Take Two

by Evangeline Anderson

  His hands settled at the snap of her skirt. “I like this thing,” he said as he slid the zipper inch by agonizing inch. “Kinda reminds me of those sexy little shorts you wore that first time—”

  Her whole body tensed. She didn’t want to think of that night right now, didn’t want to think about the last time she let uncontrollable desire get the best of her. Her fingers pressed against his lips. “I’d rather not revisit unpleasant memories.”

  She caught the quick hint of a frown across his features but he hid it quickly as he slid her skirt and thong off, leaving them to pool around her feet.

  “In that case,” he said as his shirt slid off his massive shoulders, “I better get down on creating some new ones.”

  Lyrical…mysterious…and dazzlingly erotic. Don’t miss

  Noelle Mack’s new story in THE HAREM, coming in

  December 2006 from Aphrodisia…

  Yasmina sat down on the edge of the fountain, soothed by the rhythm of the bubbling water. She stared down, focusing on an elusive blue light in its depths that seemed to come and go. A minnow, she thought. With scales of a hue to match the twilight. The blue light vanished and the water grew calm. She drew in her breath. For two years she had come here and never in all that time had the water been still.

  She saw a white rosebud reflected upon its mirrored surface, tiny and tightly furled, and so perfectly like a real one that she touched the water, thinking that it had fallen there. To her surprise, the bud opened, becoming a huge, full-blown rose under her fingertips. Its stem shot it above the water and an unusual fragrance filled the air. Yasmina drew back.

  Come to me. The deep voice was male. It came from every-where—and nowhere. Yasmina looked wildly about the shadowy garden and saw no one. If she were caught with an intruder, she would be killed with him, her throat swiftly cut. Or she would be tied into a sack and drowned in the indifferent sea, depending on the whim of the executioner. She had no friends within the harem, no wise woman to plead her innocence.

  The huge rose sank back into the fountain and vanished by a magic beyond her understanding, yet its fragrance lingered. The air grew still and warm, oppressively sensual. Yasmina put her hand into the fountain, craving a few cool drops upon her forehead and her lips. Her mouth was suddenly parched.

  A goblet made of ice rose from the depths of the fountain, brimming over with its water. Her hand clasped it and could not let go.

  Drink, Yasmina. On a hot night, cold water is as intoxicating as wine.

  Compelled by an unseen presence that seemed as male as the deep voice, she drank it dry. She closed her eyes, letting the enchanted water slide down her throat—and gasped when a man’s hand covered her mouth. He was behind her. She could not see him and she dared not scream.

  You must be quiet.

  He took his hand off her mouth and she whispered a reply in her own language. “Who are you?”

  Shall I reveal myself?

  “Yes.”

  The intruder came around to stand before her. Clad in black rags, his body was outlined by the same bluish light that she had glimpsed in the fountain’s depths. His eyes, blacker than midnight, held the unearthly light as well.

  Yasmina was spellbound. Yet she could still hear the distant chatter of other women within the harem walls, and smell the smoke of the nargileh, the many-armed water pipe they shared to be sociable, drifting out into the air. Silent and lonely though she was, she would be missed. And she would be found with him.

  His bold stance and the tight wrappings around his strong legs, left her no doubt that he could easily overpower her. He was tall, far taller than any man she had ever seen, with the sensual grace of a panther and an air—a very odd air—of courteous menace.

  Come with me.

  “I cannot.”

  No one will see us. There is a door—a secret door. It leads to another garden.

  “This garden is my refuge. I have walked here scores of times, in the sun and under the moon. There is no door.”

  For answer he reached out his hand to her. Yasmina took it, lifted to her feet with magical lightness.

  You need not be afraid. The women inside will not miss you for a while longer. I have seen to that.

  She followed him. She had no choice. The ragged man raised a dagger from his girdle of black rags and stabbed it into the stone wall. The stone gushed forth a river of blood that ran down to the roots of the white roses, which bent and sighed, filling with blood until they were crimson. A door appeared behind them, carved in an intricate pattern and inlaid with mosaic.

