The Stanhope Challenge - Regency Quartet - Four Regency Romances (43 page)

A harsh injunctive in Arabic had Sirena blinking into the face of the mistress warden of the seraglio. In some set of orders, the old woman instructed her to perform some act on the bed. When compliance and understanding were not forthcoming, the woman scoffed at Sirena and clapped her hands.

Behind her, Sirena felt gentle hands work at the frog closure to her garment. As if these voyeurs had not seen enough of her body through the diaphanous fabric, now they would view every inch of her nakedness without obstruction or illusion. Mortified beyond bearing, Sirena shivered.

“Stand tall. Watch,” came the words from Valentina who suddenly stood to one side. “Learn. You may need these lessons. At the very least, you will need the enticement of them. If you do as you are meant to do here, you may live another day.”

Enticement? What was she implying? “I doubt—”

The older woman bellowed at her.

Terrified, Sirena snapped her mouth shut.

“Be quiet,” came Valentina’s interpretation. “And submit.”

Sirena locked eyes with her friend, thanking the young woman for the assistance, even though she would never be able to follow her orders. Valentina bowed her head and stepped backwards, leaving Sirena to her fate. Spinning toward the female warden, Sirena met her forbidding gaze with a shrewish challenge of her own. If I am to die here, it will be with some semblance of dignity you and your men seek to deny all women.

A group of young men strolled in from the far portal, their robes not white but palest blue. Each one carried an instrument. Two with drums. Three with stringed instruments similar to violins. Two with horns. One with bells.

Music to accompany the English woman’s debasement?

Sirena clenched her fists.

Suddenly, two doors directly in front of her banged against their frames as they were flung wide. Into the room now walked an obese creature so misshapen Sirena could not tell at first if it were male or female. He had breasts that swayed inside his robes and hips that wobbled when he walked. He led a procession of dwarfs and jugglers, warriors with spears six feet tall, and at the end, a man upon a porter chair, heaped atop a mountain of cushions. His sagging, pockmarked face was yellow with illness, lax with gluttony and indolent with years of excess. His porters placed him upon a dais, directly facing Sirena. He examined her at his leisure, motioned for her to turn in a circle for his inspection. Then he nodded and raised a forefinger in the air. At once, the musicians began an airy tune that, were Sirena of a mind to absorb it, might have called it delicate and fine. As it was, she knew it marked the beginning of the end for her.

Her knees wobbled. She locked them. Locked up her heart, as well.

Another procession now came through the far door. This time, two caretakers, aged maids from the seraglio, led in two younger women. These last were clothed in kaftans of red and gold brocade. In the center of the room, they paused, bowed to the pasha and gave him a salaam, then held out their arms. Their elderly maids rushed forward, unclasped the hooks on their garments, and viola!

The men gasped in pleasure.

The two young women were completely naked.

Sirena sucked in air. Save for rings on their fingers and toes and strands of pearls threaded into their waist-length raven hair, these girls were nude. Polished, their dark olive skin glowed in the brilliant refractions of the sunlight on the alabaster tiles. Gracefully, aware of their power to enflame to lust, they strolled the perimeter of the room, dangerously close to the men who watched them with covetous eyes.

Sirena was left now to wonder if she was to perform the same promenade. Yet, no one spoke to her. All eyes, all attention went to the two women who strolled now to the center of the room, stood upon the smaller couch and pillows, then sank down gracefully to the silken bed.

Close enough to see the two women’s expressions, Sirena gasped at the smiles they gave each other. One rose on her hands and knees, the other rolled to her back. Like a beast of prey, the first woman crawled over the second, a feral grin of domination spreading her plush red lips. The one on her back spread wide her legs, her mound cleanly shaven, smooth, glistening with moisture that could have come only from inside her.

Sirena reared back. They were to make love to each other. How could that be?

Yet it was true. The woman on her back, Sirena could well see from this angle, bore a tattoo on one inner thigh. Her mate, the dominant one, reached down to her cunny to stroke her seam with one long index finger. The men in the crowd shuffled. One moaned.

