Fascinated

Megan swirled around, blood pumping, heart pounding.

An endless white ribbon undulated in the darkness. She realized he was unwinding his turban.

Remembered passion clenched her stomach.

'Yes,' she said.

It was not a lie. She had taken pleasure in her husband's arms.

The undulating white ribbon soundlessly floated to the floor. All at once, the man's white robe reared up over his head; it hovered there for a long second like a ghostly specter before it, too, silently drifted downward.

Megan did not doubt that he stood before her naked-just as she was naked underneath her dress. She strained to see an outline or a gleam of skin: she could not. It was as if he had been swallowed up by the night.

A soft creak shot through the darkness, bedsprings adjusting to sudden weight. It sharply recalled her to who she was, where she was at, and what she was doing.

She was Mrs. Meg Phillins, the virtuous widow of a vicar.

She was at Land's End, a place to which she had sworn never to return.

She was about to engage in carnal relations with a man whom prior to this day she had never seen, and whom she would never see again after the night.

Tension swirled about her.

He watched her.

She did not know how he could see her in the darkness, dressed all in black, but she knew that he did. Just as surely as she knew that if she bolted now, she would never again have an opportunity to experience a man's passion.

Megan peeled off her silk gloves and stuffed them into the pocket that contained the key to her solitary room and lonely virtue. Her ring finger on her left hand tingled, as if it called out to the gold wedding band she had abandoned for a night of sexual satiation.

The bedsprings creaked again; the penetrating noise was followed by a dual clank, as if metal rubbed metal, struck metal.

Her breath snagged in her chest.

There was no accompanying stir of air, no indication that the Arab had stood up.

She licked her lips; they felt drier than the desert sands he had been born to, but that she had never seen. Her hat weighted down her head, heavier than an anvil.

Megan did not need light to illuminate her actions.

His room was much like hers-no doubt like all the rooms at the small inn. The floor was bereft of rugs; the whitewashed walls bare of paintings. Beside the locked door stood a bureau topped with a pitcher of water and a basin. Opposite the foot of the bed, a cane-bottomed, ladder-back chair guarded a small iron fireplace.

She pictured his narrow sleigh bed with its turned down covers, the man who wore no clothes, and the nightstand that stood between them.

The click of her heels were overloud in the taut silence; the trail of her gown an audible drag; the distance to the night-stand impossibly long…

Megan kicked hard wood. A lancing pain shot through her right toe. Simultaneously, the chimney of the extinguished hurricane lamp rattled, a discordant implosion. Lingering oil smoke stung her nose while embarrassment at her clumsiness burned her ears.

The Arab remained silent.

Or did he?

She could hear breathing, a soft, relentless cadence.

His?

Or hers?

Underlying the primal rhythm was the distant wash of the tide-swelling, ebbing, the eternal pattern of desire.

Awkward as she had not been in many years-not since she had been eighteen and a simple Cornish girl-she reached up and slid the pin out of her hat. The accelerated rise and fall of her breasts matched the rhythmical soughing of air that filled the chamber.

Lowering her arms, she carefully slid the hat pin into the flat felt crown. Extending her left hand for guidance, she bent down, fingers splaying, arms reaching, and encountered…

A small, shallow, rectangular-shaped metal box.

Megan frowned. It had not been there earlier.

Or had it?

Prior to this night, she had not known of her whorish tendencies.

Or had she?

Dropping the hat down over the tin, she straightened.

The carved bone buttons lining the front of her bodice were too large; they did not want to slide through the buttonholes. Hours passed, coaxing one button free, two, three… and all the while that unremitting breathing cautioned her, cajoled her, became her.

Did Arab men love differently than did Englishmen? she wondered, breath and pulses racing against one another.

Would he kiss her?

Would he caress her?

What would he feel like, this naked stranger, when his body strained against hers?

Would he penetrate her deeply… or shallowly?

Would he be rough… or gentle?

Would she please him?

Would he please her?

She shrugged out of her dress; heavy wool scurried down her back, over her hips, swooshed down her legs and collapsed about her feet. A trail of chill goose bumps followed in its wake.

All that prevented her from joining the man were her shoes.

She had prepared for this moment, too.

Using the rounded tip of her right shoe, she dislodged her left slipper. Using the bare toes of her left foot, she dislodged her right slipper.

Megan stepped out of the circle of her gown onto cold, unyielding wood.

The darkness throbbed with sexual heat.

She took one step forward. Her breasts lightly bounced.

Would he take pleasure in their fullness?

She took a second step forward. Her hips gently swayed.

Would he find them lacking?

She took a third step forward, thigh rubbing thigh, friction building, chest constricting.

The teasing aroma of exotic spice enveloped her. Out of the corners of her eyes she espied the faint, red glimmer of burning coals.

Why couldn't she see him?

A grain of dirt gritted beneath her left heel. Her right knee collided with ungiving bone and sinew-a naked leg, a muscled leg, a leg that was far smoother than her own. At the same time her foot came down on-a foot.

Moist air scorched her skin. 'You smell of vinegar.'

Megan froze, held immobile by the impact of his leg, the weight of her foot on his, the heat of his breath, and the jarring repercussion of his words.

Never had she imagined that a man would notice… or comment on… a prostitute's use of a prophylactic.

And perhaps an Englishman would not have noticed; or having done so, he would have courteously refrained from commenting.

'I…' She swallowed, acutely aware of his bare foot underneath hers and her breasts that jutted out from her chest, only inches away from his mouth 'I have inside me a… a sponge that is soaked in vinegar.'

'There is no need for that,' he said brusquely. 'I have prepared myself with a French letter.'

The tin on the nightstand-did it contain more French letters?

Did the prostitute whom Megan had replaced rely upon a man to protect her?