Thea Devine - Fascinated

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."

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."