Fascinated

Megan's silent agreement was decipherable in any language.

He persevered, as he had persevered the last forty years.

'I do not know how… to talk to women.' He spoke carefully, trying to soften his severity, to be what she would want a man to be. 'I do not know what pleases them-'

'I have told you-'

'But I would please you, Megan,' he interrupted, the harshness kicking in to block out her pending rejection. 'If you would let me.'

Her expression remained inscrutable. 'I do not understand what it is that you want from me.'

Last night she had uttered similar words.

His needs had not changed.

He wanted to know what other men knew.

He wanted to be what other men were.

'I would have no more pretense or illusions between us,' he said, reigning in hope, harnessing fear.

'Are you asking me to… to spend more time with you?' she asked guardedly.

He would never have another chance to experience a woman's honest sexuality.

'I am asking you to spend another night with me,' he said tautly.

'And if I did?'

His spine felt ready to snap. 'I will do whatever you wish.'

'My husband…' Megan shifted; the squeak of the bed-springs scraped across his skin. 'I did not ask him to do the things I said to you last night.'

'You did not ask him to touch you?' he asked, heart pounding, verge stirring, hope thickening his tongue.

Megan held his gaze, suddenly seeming far younger than her years. 'I did not ask him to… to kiss my breasts.'

'Did you ask him to touch you between your legs?'

'I did not have the courage to,' she admitted.

But she had possessed the courage to come to him. To tell him what she wanted.

A eunuch had no right to feel exultation at hearing that a woman sought intimacies with him that she had not sought from a man. But he felt that rush of possessiveness now for Megan, knowing he could give what her husband had not.

He remembered her closed lips when she kissed him. Her uncertainty at how she should move on his verge when she straddled his lap.

Her blatant curiosity. Her uninhibited response.

He was inexperienced, but he was not ignorant of sexual practices.

She was both ignorant, he realized, and inexperienced.

'Would you like me to kiss your clitoris?' he asked abruptly.

'What?'

Megan's shock was not feigned.

'Men kiss women on their clitoris,' he said, deliberately enticing her with the lure of her sexuality. 'They lick them. They suckle them.'

Until they reached a peak of enjoyment.

Awareness shimmered between them, he standing before her naked, vulnerable, she covered neck to toes with blankets, equally naked and vulnerable.

'You would… you would do that?' she asked, not quite as composed as before. More like the woman she had been last night when darkness had been their alibi and she had freely admitted her desires.

'I would,' he affirmed.

'How do you know that men do that?'

How did a virgin eunuch who had never touched a woman know that men did that? was what she really asked.

He could tell her that many Arabic treatises described the act of cunnilingus, just as those same books described a woman's arousal…

'I have watched them,' he replied baldly.

There would be no more sexual deception between them.

'You have watched… men and women together?' she asked, trying to conceal her surprise, but failing.

'I have watched women and eunuchs together.'

The condemnation he anticipated did not come.

'You said Arabic women did not have a clitoris.'

'Many women who are sold as concubines are not Arabic.'

She frowned. 'These concubines… they perform in front of an audience?'

'There is little privacy in a harem.'

Not when there were so many men who lusted after the very thing they were denied: the pleasure of a woman's body.

'Other eunuchs…' She did not finish her sentence, that other eunuchs had touched women. Pleased women. 'But you did not.'

'I did not,' he admitted, anticipating her next question: Why not?

'These women you watched'-understanding flickered in her eyes-'did they reciprocate the caresses they received?'

His throat tightened. 'No, they did not.'

Concubines were slaves, but eunuchs were… eunuchs.

A rustling of bedclothes pulled him out of the past.

'I am in a quandary, sir.'

For the first time he saw true embarrassment on Megan's face.

'Why?' he asked, dreading her response.

'Either you must dress, or I must. Either way, one of us has to leave.'

A band tightened around his chest.

'Why?' he repeated, not wanting to ask, unable to stop.

Clearly, she had had enough of a eunuch, no matter that he would go down on his knees to please her. Clearly, she was ready to return to a safe English world that did not harbor such as he.

Her face darkened, a vivid contrast against the white pillow case. 'Because I need to take care of private matters.'

'And when you have taken care of private matters?' he doggedly pursued.

'I would very much enjoy having you kiss my clitoris.' She did not look away from his gaze. 'And then I would like to kiss your manhood.'

'You will stay here, in my room, for another night?' he asked, not daring to believe his ears.

'I will stay.'

For a second he thought his knees would buckle. The surge of hot blood to his groin stiffened him.

Pivoting, verge swaying heavily, he picked up the chair- carefully so as not to tilt and upset the chamber pot- and deposited the whole by the bed, wood decisively contacting wood.

'I will tend the fire while you tend to private matters,' he said peremptorily, afraid to leave her, afraid she would change her mind. 'There are tissues in the nightstand drawer.'

Without giving her time to debate, he turned and strode toward the cold, iron fireplace. He deliberately made as much noise as he could, knocking the ashes out of the grate with the tong, crackling sheets of old newspaper to use as kindling, pouring fresh coals from the dust-blackened coal scuttle on top of the paper. Squatting down, he struck a safety match and touched it to the newspaper.

And all the while that he performed his chores, he pictured Megan. This was an intimacy he had not believed possible when he had decided to purchase a whore.

Blue flames leaped to life.

Tossing the match into the fireplace, he stood up. Without warning, he turned.

Megan bent over, naked, holding the chamber pot in both hands to slide it underneath the bed.

His heart stopped, witnessing the pale silhouette of a breast, a gracefully curved spine and a rounded buttock.