The Stanhope Challenge - Regency Quartet - Four Regency Romances

by Cerise DeLand

  “Ba!” Hassan swept out a hand as if sweeping out the dirt. “Go, go!”

  His two guards grabbed him up and hustled him from the presence of their leader.

  Hassan’s fury rising to the stone buttresses, the pasha yelled at Mark as he was taken away.

  Had he won or lost?

  He could not tell as the corsairs shoved the butts of spears into his ribs, hurried down into the bowels of the palace and into a damp, dark cell to be thrown to the barren floor like so much refuse.

  Shaking with cold, thirsty and hungry, then fevered in a delirium, he knew no one even suspected what had befallen the Water Witch, its captain, crew and siren.

  Chapter Five

  Sirena had spent, by last count, six days in a world predominated by women. Lithe, young, lovely women. Guarded by giant, fleshy black men whose eyes slid to each other in some secret code of conduct that she suspected did include their sexual interest in the women. Sirena suspected her purpose here, though she longed to learn otherwise.

  Reality killed her hopes. As a child in her nursery, Sirena had listened to stories read by her governess of a land filled with godless men who ruled the East with no regard for human life. As a young woman, she heard rumors of dissolute Ottoman pashas and their penchant for deflowering female sex slaves and keeping them behind locked walls. Those had always seemed like fables meant to embolden men to travel to exotic lands and to keep English women safely tucked away at home. While Sirena’s desire to see China or sail to Bombay had seemed more dream than possibility, she had never wished to become part of any man’s harem. And this gaggle of females imprisoned was most definitely that. What with the women who did little but eat, drink, bathe and admire themselves in numerous mirrors, Sirena assumed they were the mates of the ruler here. The presence of the men who served as guards confirmed it. And on the third day of her imprisonment, Sirena met a young Spanish woman, Valentina, who told her in broken English that the men were their jailers and to ensure the women’s purity and safety, each man had been castrated.

  Sirena shuddered at the idea of such brutality done to one man by another. Yet, you will soon learn what atrocity these pirates have in store for you.

  The manner of her days, however, did not presage any harm might come to her. Though she got no inkling of Mark or his men’s condition or whereabouts, she was treated like a precious gem. True, after the Barbaries had climbed aboard Mark’s Water Witch, they had seized her by the wrists, chained her and separated her from Mark and any of his sailors. None had manhandled her, although many had made snide suggestions she could not mistake in any language. But once off the corsairs’ galleon, she was put atop a camel and led through the teaming city up into a gleaming alabaster palace. Though she had asked in vain for the whereabouts of the Americans, she learned nothing in the high-walled sumptuously adorned seraglio except how to be pampered.

  Each morning, Sirena was roused by an elderly maid, gnarled and wrinkled like a prune, but kindly. She’d follow her maid to a cool reception room. There, a tall, imperious older woman appeared who directed her to turn about, a doll on display. She complied. What else could she do but fume? At once, the woman led her to a large room, humid with fragrance of jasmine rising from a huge azure pool. Stripped naked by two young women, Sirena quivered in modesty and indignation. But once she was directed to step down into the soothing water, her body melted in the forgiving heat. Ordered up and out of the pool, she’d be led to yet another room, this time filled with oblong copper baths three times the size of any hipbath she’d ever seen at home. Commanded to submerge in one of those tubs, she sank, grateful once more for coverage of her person, until two different women appeared armed with soaps, towels and pumices. Scrubbed, rubbed and submerged time and again in this tub, finally she was told to rise, and without a stitch of clothes, she was told to follow her maids to yet one more room. Here, with other women on tables, stark naked as Sirena, she would lie down. For God knew how long, her body was examined, then massaged, oiled, her eyebrows plucked, her hair bathed and scented. Surrounded by dedicated servants who neither spoke nor looked her in the eye, she could not deter them from their goals, nor did she have the strength. In fact, she found herself astonished to submit to their gentle ministrations, primping her for a dreaded exhibition of the most lurid kind. Each morning, as the servants bathed her and refined her looks, she feared how she would be exposed. To whom? When? How? But as they probed into every crevice of her body, denuding her of hair, even to her most private parts which no one, save she, and Mark, had ever touched, she feared to know the answer.

  Pampered more like a princess than a slave, she pondered her future each night in her own cozy private room, filled with fat feather pillows for her bed. She received pitchers of cool water, oranges, limes and lemons. Each day, she was fed a milky concoction, the consistency of pudding but tart, tasty with nuts and fat sultanas. Each morning, her nightshift of plain linen was taken away for the laundresses. Then she’d be given a garment that made her blush and gasp. Translucent pearl silk, the kaftan had a clasp of two jeweled frogs at the neck, huge sleeves flowing to her wrists, and a flowing drape to her toes.

