“Your eunuch is overcautious,” Maysun said.
“Indeed,” Shahdi snorted. “This is not Istanbul.”
Azura waved Nadim away with a little shake of her head, silently admonishing him. “He is kind, and takes his position most seriously,” she said in a soft voice. “I find I am already grateful for his gentle care of me. This world of yours is new to me. I do not mean to offend, but I suspect women’s behavior is much the same in Florence where I was born as it is here at the Moonlight Serai.” She gave them a little smile.
“We are not a large household. The crime of poisoning could hardly go unchallenged here as it might in a great harem,” Maysun said sharply. “Your eunuch is foolish to believe we would harm you. Both Shahdi and I were given women. You are a chosen woman. We have both known that eventually our husband would fall in love. I hope for all our sakes that we can get on, Azura.”
“As do I,” came the reply. “I am told you both come from cultures where a man is allowed, if he chooses, to have four wives. You certainly know that the world from which I come grants a man but one wife. Jealousy is an emotion that comes easily to women. Knowing that Amir can take favors from any of us must nonetheless be as difficult for you both as it will be for me. There was a brief time when he was mine alone,” Azura said to them candidly. “Still, I was raised in a home with several sisters. I am used to the company of women, and am generally peaceable. But understand that if I am attacked, I will retaliate in kind. It is in my nature.”
Shahdi laughed aloud. “You are very outspoken,” she noted. “I may come to like you when I know you, Azura.” How clever she is, Shahdi thought. And strong. We will have a difficult time ridding ourselves of her, should we decide to do so.
Maysun smiled. She took her position as Amir’s first wife most seriously, but she was at heart a kind woman. “Tell us how you met Amir ibn Jem,” she said.
So while they ate Azura told them a little bit of her life as Bianca Pietro d’Angelo, of her unfortunate marriage, and how she had come to meet the prince. They were fascinated by her recitation, and laughed to learn the part that the great hound, Darius, had played in bringing the two lovers together. Neither of them had ever bothered themselves with the dog. In the worlds from which they had come, dogs were not pets but used for hunting, herding, and guarding the villages. When the meal had been cleared away, they sat with small porcelain cups of mint tea exchanging histories.
Azura learned that Maysun was the younger sister of a fierce Georgian warrior who, in admiring the great Ottoman Mehmet, who became known as the Conqueror, had offered his services, along with those of the warriors who followed him, to the sultan. Mehmet had graciously accepted the Georgian warlord’s fealty, taking his sister into his own harem as a token of loyalty. That she was of little interest to the sultan did not distress her brother. She had been given and accepted as a token and pledge. Nothing more. Maysun had no illusions and understood her place in the world.
“I saw the Conqueror only once,” Maysun told her companions, “when I was presented to him. After that I was absorbed into his large harem, an unimportant girl among many such as myself. I was very fortunate to be given to Amir ibn Jem. I know I am pretty, but I am no beauty to capture a man’s heart as you are,” Maysun concluded.
“My tale is not quite as hers,” Shahdi said. “I am a Circassian. Our women are considered to be beauties in this part of the world. My father sold me when I was ten to one of our great slave merchants who decided I had promise. I was trained and then purchased by a warlord who was also pledging his fealty to the sultan. I was included in a great train of gifts and slaves this man sent to the Conqueror as a token of his good faith. Like Maysun, I ended up unnoticed until I was picked to be given to our prince.
“So many women are given to the sultan for his pleasure, but only a mere few ever are taken to his bed, and of those, fewer still manage to gain his personal favor, some briefly, but others longer. Being sent to the sultan’s harem usually means a lonely life unless you are fortunate enough to be given away to another that the sultan wishes to honor, as we were given to our husband,” Shahdi explained.
“What do the women of the harem do?” Azura asked her, curious.
“They spend their days beautifying themselves in the hopes that the sultan will notice them. Some, wiser than the others, find tasks to make them useful to the powers that rule the harem. Their lives are more interesting and fulfilling,” Shahdi replied.
