyes when she looked at hiru? he wondered. Did she see his need for approval, for praise?

"You have very white skin," he said gruffly. "White skin and pure green eyes such as yours are highly prized in Arabia. Your breasts are ample; your hips generous; your waist supple. You would be valuable in Arabia."

"You need not lie to me, sir; I am fully aware of what I am. As you said last night, I am too old to be a whore. I sincerely doubt any man would want me as a concubine."

He had hurt her, he realized belatedly.

But that had not been his intention.

"Last night…"

Her chin elevated, preparing to fend off more painful words.

"Last night I was afraid."

An invisible weight lifted from his shoulders.

The world did not suddenly stop at a eunuch's confession of fear and uncertainty.

Megan was not convinced.

He searched for the words to convince her. "Last night, I realized that my need for a woman would not diminish with age, that I felt the same needs when looking at you as I had felt when I was a young man, watching the women in the harem. I realized that I would continue to have the same needs when I am an old man."

Even if he was unable to satisfy those needs.

"I assure you, madam, you are wrong," he said truthfully. "There are many men who would want you for their concubine."

Her chin did not lower. Uncertainty shone in her shadowed eyes. "Land's End is a small village. I came to you hoping that you would think there were no other available women, and that you would thereby accept me."

Would he have considered her as a sexual companion if she had not come to his room?

He would never know.

Neither would she.

"I took out the sponge," she said hurriedly, as if circumventing his response.

He imagined his bare flesh sinking into her bare flesh, and felt his already turgid member grow longer, thicker.

Her gaze unerringly sought him out.

She studied him for long seconds before slowly lifting her eyelids. "I could… shave, perhaps, if you would assist me."

His fingers tightened around the wet cloth; the steady drip, drip of water accelerated. "I do not expect-nor wish-you to look or act like a concubine."

"My private hair must… tickle you."

"Yes," he said gravely, lips hitching upward. It had been a long time since he had smiled. "It does."

A tiny pulse beat in the base of her throat. "I need to be touched, Muhamed, but I also need to touch. I would please you, too."

His smile faded. "I am a eunuch, Megan."

"I know what you are, sir."

No, she did not know what he was. He did not know what he was.

"It was not you I cursed last night," he said shortly, and cringed at his abruptness.

Megan did not flinch at the tone of his voice. "I know."

He drew in a deep breath, smelling her, smelling him, smelling… "I would wash you, madam, and cleanse away the scent of vinegar."

"I am quite capable of washing myself, thank you."

"I would cleanse away your pain, Megan."

Her chestnut hair blazed with life; her face went deathly still. She glanced down at the washcloth in his hand and the water that dripped through his fingers, then back up to his face. "Is it just my pain that you would wash away, Muhamed?"

"No."

He would replace the empty barrenness of his life with the scent and the taste and the feel of this woman, and for a little while longer, he would bask in her belief that he was a man.

Megan's face suddenly lit up with a radiant luminescence that was far more seductive than youth. "I would enjoy your ministrations, sir."

Chapter Four

Muhamed was a eunuch; Megan was a widow.

His body was fit, that of a man in his prime; hers was softer, a woman who had reached middle-age.

His manhood blatantly stood out from his body, long, thick, hard. She did not have to glance down to know that her nipples were equally hard.

They stood before each other, naked, with no more lies to hide behind. With no more darkness to camouflage who and what they were: a man and a woman whose lives, for whatever reason, had crossed paths.

Megan waited with trembling expectation. She ached- both from their joining the night before and the need that flooded her anew.

Muhamed stepped closer. The tantalizing scent of musky sweat and tangy spice teased her nostrils, reminding her of the pleasure they had shared the night before, and of the pleasures that awaited them in the light of day.

"Thank you for your compliment, about my… my person," she said breathlessly. And returned it. "You are a very handsome man, you know."

A patch of light clearly delineated his left cheek. Dark crimson stained it; denial flashed in his black eyes. He opened his mouth… "Thank you," he said gruffly. And cupped her cheek with the wet washcloth. It was warmed by the heat of his body.

The touch was electric.

Or perhaps it was his manhood which prodded her stomach that was electric. It, too, was damp.

The intensity of his gaze took her breath away. She squeezed her eyelids closed and concentrated on the rough-soft caress of the washcloth, cleaning her left cheek, her right, her forehead, her chin, her neck, her chest, her left breast…

Her eyelids snapped open.

Muhamed's eyes were veiled by thick black lashes.

A squire near her husband's vicarage had once purchased a young stallion for breeding purposes. When the stallion had proved to be sterile, the squire had castrated the beautiful beast.

Megan had watched it in a field one day, trying to do what nature had intended it do but which the squire had made impossible.

Or perhaps it had not been impossible.

Perhaps the gelded stallion had been able to gain release, as Muhamed was capable of gaining release.

Perhaps the gelded stallion had also given his mare release, as Muhamed had given her release.

Muhamed diligently washed her right breast, rubbing and rubbing until her engorged nipple throbbed.

She sucked in cool air, needing to know-"Did the concubines… did the men suckle their breasts?"

Or was she, indeed, an abomination, to want a man to suckle her as mothers suckled their infants?

He lifted his eyelids. Black eyes pinned her as the washcloth cleansed her. "Yes."

"What else did the"-no, she could not use the term eunuch, not when his member bridged her stomach and his eyes probed her soul-"the men do to the concubines?"

"Harem women possess phalli; they use them on themselves, on each other, or else they have eunuchs ply them."

"What is"-pain-pleasure zigzagged back and forth between her nipple and her womb-"phalli?"

"Artificial phalluses."

Megan's heartbeat staggered.

Phalluses. Artificial… penises?

"Sit down on the bed and lie back."

So he could wash her private parts.

So he could kiss her clitoris.

But what if he did not like the sight of her… the taste of her?

"It is not necessary that you do this," she said hurriedly.

"It is not what you wish?"

"I…" The cleansing was for him as well as her, he had said. She thought of the pain he had endured in the harem, watching others engage in the pleasures that he was denied. While Megan was not a young, beautiful concubine, she could give him this. "Yes, I wish it."

Megan stepped backward. The backs of her legs hit the mattress.

She abruptly sat down, bed squeaking. Dull pain radiated up through her pelvis, faded at the cold compress of wool blankets and coarse sheet.

The floor would be equally cold and far harder on his bare knees.

Reaching out, she grabbed a pillow and dropped it on the floor. At the same time dark, long, narrow feet stepped forward. The pillow landed on top of them.

She glanced up… and froze.

A single eye stared at her.

She instinctively reached out… and closed her fingers around warm, pulsing skin.

Muhamed audibly sucked in air, but he did not pull away.

Last night, sheathed inside a French letter, he had felt like rubber; now-"You feel like satin," she murmured, mesmerized by his circumference and length and pure masculine beauty.

Gently, she grazed the engorged tip-it was dusky purple in the muted light. Slippery clear moisture dampened her thumb. A tiny heartbeat pounded inside him.

She looked up in wonder. He tensely stared down at her.

Megan said the first thing that came to mind. "I never knew a man would be so soft, yet so hard."

"Did you not see-or touch-your husband?"

"The English are more concerned with modesty than sensuality."

"I am circumcised."

"You are perfect," she said in all sincerity.

Hearing the words she had spoken aloud, she blushed.

His manhood flexed inside the ring of her fingers.

She had pleased him with her compliment. Such a simple thing to do, when he gave her so much pleasure.

Pride was a little thing to sacrifice if it would give him back the joy that had been taken away from him.

Realizing the opportunity he presented her with, she reached for the washcloth.

Muhamed knew what she was going to do. What the harem concubines had not done for those men who had given them pleasure.

He gave her the washcloth.

Megan carefully washed him, there, underneath his penis where the skin was smooth save for a hard seam of puckered scars. He stiffened; she persisted, washing the root that was darker than the hairless skin at his groin, the stalk that was thicker than the circumference of her fingers, the purple-tinted crown that cried crystal tears.

