Megan strained-not to escape, but to get closer. "No, I did not lie."

Her only lie was in allowing him to believe she was the prostitute the innkeeper had summoned.

"Does my touch please you?"

"Yes."

She had not thought such pleasure existed simply from a man's touch.

"Then I will not stop until you give me your release and we both discover if a man's fingers are as good as his verge."

Megan tensed. The night tensed.

What had they done to this man?

Suddenly the darkness exploded; Megan exploded with it, gasping, falling, grabbing. Bed creaking. Legs straddling his legs.

A wave of energy swelled over hers, swallowed hers, throbbed with a life of its own.

"I felt your release," Muhamed rasped. A hard hand grasped her left hip, finger wet from her body; another hard hand bolstered the small of her back.

Megan struggled to catch her breath, inhaling the almond scent of his breath and the moist, spicy heat of his body. Her left knee was embedded in thick wool; her right knee indented a coarse cotton sheet. Aftershocks of pleasure rippled through her; cool air bathed her naked, exposed nether lips.

Her vulva was open. Utterly accessible.

Her vagina gaped.

Open. Utterly accessible.

Hard, muscled thighs supported her buttocks; they were not cushioned with hair. A hardness bridged their bodies that owed nothing to a callused digit and everything to a man's tumescence.

It felt like rubber.

A rubber prod with a large, blunt head.

Her fingers convulsively dug into shoulders that were as tautly muscled as the thighs underneath her buttocks.

"Do you miss having a verge inside you?" His almond-scented breath scorched her lips. "Would you be satisfied if touch was all that a man could give you?"

It dawned on her that it was his need that had only seconds earlier swelled over hers, swallowed hers.

He might deny that he needed sexual release; his body told its own story.

"Yes." Megan gulped air. What he had given her was far more than she had previously had. "I would be satisfied."

But be would not be.

There was so much pain inside her Arab.

She did not want him to hurt. Not tonight.

Megan had suffered through enough pain in her life, and so, she suspected, had he.

She slowly inhaled, deliberately calming her thundering pulses so that she could say the words that needed to be said. "I do not judge you, Muhamed."

"Do you not?"

His rubber-sheathed manhood throbbed.

Her womb throbbed.

"No, I do not," she said, and reached between their bodies to gift him with the same pleasure he had given her.

He filled her hand. He overflowed her hand.

He grasped her hand.

"Don't!" he ground out.

Everything about him was iron-hard-his voice; his thighs; his shoulders; his fingers holding her right hand; his rubber-sheathed manhood.

Whatever Muhamed suffered from, it was not impotence.

"You said you wanted me to show you how to please a woman," she said, undeterred.

"I did not procure you for this."

"Yes, you did," she countered… and wondered what gave her the courage to do so. The pleasure he had given her, or the pleasure he so obviously wanted to experience?

His fingers tightened around her wrist; there would be bruises there tomorrow. "I did not want you to know."

"You did not want me to know… how hard you are?" she asked boldly.

Megan could feel his surprise. A gentle power filled her.

Tomorrow she would be mortified at her audacity, not tonight.

She had always wondered if men came in different sizes, as women's breasts were sized differently. Now she knew.

They did.

Slowly she ran her thumb over the blunt tip of him; it pulsed underneath the nippled rubber sheath. "You did not want me to know… how large you are?" she asked breathlessly.

"Do not play the whore with me, madam," he said harshly, rebuke a blast of almond-scented breath.

She stiffened. "I am what I am."

"I will not have you lie to soothe my vanity."

It occurred to her that it was not her actions he castigated, but his own body. "I assure you, sir, I do not lie. I have never before held a man as large as you."

Long seconds passed while he assessed the truth of her assertion. His banding fingers pulsed around her wrist: he wanted to believe; he was afraid to believe.

"Do you not find me… distasteful?" he asked, plainly finding himself distasteful.

"No, I do not," she said firmly. And forced herself to ask: "Were you repulsed by me?"

"A woman's body is not repulsive."

Relief coursed through Megan.

"Neither is yours," she asserted.

A hiss of air escaped from between his lips. "I do not know if I can satisfy a woman."

"I assure you, I am very satisfied."

