The Lady's Tutor (22 page)

The memory was clear in her hazel eyes, the lightning jolt of
sensation that had coursed through their bodies when she had touched his bottom
lip.

He imagined what it would be like, her fingers lightly strumming
the crown of his manhood. And did not doubt in the least his answer. “Yes.”

“Does
it quiver . . . like your lip did?”

It
quivered
just talking about it.

“Call it by a name,
taalibba,”
he commanded.

“Ellezzaz,”
she
responded promptly.

“The unionist.” So named because once inside a woman, it pushes
and grinds until pubic hair meets pubic hair and still it pushes and grinds as
if trying to force even the testicles inside of her.

The sixth movement.

The ache inside his groin traveled up to his chest.

Her wants . .. His wants ... They were becoming increasingly
difficult to keep separate. And over the both of them loomed her husband.

Of all the people to choose as a lover, why would he choose the
person Ramiel had seen last night?

“How long will you continue to remain celibate, Mrs. Petre?”

She clenched the artificial phallus so tightly, her knuckles
paled.

Ramiel winced.

“How long will
you
continue to remain celibate, Lord
Safyre?”

“As long as it takes.”

“Likewise.”

He
studied her intently. “Everyone deserves to be loved just once, Mrs. Petre.”

Even a Bastard Sheikh.

Confusion
shone in her clear hazel eyes; it was followed by dawning comprehension; that
by unmitigated horror.

In her haste to escape him the previous morning, she had forgotten
about writing on the paper he had instructed her to take notes on.

Elizabeth remembered now.

She remembered what she had written . . . and she remembered
thrusting the paper onto his desk. Where she had left it... and he had
retrieved it.

Forty ways to love
—lebeuss el djoureb—
please, God, let me love just once.

Without
warning she dropped the phallus inside the velvet-lined box and slapped it onto
the desk beside her cup. “I have to go now.”

“There is no shame in needing love,
taalibba.”

Clutching her gloves and reticule, she stood up.

Ramiel reached out and plucked the phallus out of the white box.
It was still warm from her touch. He cradled it in his palm, a mere handbreadth
long, as she had cradled it in her palm.

She stared at his hand and the artificial phallus. At the dried
leather and warm, living flesh.

Her thoughts were so plain that he felt as if he violated her
privacy by looking at her.

“Objects such as this are harem favorites.”

Her spine stiffened. She glanced up, eyes filled with revulsion ..
. and so much more. “You mean—women use these—”

“Yes.” He suggestively curled his fingers around the leather,
making of them a sheath. “There are too many women and only one man.”

She
stepped back. The burgundy leather chair shot across the carpet.

“I
obtained this one in a shop yesterday; they are as much in demand in England as
they are in Arabia.”

She
pivoted, fled for the door.

“A woman always has choices, Mrs. Petre,” he called after her,
knowing that she would understand that reference too.

Yesterday morning she had said that she was a woman and that her
choices were few, that she must make her marriage work because that was all she
could ever have.

Elizabeth was wrong.

She had choices... if she only had the courage to make them.

lizabeth’s skin felt tight, like overripe fruit. Her heartbeat
raced the sour-smelling hack.

She had wanted it.
She had held the phallus in her hands and imagined the plum-shaped
head nudging her most sensitive flesh, pushing up into her body and filling her
like she knew the Bastard Sheikh would fill her.

Mochefi el relil.
His member would be like that, large and strong, completely
satisfying a woman’s amorous wishes.

She squeezed her eyelids together. Why had she told him about the
statue? Now he would know that her unnatural desires were not triggered by the
shock of discovering that her husband kept a mistress—she had always had them.

Oh, my God.
He had read her notes.
Scribblings listing her
most secret sexual desires, to be taken from behind,
to be taken,
period.

What kind of a woman was she? What kind of man could possibly want
a woman who was filled with such uncontrollable lust? Like the beasts in the
fields . ..

How could she be married to one man and lust after another?

When the hack rumbled to a stop, she stumbled out and tossed the
cabbie she knew not what—a groat, a sixpence, a florin, a half crown,
a
crown,
it did not matter as long as she was free to gain the sanctuary of
her bedroom. She raced off into the nebulous ribbons of yellow fog, away from
the woman she had become.

“But what about tomorrow mornin’? Should I—”

The cabbie’s voice was swallowed in the cold twilight. The tiny
dots of burgeoning gray light that comprised Elizabeth’s vision through the
black veil blurred with tears.

A woman always has choices, Mrs. Petre.

She fumbled with the key to the front door of the town house,
fingers nerveless—oh, no, she almost dropped the bit of metal, caught it, and
jammed it home.

Pulling her cloak about her, she raced up the stairs, a foot
landing on a weak board—she knew better than to step there; she used to lie
abed and listen to Richard and Phillip creep down the stairs for a midnight
snack. A muffled
shh!
had always accompanied the creak of that board.
Only this time it was Elizabeth sneaking up the stairs, and she had raided
rather more than a biscuit jar.

Tonight was the night of the charity ball; surely Edward would be
home,
please God, let him be home.
She needed to see his face, to
replace the image of warm, tanned skin and turquoise eyes with Edward’s cool,
pale skin and brown eyes.

She needed to see his body instead of the artificial phallus cupped
in the Bastard Sheikh s hand.