She kissed him, there on the tip of his manhood.

He grabbed her head, palms stopping her ears so that all she could hear was the beat of her own heart that matched the tiny heart that beat against her lips.

She tasted him.

Slippery salt coated her tongue.

She opened her lips against him-smooth flesh dragging over smooth flesh, mouth opening wider-

Suddenly the heat cupping her ears disappeared, and a hard hand grasped her braid, pulling her head back while the sound of labored breathing surrounded her.

Muhamed's hard features were drawn; his black eyes filled with-what?

Her heart lodged inside her throat. "Did I hurt you?"

"A man can gain release through a woman's mouth as well as her vulva," he gritted.

Megan saw behind his harshness.

He wanted the release he spoke of. He wanted it so much that he was afraid of it.

"I would enjoy bringing you to orgasm in such a manner," she said calmly.

His mouth twisted-a grimace of pain rather than pleasure. "What if I told you that some concubines enjoy it when eunuchs penetrate their back orifices? Would you enjoy that, too?"

Back orifices…

His meaning slammed through her. The image hovered in her thoughts, refusing to fade. It was overlapped by a vivid picture of an artificial phallus.

She had never imagined such acts as he conjured… had she?

When she had picked cucumbers from her small garden, she had never imagined the object to which their shape bore a striking resemblance… had she?

When she clenched the muscles inside her vulva, she had never noticed that her buttocks also tightened… had she?

When his fingertips had plunged into her crevice last night, she had not wondered what would happen if only they had sunk a little lower, a little deeper… bad she?

"I think"-Megan swallowed, the stretch of her neck making it difficult-"that if an act brings pleasure to a woman… or a man… then surely it is a cause for rejoice, rather than shame. I think it is those who judge the needs of others that are shameful."

"There are acts that are shameful." The beginnings of pain pricked her scalp. "Acts that some men require that are not natural."

His manhood continued to throb between her fingers; a pulse throbbed at the corner of his mouth.

"What?" she asked carefully. "What acts do you refer to? A man touching a woman… kissing her vulva? A woman touching a man… and kissing his manhood? You think those acts are unnatural?"

"No." His hold eased. "It is not those acts which are shameful."

What did this man need-or require-that he deemed unnatural?

"I will do anything you wish, Muhamed, so long as you do not hurt me."

"I wouldn't hurt you." Something flickered in the depths of his black eyes. "I have never hurt a woman."

Megan believed him.

"I saw a young girl and boy once."

The words popped out of her mouth before she could stop them. A stillness came over him; only the throbbing pulse inside his manhood was alive, clocking the passing seconds.

Muted sounds drifted up from the side of the inn-they came from another world, a place that had no bearing on a eunuch and a widow.

"The country, like your harem, is not always a place of privacy," she continued softly, remembering… "They lay together in a field. It was in the spring. The grass was newly green. I watched them over a hedge."

"What did they do?" he asked hoarsely.

"The girl sat astride the boy's hips, while he lay back and fondled her breasts. She rode him like a man would ride a horse."

"Did the sight arouse you?"

The very memory aroused her.

"Yes."

His eyes closed, lashes thick against his cheek. "You gave me pleasure last night, Megan. More than I had ever thought possible."

His eyelids opened; his black eyes were bleak. "I do not know if I will be able to share that pleasure with you again.

Eunuchs such as I grow erect, but it is… difficult… sometimes impossible… to obtain release."

She did not want release if he could not obtain his own.

"Then there is no need for you to give me pleasure-"

"There is every need, madam."

"Why?" she challenged.

"Because you are a very special woman, Megan. And I would know you."

The protest rising inside her throat died.

"I felt your clitoris harden against my fingers last night," he continued, voice and face strained. "Now I want to feel it harden against my tongue. Lie back, Megan. Let me learn your body. Let me give you pleasure. It's all I can offer you. It's all I can offer any woman."

Her chest felt as if she squeezed it instead of the washcloth.

Silently, Megan handed him the damp cloth and lay back. The ceiling had leaked at one time; a maze of brown water stains ringed it.

"Spread your legs."

Firm fingers helped her. Opened her. Exposed her.

Something icy wet touched her-the washcloth.

She tensed-the muscles inside her vulva, the muscles inside her buttocks.

The cold washcloth warmed to her body, parted her body, delved inside her body.

He was… stuffing the cloth up inside her.

She winced, invaded by his finger, by more washcloth, his finger again, and yet more washcloth. Just when she lifted her head and started to protest that she was not a jar which needed to be cleaned out by swirling a cloth inside, he took her into his mouth.

Liquid heat. Scalding moisture.

Megan's head banged the pillow of crumpled blankets; the mattress squeaked in protest. She stared up at the largest water stain; darker circles rimmed the outer edges, more re-cent leaks, a part of it yet separate. Just as Muhamed's sexuality had been a part of his nature, yet separate from his life.

Thoughts of Muhamed and images of the circle of water slowly blurred until sight and sensation became one, and that one was his tongue and the washcloth that was tightly packed inside her.

He stabbed the very tip of her, his tongue hotter than had been his fingertip. Wetter. Faster.

A drop of cool water trickled down her vulva and into the crevice between her buttocks. There was no room for air inside her body, yet her lungs independently sucked it in, deeper, deeper…

Her peak of enjoyment hit her with the force of lightning, searing, rending. Dimly she had time to wonder who had coined the term "peak of enjoyment"-there was nothing remotely enjoyable about the agony that rent her body asunder; was this what Muhamed was afraid of, this pleasure that consumed one's very soul-then she was crying out. At the same time her body convulsed. It felt as if his tongue were sucking out her insides.

She tightened her muscles-vulva, buttocks-and could not stop it. With each spasm another inch of her was drawn out.

No, not her... the washcloth.

He was slowly pulling the washcloth out of her even as her muscles clenched down, trying to stay the motion.

Suddenly there was no stopping it, her body bore down and gave up the washcloth… gave up her release… gave up a part of Megan that she had not known she possessed until an Arabic eunuch had taken the time to show her.

Megan plummeted back into her body, and once again she was staring up at the ceiling and the large water stain that was ringed by smaller dark circles, joined but separate. A hard hand pressed down on her stomach, as if feeling the contractions that continued to ripple through her womb. A facile tongue probed her vulva, as if feeling the contractions that continued to ripple through her vagina.

Slowly the contractions ebbed and his tongue withdrew. Something soft and silky and alive slipped through her fingers-hair.

When had she grabbed his head? she wondered dazedly.

"In the Orient, strung pearls are used instead of a cloth."

Hot air seared her nether lips, breathing desire back into sated flesh.

"You have seen men," she gulped air, "insert pearls inside women?"

Hard heat abruptly invaded her-a finger. She winced. It was not padded by cloth.

"I have read about that act and many more," he said hoarsely. "In Arabia there are treatises that describe the various ways a man may please a woman."

"And are there treatises that describe the various ways to please a man?"

"It is through a woman's vulva"-he inserted a second finger, a quick shock that rapidly gave way to tantalizing fullness-"that a man gains his pleasure."

Tears burned her eyes. She determined to find a way to give Muhamed the same pleasure he had given her.

"Thank you for improvising with the cloth. I feel quite… cleansed."

His fingers inside her throbbed. Or perhaps it was she who throbbed.

"If you could have anything you wanted, what would you wish for, Megan?" he asked unexpectedly.

"I… " This. This time with him was everything she had ever wished for. "I don't know." Hard pressure pinched her vagina. "What are you-what would you wish for?"

"This, Megan." He pushed inside her-three fingers-it felt like five. "This is what I've dreamed about ever since I can remember. "

She sucked in air-consciously trying to relax her body and give him what he needed. The ceiling was superimposed by images: Muhamed relieving himself; Muhamed preparing for condemnation, when he turned and saw her watching him; Muhamed's face growing shuttered when he thought she was not going to stay with him for another day, another night.

