Fascinated

Chapter One

She wanted a man-if just for one night.

The man who stood before her was willing to pay a woman-just for one night.

He blocked the door, six feet tall to her own five-feet-four-inch frame. His face was harshly handsome; it looked as if his features had been hewn out of sand and sun. Lines bracketed his mouth and radiated out from the corners of his eyes-eyes so dark they appeared to be black.

Muhamed, the innkeeper had called him. Mr. Muhamed.

He was an Arab; she was an Englishwoman.

He was garbed in a white robe and turban; she was shrouded in a black dress and veil.

They had nothing whatsoever in common save for their physical yearnings, yet here they both were in Land's End, Cornwall.

Megan knew what she had to do; it was the hardest thing she had ever done. Slowly, deliberately, she lifted her veil and hooked it over the crown of her Windsor hat.

Bracing her spine, she mentally prepared for she knew not what: rejection, acceptance.

The Arab had ordered the innkeeper to procure him a whore; instead, a forty-eight-year-old widow had knocked on his door.

And he had let her in. As if she were, indeed, the prostitute she pretended to be.

And perhaps she was.

No respectable woman would engage in the charade she now played.

Her chest rose and fell, lungs filling, emptying-she could not draw enough air into her oxygen-deprived body. The harsh wool of her gown chafed her nipples. She did not have to glance down to know that they stabbed her bodice.

His black gaze raked over her face, her breasts-they swelled underneath his perusal, fuller than those of a young girl, heavier-dropped down to study her stomach and hips that with the rest of her body had rounded over the years. Slowly his gaze raised back up to her face and the lines there that owed nothing to sand or sun, but everything to a woman's age.

She clutched the side of her skirt and the pocket within that held the key to her own room just down the corridor.

Now he would accept her, or now he would reject her…

'You are too old to be a whore,' he said flatly.

But she was not too old to want a man.

Inwardly, she flinched.

Outwardly, she held his gaze; her green eyes, at least, were unchanged by time. 'Some would say, sir, that you are too old to need the services of one.'

Faint color darkened his cheeks-or perhaps it was her own shamelessness that colored her vision. 'You are naked underneath your gown.'

The warm color tinting his angular cheekbones leaped blazing hot into her more rounded ones.

She defiantly tilted her chin. 'Yes.'

Megan wore no bustle, corset, chemise, drawers nor stockings. None of the apparel that respectable women wore.

Nothing that would impede the purpose of her visit.

She wanted this night.

She wanted to lie naked with this man.

She wanted to experience again the closeness found in an intimate embrace.

Megan was fully prepared for-everything. The vinegar-soaked sponge crowding her cervix burned and throbbed, a reminder of-everything.

Possible pregnancy. Potential disgrace. Purgatory….

A coal exploded in the fireplace.

Tension prickled her skin. The rectangular bit of the key jabbed through the wool of her skirt and the silk of her glove.

A muscle jumped at the corner of his mouth. 'You are not from around here.'

Native west Cornish folk spoke with an unmistakable singsong cadence. During the past thirty years, Megan had learned to speak like a gentlewoman, just as the Arab before her had at some point in his life learned to speak like an English gentleman.

'No, I am not from around here,' she acknowledged evenly.

'Have you come from another man?'

Megan fought down a spark of-anger? Trepidation? How would the painted prostitute whom she was a substitute for respond to such a question? 'No.'

She suspected no man would pay for what she now offered.

His gaze remained colder than a starless night. Searching. Probing. Looking for a remnant of the youth she no longer possessed.

A cold sheen of anxiety broke over her.

How could she have been so naive as to believe that for lack of choice, this man would take her?

Megan jerkily offered, 'I fully understand if you prefer someone who is young-'

'I am fifty-three years old, madam,' he interrupted. His dark, chiseled features hardened. 'I do not want to lie with a child; I want a woman. As you said, you are a woman. I will pay you one gold sovereign.'

Relief coursed through her. It was followed by alarm. Desire. Surprise, that he would so generously compensate a woman for the use of her body.

A gold sovereign was equivalent to twenty shillings. The prostitute whom she had intercepted in the hallway had greedily snatched the double florin-equivalent to a respectable four shillings-which Megan had offered her. A sure indication that she had expected to receive considerably less from her waiting client.

Why would this man-this Arab-be willing to pay more than an Englishman?

Forcibly, she relaxed her fingers around the wool-padded key. 'Thank you.'

'You may call me Muhamed.' His black gaze did not waver; something briefly flickered deep inside his eyes- indecision? Aversion? 'What name are you known by?'

'Meg-' She paused.

Robert Burns' poem, 'Whistle O'er the Lave O't,' rose up from the depths of her conscience in a mocking litany: 'Meg was meek, and Meg was mild / Sweet and harmless as a child.'

But there was nothing meek, or mild, or harmless about her actions this night.

She was a woman, not a child.

'Megan,' she said more forcefully.

He pushed away from the door.

She involuntarily shrank back.

A whirl of white robe and elusive spice swept by her; the tantalizing aroma seemed to emanate from the Arab's clothes.

Darkness abruptly cocooned her-he had doused the oil lamp.

A ridiculous pang of hurt ricocheted through Megan. Obviously, he had no desire to see the naked body of a forty-eight-year-old woman.

Fear chased feminine pique.

She remembered every rumor she had ever heard about Arab men: they were exotic; they were erotic; they purchased women as if they were chattel.

The rustle of cloth alerted her to movement.

'Men use you for their pleasure.' His terse voice snaked down her spine-it came from behind her, near the bed. 'Do you take pleasure in the men you service?'