Murad, however, was not at this moment particularly interested in Aidan. She was secured, and would cause no further difficulty. He sat upon a chair while an elderly woman slave administered to his wounds, gently disinfecting the weals that Aidan had opened high upon his cheeks. The slave worked gently and carefully, and finished by delicately dabbing the injury with a clear lotion that removed the pain from it. The sultan smiled at the old woman, and politely thanked her. Aidan could not hear what she said in return to her master, but he laughed with genuine amusement, and then walked her to the door to usher her from the room.
Turning back he came directly to the bed where Aidan lay helpless and spread-eagled. “Old Ayse says that women with hair of fire, and peppery temperaments make the best lovers. I hope she is right, Marjallah.” His eyes glowed warmly as they took her in, and he reached out to touch her.
Aidan managed to move away just enough to avoid his touch. He might have stretched his hand a little farther, but he did not. He simply laughed, a low intimate sound that sent a shiver of dread up her spine. She could not bear his look which was so possessive and passionate, and so she turned her head away from him. Seizing her chin in his hand he turned her head back to face him. “You will look at me,” he said. Aidan closed her eyes in defiance.
Murad smiled at her disobedience. Her rebellion would only make his conquest sweeter. For several long moments, moments that grated upon Aidan’s already edgy nerves, he sat by her side and debated how to begin. She really had the most incredible body. Now he knew why the dey had sent her to him. It was not just her copper-colored hair, it was her fabulous form. He must remember to send a letter to the dey telling him that Marjallah was back in his possession, and how delighted he was with her; so much so that he would not part with her this time.
Aidan’s eyelids fluttered as she peeked from beneath her lashes at the sultan. What was he doing? What was he going to do? She was very frightened despite her show of boldness. Never had she felt so terribly lost as at this minute. Murad stood up, and loosening his robe removed it, and tossed it aside. Her heart hammered against her chest as he turned back to the bed. He was a slim man of medium height, his pale skin in great contrast to his gold-red beard and closely cropped hair.
Murad’s languid, dark eyes once more viewed his helpless prey, and then without a word he slid his body between her legs, and lowering his head began to lick at her secret treasures. Aidan shrieked wildly at this totally unexpected first attack, and she attempted to twist herself away from him, but the ropes binding her to the carved posts of the sultan’s bed would allow for only the smallest of movements, and she could not escape the warm, probing tongue that was slowly, and very thoroughly exploring her.
“Please don’t,” she gasped pleadingly, “oh, please don’t do that to me!”
He ignored her as if she hadn’t even spoken, his strong fingers firmly pulling her nether lips wide and holding the thick pink skin apart while the pointed tip of his tongue first caressed the ridge of flesh on either side with long, smooth strokes, and then touched delicately at the very core of her being. The scent of her, half female, half fragrant freesia, was the most intoxicating perfume he had ever known. His shaft was so rigid that the skin felt as if it was going to burst from around it. Flicking his tongue back and forth upon that sensitive little jewel of hers he worked with an inner rhythm learned so long ago in his history that he had actually forgotten the first time he had tasted a woman. It was a preference, however, that he had never grown tired of for each maiden was different.
Aidan was moaning, the sound a mixture of shame and pleasure. She was being ravished, and she hated it. Hated him for what he was doing, but yet her body was responding to the stimuli of his lovemaking. She didn’t understand it, and again she considered the alternative of death. Somehow, she thought, somehow she would find a way to escape him, and this insidious degradation he was inflicting upon her. Murad plunged his tongue into her helpless body, swirling it about the pinkish passage, pressing his face into the most intimate part of her. Aidan struggled mentally to resist him, to deny him that final victory. Fiercely she pushed the pleasure away with so strong an effort that for a brief second she actually believed she would triumph over him, but then his lips fastened upon her little jewel, and he sucked hard upon her. It was too much, and an explosion of stars burst within her forcing her final surrender, and she sobbed as much with her pleasure as with her frustration at being beaten by him.