Imagery gave way to the sound of Muhamed cursing the night as he found his first release with a woman.

He twisted his fingers.

Electricity shot through her.

She stared blindly at the ceiling, forcing herself to hold still and allow him to explore her. "What did you say… in Arabic, last night?"

"I don't remember."

He was evading her again.

His fingers surged more deeply inside her.

Megan bit her lip. "Ela'na. What does that mean?"

"'Damn.'" He crooked his three fingers inside her and gently raked the front wall of her vagina. "You have a button inside you."

A button!

Heat shot through her-hotter than fire, more galvanizing than lightning.

"What does… Lowsam-" She couldn't remember the word, could barely remember how to speak. "What does mara-"

Her body independently surged upward. "Oh, my God! What are you doing?"

He repeated the caress. "Mara wahda means 'one time.' Does it give you pleasure, with just my fingers inside you?"

Pleasure was not the word she would use to describe what she felt. Agony. Torture. "Yes, it gives me pleasure. Does it bring you pleasure?"

"Your flesh burns, Megan, with the heat of your desire. Yes, you please me. Can you obtain your release like this?"

"I… I don't know."

"Then let us find out."

He found the rhythm that her body needed, as if his fingers were his manhood, driving deep, hard, tips curled, so that each thrust, each withdrawal, teased the special button he had found.

Wave after wave of pleasure rolled over Megan.

She thought of the Arabic women who had been altered, and hoped that they were able to experience this, at least, the pleasure that accrued from having the inner wall of a woman's vagina strummed. And then she didn't think, she could only feel as a wave of blinding sensation broke over her, and her entire world shrank to the heat of his hand pressing on her womb while the heat of his fingers pistoned inside her.

Her body bowed in a perfect arch. Seeking to escape. Lifting for more.

He gave her more. Deeper. Harder. Always pressing inward against the inner wall of her vulva.

He gave her release. And did not seek his own.

Megan slowly became conscious of his fingers that were a part of her and the tension that surrounded her.

"I have read that a woman is inexhaustible," Muhamed rasped. "That she may reach a thousand and one orgasms in a night."

"I do not think…" She took a shallow breath, unable to draw a deeper one. "I do not think I will survive even one more orgasm right now, let alone nine hundred and ninety-nine more."

His fingers curved around her stomach; at the same time they curled inside her vagina.

"There is a well nearby," he said abruptly. "Madron Well."

It was a mile or so above Madron church.

"Yes." Megan raised her head. Sweat glistened on his face. "I know it."

But how did he know about it?

"I would see it. With you."

Her heartbeat drummed against her chest; her breast quivered with the force of her breathing. "I would much rather see to your satisfaction."

His mouth twisted. "I have told you, Megan. Eunuchs are not like men."

His fingers throbbed inside her, telling her he lied, either deliberately or unknowingly.

He was a man, and he could gain release. If only he would trust her.

"I need to… to return to my room," she said.

"Why?" he asked, his voice suddenly guarded.

"I need to get…" How ridiculous it was, to blush over mentioning an innocent thing like underclothes when his fingers filled her and her body still shook with the release he had brought her. "I need to get my cloak."

"We will stop by your room and get it on our way out."

"I would rather you have the innkeeper prepare us a picnic basket to take along with us while I dress."

"You will not"-he prodded her more deeply, fingers straightening, reaching, as if he mapped her vaginal walls- "change your mind?"

"No. I am hungry." He reversed direction. She took a deep breath, internally following the slow withdrawal of his fingers, one knuckle, two… "I did not eat my dinner last night."

His fingers glistened in the dim light, moist with the essence of her release.

Megan glanced up. His gaze was waiting for her.

That slight half smile hitched up the corner of his lips "I do not want you to go hungry on my account."

"Then I suggest you feed me, sir."

The trace of his smile disappeared. "I did not know that women like you existed."

"I did not know that men like you existed."

His expression immediately closed. "Eunuchs are mentioned in your Christian Bible, Megan."

"But men who value a woman's satisfaction are not, Muhamed."

Muhamed stood in one swift motion; he was blatantly erect. Bending down, he scooped up the white turban and robe he had discarded the night before.

The muscles in his back, legs and buttocks rippled when he walked. He dropped the washcloth across the wooden bar beside the bureau, then neatly pulled the robe on over his head. Opening the top drawer, he took out a wooden-handled hairbrush and ran it through his hair. It neatly fell into wavy curls.

A brief pang stabbed her chest, that he should have such a beautiful head of hair when hers was limp and straight. The pang of envy was immediately replaced by a sense of Tightness.

It was comforting to watch a man perform his morning toilet.

His habits were the same as those of an Englishman; he dressed, brushed his hair, his teeth…

Bending his head, he spat into the basin.

She bit her lip to stop her protest when he proceeded to wrap the turban around his head. When he opened the second bureau drawer and took out a pair of baggy white trousers, she could not keep her mouth shut. "Please don't."

The back of his white robe stiffened. "Don't what?" he asked, without turning around.

"I rather fancied that Arabic men did not wear anything under their robes. The Scots are reputed not to wear anything under their kilts. It is… interesting for a woman to think that all she need do is toss up a man's skirt."

Muhamed turned, white robe flurrying. "You are… jesting with me."

He seemed surprised that a woman would do so.

"Not at all, sir," she said whimsically, feeling absurdly young and carefree. "The English have no sense of the ridiculous, especially when they sit naked in front of a clothed gentleman. Or perhaps that is not well-known in your country."

Shadow crossed his face, a trick of light. "Concubines and slaves do not picnic in Arabia."

She had overseen many picnics as the wife of a vicar, but she had never attended a picnic unchaperoned with a man.

"I dare say it would not be a practical custom in a desert land," she said gently.

"What shall I have the innkeeper prepare?"

His uncertainty was endearing.

"I suspect an inn of this size will not have much of a menu to chose from. A meat pie and cheese will do quite well, thank you."

"You will be here when I return?"

Megan felt a flutter deep inside her chest. Muhamed was so very vulnerable underneath his outward gruff ness.

"If I am not here, I will be in the second room down to the left of yours," she said calmly.

He turned toward the door, in a soft swish of cotton.

"Muhamed."

Muhamed halted; he did not turn around. "Yes?"

"How did you come to know about Madron Well? It is a local phenomenon."

"How did you come to know about it?"

She had not imagined the shadow that had crossed his face and now pervaded the room; it had nothing to do with a passing cloud.

He had said no more pretense.

"I was born in Land's End," she replied evenly. "My mother-like most of the folk hereabouts-clung to many of the old ways. She baptized me in the well waters."

"What would you like to drink with your meal?" he asked in his old brusque manner.

He was not going to answer her question.

Megan fought down a prick of hurt.

"Cider will be fine, thank you."

With a swirl of robes he opened the door and slid out of her sight. A final click of closure followed his departure.

Her heart skipped a beat. Suddenly she felt forty-eight again instead of twenty-six and full of joy.

What had she said to upset Muhamed?

What if he did not return?

Standing up, Megan picked up her black wool gown from off the floor and dressed. Hairpins dotted the pillow and sheet. She scooped them up. Slipping into her shoes, she rescued her black felt hat and the hatpin underneath it.

She stared at the small brown tin on the nightstand. There was no advertisement on the outside, nothing at all to indicate what was inside it.

On impulse, she removed the lid.

It was filled with what looked like rolled-up sausage skins. French letters. She had often wondered what they looked like. They hardly seemed large enough to accommodate a man of Muhamed's size.

Megan grabbed a rubber sheath and replaced the lid, a quick click of metal on metal.

The hallway was dark, empty; a worn wool runner tiredly traversed the length of it. An oil sconce guarded each of the six doors, a dull gleam of pewter. She hurried to her room.

