Fascinated

No whore could fail to observe what she had apparently missed.

His stomach clenched.

But if she wasn't a whore, why had she come to his room?

What was she doing in his bed?

He had cried, when he orgasmed, the tears he had not cried for forty years. She had held him, comforted him, loved him as if she were used to men who cursed and cried while they fought to find release inside a woman's body.

Who was she?

Tense seconds passed. A man's muffled shout for an ostler penetrated the outside hotel wall, a blaring reminder that the night was over and a new day had dawned.

'I am a widow,' she said finally, evenly. 'A patron of this inn, as you are.'

His eyes narrowed, remembering his observation-that she did not sound as if she were from around Land's End; remembering her answer-that she was not. Why hadn't he ques-tioned her further?

'How is it that you came to my room last night?' he bit out.

'I overheard you order the innkeeper to find you a… a prostitute.' Her breath fogged the air, blurring her face. 'I intercepted her in the hallway. I knocked on your door in her stead, hoping you would mistake me for her.'

And he had.

A shrill whinny carried on the air; it was followed by a short, sharp, canine bark.

It dawned on him that he should be cold, standing naked before a woman in a chill English inn, but he wasn't. Blood pumped through his veins; vivid memories flashed through his mind like colored sand in a kaleidoscope, changing, shifting. Questions he had asked, thinking she was a whore; reassurances she had uttered, encouraging his abandon.

Had she been disappointed by his ignorance… or had she reveled in her sexual superiority?

Ten half-moons throbbed to life in his shoulders, the imprint of her fingernails.

Had her flesh clenched around his in enjoyment… or frustration?

She had lied to him, no matter that he, too, lied by inad-mission. What did the likes of him know about women?

How did he know if he had pleased her?

'Exactly what had you heard about Arabs that incited your curiosity, madam?' he lashed out, masking his vulnerability. 'Did you hope that my verge would be larger than that of an Englishman? Arab men are reputed to be masters at pleasuring women. Tell me. What did you hope to gain through your deception?'

She had not cowered from his curtness the night before, nor did she cower before his anger now.

'One night, sir. I hoped to gain one night of pleasure.' Her head slid back on the pillow, braid coiling, chin mutinously thrusting forward. 'I thought that was what you wished, too, else I would not have taken up your time.'

A woman lying naked among crumpled bedcovers, with her hair unkempt and her face shiny with dried sweat, should not manifest dignity. But Megan did.

Unexpected pain ripped through his rage.

This woman had not belittled him. Ridiculed him. Pitied him.

I do not judge you, she had said.

Why not?

She was an Englishwoman, if not of good breeding, at least from a respectable family.

How could she accept what harem women did not?

'I am hadim,' he said brutally.

'I am English,' she returned.

Literally translated, hadim meant hairless; in any other language, it meant only one thing.

He gritted his teeth and forced out the hated word-a word he had hoped not to use with this woman; a word that had haunted him for forty years. 'I am a eunuch, madam.'

The desert was a place of treacherous sand and shrieking wind; it was also a place of stillness and perfect quietude. He had never before witnessed such stillness in an Englishwoman, but he witnessed it now, in Megan.

Her gaze did not waver from his. 'I would say, sir, that your performance last night attests otherwise.'

Silently, he cursed the heat that blistered his cheeks. He had not blushed in forty years. Twice now this woman had caused him to blush.

'They cut off my stones,' he said crudely, hoping to shock her. To horrify her.

To prove that he was not the man she believed him to be, but which he had felt like for one single night.

She regarded him calmly. 'By stones, I take it you mean your ballocks?'

The tips of his ears pricked hotly at her blunt English. 'I have no seed.'

I have no seed reverberated inside his head-the cry of the thirteen-year-old boy he had once been, irreparably altered. The excuse of the Muslim he had grown up to be, filled with rage.

His heartbeat pounded in his temples and his groin, counting the seconds, preparing for defense.

'My husband was a vicar,' Megan said in a clear, dispassionate voice. 'When the surgeon told him I was fashioned in such a manner that I would never be able to carry his children, he refused to share my bed. He did not want to endanger my life, he said, by causing me to have any more miscarriages. The local midwife apprised me of certain prophylactics that would prevent conception. My husband refused to use them, even though their use would have allowed us to be together. He said such devices were immoral, and that marital pleasure was solely for the benefit of procreation.'

The faint protest of a carriage squeaking and the dull clip-clop of hooves broke the stark silence that followed her words; just as suddenly the external sounds faded.

'I would to God that my husband had had no seed-or that I had been barren,' she concluded with cool decisiveness. 'It would have been far more preferable than the loneliness he condemned us to.'

He stood still, remembering her admission that a man had rejected her.

Not a young swain, as he had thought. But a man who had shared with her the sexual intimacy that was indeed one of life's true miracles. A man who had given her pleasure and who had seeded her womb with children she could not bear.

A man who, by her own admission, she had loved.

A tide of emotion swept over him: jealousy, at the depth of her affection for her deceased spouse; envy, at the long years of companionship she had shared with him; uncertainty, at how to comfort a woman whom he had admitted into his life solely for his own comfort.

Anger came to his rescue, that he should feel the need to comfort and, feeling it, did not have the wherewithal to express it.

Eunuchs could not afford softer emotions.

'How long have you been a widow?' he asked curtly.

'Two years.'

'How many men have you been with since you were a widow, or were you in the habit of slipping into other men's bedchambers before your husband died?' he asked, cringing at his cruelty, yet wanting to prove that she was a whore in flesh if not profession.

Wanting to destroy the bond that had been forged between them in the night lest she expect more than he could give, eunuch that he was but did not want to be.

'My husband is the only man I have ever been with, save for you,' she said stiffly. Her face, framed by her dark hair and white bedding, was ashen. 'We were not intimate the last twenty years that he lived.'

Twenty years. Two years.

She had been abstinent more than half the number of years he had been a eunuch. Yet she had come to him, a man who was no man.

'It was your husband whom you asked to touch you,' he said flatly.

To kiss her. To lick her. To suckle her.

All the things he had done to her last night.

Had she imagined that he was her husband?