Fascinated

chords in her throat strain. A chorus of ragged breathing blended with the wet impact of flesh slapping flesh. Megan rode him until he could feel the sun on his back and the ground beneath his feet and the wind in his face, together galloping back through the past to a time when they had both been young and innocent.

And then it stopped-the pounding motion, the driving force, the race for freedom. Megan stared down at him, face streaked with sweat and sunshine, hair clinging to her cheeks and her breasts. Her vagina rippled around him in the aftermath of her orgasm, fisting, relaxing, fisting, relaxing… about his heart, his verge. Too much, not enough.

He fought back a cry of agony. He was not ready to be a eunuch again, not when the blood still sang through his veins and desire crackled up and down his spine.

Megan's panting breath slowly subsided. 'You cannot, can you?'

He did not pretend to misunderstand her. 'No.'

But Allah, God, he wanted to.

'I am going to bring you to release, Muhamed.'

She abruptly levered up onto one knee-he slipped free of her, wincing, turgid verge reaching out for her-and stood up.

He gazed up at the beauty that was a woman's sex; it was pink and wet between a dark fringe of damp curls.

Her pubic hair was darker than that on her head and underneath her arms.

Quickly, she lifted her leg and brought it over his groin, so that her thighs modestly pressed together.

'Come with me,' she said, every bit as imperious as he could be.

'Why?' he rasped, chest heaving, lungs laboring.

Why could they not stay as they were, just for a little while longer?

'I am going to make an offering,' Megan said cryptically.

Bending down in a glistening waterfall of hair, she flipped the side of her cloak over and retrieved something from her pocket.

He could not see what it was.

Straightening, she turned and walked toward the well that the spring fed, buttocks gently bouncing, hips swaying.

He followed her.

Megan stood over the baptistery that mothers dipped their babies in. Cupping her right hand, she scooped it into the water, brought it up, filled. Turning to him, she let the water trickle down his verge.

He sucked in his breath.

The water was icy.

What had been hard shrank to escape the cold.

She ignored the results of her handiwork, concentrating instead on unrolling a French letter. Megan stuck the unfurled sheath of rubber onto a bush that housed the remnants of swaddling cloths.

His throat tightened. She had baptized his male appendage, as women baptized their babies. Now she left a condom offering, as countless mothers left pieces of swaddling cloths as offerings.

'You think that the good fortune mothers seek for their children will visit me?' he asked roughly.

'I know it will,' she said firmly. 'But later. In a room warmed by coal and the comfort of a bed at our disposal.'

He had experienced one miracle, last night buried inside her body; he did not expect another one.

He helped Megan dress, dropping her petticoats over her head, tying her bustle in place, buttoning the band of her skirt, the front of her bodice.

Pulling her hair back from her face, he braided it for her. It was warm with sunshine, slippery fine, softer than down.

Megan held perfectly still for his ministrations, as if she were not used to another dressing her, helping her.

What kind of a fool had her husband been, to reject Megan's love? he wondered angrily. Were she his woman, he would see that she never wanted for attention.

But he was a eunuch, not a man.

She secured the braid on top of her head and crammed on her hat and gloves while he threw on his thobs and wound his turban around his head.

It felt heavier than a boulder.

They did not talk as they retraced their steps through the overgrowth of thorny bushes to the gig that waited for them. He unhobbled the horse and hitched it to the carriage.

Megan climbed in, unassisted.

He wanted to rip off her black hat and black cloak.

He wanted to eat more tasteless meat pie and drink more sour cider and lie again in the sun, with her naked body riding his own.

'You said that eunuchs who do not have their manhood or their testicles marry,' she said, looking straight ahead at the gelded horse instead of him.

His lips tightened in a grim line. 'Yes.'

He knew what she was going to ask.

Megan turned and stared at him. 'They would not marry would they, if they were not capable of enjoying a woman's attentions?'

He snapped the reins. 'No, they wouldn't.'

Chapter Six

The journey back to the inn was completed in silence. He could feel Megan's determination to give him satisfaction.

It incited both anger and hope: anger, that she failed to understand a eunuch's limitations; hope, that she prove he could find gratification as surely as any other man could.

A young stableboy held the horse's head while he lithely jumped down out of the carriage. For the first time he was glad that he had to daily exercise to build muscles or else turn to flab as so many eunuchs did.

His strength would allow him to bring Megan many more orgasms.

Turning, he offered her his hand. She glared in the direction that the stableboy stood.

He did not need to look to know that the boy gawked at the Arab who wore a robe like a woman.

'Megan,' he said softly.

She reluctantly tore her gaze away from the stableboy.

'I am used to arousing curiosity,' he merely said.

Megan gave him her hand. Her frown did not diminish.

The dim interior of the inn was oppressive after the bright sunshine outside; the smell of boiled cabbage and beef nauseated him after the freshness of spring air.

The innkeeper who had greedily procured him a whore was not at his station. Raised voices drifted out of the pub.

A chambermaid had straightened his room while they were gone. The bed was made; the ladderback chair stood by the fireplace; the water pitcher sat inside the stoneware basin.

It was as if he had not pleasured a woman and been pleasured in return.

He locked the door.

Megan waited for him by the bed. 'I trust you to give me pleasure, Muhamed.'

But he did not trust her to give him pleasure, she did not need to add.

No woman could give him what he ached for.

She would not be satisfied until he proved it to her.

'Take off your clothes, Megan.'

Megan did not gaze away from him as she removed her clothing. The color of her eyes was indistinct in the dull