  Aghast at its suggestiveness, she knew at once its intention was to arouse and to titillate. Without any other item to cover her nakedness, she donned it, assuring herself that her appearance did not diminish her inner character. Nor did it represent her person. Only her condition.

  Enslavement, she contemplated in those first few hours in the harem, was an astonishing condition for the daughter of a duke of the British Realm. She laughed bitterly at that first thought. Then sobered. She had left her rights and privileges as an aristocrat the minute she had left her home in London. Going to Dover, intent on building a new life for herself, perhaps even learning how Mark Stanhope cared for her, was a liberating stroke. That she was here, imprisoned, seemed a bitter irony.

  Where was Mark? Dead? Tortured?

  She caught back cries of outrage that that might be true. She had to learn where he was, how he was.

  Her resolve bore fruit on the fourth day when her friend Valentina arrived in her room to share news.

  “I hear the matron, there,” Valentina nodded to the older woman who was the mistress of the seraglio, “tell our Nubian eunuchs you will go before our pasha, Al Hassan.”

  “When?” Her throat went dry as dust. Her stomach rolled in fear.

  “After he decides what to do with your man.” Valentina’s cobalt blue eyes snapped as she spoke low to avoid detection. “Your body has been prepared for Hassan but—”

  Sirena’s heart stopped. She grabbed Valentina’s hand. “What?”

  “You may be given to any man he wishes.”

  “As his concubine?” Sirena tried not to let her terror overcome her.

  “Of course. It is why we all are here.” Her eyes circumscribed the room filled with lounging, laughing women who, it seemed, had come to terms with their servitude.

  “How do you live with that?” Sirena asked, in indignation at such bondage.

  “I have been taken up once to Hassan. He is impotent.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Do not think thus. He has other ways to make you arouse his flaccid member.”

  “How so?”

  “Have you ever put your mouth to a man’s tool?” Valentina put her hand to her own mons.

  Sirena shook her head, her thoughts drifting to Mark and how she might gladly take him with her lips and tongue that way.

  “Hassan likes that.” She waited until the masseuses passed them by with large bowls of steaming honey and creamy depilatories. “He also likes to see men take women from behind. Like animals.”

  Serena’s eyes widened. “That’s appealing to men?”

  The blue-eyed woman nodded. “It is forbidden, haraam, to take a woman in the ass. These pirates may say they follow the teachings of Mohammed, but they are part-Spanish and French, ex-patriots, criminals who know no law. They follow neither God nor man�
�s rules. Therefore, remember only one thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Whatever you are asked to do? Do it and live another day.”

  Sirena turned away, filled with desperation to see Mark, know he was safe and to escape this hideous existence. All the sumptuous foibles in the world could not fill the void of heartless existences without law or love.

  The next morning, two bare-chested Nubians in multicolored loin cloths came to her alcove and led her through the winding corridors of the seraglio, out into a huge, brilliantly white courtyard, alive with the sounds of water tinkling in hundreds of fountains. Passing those, Sirena squinted in the sunlight as her two guards escorted her up a flight of broad tiled stairs and into a room bare of all furnishings, save for two wide beds in the center of the lushly carpeted floor. One bed was slightly smaller than the other, but nonetheless as richly appointed.

  She paused to consider them.

  Both beds were like no other Sirena had ever seen. A foot off the floor, each bed was covered in a vibrant silk. The smaller of the two sported a purple gauze covering. The larger was dressed in cherry silk and here, there and everywhere about that bed, stood pillows in all the colors of the rainbow. The pillows were covered in the same shimmering silks, adorned with contrasting tassels, beads and gewgaws. She knew what both beds were meant for.

  Me. Making love to whom? Two men?

  Her heart fluttered. Would she, could she, survive such an encounter? The shame? The torment? The betrayal of Mark, whom she loved more than life?

  It was one thing to mate with the man she craved. Another to submit to a barbarian she did not know, could never care for.

  The sounds of men’s voices grew in her ear. To her horror, side doors opened and in flowed white-robed men of all ages and sizes. Staring at them with growing panic, she watched them assemble in two rows on either side of the room. One hundred men, perhaps more.

  Dear God.

  Am I to service them all?

  She flinched. Her Nubian guards seized her by the upper arms and walked her forward to the first bed.

  Sirena’s mind blanked. Her mouth opened in a silent plea. Let me leave now or let me die. I can not do this. Not even to live.

  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.