by Robin Schone
(3/15/00)

This excerpt is from the early part of bestselling author Schone's breakthrough erotic romance. (See the outspoken interview with Robin in the Articles section of this week's Clean Sheets.) We are in Victorian England. Elizabeth, the sexually abandoned wife of the soon-to-be Prime Minister is learning about men's bodies and desires from Ramiel, the larger-than-life son of an English noblewoman and an Arab sheikh. She hopes to use what she learns from Ramiel to reclaim her husband. The sexual tension between the two is palpable; the Byzantine twists the plot will take are already being foreshadowed.

"Does every man... secrete moisture... before he ejaculates?"

A circle of damp warmth penetrated Ramiel's trousers where the crown of his manhood strained against the black broadcloth. "Yes."

Elizabeth's gaze jumped up from the desk, safely settled on the cup and saucer in front of Ramiel. "How much?"

"Enough to lubricate a woman's netherlips so that he can glide between them." Ramiel dipped a long finger into his coffee and circled the rim of his cup with it. "Enough to wet his fingers so that he can caress her clitoris and bring her to climax."

She tore her gaze away from his cup and met his eyes. "What Arabic terms do you prefer, Lord Safyre?"

Ramiel's manhood thickened. He shifted in his chair, stretching out his legs to find a more comfortable position. "Keur... kamera... zeub."

"Virile member, penis, and verge," she translated softly.

Ramiel lowered his lashes, veiling his eyes. "You have an extraordinary memory, Mrs. Petre."

She did not look away from him. "I took notes."

But she wasn't looking at her notes.

"Then you remember that mochefi el relil, the 'extinguisher of passion,' best satisfies a woman. It is large, strong, and slow to ejaculate. It will not take its leave until it thoroughly excites the woman's womb, 'coming and going, tilting high and low, and rummaging left to right.' Do you want to see a man?"

Dark rose bloomed in her pale cheeks. She gripped the saucer so tightly he thought it would shatter. "You asked me that yesterday morning."

And then I sent you away, fool that I was.

"I am asking you again."

Defiance glimmered in her eyes. Defiance... and desire.

"Yes." She abruptly lifted her saucer off her knee and set it down on the edge of the desk. A decisive thud echoed in the library; a black wave of liquid splashed over the rim of the cup. "Yes, I want to see a man. Are you willing to show me one, sir?"

Ramiel leaned back and opened the top drawer in his desk. He could feel her eyes on him. His manhood pulsed in time to the rise and fall of her breasts underneath her soft velvet bodice.

She was expecting him to display himself.

He wanted to display himself for her. He wanted to satisfy her every curiosity.

Ela'na, damn, let him get through the next few minutes.

He grabbed a rectangular box and pushed it across the desk. "Take it."

Clearly, it was not what she expected. She leaned forward and picked up the white box. "What is it?"

"Open it."

She opened the box -- and promptly dropped the lid. Her intake of breath was loud over the hiss of the gas lamp and the crackling of burning wood. Shocked hazel eyes leapt to meet his turquoise gaze.

"Take it out," he said harshly.

A pink tongue flicked her bottom lip.

Ramiel gripped the edge of his desk to keep himself from jumping over it and giving her her first kiss, ferame, the kiss between a man and a woman.

He wanted to give her everything Edward Petre had denied her. He wanted to give it to her now.

Lowering her gaze, Elizabeth studied the leather object nestled in a bed of red velvet. It was so shaped that not even a woman with her limited experience would mistake what it was fashioned after.

Sexual awareness throbbed in the seductive thrust and retreat of light and shadow. The gas lamp sucked up the oxygen inside the library. Ramiel could not breathe, waiting for her reaction, waiting for her acceptance....

If she ran now... Allah and God help them both.

She gingerly lifted it out of the box. "It does not have a red head."

"It is tooled leather."

"It is cold."

"Hold it and warm it in your hands."

"You are trying to embarrass me."

"I am trying to educate you."

Elizabeth refused to meet his gaze. "Lord Safyre--"

"You wanted to see a man, Mrs. Petre; that is what a man looks like. You wanted to learn how to please a man. I am going to show you."

She closed her eyes in silent struggle. It was so obvious that she wanted to do as he instructed, to hold it as she would hold a man, as she would hold him, when the time came. It was equally obvious that she was still bound by thirty-three years of ingrained prudery. He fought himself not to make the choice for her, to take her hands in his and close them around the leather.

Opening her eyes, she closed her left hand around the leather. Her fingertips brushed her thumb, meeting on the underside of the object. Its circumference was large, but not so large that it would intimidate her.

"What is it called?" He strained to hear her over the blood thrumming in his temples.

"There are many words. Let us call it an artificial phallus."

"It is circumcised."

Unlike Ramiel.

"You have seen your two sons when they were younger." His voice was labored.

"Yes."

"A circumcised man and an uncircumcised man do not greatly differ when they are erect."

