Fascinated

They gleamed in the darkness.

'I believe that it requires courage for a man to acknowledge a woman's needs, yes,' she said more firmly.

'How do you judge a man, madam, if not by his sexual experience? Do you judge him by the number of orgasms he gives you? Do you judge him by the hardness of his male member? By the length of it? Do you judge him by his ability to spurt his seed?'

Pain streaked through Megan-hers, his.

It dawned on her that this man was afraid.

But of what?

'I cannot bear children,' she impulsively offered. 'Ii I judged a man for his inability to produce seed, then I must also judge myself for being unable to carry a man's seed.'

Megan's jaws snapped shut. She could not possibly have admitted to this stranger what now echoed inside her ears.

That she was barren.

That she was alone.

That she had failed as a woman.

But she had.

'Do you?'

The question took her by surprise. It sounded as if it had been ripped from some place far deeper than the Arab's chest.

She did not pretend to misunderstand him.

Did Megan judge herself?

Why did it seem perfectly natural to discuss her personal feelings with this man?

Why had not her husband, in all their years of marriage, asked her what this Arab now asked her?

'No.' Her throat tightened. 'But others do.'

Just as no doubt others judged him, an Arab traveling in a foreign country.

'You do not wonder, sometimes, if they are right in their judgment?' he asked hoarsely.

Yes.

But those thoughts were for another time.

'I think… when a man and a woman come together- that the closeness they share-I think that is life's true miracle,' Megan said shakily.

An ember sparked; red light flared, briefly revealing an ear, a jaw. Human flesh bled into dark shadow.

'You have loved a man,' he said flatly.

The tightness constricting Megan's throat spread to her chest. 'Yes.'

'Yet you are a whore.'

She should have expected his judgment; she had not.

Hot emotion erupted inside her, hearing the echo of another man's judgment.

'You think a woman is a whore because she has physical needs?' she flared, forgetting that he rightfully thought her a prostitute. Forgetting that she had come to him out of loneliness, not to debate women's morality. 'You do not think that women are entitled to take comfort in a man's embrace?'

'I do not know.' His grating honesty shattered her anger; his breath lapped at her breasts. 'I do not know what either men or women are entitled to. All I know is what I want.' To know a woman's body. To learn how to bring a woman to orgasm.

'Surely you must also wish to… to experience your own release,' Megan said rashly. 'Would you not like a woman to touch you?'

'I have no need of a woman's touch.'

'We all need to be touched,' she riposted.

Surely, all men and women needed the intimacy of touching, of holding, of being touched and held in return.

'There are worse things than physical frustration,' he finally said, as if he begrudged her question.

'What?' she asked.

What could possibly be worse than sleeping alone, without even the companionable press of buttocks against buttocks to alleviate the ache of loneliness?

'Knowing that there is no release,' he bit out, 'is far worse than aching with need.'

'But there is always release…' Her heart somersaulted at her near confession.

An Englishman was not interested in that part of a woman's body which society did not acknowledge.

An Englishwoman did not admit she possessed a place which brought her release that did not also culminate in a man's ejaculation.

'Do you pleasure yourself, madam?' he asked jarringly, a blatant reminder that he was not English, no matter how much he might sound it.

'Yes.' Stinging heat flooded her cheeks, her ears, crawled down her throat. She stiffened her spine, refusing to lie. 'Men… do they not… pleasure themselves?'

The silence was complete save for their breathing and the remote lap of ocean waves, teasing, promising, retreating, never fulfilling.

'There is a difference between a man's hand and a woman's body,' he said tersely.

'But do you?' she insisted, suddenly wanting to know, no, she needed to know that men required the same release that women did.

'I have done so.'

He was embarrassed-she could feel the heat of it against her breasts and in her toes, hear the roughness of it in his voice-but like her, he would not lie. Not tonight.

'What do you hope to gain from this encounter, Mu-hamed?'

His name slipped unbidden from between her lips.

It should sound awkward, an Arabic name spoken with an English tongue. It should be awkward, an Arabic man discussing with an Englishwoman what no man had dared say to her, and what, she suspected, he had never dared say to another, be they English or Arabic.

Why didn't it?

'I have told you what I want.'

'No, you told me what you want to know,' she said, gaining courage from the anonymity of the night, 'not what you yourself want.'

For a long second she did not think he would answer.

'I want to know that I can give a woman pleasure.'

His voice rebounded off of her breasts. Hot, moist air fanned her nipples.

'I want to know what other men know.'

Megan was riveted.

By the raw intensity inside him.

By the passion emanating from him.

'I want to know that I am like other men.'

Chapter Two

The air was sucked out of Megan's lungs.

What could possibly cause the agony she sensed inside this Arab?

Men who contracted mumps were sometimes rendered sterile, she remembered. Had he suffered from some illness that had incapacitated him?

She took a steadying breath. 'I do not think any woman need demonstrate that you are a man, sir.'

'Then do not demonstrate it, madam,' he said brutally. 'Prove it.'

The darkness closed around them. It shrank the distance between his mouth and her painfully engorged