Edward’s drapes were closed, his bedroom dark and silent. Empty
again—

No.
A sound
alerted her of his presence, the rhythmic soughing of his breath.

Nausea churned in her stomach.

There would be no forty positions of love in Edward’s bed.

Six days ago the knowledge would not have bothered her.
Six days
ago she had not possessed such knowledge.
Now she needed Edward to wipe
away that knowledge.

She needed to know that she could obtain satisfaction in her
marriage.

Laying her reticule on the dark monolith of a chest, she peeled
off her gloves and dropped her cloak onto the floor. She could hear the release
of each button as she unfastened her velvet gown, certain Edward would awaken
any moment.

And what if he did? she wondered half hysterically. They were man
and wife. Why shouldn’t he see her naked?

Why shouldn’t she see
him
naked?

The air was icy against her arms. It was as cold in Edward’s
bedroom as it had been in the Bastard Sheikh’s library that first morning.
There had been no welcoming fires lit for her either then or now.

Her petticoats sloughed off like the skin of a garden snake. Her
chemise followed, leaving her breasts bare, exposed, but not nearly as
vulnerable as her hips and thighs felt when she stepped out of the protection
of cotton drawers.

Her stockings were snug around the tops of her thighs. Briefly,
she debated leaving them on. For some reason, though, it seemed more decadent
approaching a man wearing only stockings than it did wearing nothing at all.

Removing stockings, however, was not a graceful process. Too late
she realized she should have undressed in her room.

Standing stark naked in the darkness, she felt more nervous than
she had been on her wedding night. Where she had been warm and wet but an hour
earlier, captivated by Ramiel’s husky voice and the discovery of a man’s body,
she was now cold and dry.

The carpet underneath her bare feet was thick and soft; it
cushioned her steps. The bedcovers folded back without protest, the comforter a
muted whisper of velvet, the quilt and top sheet a coarse sigh.

Edward’s
nightshirt was even whiter than was the bottom sheet. He lay on his back, still
as a corpse, limbs neatly arranged as if he controlled his dreams as easily as
he did his waking life.

Hand trembling, heart pounding, Elizabeth reached out and
encountered cold cotton and even colder fear.

It should not be like this, her husband lying insensate while she
attempted to seduce him. The Bastard Sheikh would not just lie there.
He
would welcome a woman s needs.

Carefully, slowly, she eased up Edward’s nightshirt, revealing
forbidden male flesh, a knee, a thigh. His legs were darker than the
nightshirt, darker than hers. Wiry hair brushed the backs of her knuckles—who
would ever have thought that a man was so hairy? Or so warm—

Unyielding fingers grasped her wrist. Elizabeth gasped.

“What are you doing, Elizabeth?”

She fought back a laugh, spoke with calm resolve. “What do you
think I am doing, Edward?”

“I think we are both going to catch our death from cold.”

His voice was equally calm and so much more reasonable. And not at
all amorous.

She did not pull back her hand; he did not release her wrist. “I
am trying to seduce you, Edward.”

“By sneaking into my room and groping underneath my nightshirt
while I lie asleep?”

She flinched, suddenly feeling cheap and tawdry.
It was not
supposed to be like this.
During their lessons the Bastard Sheikh had by
turns angered and shocked and aroused her but he had
never
made her feel
dirty. “Some men might appreciate the attention.”

“I am not some man, Elizabeth. I am your husband. What do you
want?”

The situation was becoming increasingly farcical. How could he not
know what she wanted?

Perhaps he had poor night vision. Perhaps he did not see that she
did not wear a nightgown.

“I want. ..” Her heart gave a lurch. How did a respectable woman
tell her husband that she wanted to make love? she thought. And then,
resentfully, why did she have to explain her intentions when she sat naked on
his bed? “I want to be intimate.”

“You have two sons. I have done my duty by you.”

Elizabeth felt as if she had stepped into the pages of a penny
dreadful.

Edward
had a mistress, for heaven’s sake. Sex was not a duty.
He must know what she
wanted.

“I do not come to you out of duty, Edward.”

“Then go back to your room and we will forget about this visit.”

Elizabeth’s throat ached. She felt silly and awkward and numb with
cold, wearing nothing but her lust.

Anger came to her rescue.
If she could ask the Bastard Sheikh
to teach her how to give a man pleasure, she could certainly ask her husband to
let her give
him
pleasure.

“Edward, I know you have a mistress. Please let me satisfy your
needs.”

His fingers tightened about her wrist; she would have a bracelet
of bruises there in a few hours. “I do not have a mistress, Elizabeth, and you
do satisfy my needs.”

He was lying.

She struggled to keep her voice even. “What needs do I satisfy,
Edward?”

“You are the perfect wife for a politician.”

“Because of my father, you mean.”

“Yes.”

She knew that; she had always known that Edward married her
because of who she was and not what she was. The knowing should make the pain
of confirmation less, not worse.

“I want to be more, Edward.”

I want to experience that moment of bonding when a woman takes a
man into her body.

“I don’t need you to be more.”

“Our sons need us to be more.”

“Your sons, Elizabeth. I gave you children so that you would be
satisfied.”

Dear God, she did not need to hear this. Regardless of Edward’s
lack of commitment to the marriage bed, they were the perfect family ... weren’t
they?

“What if
I
am not satisfied by this arrangement? You have
not been to my bed in over twelve years.”