A glint of gold greeted her.

Her wedding band waited on the nightstand beside the narrow, neatly made sleigh bed.

The sight of it did not incur the sense of betrayal she had associated with her marriage over the last twenty-two years.

Impulsively, Megan crossed the wooden floor, heels echoing determinedly, and flung open the worn drapes. Blinding sunlight spilled into the sterile room, proof that there was light after darkness. Turning, she plucked the wedding band off the nightstand and dropped it into the top dresser drawer.

Feeling as uncertain as a young girl awaiting her first beau, she washed, brushed her teeth, loosened her braid, and brushed her hair. Rummaging in her trunk, she pulled out a corset, chemise, petticoats, wool drawers-no, she did not want to wear drawers, she wanted to be accessible to Muhamed.

Megan pulled out a black skirt and bodice. She realized with dismay that all of her clothes were black. They belonged to a woman who was resigned to widowhood, not to a woman who planned upon demonstrating to a eunuch that he was a man.

No time now to worry about her wardrobe.

Hurriedly, she slipped into her chemise and rebraided her hair.

A sharp knock splintered the silence.

Megan's heartbeat quickened.

"One moment!" she called out, mouth full of hairpins.

The knock came again. Louder.

Stomach roiling with nervous anticipation, she coiled the braid on top of her head and secured it with pins.

A third knock came, louder still.

The entire inn would know that Muhamed sought entrance to her room if he continued knocking.

She jerked open the door. And perforce had to step back to prevent Muhamed from walking over her.

A black cloak billowed after him. He carried a battered bucket.

"They did not have a picnic basket," he said without preamble.

"Oh." She flushed, suddenly, painfully aware of the sunshine that warmed her back and starkly revealed a patch of chipped paint on the wall behind him. Shadow had cloaked her nakedness before; the thin cotton chemise would not conceal the changes that age had wrought in her body-breasts that were too soft; hips that were too rounded. "If you like, you may wait downstairs-"

"I have never watched a woman dress."

Her flush deepened. "I have never had a man watch me dress."

"You will not wear a corset to our picnic."

Megan blinked at Muhamed's peremptory manner. "I beg your pardon?"

"Corsets restrict a woman's circulation."

"Corsets also support their… bosom."

"Your bosom does not need support, Megan."

"That is for me to decide, surely."

"Men, too, have fancies." His black eyes were wary. "I would like to look at you over our meal and know that it is you I am gazing at and not a miracle of whalebones."

Megan mentally struggled with the vicar's wife she had been for so long and the woman she wanted to be for this Arab. She had not worn a corset to his room the night before, but.…

She took a deep breath. "When you returned to your room, did you don trousers?"

"I am as you saw me."

Was he still erect?

Instinctively, she glanced down; his white robe was tented.

He was ready for her; completely accessible if she wanted to flip up his skirt.

Scalding blood scorched her cheeks and pounded in her temples.

"I cannot go outside with nothing on underneath my dress," she said firmly, raising her gaze to his. "I must wear a bustle and petticoats, or the hem of my skirt will sweep the ground."

As it had swept the hallway last night.

Muhamed set the bucket on top of her neatly made bed. "Very well. I will assist you."

And he did.

Megan had never had an abigail. Had not been assisted with her dress since she was a young child, so young that she could not even remember having received assistance.

He buttoned up her bodice, fingers lingering at her breasts.

Desire knotted inside her stomach.

"Thank you," she murmured, suffocating on the tantalizing aroma of spice and masculinity that was uniquely Muhamed's.

When she made to withdraw, he clung to her button.

"You said you weren't from around here." Almond-scented breath bathed her face. "Why did you lie?"

"I've lived in Birminghamshire for the last thirty years," she said truthfully. There was no need to lie, not anymore. She was neither young nor wealthy nor in any way desirable other than to this man. "Land's End is no longer my home."

"Yet you are here."

"Yes, I am here. My husband died penniless. The vicar who replaced him was a bachelor; he was kind enough to let me be his housekeeper. Last month he married. There was not enough work for two women, so I… volunteered to retire my position. My parents left me a small plot of land." Pride intervened; she could not bring herself to tell him that it was a plot of land no larger than a matchbox and that the Branwells, in a place of poverty, had been the most poor. "I had nowhere else to come."

"Did you see your parents, before they died?"

"No," she said. Lingering regret flitted through her. "They died of influenza."

"Did you come back for their funeral?"

"My parents never forgave me for marrying a man who was not a Cornishman. No, I did not come back for their funeral. By the time I was alerted of their deaths, they had already been buried."

"Would you have attended, if you had known about it in time?"

"I don't know."

Or did she?

Megan had not wanted to return to the poverty or the grim austerity of the Cornish people.

"Did you like it when I put my tongue inside your mouth?"

Her breath caught in her chest, remembering the dual penetration of his tongue inside her mouth and his manhood inside her vulva. "Yes."

"I, too, found it enjoyable." Bright color circled his cheeks. He dropped his hands. "The gig will be ready."

Megan grabbed her cloak off one of the rusted hooks that acted as a wardrobe, and the Windsor hat off the bed. Rushing back, she retrieved her gloves and the French letter she had put inside the pocket of the discarded dress.

Chapter Five

Ragged pieces of cloth hung from thorns, mothers' last-year votive offerings torn from swaddling cloths to appease the old gods.

He stared at the clear spring water, and wondered why he had brought Megan to Madron Well.

The truth chuckled and bubbled out from underneath the rock.

Hilla-ridden-to have the stag-was a West Cornish term for a man whose life was riddled with nightmares. Legend claimed that a man could be cured if he washed in Madron Well.

He wanted to be cured.

He wanted to wash in Madron Well and bathe the past away.

"It is said that in 1650 there was a cripple named John Trelilie," Megan said. The brim of her hat and the fold of black veiling hid her face from his view. "He dreamed three times that he should wash himself in Madron Well. But he was crippled, and no one would bring him, so he crawled here to wash himself in the waters. It cured him, they say. They say he walked away from the well upright."

"Do you believe the story is true?" he asked neutrally.

"It is certainly less farfetched than some other Cornish legends." Megan looked up; sunlight sharply illuminated her white skin and the network of fine lines that defined it. "Are there similar legends in your country?"

Arabia was filled with legends. Of genies. Of magical oases.

He opened his mouth to tell her of Arabia. "Eunuchs have been known to marry," he said instead.

It was not what he had intended to say.

Her moss green eyes remained calm. "What did you mean, earlier, when you said that eunuchs such as yourself grow erect? Are there eunuchs who do not… grow erect?"

A bird warbled; the spring gurgled.

It all seemed so far away, the years he had been whole and the day he had been altered.

"There are three types of castration," he said, feeling as removed as the bird's warble. "There is the sandali, or castrati, in which a boy's-or man's-penis and testicles are cleanly cut off by a razor; there are those who have their penis only cut off; and there are those like me, who have their testicles either crushed or removed."

He spoke dispassionately, as if it had happened to someone else other than himself; as if the crimes perpetrated were not monstrous, but were perfectly acceptable.

In Arabia, they were.

The horror he had earlier expected to see in her eyes was clearly visible. "These men who do not have their manhood- how do they relieve themselves?"

"They urinate through a straw. Or else they squat."

Like a woman.

But they did not deserve that analogy-not from a fellow eunuch.

"And so these men-these men who do not have their manhood-they must suffer, without any consolation at all."

"A eunuch's level of desire corresponds to the age he was castrated," he said stoically, unable to lie and tell her that a eunuch never felt desire, because they did feel desire.

Even those who were castrated before the onset of puberty.

Even those who were sandali.

"At what age were you?…" She paused, unable to say the word.

"I was castrated when I was thirteen," he said flatly.

He had matured early. At thirteen he had sported the shadow of a beard and his testicles had dropped.