Murad pulled himself up level with Aidan, and reclining upon an elbow watched her. Helpless to her passion the lower half of her beautiful body writhed, straining against the silken ropes that bound her to the bed. He had always enjoyed watching a woman in the throes of desire, and he maintained the level of her craving for several long minutes by simply rubbing her sensitivity with his index finger every few moments.
Satisfied now that he had proven to her his superiority over her the sultan decided to inflict another salacious torture upon his victim as well as take the edge from his own lust. He called out to the two black eunuchs, and they, as ordered, hurried from the shadowy corner where they had been seated to place plump pillows behind Aidan’s back propping her up. With no further foreplay Murad thrust himself into her readied sheath, and then, his shaft well lodged, he began to play with her breasts.
She had known that he had eventually planned to unite with her, and that bound as she was she had no choice but to accept him, but his entry was still so sudden and surprising. He filled her, his hardness pushing against the walls of her passage, but he made no other movement than to simply enter her. He was far more interested in her beautiful breasts which he handled as if they had been separate entities. He did not have large hands, and so her breasts overflowed his palms causing him to exclaim with delighted wonder.
His fingers fondled the flesh, leaving faint impressions on her fair skin. “I had my first woman when I was thirteen,” he said quietly in a conversational tone that she somehow found embarrassing. “I have deflowered over a thousand virgins, and made love to over two thousand women in my lifetime, but never, exquisite Marjallah, have I seen such wonderful breasts on a woman. They are perfect in form, in texture, in color. You are perfect in form. The most perfect woman I have ever seen. I will not, however, be satisfied to simply possess your body. I must have all of you, and in time I will!” Leaning forward he began to suck upon her nipples.
A cry rose up in her throat, but she forced it back. What good would it do her to scream? Besides she could not allow him to have any more of a victory over her than he had already had. She hated him with an intensity that would have startled Murad had he but known it. Javid Khan had freed her, and the sultan knew it. Still he had forced her back into slavery to endure this shameful bondage. She had never known anything but tenderness and love from men. Now she was learning the darker side of passion. She was learning lust.
“Look at me, Marjallah!” he commanded.
She focused her gaze upon him, and he smiled cruelly seeing the truth of her feelings in her storm-gray eyes. “You will not always hate me, my exquisite one,” he said self-confidently. “In time you will love me as they all love me. In time you will learn to hunger for my caresses, and there will even come a time, though you doubt it now, that you will beg for those caresses.”
“I will be dead long before then, my lord,” she hissed at him. “You can never really tame a free creature to your leash, and I was born free. Javid Khan understood that, and he freed me. You understand nothing of me, but be warned that I shall not flourish within the confines of your walled garden for I am not like the other flowers who bloom here. I shall wither, and I shall die, my lord, and you will never really possess me!”
Allah! How her defiance excited him! He could feel himself throbbing within the heat of her body, but he was not yet ready to take his release. Her words had stung him, and he felt the need to punish her, to humiliate her, to once again gain a mastery over her; and he knew precisely how he would do it. Abruptly he withdrew his swollen manhood from her body, and barked an order to the eunuchs again.
They hurried forth to pull the bolsters from behind her back, and to untie her. Have I beaten him? Aidan wondered, but she quickly found that she had not. Rather than releasing her the eunuchs turned her over upon her stomach, and rebound her once again. Two small, hard pillows were stuffed beneath her lower belly elevating her hips. She felt the sultan sliding his body lightly over her back, and then he pushed her hair aside so he might kiss her neck. The warmth of his lips sent a tingle down her spine.
His hands then moved her long tresses over her head, and onto the silken mattress above her head. His lips touched her ear in an erotic caress, and she felt his tongue licking the side of her face.
Then he whispered softly to her, “A woman has two maidenheads, Marjallah. I suspect that your second maidenhead has not been tampered with. Am I correct?”
“I . . . I do not know what you mean,” she said puzzled. “A second maidenhead?”
He hovered over her prostrate form, and his hand smoothed over the bulb of her bottom, running along the division between the twin moons, a finger suddenly and boldly pushing between the halves to worm itself into her. “Here,” he said, “is your second maidenhead, my exquisite Marjallah. Has any man ever penetrated this passage?”
