Free The Lady's Tutor by Robin Schone Page B

repulsed by her base,
childish needs”
    Elizabeth lifted her chin, refusing to let the stinging tears that
welled in her eyes fall. “Is that what you were referring to, Lord Safyre?”
    The Bastard Sheikh cradled his cup in the palms of his hands and
rocked back in his chair. “You do not think that such a woman is praiseworthy?”
    Her lips tightened mutinously. “I think that I would rather
be a ‘meritorious’ man.”
    He stared at her for long seconds before replying. “That is
because you have not yet read one of the prescriptions for increasing a man’s ‘meritoriousness.’
”
    Elizabeth could not imagine anything worse than the life she had
just described. She had spent sixteen years being a praiseworthy wife, holding her emotions in abeyance, always deferring to her husband. It might
make a man’s life more pleasant, but it certainly did nothing to enhance the
life of a woman.
    “And that is?”
    “Imagine washing a man’s genitals in warm water until he becomes
pleasurably erect. . .”
    He paused, studying her face.
    Elizabeth returned his stare. Not for the life of her would she
admit that she had never imagined washing a man’s genitals, either in warm or
cold water. Furthermore, it was hard to imagine a man growing pleasurably erect
when one had no idea of what a man looked like ... erect.
    “Now imagine taking a piece of soft leather that is spread with
hot pitch and slapping it onto the man’s unsuspecting member.”
    Shock raced across Elizabeth’s face; it was chased by incredulity.
    Hot pitch was hot pitch. And while she had never seen a man’s erect
member, she was quite certain that it was as sensitive as was a woman’s
genitals.
    “According to the prescription, the man’s member rears its head,
trembling with passion. When the pitch cools and the man is again in a state of
repose, the operation must be repeated several times in order to increase his ‘meritoriousness.’
”
    . . . The man’s member rears its head, trembling with passion shimmered
in the air between them.
    A flash of heat rippled through Elizabeth’s body.
    “Does a man tremble with passion, Lord Safyre?”
    “Not wrapped in hot pitch, he doesn’t,” the Bastard Sheikh
murmured dryly.
    Edward had looked so distant yesterday, so above the dictates of
the flesh, so unlike a man who would tremble, whether it be in passion or the
result of any other emotion.
    Was it a facade? Did men project the qualities they thought women
wanted to see in them?
    “Does a man tremble with passion?” she repeated, enunciating the
words slowly, carefully, needing to know, needing to hope.
    He leaned forward in his chair, a sharp crack of protesting wood.
His hair and eyes blazed in the lamplight. “When sexually excited . . . yes,
Mrs. Petre, a man trembles with passion.”
    She instinctively glanced down at his hands, still cradling his
cup. They were large and muscular and rock steady.
    “Just as a woman trembles in her passion.” His voice was a dark
rasp.
    Elizabeth recoiled. Absolutely, that was not the voice of a tutor
to his student.
    His dusky brown fingers tightened, knuckles whitening. Suddenly, he
brought the demitasse cup to his lips and neatly downed its contents. The dull
impact of china on wood echoed in the stillness.
    “Tobacco is enjoyed by both men and women in Arabia,” he said
abruptly. “Would you care for a smoke, Mrs. Petre?”
    A smoke?
    Only women of ill repute smoked.
    “Perhaps another time, Lord Safyre,” she said repressively.
    The skin over his cheekbones stretched taut. “Men are excited by
words. If you want to learn how to please your husband, perhaps you should
memorize, or at least take note of, some of the Arabic love poems in The
Perfumed Garden.”
    It was a direct challenge.
    Elizabeth’s hazel eyes shifted, stared at a point over his golden
head. “ ‘Full of vigor and life,’ “ she quoted softly, “ ‘it bores into my
vagina, / And it works about there in action