"But those men who lose their manhood…"

She did not have to finish her observation. Or perhaps it was a question.

How did a man who had no manhood yet who still possessed desire find satisfaction?

"Some eunuchs take consolation in giving women pleasure."

"I cannot imagine always seeing to the pleasure of others without being able to physically share it."

Yet she had loved a man who had not seen to her pleasure.

"Eunuchs who have neither a penis nor testicles marry," he said reluctantly.

She remained silent, her gaze suddenly alert.

Instantly, he regretted his confidence.

He did not want to talk about his past. He did not want to think about his future.

He simply wanted to enjoy the day, and his first-and last-woman.

Even should he have the ability to find release in a prostitute, he would never be content with passionless union.

Reaching up, he slid out her hatpin and plucked off her black hat. Sunlight turned her chestnut brown hair to a blaze of red and bronze, autumn colors streaked with the silver gleam of winter. "You have beautiful hair. Why do you wear it pulled back so tightly?"

Reaching up, up, up, she said, "You have beautiful hair, too. Why do you hide it in a turban?" and pulled free the end of the white cotton that was tucked inside to hold the turban in place.

He held still, staring down at her upturned face and the faint lines that contradicted her youthful impulsiveness. "A Muslim man may not show his hair in public."

She unwound the cloth, breasts thrusting against her black cloak, against his chest, focusing upon his turban rather than his gaze. "An Englishwoman may not wear her hair loose in public," she said, breath caressing his chin.

It smelled of tooth powder.

"We are not in public," he said, more aware of her touch and the unwinding turban than he was of his own heartbeat.

Cool air cocooned his head. She stepped back, triumphantly brandishing his turban. "No, we are not."

"I am hungry, Megan," he said deliberately.

"What did you bring us to eat?" she asked, moss green eyes sparkling.

His breath caught in his chest.

No woman had ever jested with him. Teased him. Engaged him in sexual banter.

"What would you like?" he asked, voice too gruff.

It did not deter her-his voice-his body.

"Meat pie," she riposted.

"Then you are fortunate," he returned. "There is a meat pie in the bucket."

Megan laughed.

It rang out through the thicket of branches and leafing bushes, ricocheted off the stone walls that isolated Madron Well from the intrusion of modernity. Wings fluttered up to the sky-she had startled the warbling bird.

His groin tightened.

He untied his cloak and spread it on the ground. She unbuttoned her cloak and spread it on top of his.

Her nipples stabbed her bodice.

"You will get cold," he warned.

"No colder than you," she rejoined.

He was not cold.

Turning, he walked to the stone fence where he had left the bucket. His loose cotton thobs fluttered against his bare ankles, rubbed against his turgid verge. Catching up the thin metal handle, he turned.

Megan sat on their cloaks, black gown primly tucked around her legs, tugging off black silk gloves.

He stalked her.

She glanced up… and stared at his groin. His robe was tented.

"Your meat pie, madam," he said. And set the bucket down on top of their spread cloaks.

Setting her gloves aside, Megan raised her head. Her moss green gaze snared his black one. "I do not see it."

The heat surging through him owed nothing to sunshine. "Look harder, madam."

"There is a cloth covering it," she returned, "Perhaps you should remove it."

There was no mistaking her inference.

He remembered the press of her lips and the lick of her tongue when she had kissed his verge.

His heart thudded against his chest. "We will both catch our chill," he warned.

Megan reached for the top button on her bodice. "But we will always have fond memories of meat pie, will we not?"

She unfastened one button, two, three… and shrugged out of her bodice.

Her breasts, warmed by sunlight, gleamed like alabaster. Full. Heavy.

Perfect.

"Take down your hair," he said in a strangled voice.

He watched the lift of her arms, her breasts, noted the glint of red-brown hair underneath her arms, catalogued each quiver of her soft breasts.

A long, thick braid fell over her shoulder. Laying aside the hairpins, she slowly unraveled it and raked her fingers through it to straighten out the kinks.

The red, bronze and silver that had only glinted in her hair when it had been secured on top of her head, now was a blazing waterfall that cascaded over her right breast and down to her waist.

The thud of his heart shook his entire body-his chest; his knees.

Megan was willing to satisfy a eunuch's fancy; he could do no less.

He jerked the thobs over his head, letting it fall where it would, and kneeled down in front of her.

In the dim light of morning with the curtains closed, his condition had been blatant but not the scars. There was no hiding them in the full light of day.

She did not cringe from their sight.

Solemnly, she uncovered the bucket of food. Equally solemn, he accepted in his bare hand the slice of meat pie she offered him.

Sitting down, he crossed his legs, acutely aware that she could see everything… his scars, his desire, everything he had spent the last forty years trying to hide.

Pulling out a small jug of cider, Megan filled two glasses, left breast quivering with her motion, nipple stabbing the chill spring air.

He reached out and flicked back her hair, so that he could see both of her breasts.

The meat pie was tasteless, the cider sour. He would never forget them.

When they had drained the last drop of cider, finished the meat pie and licked their fingers clean, she returned the jug, glasses and empty pie plate to the bucket.

Megan stood up and unfastened her skirt, her bustle, her petticoats. Her hair shielded her face. "I would ride you, sir."

Twenty-four hours ago, he would have thought her ridiculous.

Twenty-four hours ago, he had not opened his door to admit a widow who masqueraded as a whore.

Straightening his legs, he kicked her underclothes off their cloaks and lay down.

The sun was hot. Blinding. The weight of her body was more welcome than his next breath.

Kneeling over him, she grasped his verge.

He stopped breathing.

Wet heat kissed him.

His heart stopped beating.

Unrelenting pressure. Scalding moisture.

He concentrated on Megan's face as she determinedly tried to put him inside her. She bit her bottom lip, like a child studying for an exam.

"Take me home, Megan," he said hoarsely.

And wondered where his home was.

He knew where others thought it was, but he himself did not know.

Without warning, her portal opened and she swallowed him.

She moaned.

He groaned.

Her pubic hair prickled his pelvis. The tip of his verge abutted her cervix.

He could feel the pulse of her body frantically beating against him.

Megan stared down at him. "I think I'm too old for this."

He grabbed her hips. "I think not, madam. Ride me," he gritted. "Ride me like you saw the young girl ride the boy."

Show me what it is like, he silently begged, to be young and whole and carefree.

Tentatively she lifted up; cool air surrounded his verge while his crown was gripped by molten fire. Her gaze did not waver from his, green eyes moist with sexual need and something more, the need to please him.

It was not her consideration he wanted; he wanted her selfish enjoyment.

He bucked up; at the same time he pulled her down, forcing her to take the hardness that was all he could give her.

Megan threw her head back; a low cry vibrated along the length of his verge.

He did not know who it came from-her, or him.

She had a long neck, white, graceful.

Slowly, she learned the rhythm: up, thighs and vagina squeezing him; down, thighs and vagina opening. Blindly reaching, she clasped her hands over his.

They were the hands of a woman used to cleaning and toiling.

The sun haloed her head in a crown of red, bronze and silver. He alternately watched her breasts jiggle and the chords in her throat strain. A chorus of ragged breathing blended with the wet impact of flesh slapping flesh. Megan rode him until he could feel the sun on his back and the ground beneath his feet and the wind in his face, together galloping back through the past to a time when they had both been young and innocent.

And then it stopped-the pounding motion, the driving force, the race for freedom. Megan stared down at him, face streaked with sweat and sunshine, hair clinging to her cheeks and her breasts. Her vagina rippled around him in the aftermath of her orgasm, fisting, relaxing, fisting, relaxing… about his heart, his verge. Too much, not enough.

He fought back a cry of agony. He was not ready to be a eunuch again, not when the blood still sang through his veins and desire crackled up and down his spine.

Megan's panting breath slowly subsided. "You cannot, can you?"