  Now do you believe?

  “Yes,” she whispered. “But what is your name? What may I call you?”

  Rustem. It is not my name but you may call me that. He took her hand and pushed aside the red roses. She glimpsed blood on his skin where he touched them and shuddered.

  “I did not know that roses could bleed.”

  All living things bleed, Yasmina. But I do not.

  He drew the tip of the dagger along his neck. A wound appeared and closed up again, quickly. She gave a little cry.

  It is kind of you to feel pain for me. I cannot.

  “Is there nothing that you feel?”

  He pushed the climbing roses further away from the door. Loneliness. And for a little while you and I shall keep that at bay. Enter.

  He drew her through the secret door into a garden she had never seen. It was much like the one in which she walked, though hers lay in shadow and this one shimmered with light. It boasted something that her garden did not: a small pavilion, strung with pierced lamps, in one corner. On its floor were cushions of silk. A young woman, naked, sat upon them and strummed an oud, singing melodies that hung in the air and repeated themselves. Yasmina came closer. The singer’s flesh was transparent; her body as insubstantial as the notes of her song.

  A ghost. She cannot see or hear you. But the music is pretty.

  The transparent singer rose and floated to a different part of the hidden garden, where birds had begun to echo her melodies. They flew over the wall and she flew away with them, leaving the two mortals who had dared to intrude upon her music-making to themselves.

  Yasmina sighed with relief. Her companion motioned her to sit beside him on the cushions, offering her more water in another goblet of ice, and unfamiliar fruit. She refused both.

  The black-haired man shrugged and helped himself, eating with evident pleasure. His gaze traveled over her body, resting longest on her face. But the sight of her breasts, concealed not at all by the fine gauze that she worse, seemed to arouse him.

  Are you a virgin, Yasmina?

  The bold question surprised her. “N-no,” she stammered, unable to lie. Like all the other women who entered the sultan’s palace, her legs had been spread open and the most intimate parts of her body carefully inspected. She had been sold as a virgin and because of her youth, it had been assumed that she was. But she had not passed the shameful test, though her beauty had persuaded the kizlar agasi, the master of the girls, to keep her in the end.

  Yasmina had been consigned to the lowest ranks of odalisques, forced to share a room with coarse, strapping young women who tried to rape her with a thick rod of ivory that they had stolen from somewhere. They’d bound Yasmina’s wrists, clumsily. One had stripped naked and tied the rod to a string around her waist, letting it dangle in front of her as her companion tightened other strings at its base, running those through her buttocks and knotting it at the small of her back. That one had held Yasmina’s legs apart, eager to watch the other violate a new and vulnerable member of the harem.

  But Yasmina had bitten through the bonds around her wrist and fought them hard, twisting the heavy ivory rod from the strings that held it around her tormentor’s waist and bruising her with no more mercy than she had been shown. In the years since then the two women had left her mostly alone, preferring to play their wicked games with each other, although they invited her to join in when they had drunk too much wine.
/>   So you have known a man.

  “A man knew me when I was far too young.”

  Ah. Then the experience was an exercise in cruelty, not tenderness.

  “Yes.”

  Now I know why you seem afraid of me, although I have little more substance than your own dreams.

  “I am not so sure of that,” she said, trembling. She felt powerfully drawn to him, all too aware of the disparity between the sensual languor of his pose and the coiled strength that was hidden by his ragged clothes.

  I will not hurt you, Yasmina. Undress me. I will let you go as far as you like and touch what you will. Allow yourself to know pleasure.

  Unwilling but unable to refuse, she lifted her hand and stroked his face. Rustem closed his eyes, enjoying her tentative caress. Without her being quite aware of it happening, her hand drifted down and the black rags that bound him flew open to reveal a muscular chest. His skin was bronzed and gleaming, like soft, warm metal to the touch. But he had no heartbeat. She pulled her hand away, as if the increasing heat she sensed in his flesh would scorch her.

  “What are you made of?”