The dominant woman arched, her firm buttocks in the air, then she bent and put her mouth to the woman beneath her. The two of them gave themselves up to the pleasures, the one licking and sucking. The other, grabbing up handfuls of purple silk, twisting in her euphoria.

Sirena felt her own body gush in appreciation of the two. She shifted, pushing her thighs together to stop the throb that had begun and made her wish for Mark to ease the hurt. But the two women had no inclination to cease their pleasure, nor did the men on the sidelines. Some of them stood as the dominant woman bit the dark pebbling nipples of her partner. Some men slumped in their chairs, their hands to their groins, or leaned toward the women for a better view. Meanwhile, from beneath the shallow bedding, the dominant woman produced an ivory rod. Perhaps six inches in length, the implement made some in the audience laugh, a few applaud, other gasp, but most flared their nostrils and growled. The houri held it aloft for all to view like a prize, a promise. This ivory rod, Sirena could now see, was shaped like a penis. A marvelous stiff, thick cock.

Sirena licked her lips. It was just like Mark’s.

Sirena moaned. Her outburst was lost amid the sounds of the men’s lust. Transfixed, she watched in amazement as one hundred or more men seemed to lean in unison toward the two women. The dominant woman who took the part of the male actor, pressed open her partner’s swollen cunt lips with two fingers as she teased her with the tip of the ivory. Sirena felt her own nipples harden painfully and her core pulse as one female slowly inserted the ivory rod into the other woman’s vagina. She did not object, but rolled up and with a snarl of sexual satisfaction on her face, urged her mate to fuck her. Sirena needed no interpretation. She knew the meaning by the way the woman thrust her hips and wiggled closer to her partner. She knew it by the way the woman cupped her own breasts, pinched her own nipples, then lifted one to suck it herself. With a pop, she released it and gave herself up to the twisting, driving sensations of her partner’s rhythmic pumping.

Sirena gave a cry of need. Shocked at herself, she glanced about. No one was watching her. No one cared. Every eye was fastened to the two female lovers, the one gasping as she mated with her partner with the inflexible ivory cock, the other, teeth bared, roaring her climax on the purple bed.

At once, another door opened, and a well-sculpted man strode into the room. Dressed in a kaftan of gold satin, he came to stand before the purple couch. He shrugged, his robe drifted over his massive shoulders to the carpet, and there in totally nude glory he stood every muscle rippling with raw power. His shaft at full height. Erect and red.

Both women rose to their knees. The dominant one removed the ivory rod from the other’s core with such a swift pull, she had the first one keening in objection. Had she finished her climax? Sirena could feel the denial of pleasure ripple though her own body. Angry and rejected, Sirena grit her teeth. But the dominant woman could not care. She swirled on her knees toward the man and with a savage look of feminine possession, she cradled his rod in her hand and sank her mouth over him.

Sirena swayed in the erotic impact of the sight.

This is what Valentina had spoken of. This is what Sirena would have to do to the pasha.

She pushed her legs together, outraged at her own lust, yearning to scream out her need to perform this kind of service only to the man she loved.

But where was he? Would she ever find him?

She caught a hand to her mouth in a sob.

Strong arms curled around her, pressed her back to a warm sculpted body, then turned her about.

Unknowing, uncaring who this person was, Sirena gave her self up to the need for sexual union. She knew it was useless, childish to think her comforter might be her lover. Still, all she could say as she looked into the sensual blue eyes of the man who held her so tenderly was his name.

“Mark!”

“Yes,” he whispered as he dropped his face into the crook of her shoulder. “Steel yourself, my sweet. Let me make love to you.”

She mouthed his name, aware at once she was ordered not to speak, not to object. She wouldn’t now. Not now that he was here with her! She gripped him tightly, let the violent urging of her muscles tell him the words she was forbidden to say. For this moment in time, he was hers. For this ecstasy, she would live. A minute. An hour. To know he was alive and safe was all she cared for in this world.

He held her, his body afire with fierce protection and was it also passion? Had he seen what she had?

Was he as entranced? Why would he not be by that display? He was a red-blooded man.

And she? She was as sexual as an animal. Her reaction to this scene, her reaction to Mark’s loving had taught her that. If this mating here with him was to be her last act, let it be true and wild, and let her be his.