He did not pretend to misunderstand her. "No."

But Allah, God, he wanted to.

"I am going to bring you to release, Muhamed."

She abruptly levered up onto one knee-he slipped free of her, wincing, turgid verge reaching out for her-and stood up.

He gazed up at the beauty that was a woman's sex; it was pink and wet between a dark fringe of damp curls.

Her pubic hair was darker than that on her head and underneath her arms.

Quickly, she lifted her leg and brought it over his groin, so that her thighs modestly pressed together.

"Come with me," she said, every bit as imperious as he could be.

"Why?" he rasped, chest heaving, lungs laboring.

Why could they not stay as they were, just for a little while longer?

"I am going to make an offering," Megan said cryptically.

Bending down in a glistening waterfall of hair, she flipped the side of her cloak over and retrieved something from her pocket.

He could not see what it was.

Straightening, she turned and walked toward the well that the spring fed, buttocks gently bouncing, hips swaying.

He followed her.

Megan stood over the baptistery that mothers dipped their babies in. Cupping her right hand, she scooped it into the water, brought it up, filled. Turning to him, she let the water trickle down his verge.

He sucked in his breath.

The water was icy.

What had been hard shrank to escape the cold.

She ignored the results of her handiwork, concentrating instead on unrolling a French letter. Megan stuck the unfurled sheath of rubber onto a bush that housed the remnants of swaddling cloths.

His throat tightened. She had baptized his male appendage, as women baptized their babies. Now she left a condom offering, as countless mothers left pieces of swaddling cloths as offerings.

"You think that the good fortune mothers seek for their children will visit me?" he asked roughly.

"I know it will," she said firmly. "But later. In a room warmed by coal and the comfort of a bed at our disposal."

He had experienced one miracle, last night buried inside her body; he did not expect another one.

He helped Megan dress, dropping her petticoats over her head, tying her bustle in place, buttoning the band of her skirt, the front of her bodice.

Pulling her hair back from her face, he braided it for her. It was warm with sunshine, slippery fine, softer than down.

Megan held perfectly still for his ministrations, as if she were not used to another dressing her, helping her.

What kind of a fool had her husband been, to reject Megan's love? he wondered angrily. Were she his woman, he would see that she never wanted for attention.

But he was a eunuch, not a man.

She secured the braid on top of her head and crammed on her hat and gloves while he threw on his thobs and wound his turban around his head.

It felt heavier than a boulder.

They did not talk as they retraced their steps through the overgrowth of thorny bushes to the gig that waited for them. He unhobbled the horse and hitched it to the carriage.

Megan climbed in, unassisted.

He wanted to rip off her black hat and black cloak.

He wanted to eat more tasteless meat pie and drink more sour cider and lie again in the sun, with her naked body riding his own.

"You said that eunuchs who do not have their manhood or their testicles marry," she said, looking straight ahead at the gelded horse instead of him.

His lips tightened in a grim line. "Yes."

He knew what she was going to ask.

Megan turned and stared at him. "They would not marry would they, if they were not capable of enjoying a woman's attentions?"

He snapped the reins. "No, they wouldn't."

Chapter Six

The journey back to the inn was completed in silence. He could feel Megan's determination to give him satisfaction.

It incited both anger and hope: anger, that she failed to understand a eunuch's limitations; hope, that she prove he could find gratification as surely as any other man could.

A young stableboy held the horse's head while he lithely jumped down out of the carriage. For the first time he was glad that he had to daily exercise to build muscles or else turn to flab as so many eunuchs did.

His strength would allow him to bring Megan many more orgasms.

Turning, he offered her his hand. She glared in the direction that the stableboy stood.

He did not need to look to know that the boy gawked at the Arab who wore a robe like a woman.

"Megan," he said softly.

She reluctantly tore her gaze away from the stableboy.

"I am used to arousing curiosity," he merely said.

Megan gave him her hand. Her frown did not diminish.

The dim interior of the inn was oppressive after the bright sunshine outside; the smell of boiled cabbage and beef nauseated him after the freshness of spring air.

The innkeeper who had greedily procured him a whore was not at his station. Raised voices drifted out of the pub.

A chambermaid had straightened his room while they were gone. The bed was made; the ladderback chair stood by the fireplace; the water pitcher sat inside the stoneware basin.

It was as if he had not pleasured a woman and been pleasured in return.

He locked the door.

Megan waited for him by the bed. "I trust you to give me pleasure, Muhamed."

But he did not trust her to give him pleasure, she did not need to add.

No woman could give him what he ached for.

She would not be satisfied until he proved it to her.

"Take off your clothes, Megan."

Megan did not gaze away from him as she removed her clothing. The color of her eyes was indistinct in the dull light; the fire in her hair doused.

"Sit down on the bed," he said harshly.

She sat down on the edge of the bed.

Silently he removed his turban and jerked his thobs over his head. The act was familiar, his intentions were not.

Megan dropped a pillow to the floor; he knelt in front of her.

He did not have to tell her to spread her legs.

Gently he cupped her breasts, swollen and tender, shrouded in shadow instead of sunlight. Hunkering down, he touched her vulva, her clitoris that was still engorged, her nether lips that glistened with moisture.

Untouched by the beauty and the brutality that was Arabia.

She easily took one finger, two…

He stared at the taut ring of her flesh and the dark intrusion of his hand. Moisture leaked from her body, a pearly essence. Slowly, he pulled out until just his two fingertips were buried inside her. Carefully, he pressed his third and forth finger into the gap he caused, fluting them to fit her shape, her size.

She winced, but did not deny him.

Megan would not deny him anything, and he did not know why.

He glanced up at her breasts he had held and her nipples that he had suckled. And was overwhelmed by need.

Swooping upward, he took her left nipple in his mouth. Her heartbeat pounded against his tongue; a matching pulse throbbed against his fingertips.

A woman's vagina was made to birth a child. A woman's breasts were made to give milk.

But there would be no offspring from their union.

He suckled, giving her the succor she needed. That he needed. That they needed, together.

He pushed four fingers inside her, first knuckles, second knuckles… stretching her as a child never would.

Megan contracted around him.

He circled his thumb around her clitoris, savoring her hardness on the outside, her softness on the inside.

A cry spread through Megan's chest, vibrated against his lips and tongue, labored up through her throat and out of her mouth.

Pleasure. Pain.

Her orgasm crushed his fingers, forcing him to share both her pleasure and her pain. A drip of preparatory moisture was squeezed out of his verge.

Cool fingers cupped his ears; heat riffled the top of his head-her breath. She buried her face in his hair, nose and lips pressing against his scalp as he suckled her and milked from her the last spasm of her pleasure, a gentle flutter around his fingers.

They sat for long moments, his fingers inside her, her nipple inside his mouth, connected in a way no erotic treatise could adequately describe.

Reluctantly, he released her nipple. The heat weighting his head lifted; the fingers cupping his ears slid down to his cheeks.

There was no stubble to prick her fingers, nor would there ever be.

He lifted his head and met her waiting gaze.

"I had a son," he said.

Her fingers tightened around his jaws; her vagina nipped his fingers.

"Not of my flesh," he explained harshly, "but a boy who was placed into my care when I was twenty-seven years old.

We"-he would not reveal another's secret exile, it was not his story to tell-"came to England nine years ago. Last week he threatened to kill me if I hurt his woman."

His pain was reflected in her eyes. Or perhaps it was fear he saw, that another man had felt it necessary to threaten him lest he harm a woman.

"Words said in the heat of anger should be forgotten," she merely said.

"They were not said in the heat of anger." He flexed his fingers inside her; Megan reflexively tightened around him. "He would have killed me. I do not blame him. He did what he had to do."

"Were you a… a threat to this woman?"

"Yes."

The pulse beating inside her sped up.

"Why?"

"Because I was jealous." Remembered rage and pain swelled over him. "Because I wanted what he had, a woman of my own."