“Never!”
she gasped.
He gently worked his finger up to the knuckle.
Aidan panicked entirely. “Don’t!” she begged him. “Please, don’t.” She tried to dislodge the offending finger, but she could not which only increased her sense of fear.
The finger was withdrawn, and she breathed a deep sigh of relief that she quickly discovered was very premature. She felt him lubricating the entry to her rear passage with some sort of ointment, and then he grasped her hips firmly. Some primitive instinct warned Aidan what was coming, and terrified, she shrieked wildly.
“In God’s name, no! Have pity on me, my lord!
Doooooon’t!
”
The sultan felt a strong surge of potency flooding him as he forced this woman to his will. Slowly, for he had no desire to harm her physically, he pressed the head of his manhood upon the puckered entry to her rear passage until at last it gave way, and he worked his way into her. Now he rested a moment having gained a bridgehead, and then he once again began to force himself forward, an inch at a time, until he was at last buried completely within her. Beneath him Aidan sobbed, broken in spirit at least for the moment.
Murad groaned against her ear. She was so wonderfully tight, and if he had throbbed within her frontal passage, he was throbbing twice as fiercely now. He had used women like this many times, but never had he had the feeling that she was now giving him. He wanted release. He needed it! Drawing himself almost completely out of her he plunged back in, and out, and in again and again and again while she wept uncontrollably beneath him. Finally the sultan shouted with exultation, and collapsed upon her, forcing the breath from her, and Aidan fainted.
When he finally rolled off her he found that they could not revive her. She lay insensible, and no amount of stimulants could arouse her. Disappointed Murad had her carried back to her chamber, and another maiden was sent for to entertain the sultan that night.
Aidan did not regain her senses until late the next afternoon. She awoke slowly to find the sultan valideh sitting by her bed, a very worried expression upon her face. Aidan’s eyelids fluttered, and she finally opened her eyes.
“Dear child, praise Allah!” Nur-U-Banu exclaimed.
“Then I am still alive?” Aidan whispered. “I hoped that I had died.”
“Say it not!” cried the sultan’s mother.
“But it is true, and I mean it! Oh, madame, you have been so kind to me, and I realize I must seem ungrateful, but I do not want to be one of your son’s wives. Why will no one listen to me? Javid Khan freed me, and I want to go back to England. Oh, I know you tell me that I cannot, but I could if you would but just free me! I know my husband, and he has not remarried as you suggest. He would want me back! I know he would! When I was wife to the prince I had no real choice in the matter, but I do now. I do!”
“What did my son do to you that put you in this state?” asked the valideh.
Slowly, and with flaming cheeks, Aidan told her. Nur-U-Banu snorted. “Among the men of Islam, this is a common practice, despite the Prophet’s ban upon it. Murad’s father forced me to it once, but when he learned I did not like such things he confined his urges for variation to those of his women who did, and believe me, Marjallah, there are those women. I will simply tell Murad that such practices are not to your taste, and he will not inflict it upon you again.”
“I want to go home,” Aidan said doggedly, but the valideh ignored her, and now convinced that she would be all right left her to rest. Aidan shook her head. They would not listen to her. There was therefore nothing left to her but death.
To her surprise, however, she found that Murad had taken her threats of suicide quite seriously. There was, she found, no means by which she could end her life, and she was rarely left alone. Her food was brought to her already cut up so there was no knife available to open her veins, or plunge into her heart. Her jewelry was locked away, and taken out only when she could be watched. She was, therefore, not able to swallow a piece of it, choking herself, thereby putting a quick end to her unhappy existence.
She was kept docile the next few days by means of drugs in her food for it was hoped that rest might cure her depression. Murad fretted irritably for his first experience with his exquisite Marjallah had only whetted his appetite to possess her entirely. Over the next several days a parade of women came to the sultan’s bed, but after satisfying his physical urges he angrily sent them away for none of them really pleasured him anymore. None of them was the exquisite and unattainable Marjallah.
He had to have her!