She felt his lips on her shoulder, his hands on her back, her buttocks, one skimming up to cup a breast. Squeeze her fullness. She let him hold her, relaxing into his care and abandoned herself to him.

“Yes,” she heard him praise her as he tongued her nipple and sucked her into the warm stormy cavern of his mouth. She gasped, reeling in delight. He was seducing her for these brigands. Letting them view what had been private between them. Gentle, ribald, and rare.

She would let him. Let him because she loved him. Allow him because she lived to be loved by him. Now. Here. What difference did it make that they had a voracious audience? She was his. Had been since that first night when she had glimpsed him in his brother’s ballroom. Now she would show anyone, even these renegades, that she belonged to this man. Body and soul.

He put one leg between her two, bracing himself as he lifted one of her thighs and hooked it up around his hip. Could all these people see her most intimate folds? She was certain of it. Swelling, soaked with need of his shaft, she felt liquid as hot glass. She gasped as a rush of cream cascaded down her thighs.

A low growl of men’s desire met her ears.

Mark halted. The hall grew silent as stone. Suddenly, Mark sank before her and pushed her legs wide. There, as she stood astride, looking down at him, he examined her smoothly polished mons. She moaned, eager for his touch, his tongue. She inched her legs wider for him. He shot her a look of praise, then with thumbs to her tender swollen lips, he parted her She tilted up her hips, the better to have him, let him use his marvelous skilled lips on her flesh. He smiled, then growled as he fastened his mouth on her enflamed body.

Her knees buckled.

He caught her as if she were a ragdoll and lifted her backward to the large couch. Stuffing a large pillow beneath her hips, he grinned into her eyes, his gaze branding her with his lust. She ran her palms over his sculpted heaving chest, and in her ravenous hunger to have him, she noted that he was not hurt, but whole and healthy. How these monsters might have mistreated him had been a nightmare to her these past days. Now, she saw they had saved him. For her. For this.

She arched up, cupping both her breasts and kneading them, pleasuring herself with her nipples as he consumed her. He laved her in a delicate feast. She whimpered. More! She grabbed for his torso, clawed him to come nearer.

He grasped her wrists, drove them to the downy softness of the couch, then kissed his way down her body. She cried out as he tasted her ribs, her hipbones, then raised a leg to kiss the back of her knee and her ankle. Bucking, furious, he had bypassed her pulsing core, where she needed his mouth and tongue and teeth. She batted her hands at him. He rolled her over, hauled her up in the air, his cock, his glorious long thick shaft, sliding along her seam.

She shuddered, rejoicing at the fierce girth of him. Still, he was not inside her, and she groaned in demand.

As if she were an animal he tamed, he kissed her back, caressed her hips, stroked her wet core with one hand and with two blunt fingers, stroked a special spot high inside her. She jerked in his arms, aware now that a few men in the room drew closer.

She couldn’t care. She needed to be fucked, dammit. Now and by Mark. She reared back, a fire roaring in her blood.

He caught a handful of her hair and twisted it, yanking back her head.

She stilled.

But oh, she was rewarded for her rebellion. Mark had inserted his cock deep into her pounding core. She moaned and he pulled out.

She moaned at him.

He pulled her around to face him, rose up on his knees and grinned at her, a conqueror over his concubine, as he stroked his long shaft. His cock had been beautiful, a thick instrument of love when first she’d seen it. Now in this brilliant room awash in sunlight, his rod was a blue-veined vessel bigger than the ivory penis she’d seen the woman use to pleasure the other. Mark’s was more glorious as he stroked himself so artfully, his eyes glued to hers.

Take him in her mouth? Oh. She licked her lips. Of course, she would. She tossed back her hair and in a graceful dive, moved to kiss the tip of his cock. He tasted salty and sweet. Her tongue reached out for another drop and another. Yes. She let his flavors settle on her lower lip as she licked it and considered how best to love his marvelous body. Should she lick him again?

She did.

The men murmured their delight.

Should she kiss his slit?

Oh, she did. The men ground out their approval.

Should she sink her lips around his crown?

She could. She did. And did it again. And again.