Nan Ryan (23 page)

The game continued.

One of his hands supporting his weight, the other wrapped almost protectively around his jerking, bobbing tumescence, Sharif kissed her breasts until they were pink and throbbing. He kissed her pale shoulders. He kissed her warm underarms. He kissed her delicate ribs. He kissed her flat stomach. He kissed her prominent hipbones. He kissed her navel.

All without the use of his hands.

Finally, when he began to kiss the wispy line of blond hair going down her jerking belly, Temple lost the hard-fought game.

She was dazed with uncontrollable desire. Seized by a hot longing so novel and foreign to her that she was no longer herself. Her hands frantically went to the sides of Sharif’s dark head and she pulled up his handsome face.

“Sharif, Sharif,” she gasped, her fingers clutching the thick hair at his temples.

“Chérie,”
he murmured, the pulse in his throat throbbing.

Then his hands were all over her and hers were all over him. She didn’t flinch or try to pull away when he drew her hand to his throbbing, blood-filled erection and whispered, “Touch me, hold me.”

Sharif swallowed hard and his hand fell away. He watched through smoldering eyes as she began to toy with him, letting her slender white fingers glide up to the jerking tip, then move slowly all the way back down to cup and gently squeeze. “Like this?” she asked, and slid her caressing fingers back up his impressive length.

“Exactly like that,” he said, his eyes closing, his chest heaving.

After only a minute he jerked her hand away, stretched out on his back, and lifted her astride his hips. All the breath left his body when she settled comfortably atop him, her parted thighs warmly cradling his erection.

Temple extended her arm, laid her fingers on his lips. He put out his tongue and licked her fingertips until they were wet.

When she then hesitated, uncertain, he said, his tone a low caress, “Do it,
chérie.”

Then he watched, transfixed, as she rose to her knees, took him gently in her hand, and ran her dampened fingertips over the velvet smooth head until it glistened. Again she looked at him.

“Take me now,” he encouraged gently.

Obeying, Temple carefully guided just the glistening tip up inside herself.

“Settle down on me,” he coaxed. “Slowly. Easy.”

Nodding, feeling incredibly hot and bold and sexy, Temple took her hands away.

She raised her arms, put them behind her head, and, watching him watch her, slowly, seductively sank down on him until she was completely impaled. Only then did her hands come down from behind her head. She gripped his ribs, leaned down so that her bare breasts rubbed against his chest, and brushed her mouth to his.

Before he could capture her lips in a kiss, she whispered, “What do you want from me?”

His hands came up, swept the heavy blond hair back from her face, and he said, “Everything. All of you. Withhold nothing from me. Give it to me,
Naksedil.”

Her terrified screams pierced
the dawn silence.

Tears streaming down her cheeks, she pleaded for mercy. It did no good. He was merciless.

He raised his hand and hit her again, his open palm striking her with such force that blood gushed from her nose and her split bottom lip began to bleed anew.

Her left eye was blackened and swollen almost shut. Her right arm was badly sprained from being twisted cruelly behind her back. Blue-and-purple bruises covered her naked body from his vicious slaps and brutal punches. Her bare buttocks were crisscrossed with raw red welts left by the braided leather riding crop with which he had enthusiastically flogged her. Teeth marks decorated the tender insides of her firm thighs.

And both earlobes—not yet fully healed—had been viciously clipped away with a pair of pinking shears at a similar session a few nights ago.

Sobbing uncontrollably, she continued to kneel beside the bed, within his reach. Even if she had not been afraid to try to get away from him, she was too weak and battered even to attempt it. She could hardly move. There was not a single square inch of her flesh that had not been severely punished by him. Not one thing about her that didn’t bleed, sting, throb, or ache.

After an agonizingly long night of his perversion and brutality, she had absolutely no strength left. She couldn’t leave if he ordered her to do so. She was utterly under his power, at his mercy. All she could hope for was that he, too, was growing tired and would soon finally fall asleep.

“Stand up!” he ordered in his native tongue.

“Master, I cannot,” she whimpered.

Her response displeased the sultan.

Mustafa Ibn Agha Hussain, lounging indolently among the satin pillows on his solid gold bed encrusted with diamonds and emeralds, made a sour face.