"I do not know if I can find satisfaction in a woman."

"If you will release my hand, sir, you will soon have your answer."

The sound of their breathing momentarily halted-even the waves bathing the surf seemed to pause.

He released her.

She exhaled; he exhaled. The ocean resumed its relentless rhythm of advance and retreat.

Megan bowed her head and stared down at the long, thick appendage she held. All she could see was the dark chasm that separated their bodies, and her own ineptness.

She had never before put a man inside her. The thought of doing so now was both humbling and empowering.

Carefully, she guided him to her vulva. Heat bumped her forehead-his forehead; it was slick with sweat.

He clasped her hand, hard fingers cupping her softer fingers, helping her, urging her. A callused palm slid down the small of her back. He grasped the right cheek of her buttocks, fingertips wedging deep inside her crevice. At the same time, blistering heat grazed her gaping vagina.

Together, they found her portal. Together, they notched his blunt, masculine flesh into her open, feminine flesh.

Megan couldn't breathe. Couldn't move.

Perspiration dripped down her forehead, her nose, plopped onto her chest. She did not know who it came from-her or him.

In all of her twenty-eight years of marriage, she had never experienced the type of intimacy she now experienced, straddling a man's lap while his breath laved her breasts and his manhood kissed her womanhood, sharing sex, sharing sweat, hands joined, body joined.

"I'm not… come closer," he grated.

Steadily he pulled her closer, fingers digging dangerously deep inside the crevice between her buttocks, while with his right hand he directed his rubber-sheathed manhood. Rubbing. Pulling. Prodding.

Megan's knees slowly inched across the covers, thighs spreading wider while her hand followed his motions as if she were a marionette. Rubbing. Prodding.

Breaching. Piercing. Spitting.

She threw her head back, voice high and shrill, directed up to the ceiling. "Oh, my God!"

"Allah akbar!" His voice was low and hoarse, directed down to parts that could not answer back.

She instinctively released Muhamed's manhood. Using both his shoulders, she tried to lift up.

Grasping her hips with both hands, he pulled her down and forward until he gorged her very womb.

"I did not know a woman was this small," he gritted.

"I…" Megan desperately tried to compose her thoughts when all she could think about was the long, hard, thick, rubber-sheathed flesh that impaled her very heart. "You are penetrating me very deeply."

Hot, almond-scented air gusted against her cheek. "Does it cause you pain?"

Yes.

"No."

But it sounded as if he suffered.

She had forgotten how physically close a man and a woman were in conjugal intercourse. Or perhaps she had never really known.

Her breasts molded his chest; her thighs saddled his hips; her groin locked with his groin.

One breath.

One body.

One heartbeat.

"I have never…" Her internal muscles convulsively clenched around him. "I cannot… move. I do not understand how it can be done in this position."

"Grind your pelvis against mine."

He ground her body down onto his. At the same time he thrust his pelvis up.

He gasped.

She gasped.

The surge of heat that shot through her was far more agonizing than pain. Far more intense than pleasure.

Her nether lips were flattened against smooth skin-he had no pubic hair. The hardened bud of her femininity rubbed bare, naked flesh.

Megan impulsively spanned the short inches that separated their mouths and kissed him.

Lips closed. Eyes open.

He froze.

His lips were dry. Firm. Softer than a sigh.

The heat radiating through her pelvis leaped to her mouth, her breasts that stabbed his muscled, hairless chest, and bolted back down to her vagina that milked his rubber-sheathed manhood.

She jerked back, breathing hard.

"I have never kissed a woman," he said stiffly. He, too, breathed hard.

"Did you like it?" she asked, feeling invaded, feeling vulnerable, feeling as if she were far younger than a woman her age had a right to feel.

"Yes," he said shortly.

Megan was not deterred by his shortness.

Releasing his shoulders, she cupped his face in her hands- his skin felt as if it had been freshly shaved-and deliberately pressed her mouth to his.

His lips clung to hers. And then they possessed hers.

Shocked pleasure washed over her.

He was-probing the seam of her lips with his tongue. As if he wanted her to open her mouth.

Megan opened her mouth.

He touched the tip of his tongue to hers, simultaneously piercing both her upper lips and her nether lips.