Lustful Intrigue: Forbidden Love Amidst Duty's Chains

Damien would not be blackmailed by any woman, no matter how strong her need for sexual fulfillment.

He leaned against the library door, narrowing his eyes to see the woman standing in front of the half-circle bay of floor-to-ceiling windows. Wispy tendrils of fog connected her to the opening curtains, the former a monolith of black wool and the latter sentry columns of yellow silk.

Rebecca Petre.

He didn't identify her, who was dressed head to toe in a hat and shapeless black cloak and had her back to him. But he wouldn't know her if she was nude and facing him, arms and legs spread wide in shameless invitation.

He was the Bastard Sheikh, the illegitimate child of an English countess and an Arab sheikh. She was the wife of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and her father was the Prime Minister of England.

She and him did not interact except behind closed doors and between silky beds.

Damien remembered the black-haired woman whose bed he had departed barely an hour before. The Marchioness of Clairdon had met him at the ballum rancum, a whore's ball, where he had danced nude among the other prostitutes. She had used him to fuel her desire for sexual titillation, and for a few hours, he had transformed into the animal she thought he was, thrusting, grinding, and pounding into her body in search of that perfect release where there was no past, no future, no Arabia, and no England-only blinding oblivion.

Perhaps he would accept this lady as well, if she hadn't purposefully pushed her way into his house via coercion and extortion.

With muscles clenched in quiet hostility, he pulled away from the cold press of mahogany and padded over the Persian carpet that covered the library floor. "What do you want, Mrs. Becky Petre, that you invade my home and threaten my citizenship?"

His voice, a raspy purr of English polish covering Arab brutality, bounced off the three sash windows and chased the curving brass curtain pole that rimmed the twelve-foot-high bay ceiling.

He could feel the woman's anxiety, practically smell it through the moist fog.

Damien wanted her to be terrified.

He wanted her to understand how vulnerable she was, alone in the Bastard Sheikh's den, with neither her husband nor father to defend her.

He wanted her to understand in the most basic and fundamental way imaginable that his body was his to gift and that he would not be coerced into having sex.

Damien halted beneath the burning chandelier, waiting for her to turn and face the repercussions of her decisions.

Burning gas hissed and bubbled through the frigid quiet.

"Come now, Mrs. Petre, you were not so reticent with my servant," he gently teased, knowing what she desired, daring her to say the forbidden words, familiar ones, I want to diddle an Arab; I want to rut with a bastard. "What could a woman like you possibly want from a man like me?"

Slowly, slowly, the figure turned, a black swirl of wool framed by glittering yellow silk draperies. The dark veil covering her face did not conceal her horror at seeing him.

Damien's lips twisted in derision.

He understood what she was thinking. What every Englishwoman thought upon first seeing him.

Half-Arab men do not have sun-kissed wheat-colored hair.

Half-Arab men do not wear fitted attire like English gentlemen.

A man who is partly Arab.-

"I want you to teach me how to give a man pleasure."

The woman's voice was muffled by the veil, but her words were clear.

They were not the words he was expecting.

Damien's heart stopped pounding in his chest for a single, timeless second. Erotic pictures rushed before his eyes... of a lady... naked... taking him... in every way a woman can take a man... for both his and her pleasure.

He felt a burning sensation in his crotch. Against his will, he could feel his skin growing and hardening, recalling pictures that would never exist, exiled as he was in this cold, passionless land where women used him for their own needs-or scorned him for his.

His nerves twitched with wrath.

Becky Petre, for invading his house for selfish reasons under the premise of learning how to pleasure a guy.

At himself, who, at the age of thirty-eight, still craved what she had to offer, although knowing it was a lie: Englishwomen were not interested in learning what satisfied a bastard sheik.

Damien deliberately and aggressively reduced the gap between himself and the woman who hid behind a shroud of respectability.

To her credit, she did not flee from his rage.

To his credit, he was fine with simply pulling down her veil.

She could easily see his Arabian ancestry up close, free of the sheer black cloth that obscured her view. His complexion was brown and sunburned, and his hair was sun-kissed.

Now she'd know that his English gentleman persona was simply that: a veneer. He had learnt to be a man in a nation where women are valued half as much as men-a woman might be sold, raped, or killed for daring considerably less than this lady did now.

Becky Petre should be terrified.

"Now, tell me again what you want," he said softly.

She was unconcerned with the stench of whiskey, perfume, perspiration, and sex that he gave out.

"I want you to teach me how to give a man pleasure," she said gently, leaning her head back so she could meet his eyes.

She didn't stand taller than five feet three inches, and she had a long way to gaze up.

Mrs. Becky Petre had extraordinarily white skin, the kind of white that on an Arabian auction block indicated a woman's bondage. She wasn't young. Damien estimated her to be in her early forties. Faint creases extended from the corners of delicate hazel eyes. The face pulled up to his was rounder than oval, the nose more pug than aquiline, and her lips were too thin. Her pupils were dilated, yet her expression was devoid of the anxiety that she must be experiencing.