He was out of sorts.

The entire night had been wasted, not to mention the generous sum of money he had paid for Leyla, this beautiful but disappointing creature, kneeling cowed and tyrannized beside the bed. Leyla was Circassian, as were most of the ladies of his harem. The Circassian girls were heralded for their beauty and were therefore very expensive. Leyla was extraordinarily beautiful and had therefore been extraordinarily expensive. But he had paid the price willingly, eager to own such an exquisite jewel.

Now he found Leyla disgusting. At this moment he hated the sight of her. She was not at all what she had seemed, what he had paid so dearly for, and he was sadly disillusioned. He’d heard of Leyla’s fire and beauty well before he ever saw her. And when finally she was brought to him, a tall, lithe gem with golden brown skin and blazing dark eyes, she appeared to be haughty and spirited. He was sure he had himself a spitfire, a wildcat, a she-devil he would spend many a long, lust-filled evening taming.

How wrong he was.

Leyla was a sniveling coward and a bore. She was like all the rest. No spirit. No passion. He’d had her for less than a week and already he was tired of her. Sick to death of her meekness and her whining. He wanted a woman who would challenge him. Defy him. Amuse him. In the name of Allah, he would gladly give up his entire harem for just one such woman!

Sighing with self-pitying despair, Mustafa reached out a fat, bejeweled hand to a golden tray resting on the bed. He dipped his short fingers into a stemmed crystal bowl of sherbet, scooped up a big blob, and plopped it into his mouth. Then he reached for a golden goblet that was filled with a special, sticky sweet liqueur. He drank thirstily, slammed the goblet back down on the tray, and glared at the woman’s bent head. Melting sherbet dripped down his sausage fingers and spotted his already soiled robes of gold-trimmed scarlet.

He hardly noticed.

His wet tongue coming out of his fleshy lips, he licked his chin and continued to glare at the weeping woman.

“You have disappointed me, slave,” he said, unable at the moment to recall the young woman’s name.

“I am sorry, Excellency,” Leyla sobbed.

With a great groan of effort, the heavy Turkish sultan turned over onto his rounded belly, raised his massive arms, crossed them, and leaned his double chins atop them.

“Get out of my sight,” he said coldly. “Go away.”

“Yes, Excellency.”

The pain-racked young woman attempted to rise to her feet but failed. Her weak legs wouldn’t support her. She fell against the edge of the golden bed. Her long unbound hair swished against the reclining ruler’s fleshy face.

It angered him.

Mustafa grabbed her dark flowing locks and pulled violently, causing the woman to cry out once more in pain. A generous portion of her hair clutched in his fat fist, he began bellowing loudly for his manservant, Alwan.

Alwan was just outside the door.

He immediately leapt up from the chair where he sat dozing sporadically and drew a deep breath to stiffen his spine. It had been a very long night, one of many very long nights of late. The master had been more impossible than usual since the failed attack on the desert village of Sheik Sharif Aziz Hamid.

Alwan had so hoped this beautiful young Circassian for whom the sultan had paid an astronomical sum might sweeten his disposition. She hadn’t. Leyla had been at the seaside palace for a week and there had been no change in Mustafa’s disposition. Alwan knew the reason.

The master wanted Sheik Hamid’s American woman. He would not rest until he had her.

Alwan hurried inside the vast bedchamber as the rising summer sun painted the room in varying shades of pink. He saw the red-robed Mustafa sprawled on his stomach, the mammoth cheeks of his buttocks rising in the air like twin red domes. His hand was gripping something dark, which, Alwan learned as he proceeded into the opulent chamber, was the flowing dark hair of the beautiful slave whose screams he had heard throughout the night.

“Yes, Excellency,” said Alwan. “How may I be of service?”

“Get
this
out of my sight.” He nodded to the weeping woman. “It is ugly and it offends me.”

“Yes, Excellency. Right away.”

Alwan hurried to the bed. He anxiously set about to untangle the sultan’s fat fingers from the sobbing Leyla’s long hair, but his master stopped him.

“Don’t waste time with that,” said Mustafa, annoyed. “Cut it.”

