The Harem

by Celia May Hart, Noelle Mack, Melissa MacNeal, Emma Leigh

Genres: Anthologies

Synopsis

They are erotic artists, trained to indulge their lovers' wildest wishes and most forbidden fantasies. And that is only the beginning. Now, in these scorching hot novellas, four ripe and ready concubines will discover the joys of getting what they give. . .

The Secret Door, Noelle Mack

Left to wander the glittering Topkapi palace by night, Yasmina falls into a magical dream, discovering a secret garden where a strong, dark-haired man wraps her in a sensual embrace, imploring her to unveil her body--and reveal her deepest desires. . .

The Pleasure Garden, Emma Leigh

Julia Martin awakens to find herself in the Forbidden City, where she will be trained in the ways of Tao lovemaking by a handsome, mysterious Englishman. As inhibitions and innocence fall away, a temptress is born--and master and student pursue an education in mutual pleasure. . .

East Meets West, Celia May Hart

Chandari's destiny is with the Maharajah, not with the lieutenant escorting her. But as temptation grows into a hunger neither can resist, two star-crossed lovers are willing to risk everything for stolen moments of sheer ecstasy. . .

A Lady's Pleasure, Melissa MacNeal

Ophelia Leeds is shocked to learn that her late lumber-baron husband also captained a floating pleasure palace with a bevy of beauties to entertain his wealthy friends. Now the comely widow has a plan of her own--to become mistress of the love boat and bring aboard a brawny harem of lumberjacks who are ready, willing, and more than able to please Ophelia--again and again. . .

Release date: April 7, 2011

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 336

Sample

The deep blue of twilight suffused the garden where Yasmina walked alone. She stopped at the black-tiled fountain at its center, bubbling with water that rose from an ancient, buried spring. Only she came here—the other odalisques of the Topkapi harem shunned this place, convinced that the strange shadows cast by the garden’s old walls had enchanted the water and the flowers that drank from it.

Yasmina had listened to these tales and then, left to her own devices, dipped her fingers in the fountain, not caring if the water was poison, and found it pure in taste. Still, it was whispered that evil spirits, djinns and ifrits, lurked in its dark depths. For that reason the garden had been neglected, and for that reason she preferred it. Here, sweet white roses sent out thorny shoots, climbing up and over the walls with wild abandon, as if they might someday escape the earth in which their roots were buried.

But the roses could not. Nor could she ever leave this place, she thought with bitterness. Though she wanted for nothing in this golden realm, nothing belonged to her—not her beautiful gowns, not her embroidered slippers, not the jewels that hung between her perfect breasts, bared under silken gauze.

Yasmina shivered. A cool breeze wafted through the garden, enlivening the air and clearing her mind. Her nipples stood out against her white skin, white as the roses she walked among. Here in the harem, no one considered such display of female flesh immodest. There were only women to see. Like them all, Yasmina was the property of the sultan, a debauched and repulsive old man whom she glimpsed only rarely from behind a latticed wall of precious marble, under the great dome of the palace, holding court among his viziers and eunuchs.

His chief wife and favorite, the plump and lovely Gulbahar, made a great show of enjoying his company, as did the kadins, his lesser wives. The odalisques did not have to, as a rule. The sultan Suleyman was too old to visit many beds, and weary of the quarrels and vicious rivalry among the women.

Left to themselves, watched over by eunuchs and attendants within the harem walls and armed guards without, the young odalisques entertained themselves with storytelling and poetry, and games of chance and skill, and songs that extolled the prowess of legendary lovers and erotic bliss. When those amusements palled, there was always gossip. And for some, hashish and opium, which allowed their minds to flee the lovely bodies that had brought them to a state of bondage.

Yasmina wanted only to be by herself. As no one spoke her dialect, she was ignored and avoided, and some thought she was deaf and mute. A few seemed to look at her with pity in their beautiful eyes, but she cast her gaze down, not wishing to be entangled by an emotion as useless as pity.

Being alone was her fate. And there were far worse fates, she reflected, sipping from the crystal cup a harem servant had brought her an hour ago, filled with sherbet that had melted by now, made with berries and herbs and fine white sugar.