  I cannot explain it now. But I was once human. He took her hand and rested it between the juncture of his legs. As you can see. Or should I say feel? He smiled without showing his teeth, pushing his groin up slightly so that her hand pressed down. So. He was a man like any other. She could feel something she had felt before: a rigid shaft of hot flesh.

  The black rags unwound from around his groin and he was fully revealed to her wide eyes. She could not look away any more than she had been able to stop herself from following him to this strange garden, from caressing his face and touching his chest. Under her gaze, his cock grew long and thick, the heavy head resting on the bare skin of his thigh at first and then rising as the shaft rose. The sight was mesmerizing. He was not a man like any other. He was made of pure gold.

  Touch me. However you like. Your soft hand is soothing.

  Yasmina clasped his cock. He cupped his balls as if he were offering himself to her. The rags that bound his legs stayed in place but she glimpsed his skin where there were openings. It was bronzed as his chest. he lay back in the cushions, moving just enough to do so but not so much that she lost her grip on the throbbing golden rod between his legs. The veins that curled around the shaft pulsed with a slow fire. Compelled to caress him again, she lay her white hand over the middle of his chest. Now she could feel, very faintly, the beating of a heart.

  The sight of him, whatever he was, man or spirit, aroused her—and Yasmina had never been aroused. Everything that touched her skin excited a potent, animal desire. The delicate friction of the sheer silk over her breasts, bare beneath it, was unbearably stimulating. She let go of his cock with a soft cry and clasped her breasts, then her nipples, pinching them until the silk was torn to shreds. Her nipples were fully revealed by the ruined garment and she rubbed them frantically.

  Ahh. Such sensitive breasts and such beautiful nipples.

  Startled, Yasmina sat back on her thighs, ashamed that he had seen her fondle her own flesh so wantonly, and tried to draw the shreds of silk together. It was no use. She could not even cover her breasts with her hands, or the sensation of pure sexual excitement would overwhelm her again. No, she must sit before him in rags of her own making and be devoured by his hungry eyes.

  Should she returned to the harem, she would be publicly punished, perhaps even whipped by order of the kizlar agasi, the master of the girls. The kizlar agasi decided which woman was brought to the sultan’s bed at night; and if any were so bold as to forget that her body and the clothes that displayed it were his property, she would be corrected, forcibly if necessary. Though many odalisques indulged in private stimulation, alone or with each other, a woman of low rank could not be so willful as to rip her clothes in the throes of sexual pleasure, private or public.

  She blushed furiously. Rustem sat up and caressed her hot cheeks.

  Ah, pretty one. I enjoyed seeing you tear your clothes. Your bare flesh is much more beautiful than your finery. And your excitement is building more quickly than I thought. He put his mouth on hers and kissed her long and deeply. Yasmina moaned, helpless with lust for this strange man. If he was a man.

  He picked her up as if she were a flower petal and placed her on his lap. Such tender nipples, he murmured into her ear. And yet, how hard you pinch them. Sometimes pain is as irresistible as pleasure, and as sweet. Am I not right, Yasmina? He grasped the sheer material and ripped the last of it away from her. There. Your breasts are as bare as your soul.

  She cried out, knowing that he was right. He cupped her breasts in his golden hands and a sensation of warm fire shot through her. Able to curve around her with uncanny ease, he brought his head down to suckle her nipples and nip them until she cried out again.

  Yasmina arched her back and her hair flowed loosely over the cushions. Her lover moved his body over hers, separating her legs, clad in billowing pantaloons sewn to a band about her narrow waist. He drew his dagger, holding the point precisely at the wet spot in the soft silk where her cunny had been enfolded by it. Her sexual arousal had been intense and uncontrollable.

  She held still. He pressed the point of the dagger into the yielding place between her legs…but he cut only the cloth, in a deft slice that bared her from her navel to the soft double moons of her behind. Her cunny tightened when he bisected the silk and tossed the dagger aside. He spread the rich cloth and gazed upon her no longer hidden flesh. Yasmina tried to cover herself with her hands, but he pushed them gently away.