Ela'na. Damn. Why didn't she reveal it?

A muscle in his jaw twitched. "And what makes you think I am capable of teaching you such a feat, Mrs. Becky Petre?"

"Because you are the-" She hesitated briefly over his moniker, the Bastard Sheikh, being brazen enough to blackmail him for sex but not brave enough to call him a bastard in front of him.

"Because you are the only man who-" She couldn't complete the phrase, which said he was the only man in England reported to have been awarded a harem on his thirteenth birthday.

She lifted her chin higher. "Because I overheard a . . . a woman say that if husbands had only half of your skill, there would not be an unfaithful wife in all of England."

Damien's ferocity turned into piercing sarcasm. "Then send me your husband, madam, and I will instruct him on how to keep you faithful."

Becky Petre's lips compressed in an emotional spasm-fear, rage, it was hard to tell from her face; the lady had a sphinx-like expression. "I see you won't leave me with any pride. Very good. I adore my spouse. It is not he who requires guidance on how to keep me from wandering, but rather the reverse. I do not want to bed you, sir. I merely want you to teach me how to please my husband so that he will bed me.

Damien's body cooled down completely.

"You do not want to be dirty by the hands of an Arab, Mrs. Petre?" he said softly and ominously.

"I do not want to be unfaithful to my husband," she said honestly.

Damien's nostrils flared with grudging adoration. Becky Petre did not lack bravery.

There were allegations about the Chancellor of the Exchequer having a mistress.

Edward Petre was a commoner. If he were a peer, society would be unconcerned with his adulterous relationships, but his voters were middle-class, and the middle class wanted their political representatives to be as morally strict as their queen.

Becky Petre was undoubtedly more anxious about her husband's professional future than she was about losing his services in the bedroom.

"Women who love their husbands do not ask strangers to teach them how to please a man," he remarked with a laugh.

"No, cowards who love their spouses do not approach others to show them how to pleasure a guy. Cowards sleep alone night after night. Cowards tolerate that their spouses have pleasure with another lady. Women do nothing, but cowards do."

Cowards resonated in the unexpected quiet.

Short, sharp bursts of grey mist warmed Damien's face-her breath. Long, even bursts of gray mist mingled with hers in the frigid winter air-his breath.

Becky Petre blinked quickly.

Damien believed she fluttered her lashes in a gauche imitation of seduction for a little minute before noticing the sheen of tears coating her eyes.

"I refuse to be a coward." She straightened her shoulders. The move produced a creak of whalebones, indicating a corset that was too tightly laced. "Therefore once again I ask you to teach me how to give a man pleasure."

Damien's temples throbbed with blood.

In many ways, Arab and English women were not dissimilar.

An Arab woman wore a veil. An Englishwoman wore a corset.

An Arab wife reluctantly accepted her husband's concubines. An English wife acknowledged her husband's mistresses by ignoring them.

A woman in any culture did not blatantly arrange sexual training from another guy in order to ensure her husband's attention.

Damien's nose were irritated by an unpleasant perfume emanating from her cloak. She had just cleaned the wool.

Women came to him soaked in their scent; no woman had ever come to him smelling like benzene.

Damien wondered what color her hair was... and what she would do if he reached out and removed the hideous black hood that concealed it from his gaze.

He took an abrupt step back. "And just how do you propose that I teach you to please your husband if I do not bed you myself, Mrs. Petre?" He bit out.

Her gaze was unwavering, oblivious to Damien's sexual need. "The women who live in harems-do they learn how to please one man by going to bed with another?"

Damien was briefly sent to Arabia, where he was twelve years old. A blond-haired concubine, a vizier's bored favorite, was intrigued to test the sheik's uncircumcised infidel son. Damien, locked between sleep and opium-scented breasts, had assumed she was an hour, a Muslim angel come to give him a taste of heaven.

The concubine had been stoned the next day.

"An Arab woman would be executed if she did that," Damien stated firmly.

"But you have been with these women-"

"I have been with many women-"

She disregarded his curtness. "Therefore if it is possible for an Arab woman to learn how to please a man without the benefit of personal experience, I see no reason why you, a man who has benefited from that training, cannot in turn instruct an Englishwoman."

Many Englishwomen had requested Damien to show the sexual tactics that Arab men use to please a woman, but no woman had ever asked him to teach her the sexual skills that Arab women use to please men.

Damien's next query was spurred by the lingering effects of heavy booze and a night of much harder sex. Or maybe it was Becky Petre herself. And the stinging knowledge that no woman, Eastern or Western, would go to such lengths for him as this woman did for her husband. She jeopardized her reputation and marriage by learning how to sexually delight a guy so that he would choose her over a mistress.

What would it take for a lady like her, a respectable woman, to desire a guy like him, a man born in England but raised in Arabia and now belonging to neither?

What would it be like to have a lady who would do everything to win my love?

"If I should undertake your tutoring, Mrs. Petre, what would you expect to learn?"