"But you didn't harm her."

"No."

Or had he?

Were the two of them together, or had he irrevocably come between them?

"Does he-do you-live around here?"

"He lives in London."

"Is that why you are in Land's End-to get away from this man and his… woman?"

He opened his mouth to tell her the truth.

He couldn't.

"In Arabia, there was a woman in the harem… a woman who married a eunuch," he heard himself say. "He had no verge, no testicles. Yet she claimed that he was capable of orgasm. She said that he would go into a rutting fever… and she would hold a pillow over his head when he obtained his peak to prevent him from gnashing her breasts with his teeth.

She and the other women laughed, that a eunuch could be reduced to such ignominy."

He heard again the laughter, the jeering taunts.

He wasn't like that, he thought on a surge of agony.

He would show her he wasn't like that.

He didn't need a woman to bring him release, other than through her own release.

Megan's flesh sucked at his fingers when he withdrew. He gave her his verge, sinking so deeply inside her that there was not room for thoughts of Arabia or eunuchs.

Her gaze held his, accepting him, accommodating him.

Closing his eyes, he pulled back out, and rammed into her. Again. And again. And again.

Until his skin burned with sweat.

Until his knees ached.

Until his verge throbbed in agony.

Until she cried out, first in pleasure, then in pain, and he still could not gain release.

Soft arms wrapped around him. Held him. Immobilized him.

He leaned into Megan, trembling, wanting so badly that he wanted to howl. Sobbing for air, he buried his face in the crook of her neck.

Soft fingers feathered his hair, pressed him closer. "Tell me how," she whispered.

How could he tell her?

It was unnatural.

A man should not need more than a woman's vulva.

"Tell me," she persisted. "Please. Trust me, Muhamed. Trust me like I've trusted you."

He pressed harder into her neck, her vagina, wanting to lose himself inside her, unable to do so. Because of one man's decision. Because of an entire culture that perpetrated a practice that destroyed lives rather than desire.

"A man has a gland inside him that can be caressed," he said raggedly.

Megan stilled-even the pulse that rapidly pounded against his lips seemed to halt.

It had dawned on her that there was only one place that a man could be internally caressed.

"How would a woman be able to identify this gland?" she asked unevenly.

He repeated what he had heard other eunuchs say, creatures who were not supposed to want sexual satisfaction but they did. "It is said to be the size and shape of an unshelled nut. They call it the third almond."

"I want to please you, Muhamed. I want to give you the same pleasure you have given me."

He pulled away from the comfort of Megan's arms. "It is not the same," he said harshly.

"You are afraid."

Yes, he was afraid.

He was afraid that the climax she had given him would never be repeated.

He was afraid of losing what little masculinity he retained.

"It is unnatural," he grated.

Why didn't she see that it was unnatural?

"Muhamed, satisfaction is not unnatural. What they did to you is unnatural. Men loving women only so they can bear their children is unnatural. But not this, Muhamed. You said you receive satisfaction through my pleasure. Let me share yours. Let me know that I can please you, as you've pleased me."

"They laughed," he said harshly.

"I would never laugh at you."

No, Megan wouldn't laugh at him.

Gently, he withdrew from her and stood up, bones creaking, knees aching.

Megan grabbed a pillow. Dropping it to the floor, she kneeled in front of him.

He stared down at the top of her head; her braid hung down her back. She looked like a schoolgirl.

Her hands that wrapped around him did not belong to a schoolgirl; they belonged to a woman.

Fire danced along his verge, the caress of her fingers.

Glancing up, she caught his gaze. "This is for me, too, Muhamed. I've never had the opportunity to touch a man's body. I will always treasure the fact that you trust me enough to let me do this."

Head lowering, she circumvented his response by the simple expedient of taking him into her mouth.

He wished he could see her face.

He wished he could hold her body.

His groin tightened.

He blindly grabbed-a woman had such a vulnerable neck-and felt the laving of her tongue deep inside, as if his member did not stop at his pubis, but wound up inside him.

She suckled him.

He slid his thumbs up, simultaneously feeling the hot suction of her mouth and the muscles in her jaws rhythmically contract, expand, contract, expand.

There was pleasure in having a woman suckle a man's member, but there was also uncertainty. In a woman's mouth, he was entirely at her mercy.

She could hurt him, and there was nothing he could do to prevent it.

Had she felt this same sense of vulnerability when he had taken her into his mouth and suckled her? he briefly wondered.

Did all women feel this sense of vulnerability when a man took them-whether with fingers or verge-and they were entirely at his mercy?

Had Megan felt this vulnerability?

Lungs sucking in air, he threw his head back, his whole world reduced to Megan's lips, Megan's tongue, and the sharp threat of Megan's teeth.

He was melting, yet he had never felt more hard.

A gentle pressure nudged his thighs. His heart jumped-in anticipation, in dread.

He did not want what she offered.

He wanted to be like other men, to take his release as other men took theirs.

Trust her, she had said.

He had never trusted anyone, not since he was thirteen.

How could he trust this woman?

How could he not trust her?

He parted his legs.

She found him, prodded him. Her finger was slippery wet- from her own body?

He squeezed his eyelids together, emotions roiling, muscles clenching. Denying her access. Denying the unbidden thrill of pleasure her touch engendered, probing for entry.

She would not be denied.

He gasped, feeling her become a part of him. And gasped again when she found the gland he had spoken of.

A bolt of lightning shot down his spine and out of his verge. Light flashed behind his eyelids; voices echoed inside his ears.

The son of his heart: I will kill you….

The woman he had loved: Have you never, ever wanted to find love in a woman's body?

Megan, the woman who through her selflessness was demonstrating that he knew nothing of love, and never had: / do not understand what it is that you want from me.

He gritted his teeth to hold back the pressure that squeezed his chest and overflowed into his throat.

This was what he had wanted.

This was all he had ever wanted.

A woman who would not cringe at his body, as he cringed from it.

A woman who would take what he could give her, and not belittle him for what he could not give her.

A woman who cared about the needs of a eunuch.

The flickering lights behind his eyelids coalesced into one blinding white light. His world shattered, the past that had been forced upon him, the present that now brought fulfillment to a eunuch, the bleak future that yawned before him.

A hoarse cry splintered the light, and once again he was a man.

Not a eunuch.

A man.

Megan's gift to him.

Suddenly they were two people instead of one.

A splash of water sounded in the silence; it was followed by the clink of stoneware on wood-more splashes, silence again.

He strained to hear her next move, to feel her nearness. Trembling in the aftermath of the pleasure she had given him.

Soft hands cupped his face, lowered his head.

He opened his eyes. Megan's eyes were bright with unshed tears.

"I was a part of you, Muhamed. I've never felt anything so powerful, or so beautiful. Thank you for your trust."

His heart double beat.

She deserved the truth.

"Muhamed is the name that was given me by the Arabs. My English name is Connor. Connor Treffry."

She recognized the name.

The Treffrys were the most prosperous fishermen in West Cornwall. Perhaps in the entirety of Cornwall.

Megan withdrew: hands, emotions.

"How?" she asked.

How had he come to be a eunuch?

How could he have deceived her, he who had accused her of deception?

"I loved the sea," he said raggedly, needing her warmth and her closeness but unable to express emotions he had held in abeyance for forty years. "I wanted nothing more than to be a fisherman, like my father. Like my brothers before me. I convinced my father to let me go out with some of his men one day. There was a squall. We were blown off course. A ship picked us up. It was a slaver. We were taken to a Barbary port and sold. I never saw my father's men again."

There were no words for the horror he had felt, imprisoned, away from home for the first time in his life with no hope of ever returning.

"But you were… English."

A smile twisted his lips; it did not reach his eyes. "The Arab who bought me was not impressed by my heritage. Nor was he impressed by my rebellious nature. In Arabia, there is a saying: take a wife for children, but take a boy for pleasure. He liked young men. When I refused to accommodate him, he watched while his guards held me down and an Egyptian infidel crushed my testicles. Then he sold me to a Syrian trader."

