The Lady's Tutor (37 page)

The
observation momentarily took him by surprise . . . until he remembered that she
had bathed with his mother. Apparently, the countess was more Arabic than what
she led others to believe. “My English half. I am not inspired by the Muslim
faith. It is a risky business when a man removes hair from certain body parts.”

Her gaze
was rapt. “You—are longer than the artificial phallus.”

“Yes.”

“And
thicker.”

“Yes,” he
gritted, impossibly lengthening and thickening even more.

“It has a
reddish-purple head, like a plum, only larger. Are you certain I will be able
to take all of you?”

Ramiel’s
body involuntarily flexed. He drew a shaky breath. “There is a special place
inside your body behind the mouth of your womb. It allows a man to fit more
deeply inside a woman who might otherwise be unable to accept all of him.” He
willed her to raise her head, snared her gaze. “I could show you this place.”

There was
neither revulsion nor fear in her eyes, just a woman’s curiosity and a yearning
to experience the closeness of sexual union. “How?”

“Take off
the rest of your clothes.”

Her hands
trembled as she fumbled with the two buttons at the waist of her cotton
drawers. He wondered if she was aware of the commitment she would make by
giving herself to him. And then he did not wonder at anything, because she
stood naked save for flesh-colored stockings and shoes that were buried
underneath the pile of damp clothing.

Her fleece
was dark auburn, like the hair on top of her head. Her thighs were voluptuous.
Dimpled knees tapered down to slender ankles.

He
imagined himself cushioned between those soft white thighs, imagined her
slender ankles locked around his waist, taking all of him, every single inch.

“Put your
right foot onto the edge of the tub,” he ordered hoarsely.

Modesty
and titillation warred inside her. “Should I not... take off my shoes and
stockings?”

Later,
he thought. But then, perhaps not. With
the stockings circling her thighs she was every man’s sexual fantasy.

“Not now.
Now I want to show you that special place inside your body.”

Her
breasts quivered with the force of her breathing. “Is there not a more
dignified position I can assume for you to show me this place?”

Her
response was so quintessentially Elizabeth that he bit back a smile. “Elizabeth—”

“Ramiel...
I am embarrassed.” She tilted her chin, daring him to mock her. “I have never
been naked ... like this.”

“You said
you wanted to give me pleasure,” he challenged her rawly. “That you wanted to
bring wonder to someone.”

Her chin
lifted higher. “I did. I do.”

“Then, let
me be that someone. Tell me to touch you,
taalibba.
Raise your leg and
open your body so that I can reach inside of you
and tell me to touch you,”

Her pulse
raced in her throat; steam trickled down between her breasts. She stood poised
for an endless heartbeat before awkwardly freeing her right foot from the
trappings of her drawers, sodden petticoats, and velvet skirt. Lifting her leg,
she perched a square-heeled slipper onto the edge of the water-rimmed tub.

His body
clenched at the sight of the black patent-leather shoe, lingered on the black
silk bow fastening across the top of her narrow foot, slowly traversed the
length of the flesh-colored stocking to the
V
of her thighs and the
delicate inner lips peeping out from auburn curls, rose-tinted like her
nipples. A drop of pearly moisture glistened on the inside of her thigh.

Sharp need
stabbed through his groin. That pearl of moisture did not result from shock.

“Please
touch me, Ramiel.” Her voice shook. With nervousness. With desire at this
unfamiliar game between a man and a woman. “Reach into my body and show me how
to take all of you inside me.”

Heart
slamming against his ribs, he stepped closer, closer yet, until he felt the
heat of her exposed body. Curving his left hand about her right hip to steady
her, he feathered her auburn bush with his right hand, tested the plumpness of
her lips and the slickness of her feminine moisture.

She
grabbed his shoulders, forging a primordial link, man touching woman, woman
touching man.

There was
passion in her eyes and there was him, two miniature blond heads, two sets of
bastard turquoise eyes. He combed through her damp fringe of pubic hair,
lightly sawed a finger back and forth until her lips parted and furled about
him like a hothouse flower.

“Did he
touch you like this?” he asked in a low, choked voice, hating himself for
asking but unable to stop the question.
If Petre or her father had not tried
to kill her she would still be with her husband.

The desire
dimmed in her eyes. She wedged her hands between their bodies—she was going to
push him away.

He touched
her hot, wet portal, fingertip circling the place that she had offered Petre
after Ramiel had aroused her. “Did he touch you here?”

Elizabeth
stilled, sensing the danger of his mood. “Edward has not touched me—ever. He
came into my bed and shoved himself into me, then it was over and he was gone.
And he has not even done that in twelve and a half years. All he wanted to do
was to make me pregnant. No one has ever touched me, Ramiel. No one but you.”

Ramiel
closed his eyes, blocking out her pain, his pain, his fingertip swirling and
swirling against the hot wetness of her, teaching her to accept his touch,
preparing her for the moment when something far larger would seek entrance. “But
you would have taken him inside you last Saturday. You used the things I had
taught you that aroused me to seduce another man.”

‘No.” She
twined her fingers into the mat of dark blond hair that covered his chest. “No,
I could not do that.”

He opened
his eyes, fighting the anger, the hurt, needing to lose himself inside her
body, needing her to lose herself inside his body. “Then relax down here.” He
pressed his finger against her only to have her muscles tightly clench,
blocking entrance. “Take me inside you.”

She slid
her hands up his chest and grasped his shoulders, breasts rising, offering
themselves to his mouth. “I am trying, Ramiel. I want to take you inside me.”

Forbidden
memories, unwanted memories flickered to life.

