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."