“There is so much about your world that I do not know,” Azura said slowly. She loved Amir, but now she wondered if that would be enough.
“You have but to ask us if you are confused,” Maysun said sweetly.
They had been kind enough, Azura thought afterwards as she prepared for bed. The kaftan had been taken from her and a gossamer-thin silk chemise with a high rounded neck and long full sleeves was given to her to sleep in. She was about to lie down when Nadim stepped aside to allow Ali Farid into the little chamber.
“The prince wishes your presence, Azura,” he said. “Remove your sleeping garment, and come with me.”
She looked to Nadim. He shook his head, and quickly drawing off her silk garment, handed it to Agata to store away. Undoing her single plait, he ran a brush through her long ebony hair. It shone in the lamplight as it fell in rippled waves down her back to the base of her spine. The faint fragrance of night-blooming moonflowers touched his nostrils. It was the perfect fragrance for her.
Ali Farid looked Azura over with a critical eye, then nodded. “You are a beautiful woman. No wonder our prince fell in love with you.” Then he turned and hurried out.
Azura stood frozen, but then Nadim gave her a little push.
“Walk slowly, and with your head up,” he murmured. “There is no one to see you, my lady Azura. This is our way.”
Following his direction she walked out of her little apartment. Ali Farid led her from the harem wing down a softly lit corridor through a pair of great bronze doors.
They were in an antechamber. He pointed to a carved wooden door. “Your lord and master awaits you, lady. When he has taken his pleasure of you, you are to return to your own bed unless he invites you to remain. You will find Nadim waiting outside of these doors to lead you back.” Then he turned about and left her.
Azura knocked at the carved door, opened it, and walked into Amir’s bedchamber. She wanted to run to the bed and cover herself, but there was simply no avoiding her nudity. She glided across the floor as he watched her. He wanted to grin, for he could see her distress. She had given up much for him, not really knowing the world she was about to enter, and he could not bear for her to be unhappy now.
“Usually when called to her husband’s bed, a wife crawls across the floor and up into the bed,” he teased her as she slipped in next to him. He too was naked.
“That’s almost as awful as it is ridiculous,” Azura told him. Then without waiting another minute she kissed him full on the lips, pushing him back amid the pillows.
His strong arms wrapped about her, pulling her atop him. His hand smoothed down her graceful back and over her sweetly rounded buttocks. “I can see you have missed me, beloved,” he said, laughing softly. She was so different from the other two, allowing her passion to bloom before his eyes while the others always remained restrained beneath him. It was he who had awakened her to love. It was she who had awakened him.
“That whole voyage was made worse by the beautiful landscapes we sailed past, the moonlit nights, and our inability to be together. I can see that you missed me as well, my husband,” Azura told him, kissing him again. She sat up, straddling him boldly.
Reaching up, he captured a lock of her hair, bringing it to his lips to kiss. Her fragrance assailed him, but as much as he would have enjoyed taking her then and there, he wasn’t going to do so. When they had first become lovers, in that brief, sweet time at Luce Stellare, he had been gentle with her, loving her in a way that would not frighten her. Now, however, she was his wif
e. Now she would learn that the man she was wed to was filled with great passion and lust for her.
He gazed up at her, smiling. She was so very beautiful. Her round breasts enchanted him. He leaned forward so he might kiss their dainty nipples, drawing her down just slightly in order to bury his face in the sweet valley between those breasts and inhale the fragrance of her skin. He had been hard before she even entered his bedchamber. Just thinking about Azura aroused him. No woman had ever affected him in the way that she did. No woman had ever had his love until Azura.
She pulled away again so she was just above him. The palms of her small hands glossed over his smooth bare chest, making little circles of movement. His skin was beautifully soft, but his body was also hard and sculpted beneath her touch. He lay perfectly still, enjoying her attentions. Her shapely thighs held him as if he were her mount.