It had been prepared in the harem kitchen, made from snow that was brought down from Mount Olympus every spring. Before she had been sold into slavery by her avaricious uncle—whose clutches she had been glad to escape, knowing nothing of what awaited her here—she had seen the caravans of the snow men and marveled at the sight. They wore turbans piled with snow, driving teams of fifty and sixty mules, who strained to pull white mountains of the stuff, piled into wagons. Yet even a miserable mule had more freedom than she, though many might envy her fine clothes and jewels.

She set the crystal cup in a niche that had once held a vase and sat down on the edge of the fountain, soothed by the rhythm of the bubbling water. Yasmina 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 above the water, and an unusual fragrance filled the air. Yasmina drew back.

Come to me. The deep voice was male. It came from everywhere—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 she had glimpsed in the fountain’s depths. His eyes, blacker than midnight, held that unearthly light as well.

Yasmina was spellbound. Yet she could still hear the distant chatter of other women within the harem walls and could still see 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 she shuddered.

“I did not know 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 farther 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 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, abandoning the two mortals who had dared to intrude upon her music-making.

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 wore, 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 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 own 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 though 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 as 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 she 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 return 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 deep. 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 been 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 that 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 punishing 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 like a hot river from the little hole in the heavy cock head. 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 in his tongue, 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 away the tears on her face. 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. You must be my eyes, Yasmina, and my hands.

“Why? Oh, Rustem, why? You are crying tears of gold….” She trailed off. The sight of his strong face racked with fear and sorrow was infinitely sad.

My younger brother is a prisoner in the Topkapi Palace. He is alive, but I can see his fate as well. But there is a chance. You alone can free him, Yasmina.

She scarcely wanted to reply, fearing for her own life, for what little it was worth. “And what if I refuse?” she said at last.

He caressed her body with those magical hands, sending tremors of scorching desire through her. Though you are not virgin and not entirely willing, I shall make you mine. And you shall do my bidding.

She stiffened, suddenly wary. “You did not penetrate me. What you have done to me is what women do to each other. I am not yours.”

Not yet. But your orgasms nourish me, and I am a little stronger now. You shall have more. My kisses will open your helpless mouth, and my hands will fondle your soft breasts and nipples. My tongue will lick your nether lips and the throbbing bud above them.

You held my long cock in your soft hand and felt it throb. Imagine how it will fill your mouth. My balls will be next. How sweet it will be to feel your obedient tongue upon them. And when I am slick, I will penetrate your swollen, shaved cunny as I please and satisfy your womanly need to be taken with strength, as a stallion tops his mare.

“But—”

But that will not be enough to satisfy me. My hands will spread the round halves of your behind, and you will cry out to have me in that hidden hole as well, and deeply. I will possess your body in every way I can. I will possess you.

“Only by sorcery,” she whispered.

Yes. A very loving sorcery. And now you will crave, desperately crave, more of what only I can give you: a sexual pleasure so intense that your fears are burned away and your past is obliterated. You cannot say no, my beautiful Yasmina.

She wriggled backward, away from the golden stranger, who only smiled.

His softly spoken words—had they been spoken or had she just thought them through his sorcery?—unnerved her far more than the sensual attention he had lavished upon her. Sold into slavery, she understood its nature too well, and would never become a slave to desire, that most capricious of masters, all the more so because it resided within the mind. Truly, her body was not her own, but she would never be tamed, not even by a djinn. Her loneliness had taught her strength.

Yasmina restored herself to a measure of decency by wrapping her upper body with an embroidered shawl that had covered one of the pillows. The split in her pantaloons, still wet around the edges from her sexual excitement and his hungry mouth, she could hide by pressing her thighs together. But doing so caused the sensations he had awakened to thrill her afresh. She called down a thousand silent curses upon Rustem.

“Tell me, Rustem,” she began, searching his face for a sign of the tears he had cried. But gold had melted into gold and left no trace. “Can you not free your brother yourself? You have powers of magic far beyond the tales of wonder that the old women tell.”

He reclined upon the pillows of the pavilion, restoring his rags around his magnificent body with a wave of his hand. Here I do, in the open air. But not inside Topkapi. There is one who lives there whose magic is a match for mine. Like you, she can see me. I am sure you know her.

“What is her name?”

Leyla.

Yasmina shuddered. Leyla frightened all whose paths she crossed, whether she deigned to look at them or not. Her gaze was hypnotic and her eyes a bright shade of green. Not the fresh green of new leaves or young herbs, but a green that had the distilled purity of venom.

“Yes, I know her. I wish I did not.” Leyla had a particular dislik. . .