The Lady's Tutor (40 page)

Elizabeth
turned her face into his, into the silkiness of her own hair trapped between
them and the prickly bristle of his unshaven cheek. “I never knew that a man
could so fully occupy a woman. I never knew how
beautiful. . .
but what
Edward did is so ugly. I couldn’t cry this morning. I couldn’t feel. It was
just so ...
ugly.
”

Ramiel
shifted; she could feel the slight movement throughout her entire being. Hard,
hot fingers soothed hair off her forehead, her cheeks.

“It’s all
right,
taalibba.
Trust me. He will never hurt you again. I promise. Don’t
cry. I will never let anyone hurt you or your sons. Don’t cry,
taalibba.”

His hand
trembled against her skin. With passion. For her.

He
deserved more than tears from her.

She opened
her eyes—and stared into his, mere inches away from her own. His gaze was dark,
stark, more black than turquoise.

“When I
exercised against the mattress, it was you I thought about, Ramiel,” she
whispered.

He
stilled.

She had
yet to experience the full strength of his desire.
And she wanted to.

Elizabeth
threaded her fingers through his glorious mane of hair; it was far softer than
the crinkly body hair that teased her nipples and abraded her stomach. “Perhaps
I am a nymphomaniac. I can feel you pulsing against my womb and all I want to
do is to take you more deeply inside me. Would you suckle my breasts, please?”

His body
seemed to swell even larger inside hers. Between one breath and another he
straightened, bringing her up with him.

She
slapped her hands against the tile, but he held her securely, arms arching her
back so that her chest jutted forward.

“Lift your
breast. Feed it to me.”

There was
no mistaking the blaze of fire in his eyes. She was about to receive
everything—and more—that she had ever wanted from a man.

Hand
trembling—
it
was all right for a woman to tremble with passion
—she
lifted a solid, heavy breast.

An
udder.

No! Ramiel
had said they were magnificent.

He bent
over her, silky golden hair brushing her cheek, her shoulder, hot breath
trailing down, down—he latched on to her nipple. Her hips jerked forward as
electricity seemed to arc straight from her breast to her womb. A muffled sound
erupted from his throat as if he felt it too, and then he was suckling her and
grinding his pelvis into hers.
Dok,
the motion that made a man a pestle.

She gave
him the female equivalent,
hez,
swinging her hips in lascivious
accompaniment. It was impossible but the combined motions drove him deeper
inside her body and it
still was not enough.

Her right
hand reached out, clawed at his hip, for his buttocks— she needed the pounding
as well as the grinding.

Ramiel
gave it to her, first drawing out and making short jabs that grew into long
stabs and he was right,
there was more,
a hitherto unexplored world of
sound as well as sensation, the slap of flesh, the ragged gasps of labored
breathing, the churning of the water, the wet suction of her body that was
opening like a flower in sunshine. The pop of his mouth when he released her
nipple.

“Lie back,”
he ordered harshly, straightening.

“Wait—”

But he did
not wait. He hooked her knees over his arms and she fell with no support,
nothing to hang on to but the hard, breath-
whooshing
drive of his
thrusts slamming into her. A sharp thud echoed off the rippling ceiling; it was
followed by another—she had lost her shoes. Her stockinged feet, thrust up into
the air, jerked and kicked with each slap of his body against hers.

Elizabeth
had never felt so open, had never known a woman’s body could withstand so much
punishment and ache for more, too much,
not enough,
too hard,
not
hard enough,
too deep,
not deep enough.
She could not breathe. There
had to be an end—
a woman could not survive such protracted pleasure.

When it
ended, she did not think she would survive the culmination.

She cried
out; every muscle in her body cried out with her, convulsing, contracting.
Dimly, she heard a hoarse, answering cry. “Allah! God!”

Body slick
with sweat and steam, Elizabeth held perfectly still, eyes closed, heart
pounding, and felt a burst of scalding liquid deep inside the very core of her,
the gift of Ramiel’s pleasure.

Home.

For
seventeen years she had lived in the house of her parents; for sixteen years
she had lived in Edward’s house. And she had never, ever once experienced this
rush of homecoming.

She opened
her eyes and stared up into his turquoise gaze. “Thank you.”

Sweat
clung like raindrops to the stubble of his beard. Expression unreadable, he
scooped her up, bodies still joined, and wrapped her stocking-clad legs around
his waist. Turning, he waded into the swimming bath until warm water swelled
her stockings and lapped her breasts. It rippled about them while her vagina
rippled about his spent manhood.

“I can
feel your seed. It’s hot.”

He gently
twirled her around in the water, not answering, just staring into her eyes.

“What are
we going to do?” she whispered, suddenly shy, remembering the echoes of her
cries as she found release.

Perhaps
she had disappointed him. Perhaps she had misread his invitation the night
before. Perhaps she should have gone to a hotel.

His
expression remained enigmatic. “What would you like to do?”

She would
like to stay here with him,
like this,
until the insanity went away.

Elizabeth
concentrated on the lapping waves of water instead of his impenetrable stare. “My
maid is sleeping with the new footman and yet I am certain that it is she who
alerted Edward to the fact that I was sneaking out of the house to meet with
you. It is ironic, is it not? She found happiness, yet she would not allow me
the same privilege. I think Edward hired someone to frighten me when I spoke
for the Women’s Auxiliary. I
am
frightened.
And I do not like being
frightened.”

He
continued to lazily circle around and around, the water caressing her on the
outside, his manhood caressing her on the inside. “You are safe with me,
taalibba.
When did you speak for the Women’s Auxiliary?”

“Last
Thursday night. I told you about running into the lamppost in the fog. But
before that, after the meeting, the custodian mistook me for a prostitute and
threatened to kill me. When I got home, Edward was waiting with the constable,
as if he expected me to have been in an accident.”