  As I thought. Your cunny is beautiful, whether or not you are a virgin. As beautiful as life itself. And sweet and juicy as a plump little peach.

  His eyes were burning with supernatural desire. She felt their odd radiance warm her most intimate flesh as he looked his fill, not touching.

  You have to be nicely shaved. The hamam attendants take good care of the sultan’s women.

  Yasmina nodded. She had left the ritual bath late that afternoon, ignoring the gossiping women who drifted through the hamam, taking turns being scrubbed to perfect cleanliness, massaged and oiled. A silent slave had shaved and plucked her cunny, deftly removing every single hair as was the custom in the harem.

  Was the slave young?

  “Yes,” she said, startled. Had this golden djinn seen her and the slave in the hamam? It was said supernatural beings lurked in water, and perhaps he had been there.

  She was gentle with your tender skin. Sometimes the older women are not. But perhaps that is because they enjoy dominating the new ones.

  “You know much about what goes on in a hamam,” she said. “But no men may enter. It is forbidden.”

  Men have always found a way to watch such sport. The erotic games of frustrated women are highly arousing. Some men have died for risking a look, just one look.

  Understanding opened her mind. “Oh,” she said. “And were you such a man?”

  Rustem sat back on his thighs, his erection subsiding. He rested his hands on her open thighs as if he were her lover, tenderly possessive, separating from her after prolonged and pleasurable intercourse. She was almost as wet as if he had climaxed inside her.

  Yasmina wondered dreamily if his semen would be as golden as the rest of him, pouring forth from the little hole in the heavy cockhead like a hot river. She had watched the play of illicit lovers in the harem. Once. The culprit had been caught and castrated.

  Yes. I looked often and long, and I loved a woman who was a sultan’s favorite. I met death soon enough. And now I have met you. And I would taste life. He reached forward with one hand and spread her cunny lips with his finger and thumb. Allow me to kiss you there, beautiful Yasmina.

  His mouth came down on the shaved, sensitive flesh between her legs and he wasted no time in thrusting his tongue in, tasting her fully. He was gentle but masterful, and his otherworldly skill gave her exquisite pleasure.

  He quickly brought her to orgasm. Her first.


  Wave after wave of sensation coursed through her shaking body. Hot tears rolled down her face as he continued his tender lovemaking, putting the tiny bud above her swollen cunny into his mouth and sucking it until she reached orgasm again, writhing, pushing helplessly against his soft lips, begging him for more. He stilled her with a hand upon her belly, stroking her there until the pleasure ebbed into a feeling of utter contentment.

  He straightened and kissed the tears on her face away. There. You remind me of the woman I loved…and died for.

  “How did you die?”

  You will not like the answer.

  “I must know.”

  The sultan immersed me in a vessel of molten gold. I am of royal blood and he could not kill me by ordinary means, though I had dared to love the most beautiful woman in his court. A jadi, a witch, betrayed us to the sultan and he saw to it that I did not die quickly. My skin burned away and became gold.

  “And what happened to the woman you loved?”

  He didn’t answer for a long time. You must be careful that you do not meet her fate.

  “Our fate is sealed at the moment of our birth,” Yasmina said softly. “It is written on our foreheads.”

  Rustem nodded. God can see such writing. And sometimes the dead can too. Which is why I came looking for you.

  Aphrodisia Books are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  850 Third Avenue

  New York, NY 10022

  Copyright © 2006 by Evangeline Anderson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Aphrodisia and the A logo are trademarks of Kensington Publishing Corp.

  ISBN: 0-7582-2157-6

  Evangeline Anderson is an MRI tech who would rather be writing. She lives in Florida with three cats, one husband, and a college-age sister but no kids, because enough is enough already. She had been writing for a number of years before it occurred to her to share her ideas with the unsuspecting world. To her delight, it turned out that some people liked the weird way her brain worked. She has been writing science fiction and paranormal erotica ever since. Evangeline welcomes reader’s comments. E-mail her at vangiekitty@aol.com or visit her website at www.evangelineanderson.com