"Everything that you have to teach me."

Everything vibrated in the cool morning air.

Damien's gaze locked with hers. "Yet you stated that you have no desire to bed me," he remarked coldly.

Her face remained calm, the expression of a lady who is uninterested in a man's passion-or her own. "I am assured that you possess enough knowledge for the both of us."

"There is no question. But my experience is with women." He was suddenly turned off by her innocence. "I am not in the habit of seducing men."

"But women . . . they flirt with you, do they not?" She refused to give up.

The duchess' bare body was gleaming with sweat as she danced her need. She lacked subtlety, both outside and within the bedroom.

Debutantes flirt. "The women I sleep with are not virgins." He arrogantly examined Becky Petre's enormous black cloak, which displayed neither a push of breasts nor a curve of hips to tempt a man. "They are experienced women who know what they want."

"And what is that, pray tell?"

"Pleasure, Mrs. Petre." He was purposefully vulgar and impolite. "They want a woman's pleasure."

"And you think, because I am older than these women, and my body is not perfect like theirs . . . do you think that I do not also want a woman's pleasure, Lord Safyre?"

Damien's attention returned to hers.

An electrical wave of pure, unadulterated yearning rushed through his body.

It comes from Becky Petre.

Sensual longings and sexual wants.

Even yet, her face remained expressionless.

A virtuous lady didn't look for a guy to educate her how to pleasure her husband.

A good woman did not admit to seeking physical fulfillment in her marriage.

Who was Becky Petre, and why did she dare what other women would not?

"A man is more than a series of pulleys and levers that need only be cranked in order for him to receive gratification," Damien exclaimed abruptly, acutely aware of the cold perfection of her pale skin and the hot blood that surged in his groin. "His contentment is based on a woman's capacity to receive pleasure. "If you want the latter, he will get the first."

She tightened her spine with another telltale creak from her corset. Anger blazed in her eyes-or was it a flash of light from the above chandelier?

"Sir, I have two children." I am well aware that a guy does not consist of pulleys and levers. Furthermore, if my husband's fulfillment was based on a woman's desire, he would not have left my bed. For the last time, Lord Safyre, would you or will you not show me how to make a man happy?"

Damien's body tensed.

Becky Petre gave him a man's greatest desire. A lady to whom he could teach every sex act he had ever desired a woman to perform... for him.

"I will pay you," she said stiffly.

He looked at her through the protection of his eyelids, attempting to get past the lifeless mask that was her face. "How will you pay me, Mrs. Petre?"

There was no denying his crude suggestiveness.

"With English currency."

There was no mistaking her willful obtuseness.

He cast a telling glance around the library, at the ceiling-to-floor shelves filled with leather-bound books, the priceless silk-screen panels that dotted the remaining three walls, the mother-of-pearl-inlaid credenza, and the carved mahogany fireplace, a masterpiece of English craftsmanship.

"That is one of the advantages of having a sheik as a parent. I have no need of your money," he said, feigning apathy, all the while wondering how far she would go in her search for sexual knowledge-and how far he would go in his desire for obscurity. "Or that of anybody else, for that matter."

Her gaze did not leave his.

She would blackmail, but not beg.

"Do you know what you are asking, Mrs. Petre?" he said quietly.

"Yes."

Ignorance showed in her lovely hazel eyes.

Becky Petre believed that a woman like herself, who is older and has a figure that is not "perfect," a woman who is respectably married with two children, could not appeal to a man like him. She had no idea how great a man's curiosity might become, or how powerful an attraction a woman's desire could create.

Damien was acutely aware of these facts. Just as he learned that mutual need may bond a man and a woman together more firmly than vows made in a church or mosque.

A dismal, acidic glare permeated the bay windows. Above the yellow fog that announced another London morning, there shined sunlight and the start of a new day.

He pivoted suddenly, traversed the Oriental carpet, and reached for a small leather-bound volume from the ceiling-high wall of books.

The perfumed garden of Sheikh Nefzaoui.

It was known in Arabic as Al Raud al Atir wa nuzhat al Khatir, or The Scented Garden for the Soul's Delectation. It was most often referred to as The Perfumed Garden for Soul Recreation.

Damien had learned it as diligently as lads in England do Greek and Latin primers. Unlike the primers, which educated English boys to read Greek and Latin academics, The Perfumed Garden prepared Damien to pleasure a lady.

It also provided fantastic tips for a woman looking to learn how to please a man.

He returned to the bay window and handed her the book without pausing to think about it. "Tomorrow morning, Mrs. Petre. Here. "In my library." Muhamed had stated that she came at-"Five sharp."

A thin, delicate hand gloved in black kid emerged from the thick covering folds of her wool cloak. The book, which measured about five by eight inches, was held securely between thumb and fingers. "I do not understand."

"You want me to tutor you, lady, therefore I will tutor you. Lessons start tomorrow morning. There's your textbook. "Read the introduction and first chapter."