“Cut it, master?” Alwan looked questioningly at him.

“Her hair!” snapped a petulant Mustafa. “Cut it off so I may free my fingers.”

“Yes, Excellency.”

Alwan scurried across the room, found a pair of sharp barber’s scissors, returned to the bed, and snipped away a large portion of the woman’s hair an inch from her scalp. The lazy sultan then straightened his stubby fingers and the shorn locks fell onto the mattress.

Again Mustafa made a face.

Alwan quickly brushed the severed hair off the bed. It fluttered to the richly carpeted floor, landing beside the kneeling woman. Crying heartbrokenly, Leyla picked up the discarded hair as if hoping she could reattach it to her head.

Alwan knelt beside her, put an arm around her slender waist, and helped her to stand. Clutching the severed hair to her bare, trembling bosom, she wept and leaned on him as he slowly walked her from the room.

Before they could reach the door, the sultan shouted, “Get rid of her and come back. And bring Mahdi with you. And bring Jamal, too! Hurry!”

“Yes, Excellency.”

Minutes later Alwan returned with Mahdi and Jamal. Mahdi was the lone survivor of the nighttime raid on
El Siif
’s desert stronghold. To him had fallen the unpleasant task of returning alone and empty-handed from the failed invasion to relay the Sheik’s message to Mustafa.

Enraged, the sultan had had Mahdi beaten, as if it had all been the messenger’s fault. Mustafa had been furious with him ever since, and each time he was summoned, Mahdi was fearful.

Jamal was the sultan’s interpreter. He, too, was afraid of the sadistic ruler, but he was clever. He regularly reminded Mustafa that he could speak six languages: Turkish, English, French, Italian, German, and most important of all, Arabic. No other interpreter could keep the sultan as well informed as he, Jamal.

Both men, roused from their beds at this early hour, hurried down the long marble-floored corridor toward the royal bedchamber. They knew what the sultan wanted. It was not the first time they had been summoned to his bedchamber in the past few weeks.

Mustafa had turned onto his back atop the gem-encrusted golden bed. He had turned, the soiled scarlet robe had not. Open down the front, it lay twisted beneath his massive girth, leaving his portly lower body and flabby legs exposed. Making no effort to cover himself, he lay propped up amid the satin pillows, one hand idly scratching his itching groin, the other stuffing figs into his mouth.

“Come closer,” he commanded, motioning the three men to the bed, chewing with his mouth open.

The trio approached. When they stood directly beside the bed, lined up, their hands clasped before them, the sultan said, “Jamal, did you bring it?”

“Yes, Excellency.”

“Let me see it. Give it to me.”

Nodding, the slender interpreter withdrew from the folds of his robe a well-thumbed newspaper clipping along with a crumpled message written on heavy vellum. He unfolded the clipping carefully and handed it to the reclining ruler. Mustafa wiped his sticky fingers on the bed linens and reached for it.

He stared at the article.

And he began to lick his thick lips as he studied the rotogravure of an attractive, light-haired woman smiling into the camera. A string of drool began to slide from the corner of his mouth, and his beady dark eyes gleamed demonically.

“Here, read it to me,” he ordered, thrusting the clipping back at his interpreter.

As he had done at least fifty times, Jamal read aloud the article, which had been cut from a copy of the London
Times
.

LONDON TIMES

M
AY
7,1898. M
ISS
T
EMPLE
D
U
P
LESSIS
L
ONGWORTH OF
W
ILMINGTON
, D
ELAWARE
,
ARRIVED IN
L
ONDON LAST EVENING
. T
HE BEAUTIFUL
,
BLOND
A
MERICAN MUNITIONS HEIRESS WAS ACCOMPANIED BY HER COUSIN
, R
UPERT
L
ONGWORTH
,
A GENTLEMAN OF LEISURE WELL KNOWN IN
M
AYFAIR’S SOCIAL CIRCLES
. T
HE PAIR’S STAY AT THE
S
AVOY WILL BE A BRIEF ONE
. A
FTER TWO SHORT WEEKS
,
THE
L
ONGWORTHS ARE TO LEAVE ON AN EXTENDED TOUR OF THE
A
RABIAN DESERTS
.…