She gently ran a fingertip over the leather crown. "Erect men... are they plum-shaped... like this?"

Ramiel gritted his teeth, feeling the caress all the way down to his testicles. "Some men."

"Are you?"

He leaned forward in his chair, wood squeaking, heart hammering. "Yes."

"Shortly after I married I became pregnant." She stared fixedly at the phallus. "I went to the art museum. There was a statue there, a naked statue of a man. Except that it had a leaf...."

Ramiel did not have to ask what part of the statue the leaf covered.

"I was seventeen years old and I was going to have a baby and I wanted to see what had made me that way. But the leaf would not budge."

The muscles inside his chest constricted. At her unexpected confidence. At the young woman she had once been, seeking illumination from an object of art that had purposefully been tempered to preserve a woman's ignorance.

When she had been seventeen, he would have been twenty-two years old with ten years of sexual experience behind him. She had known pain and frustration; he had known only pleasure.

For the first time in nine years, Ramiel almost forgave the circumstances that had exiled him to England to live out the rest of his life. While he could not change his past, he could give Elizabeth a future.

"Your curiosity is natural, taalibba."

"The guard did not think so."

Ramiel's lips hitched upward. The picture of Elizabeth determinedly trying to lift a marble leaf that would not budge while a British guard struggled to stop her was so vivid that he almost laughed. The thought of her humiliation immediately sobered him.

"Some men are afraid of comparison," he said easily.

"But you are not."

The words were drawn from him unwittingly. "I have my own fears."

Her head shot up. "What does a man like you have to fear?"

That I am not a man. That I will never be a man again.

But some things a man does not confess out of the sheer fear that putting it in words will make it true.

He could not live with himself, knowing that it was true. He could not live with himself not knowing that it was true.

How could he expect a woman to live with that which he could not?

"What do you fear, Elizabeth Petre?"

Her lips opened -- soft pink lips; immediately, she closed her mouth in a thin, firm line and returned her attention to the phallus. "Is this a meritorious member?"

He wondered what she was hiding now. Was she afraid that she would never find satisfaction with her husband? Or was she afraid that she would find it with a Bastard Sheikh?

"You know the formula. Measure it."

He watched with bated breath as she positioned the leather across the palm of her hand.

"One and a half handbreadths...." She raised her eyelids; her hazel eyes were lambent. "By my hands. You did not answer my question, Lord Safyre."

His mouth was dry, as if he had eaten desert sand. "It is meritorious enough."

"Is a man this hard when he is erect?"

Ramiel took a deep breath. "A man is more flexible."

"Thursday morning you said that you liked a woman to pump and squeeze you. How else can a woman pleasure a man?"

"She can take him into her mouth and lick and suckle him," he said baldly.

The words were riveting, for her as well as him.

"Like a nipple."

He did not miss a heartbeat. "Or a clitoris."

"Women..." Her voice was husky. She would sound like that, he thought, when he was buried deep inside her. "They take a man into their mouths?"

Ramiel closed his eyes in acute physical pain, imagining Elizabeth's mouth, Elizabeth's hair, Elizabeth's pleasure. "Yes, Mrs. Petre. Women do that."

"What does it taste like?"

He opened his eyes, stared at her rapt curiosity. Briefly, he mourned the innocence that he would be instrumental in destroying. "I am afraid that is something you will have to test for yourself," he said impassively.

"What does a woman taste like?"

What would Elizabeth taste like?

"Sweet. Salty. Like... a woman. Soft and hot and wet and passionate."

The gas flame in the lamp pulsed with heat, luring, warning. Passion could burn, badly.

How far would she go before her Western propriety pulled her back? How far could he go without losing control?

"What did you think when you saw a woman for the first time?"

What had he thought, at the age of thirteen, when the experienced concubine his father had provided him with had laid down on her back and spread her legs?

"I thought... that a woman's vulva was the most fascinating thing I had ever seen. Like a pink iris. When touched, it grew moist. When excited, its petals unfurled to reveal a secret little bud. It was the ultimate toy."

Elizabeth's gaze skidded away from his. She bowed her head. "It is impossible, surely, for a woman to fully take a man into her mouth."

"A woman does not have to swallow all of him, just the crown and the first couple of inches. She may squeeze and fondle his shaft while she kisses and suckles him.

Kisses and suckles vibrated in the air between them.

Like a nipple.

Like a clitoris.

"Has a woman ever taken you fully into her mouth?"

Ramiel remembered the pleasure of a woman's lips and tongue. The memories were fueled by her manifest interest in performing fellatio. Sexual heat flooded his cheeks. "No."

"Would you like that?"

Only if you can do it without injury to yourself, taalibba, he thought.

"I would rather that a woman take me fully inside of her vagina."

An ember popped inside the fireplace. Ramiel tensed, preparing for her next question. He had given her the reins; would she run with them?