Sliding
his left hand over the soft roundness of her hip, Ramiel reached back and
grasped her heart-shaped buttocks to hold her still. “Let me help you take me,
taatibba.
”
Let me help you make me forget.
“When I touch you here”—he slid his
finger back up through the moist folds of her flesh and found the hard little
bud whose sole purpose is to give a woman pleasure, caressed it for long
seconds— “hold yourself open. And when I slide down here”—he matched his
actions with his words, teasing her portal that was tensely closed— “push your
hips forward to press your clitoris against the palm of my hand.

“Now. My
finger is on your clitoris.” She strained against his hand. It would not take
much to make her orgasm, but he did not want that for her yet. “And now I am
sliding down.”

She
instinctively thrust her hips upward to retain contact, portal relaxed,
unguarded. His finger sank home deep inside her, stretching her where she had
not been stretched in over twelve years.

Elizabeth
convulsed around his finger. “Ramiel, take it out. I am not pre—”

He took
her cry into his mouth, thrusting his tongue inside her to counteract the small
invasion between her other lips. If she had fought him, if she had shown in any
way that she truly was not ready for penetration, he would have eased out of
her. But she did not.

He could
feel her entire body trembling, not entirely with passion. She was not prepared
for the reality of a man or the intensity of his desire. But she soon would be.

Gently, he
licked the roof of her mouth while he eased his finger more deeply inside her
until his progress was stopped by an inner hardness, the mouth of her womb.
Ramiel raised his head and looked at her swollen lips, at her breasts that
quivered with each breath, at the white skin of her stomach, her auburn fleece,
and the dark line of his wrist disappearing between her legs.

“Does this
hurt?” He delicately prodded the hard dimple of her cervix.

She fought
for composure. “It burns. And there is ... pressure. This is not what I came
for. I want to give
you
pleasure.”

He prodded
again.
“Shhh.
Not yet. Let me show you how to take me. . . . This is the
opening to your womb. Here is where a woman takes a man’s seed and later opens
up to give him his child. I’m going to insert another finger inside you.”

Her silky
tissue pulsed around him. Her nails sank into his shoulder. “Please. . .”

Please
don’t hurt her. Please give her pleasure.

Please
don’t reject me.

He lowered
his head in a whisper of a kiss. “Always so polite. I am not your husband,
taalibba.
I don’t want your politeness. I want you to moan and groan and beg me to
take you.”

Her nails
sank into his shoulders. “Intimacy is not very dignified.”

“No, sex
is not very dignified,” he agreed. And gave her a second finger. He took her
cry, a high, keening sound of unbearable pleasure and unbearable pressure.

She was
so tight.
Ramiel did not
remember ever having a virgin who was this tight.

He probed
her mouth while he probed her body; her tongue tentatively stroked his while
his fingertips firmly stroked the mouth of her womb. Pressing gently,
inexorably, he explored the back of her vagina, searching, pushing higher,
deeper.. . forcing his way until suddenly her body yawned open and his fingers
were clamped inside the special pocket behind the cervix that affords a large
man an extra couple of inches.

Hot air
filled his mouth, Elizabeth’s breath. Her inner flesh nipped his fingertips in
a painfully tight vise. “This is the special place,
taalibba.”
He gently
thrust his two fingers back and forth, careful not to withdraw from the tight
pocket. “When I come inside you and the pressure or the pain becomes too great
because I am entering you too deeply, remember to tilt your hips so that I will
slide past your cervix and enter here.”

She
squeezed her eyelids shut. Steam misted her face, dripped from the tip of her
nose. “I did not know a man could enter a woman this deeply.”

He kissed
the drop of steam off her nose. “This is just two fingers,
taalibba.
There
is more. Much, much more.”

Slowly,
gently, he withdrew, feeling her body clutch him as if to keep him in her
special place,
their
special place now, no one had ever penetrated her
as deeply as he had, as deeply as he was going to enter her. He eased out of
her vagina, slid upward, and found her swollen little bud. It pulsed
frenetically underneath his wet fingertips.

“Tell me
to touch you,
taalibba,”
he whispered thickly into her mouth.

“Touch me,
Ramiel,” she whispered back, breath searing his lips.

“Where?
Tell me where to touch you.”

She
clutched his shoulders, straining closer toward his caressing fingers. “There.
Please.
There.”

“You don’t
want me to touch you inside?”

She panted
softly into his mouth, body bearing down against his circling fingertips. “Yes.
Please touch me inside—oh there,
yes,
please don’t stop!”

“Tilt your
hips.”

He
deliberately strummed the turgid little shaft of her clitoris through the soft,
moist lips of her labia while he lightly licked the seam of her mouth. She
tilted her hips forward, arching into the palm of his hand to gain the pressure
she needed.

“Now tell
me to stick three fingers inside of your special place.”

“Three—”

Ramiel
could hear her unspoken words, too much, she could not accept a third finger,
she had barely taken two. “Tell me,
taahbba.
”

She licked
her lips, encountered his. “Please stick three fingers inside of my special
place, only please,
please
—”

Savage
pleasure surged through Ramiel. Slanting his mouth over hers, he sucked her
tongue inside his mouth . . . and thrust three fingers inside her body, open
for him in that unguarded moment, anticipating a caress instead of invasion.

She
grabbed his hair and pulled, sharing her pain as he butted up against the
dimpled cervix.

“Tilt your
hips, Elizabeth. Take me,
taalibba.
If you can’t take three fingers now,
you’ll
never
be able to take all of me later.”

A little
sob filled his mouth, and then she tilted her hips forward and he found the
special place inside her body. She clamped down on his fingertips so tightly
that he could not withdraw even if he wanted to.