His hand reached out to brush over her plump mons. Two fingers pushed past her nether lips and beneath her, past her love jewel, gliding slowly into her wet sheath. He smiled a slow smile, seeing her eyes widen in surprise. “I want you to ride my fingers,” he said softly as he sensuously stroked the hot hidden flesh that closed around those invasive digits. “Ride until I tell you to cease, Azura. This is but the first of the pleasures we shall share this evening, beloved.” His dark blue eyes glittered wickedly.
At first she could not move. Her very breath seemed caught in her throat. He had never made such a request of her, touched her in such a voluptuous manner so that her body felt as if it would shatter with a word, a single touch. However, she had never before clambered atop him in so bold a fashion. The sensation of those two fingers inside of her was acute and very exciting. She obeyed his command without another word.
Azura felt deliciously wicked as she began to move her body just slightly so that the fingers now buried deep inside her began to mimic her rhythm, stroking her, fanning the flames of her increasing desire. Her eyes closed, and with each subtle movement she made, her need increased. She moved faster, faster, faster until suddenly she felt the walls of her sheath convulsing around his fingers. She shuddered with release, and felt her cheeks grow hot with the realization of what had just transpired. “Oh! Oh! Oh!” Azura gasped as another and final tremor wracked her.
Amir’s fingers slid from her body. He pulled her down, rolling her onto her back.
“A sweet beginning, beloved,” he murmured in her ear, kissing it, his breath hot, nibbling on the fleshy little lobe. “You are a most obedient wife, Azura,” he teased.
She opened her aquamarine eyes and looked up at him. “You treated me with more delicacy in my villa by the sea,” Azura said to him.
“You were a properly raised Florentine woman, a young widow, with only a cruel and crude knowledge of passion. I think I would have frightened you to death had I been as bold then as I will be now,” Amir told her.
“Now that I am the infidel’s wife,” she said softly.
“Yes, you are my wife, beloved. Mine! I will open those beautiful jeweled eyes of yours to the many sweet ways that lovemaking can be pursued,” he told her.
She smiled up at him and said simply, “I adore you, Amir. Teach me to please you, and please me as you will. I have no fear of your love, for I know you will never hurt me. I trust in you, my love, so much so that I am willing to share you with your other wives.”
“Never bring them into this chamber when we are together, Azura,” he said gently. “I will always hold them in my esteem, but it is you that I will forever love.”
Then he kissed her, his lips proving as they moved over hers the truth of the words that he had just spoken. Everything about her excited him. Her exotic scent, her silken hair, the very warmth of her sweet nature, her growing wisdom, her kind heart.
They could not seem to cease from caressing each other. He cupped her breasts in his two hands. She stroked his cock with teasing fingers. Their bodies twined and untwined, learning and relearning. Their tongues tasted each other’s flesh, licking, nipping, their soft moans of longing echoing in the air. The time and the distance that had separated them had only increased the passion they felt for each other.
Finally Azura took his handsome face between her two hands, scattering little kisses across his eyelids, the bridge of his long nose, and across his thin but sensuous mouth. “Am I shameless that I can wait no longer?” she asked him.
In answer he covered her with his body, sliding into her welcoming sheath. “Am I?” he countered, smiling. “I have waited too long for you to return to me, beloved.” Then he began to move on her, slowly pressing forward, slowly withdrawing, over and over and over again until she wrapped her limbs about his torso. Her nails raking down his long back, she hissed one word at him.
“Faster!”
With a growl of delight he complied, his cock flashing back and forth with increasing rapidity.
Azura’s eyes closed as she began to drown in pleasure. She reveled in the sensation of his thickness, his length, the fire he was arousing within her very soul. His body felt so solid beneath her hands, beneath her legs as they squeezed him. She could not remember being filled with such deeply felt gratification. It had always been wonderful with him, but suddenly it was beyond that. Her head was spinning with such intense feelings she wasn’t certain she could survive it.
“Amir! Ohh, Amir!” she cried out as the sensation of being swept up into the heavens overcame her.