Ramiel
lowered his head; at the same time he hoisted her up higher in his arms. Flesh
bridged flesh—his forehead annexing her forehead; the crown of his manhood
butting her cervix. “What did the constable say?”

Elizabeth’s
arms reflexively tightened around his neck. It was becoming increasingly hard
to be frightened. “He said Edward was right to be worried over a wife who risks
her life by not taking a companion with her and who then proceeds to get
trapped in the fog.”

He kneaded
her buttocks; the rhythmical motion alternately pushed and pulled at other,
more vulnerable parts of her body. Water leaked into her stretched vagina.

“What did
Petre say?”

“He—” She
convulsively tightened her muscles, trying to cut off the flow of water. Ramiel’s
manhood abruptly thickened, effectively stopping the leak. “He wanted me to
dress for a dinner party. What are you doing?”

A smile
crooked his lips. “I am plugging up the dike.”

She sucked
in his breath, smelling his sweat, her sweat, the moist heat of the swimming
bath. “Having plugged up the dike, what are you going to do next?”

His verge
lengthened until it had nowhere to go; he tilted her hips and deftly thrust
into the tight pocket behind her cervix.

“I am
going to ring for champagne.”

Her breath
caught in her throat. “And then?”

“I am
going to give you a douche. Then I am going to lick you out and engage in the
twenty-first manner,
rekeud el air,
riding the stallion. And
you
are
going to straddle my hips and work your body up and down my
kamera
until
you scream your release again and again.”

lizabeth awoke slowly, reluctantly. Muscles ached that had not
ached since she gave birth to Phillip almost twelve years ago, yet she had
never felt more relaxed in her life. A bubbly effervescence fizzled inside her
body.

The sheets
were warm, soft as silk. She took a deep breath, smelling musk, sweat, and—

Her
eyelids snapped open. The sheets were soft as silk because they
were
silk.
Her flesh fizzled because it had been a goblet for two bottles of champagne.
Ramiel had filled her with sparkling wine and then he had teased her with the
bottle until she had begged him to give her his tongue, his fingers, or his
kamera
and not necessarily one at a time.

A cold
chill swept over Elizabeth’s body, bringing with it the memory of gas, its
smell, its taste.

Her
husband had tried to kill her.

The bed
beside her was empty. It smelled of her, of him, of their unique scents
commingled. Edward had never left his scent on her sheets.

Muted
sunlight filtered through crimson silk drapes. Slowly, carefully, she sat up—it
felt as if she had indeed been pierced by a “virgin s arm. Vanilla silk sheets
and a crimson satin comforter puddled around her waist.

Her hair
hung down her back in tangled disarray. Ramiel had wrapped it about his hands
and pulled her face down to his when she straddled his hips and rode him like a
stallion. She glanced down at her breasts. Her nipples were dark and swollen,
from his suckling, from the abrasion of his fingers and from the prickly hair
matting his chest.

A hot rush
of remembered pleasure flooded her body.

“You are
awake.” Stepping out from the shadows between a mahogany armoire and a plush
red-velvet-upholstered armchair, Muhamed threw the drapes open.

Gasping,
blinking at the abrupt change of darkness to light, Elizabeth jerked the covers
over her breasts. “What do you want?”

“From you,
Mrs. Petre? Nothing. I am a eunuch; I cannot harm a woman. Nor can I be harmed
by one.”

Elizabeth
studied the man who she had once thought was an Arab. He was older than Ramiel,
but while she knew that he and the countess had been sold in Arabia together,
he did not look the fifty plus years of age that he must be. His skin was olive
like Johnny’s rather than the dusky tan that Ramiel had inherited from his Arab
father.

The
countess had alluded to the fact that Muhamed’s abuse in Arabia had made him
hostile toward women. Elizabeth could not even begin to imagine the pain he
experienced, either when he had been made into a eunuch as a youth or the
emotional trauma that came of being a man now but unable to love a woman. She
could not hold his rudeness against him.

“Do not
pity me, Mrs.. Petre. I will not tolerate it,” Muhamed barked. His black eyes
glittered malevolently.

Elizabeth
drew her shoulders back, belatedly realized that she wore nothing but a sheet
and a comforter. Neither of which covered her bare shoulders. “I do not pity
you, Muhamed.” The man glaring at her incited fear, not pity. “Where is Lord
Safyre?”

“I am to
watch over you.
El Ibn
said you would need a bath. It awaits you through
that door.” He briefly nodded in the direction of a door at the left end of the
rectangular bedroom.

It was not
the way she and Ramiel had come up from the Turkish bath last night.

“Thank
you. I would like a bath, but I have been advised not to do so alone. Would you
please send Lucy to accompany me?”

“It is an
English bath that awaits you, Mrs. Petre. You do not need Lucy. I have been
assigned to assist you.”

Fighting a
tide of crimson heat, Elizabeth stiffened her spine. “I assure you I am used to
bathing alone, so there is no need to assist me.”

“It is
El
Ibn’s
instructions.”

Her eyes
widened incredulously.
Surely not.
She clutched the covers more tightly
over her breasts. “To watch me bathe?”

“I am to
watch over you,” he repeated unemotionally.

“You are
trying to intimidate me,” Elizabeth determined shrewdly. “You do not want me in
this house.”

His black
eyes glittered, the only sign of life in his otherwise blank face. “I do not.”

The
countess had said Muhamed had looked after Ramiel in Arabia like the son he
would never have. Elizabeth would not take kindly to a woman who blackmailed
one of her sons either. “I will not hurt Lord Safyre, Muhamed. I would never
have hurt him.”