He stared into her green eyes and saw not the verdancy of England, but the barren desert and the thirteen-year-old boy he had been.

"An infection set in. The Syrian trader cut off the useless sac that hung between my legs and buried me in the sand to staunch my blood."

Megan's pale skin turned pasty with shock.

"I do not remember the pain anymore." A muscle twitched at the corner of his mouth. Images of a blazing yellow sun and bright crimson blood flashed before his eyes. "But I remember crying like a girl. I wanted to die; it was not permitted."

"I'm glad you didn't die," she said quietly.

Last night and today he had been glad, too.

"I could not bring myself to tell my family that I lived," he confessed instead.

There was no condemnation in her eyes. "They believe you are dead?"

"I thought it would be best if they believed me dead rather than knowing what had happened to me."

Her gaze did not falter. It ripped the truth out of him.

"I did not want them to know what had happened to me."

He still did not want them to know.

"They would not blame you. How could they?"

"I am the youngest in my family; I have three older brothers and one sister. I was the pampered son. I've been in England for nine years, yet I did not visit my parents. They died not knowing that I was alive. I did not attend their funerals.

"Tomorrow, Megan, tomorrow I will find out if my brothers and my sister blame me."

"Do they know you are alive now?"

"They know. I sent them a note the day before yesterday."

The day he had decided to procure a whore.

The day Megan had come into his life.

"I will send them another note tomorrow," he said dispassionately. "We will meet over afternoon tea, like English do."

"Why are you visiting with them now, if you do not wish to?" she persisted quietly.

Because his hatred had frightened him.

Because he needed to make peace with himself. Cornwall had seemed like a good place to start.

"I am fifty-three years old, and I do not know who I am. I am a eunuch. I have gone by the name of Muhamed for forty years. But I want what Connor would have had. I want a woman; I want children. I want to live among other men, as a man."

"You are a man."

"And which man do you think I am, Megan? Muhamed… or Connor?"

"I think the man I baptized today is the man you are," she said firmly.

He felt as if a fist slammed into his chest.

"I don't think the gods will be appeased by a condom, Megan."

"Perhaps not, but it will certainly give rise to speculation, come May," she calmly rejoined.

He did not want to think about May. He did not want to think about the decision he would have to make, come the morrow.

"Hold me," he said starkly. And for the first time in forty years, he said one simple English word. "Please. Come to bed and hold me."

Chapter Seven

Pink dawn divided the darkness inside the bedroom. Faint stirrings penetrated the quiet, the sound of other clients rising. Leaving.

Sounds she had not noticed yesterday, the comings and goings of others.

Megan cradled his sleeping head against her breasts and listened to the easy rhythm of his breathing.

Muhamed. Connor.

Which man did she hold?

How would his family react when they saw him?

Would they stare at him, as the stableboy had stared at him?

Would they welcome him?

Would they rebuff him?

Would they hurt him?

His arm tightened about her waist. She knew that he, too, was awake.

"Muh-" She bit her lip.

What did she call him?

"I have to go," she said.

He did not answer.

Her heart felt as though it were being rent in two.

How ridiculous of her, to hope that he would want her to stay.

He did not stop her when she slipped out from underneath his head and his arm.

He did not stop her when she hurriedly dressed, shivering from the cold and the tears that silently dripped down her cheeks.

He did not stop her when she quietly opened the door and slipped out of his life.

Never to know if he found peace.

With his family.

With another woman.

Once in her room, Megan scrubbed her face, her teeth, dressed her hair and packed her clothes.

It was time to get on with her life.

The innkeeper, a squat man with thinning hair greased back from his forehead, leered at her, obviously aware of the time she had spent with the man he knew as Mr. Muhamed.

Meg would have cringed in humiliation; Megan turned her nose up. "I require transportation to the Branwell place."

"Ain't nothin' there, lady."

"Nevertheless, I would like to hire a carriage and a driver."

"It'll cost you six shillings."

It was an exorbitant price, but her only alternative was to walk. Ten miles.

"Very well."

The driver was a taciturn man who slumped underneath a worn bowler hat. He did not assist her with her luggage. Megan climbed into the seat beside him.

It was a rare Cornish day; two days of sunshine in a row.

Megan thought of the French letter, flapping in the breeze. She thought of her hair, hanging loose down her back as if she were a young girl instead of a middle-aged widow. She thought of the man who had allowed her to be free of the restrictions incurred by age and respectability.

She thought of the warm fluid that had spurted against the back of her throat.

A man's pleasure was far more precious than his seed.

Megan jumped out of the carriage and tossed out her luggage.

He laid across the rumpled bed a tailored black English jacket, folded, starched shirt, and black wool trousers. Beside them, he laid out a white thobs, baggy white trousers, and a length of white material to create a turban.

Connor's clothes. Muhamed's clothes.

Muhamed's clothes. Connor's clothes.

He was a eunuch, nothing would ever change his condition.

How could he put aside the last forty years as if they did not exist?

How could he ever have any peace if he did not?

How could Megan have slipped out of his arms and his bed and his room and his life as if they had not shared an intimacy that neither had ever before experienced?

He glanced down. And tried to choose.

To live as an Englishman, or to continue as an Arab.

Megan ignored the leering innkeeper. Heart outpacing her feet, she climbed the narrow stairs.

The hallway was a mile long; the worn wool carpet had turned to molasses, sucking at her feet.

He had given her no indication he wanted her to stay. Why was she embarrassing both him and herself by putting him in this position?

Her husband had rejected her.

What if this man did, too?

Thirty-six hours ago she had thought the hardest thing she had ever done was lift her veil and show her age to an Arab who had procured a whore. This was far, far harder.

Megan lifted her black-gloved hand and knocked.

A lifetime passed, waiting for him to answer.

She was overcome with a sense of déjá vu.

Thirty-six hours ago she had knocked in just such a manner. And waited…

Suddenly the door swung open.

Her eyes widened.

The man who answered the door was not the man who had allowed her entrance the night before.

"You… you're wearing trousers," she said.

His answer was not encouraging. "Yes."

Her gaze lingered on the white turban covering his head, drifted down to his black eyes, his chiseled features.

His face was tense, as if he, too, waited…

For her acceptance?

Or for her to leave?

In his black wool trousers, vest and frock coat he looked English, but…

"You've covered up your hair," she blurted out.

"There is only one woman whom I wish to look upon it," he said shortly, black gaze stoic.

"I do not require marriage," she said in a burst of emotion.

"My family would be shocked if I visited them with a concubine," he replied tersely, very much the man who had opened the door thirty-six hours earlier.

Her stomach somersaulted. "Are you asking me to marry you?"

"I am not an easy man."

"So you have said."

"I cannot erase the years I have lived in Arabia."

"I would not have you do so."

"I am a eunuch."

"If you are a eunuch, then I daresay many women wish their husbands were such."

His dark features tightened.

"I do not know if there is a place for me in Cornwall."

"I would enjoy seeing other parts of England"-could she live in Arabia, where women mutilated women and men castrated men?-"or other countries."

"I do not know if trousers will suit me."

"I prefer you in your robe."

"Thobs."

"I beg your pardon?"

"It is called a thobs, not a robe."

"I'm sorry."

"Yes," he said.

Megan blinked. "Yes, what?"

"Yes, I am asking if you will marry me."

How could happiness be as painful as heartbreak?

"Shall I call you Muhamed, or Connor?"

"You may call me whatever you wish."

He might be Connor in public, but in private he would always be Muhamed.

"I want to learn how to speak Arabic," Megan said firmly.

"I will teach you."

"I want to shave off my private hair."

His black eyes suddenly gleamed. "I will shave you."

"In that case, sir, I will marry you."