He groaned deeply. He couldn’t seem to get enough of her. He thrust harder and deeper until his swollen manhood cried its surrender, exploding, his heated juices filling her hidden garden, overflowing onto the bedding beneath them. He could scarcely catch his breath. He was suddenly both exhausted and filled with contentment. When her legs fell away from his torso, he wrapped his arms about her, drawing her so close she protested, but only faintly. Then they both fell into a deep sleep.
Towards the dawn, Ali Farid came to find Nadim seated cross-legged outside the prince’s bedchamber door. “Why have you not escorted your mistress back to her own bedchamber?” he demanded of the old eunuch.
“They are not yet ready to be separated,” Nadim told the head harem eunuch.
“He has never lingered so long with the other two,” Ali Farid said, puzzled. “In fact he has taken his pleasure quickly, and then dismissed them.”
“He does not love the other two,” Nadim replied. “He does love my mistress, the lady Azura. She has his heart.”
Ali Farid nodded slowly. The old eunuch could be correct, and if he was, no matter that Maysun and Shahdi were the first and second wives. It would be Azura, the third wife, who would hold the power in the harem. He would watch and think on this new information. “Continue to wait,” he said to Nadim.
When the sunlight finally filled the room outside the prince’s bedchamber, the door opened. Nadim was instantly upon his feet, surprisingly agile for his age. He draped a soft cotton kaftan over Azura, and wordlessly led her from her husband’s quarters to the harem bath, where she was bathed, and then to her own small bedchamber where she lay down and slept for several hours. When she awoke there was a meal awaiting her.
The harem quarters were quiet. She called for Agata, and together they went out into the gardens. There they found Maysun and Shahdi carefully pruning some rosebushes. The two other wives greeted Azura with cheerful smiles, and Maysun suggested that they walk together, handing her shears to an attending gardener.
“You pleased him well last night,” she told Azura. “We heard him singing this morning. It is rare that he sings.” The truth was that they had never heard him sing.
Azura blushed. Having her intimate moments with Amir discussed so openly by another woman was a new experience. She wasn’t certain it was something she would become used to, and she was not certain what to say in return. The other two wives took her silence as modesty, and were well pleased by it.
“You have made him happy again, which means all here at the Moonlight Serai can be happy,” Shahdi added. Sec
retly she was a little annoyed, for she had believed their husband was content before Azura came. Now it would appear he had not been. Why could she and Maysun not be enough for an unimportant prince who avoided both battle and the responsibilities of his great family?
“I am glad, then,” Azura replied, finally realizing that the two older wives appreciated her demure manner.
“You have not been trained in the way of harem women,” Maysun said. “I have heard that proper women from the West come to their husband’s beds as virgins, but know nothing of how to make love. They rely on their men to teach them these things. You had a husband once, didn’t you?”
“Yes, a cruel man,” Azura said. “His manners with me were depraved and corrupt. When my mother learned of it she stole me from him, hid me away, and my family attempted to have the union dissolved. It was then I met Prince Amir. We became friends, but not lovers, as I was a married woman even if I did not live with my husband. Eventually my husband found me. He beat me, but the women who served me drove him from my house. He was returning to Florence to get aid in his attempt to bring me back when he was murdered upon the road.”
“By robbers?” Shahdi asked. “Or enemies? Or was it your family?”
“It was not a robbery, for his jewelry remained upon his person, and his full purse was still on his belt,” Azura said. “No one has ever found out who killed him. His reputation was such that no one, even his grown sons, cared. They were glad he was dead. He was an evil man, and had no real friends.”
“Being a virtual innocent then was quite permissible,” Maysun said, “but now we share a husband. We would be remiss if we did not school you in harem ways. Amir loves you, but as with all men, love is not enough. We will teach you how to entertain him like a good Turkish wife. He must not get bored, and seek a larger harem.”
“You mean a fourth wife?” Azura asked.
“It isn’t just another wife we must all consider,” Maysun said.
Bianca Page 27