Feathers in the Wind: The Cygnets

by Camille Anthony

  All the while he spoke, he rubbed his swollen member along the sensitive folds of the frightened woman's vulnerable lower lips. Pre-cum dripped from his organ and he spread the liquid over and into her portal, lubricating it for his entrance.

  Susan felt him with every tension-alerted nerve, felt the friction of his movements against her and tried to squirm up the back of the slave behind her. A despairing moan escaped her parted lips. The muscles buried deep in her womanly core clenched involuntarily, and her pink flesh pulsed and quivered as she felt his engorged shaft seeking entrance. It hurt! It hurt!

  He ignored Susan's frantic head shaking, going slowly until the head of his penis crested her opening. He paused then, reveling in her tightness, and felt his rod widen and lengthen to press against the spasming walls of her inner folds. How hot she was! Hot and tight...! With a cry, and a powerful surge of his hips, he thrust deeply, sharply, welcoming the high-pitched cry of pain that was wrenched from Susan as he seated himself fully in her snug, no longer virginal passage.

  Susan wept openly, sobbing and shuddering at the pain, the uncomfortable feeling of fullness radiating from the abused, torn flesh between her legs. Her pitiful attempts to reject him proved useless, her cries falling on deaf ears, for the Sultan was intent upon exacting every ounce of vengeance on her helpless body.

  He surged in and out of her sore body with powerfully rhythmic motions, his hips flexing strongly, his thrusts flattening her against the body of the eunuch supporting her. She wished for death, wished there was some way she could retreat from what was happening, but her mind was too strong. The horror of her circumstances chained her attention, forcing her to endure the embarrassment and pain without the mercy of swooning.

  Selim, working his rampant member in and out of the tight, hugging walls of his slave's sheath, gloried in his possession. Another woman would have fainted or lain dormant beneath him—she was still fighting him! What pleasure she gives me, he thought. I would be a fool to kill her! I will keep her near, and teach her myself. I am the Sultan, now, not powerless as I was all those years ago. This English rose I will keep ... I will not lose her as I lost Emily...

  Feeling his crisis coming, Selim reluctantly slid from Susan's gloriously snug core. What had started as a punishment had become the most exciting bout of sex he had engaged in for a long while. Determined to make her enjoy it as much as he, Selim arrogantly decided to woo her, to awaken her carnal nature and use it in his service. He moved away from her, his hungry, tumescent staff jutting out proudly, covered with the red slick of her virgin's blood.

  Ignoring his rod's continued need for completion, he silently gestured the sentinels out, while the two holding Susan were ordered into the bed chamber with their burden. There she was given a choice: Submit to the him, and have privacy—the act kept between the two of them—or continue her struggles and be held down ... and open.

  Knowing the helplessness of her situation, Susan chose the privacy. Having those men look on her while the Sultan had been inside of her was the worst thing she had ever lived through. She never wanted to go through that again.

  Vague feelings of betrayal coursed through Susan as the eunuchs lowered her to the Sultan's couch. She rejoiced inwardly when they silently exited the room, leaving her to the Sultan's non-existent mercies. She could feel Selim's eyes upon her, yet could no longer bring herself to meet his gaze. She didn't want to see his victory reflected there.

  As Selim stood looking down at her, his long-buried conscious stirred and awoke. Gazing at her beauty, her bewildered tears and hurt look, he felt a moment's shame for his treatment of her. After all, it was really the cousin he was angry with. He should not have tortured and prodded her as he had. Her striking out was the action of a cornered animal, not her fault.

  Going to the basin of water kept for cleaning, he wet a cloth and rung it out. Back at her side, he knelt beside the low bed, pressing the cool cloth against her bruised, torn flesh. She jumped a little, then, obviously recalling her vow of submission, stilled her instinctive movements. Her breasts rose and fell quickly, the only visible sign of her increased agitation. He found his gaze riveted on those breasts.

  She was lying on her back and they were slightly flattened in that condition, but still full and round. The nipples, a light peach color, rode the bed of coral that were her crests. They were puckered and tight, and reminded Selim of berries. His mouth watered, and, not given to self-control, he bent and took one tempting morsel into the hot cavern of his mouth.

  When the hot slick feel of his tongue and lips covered her, Susan snapped out of her waking daydream. A volcano flowered down low in her pelvis, the unaccustomed feelings frightening her. She felt the heated drawing that connected her breasts to the cauldron seething between her legs, and opened her eyes to find the Sultan's head resting against her as his mouth moved in a suctioning motion, his cheeks caving in as he tugged on her sensitive nubbins. Fire shot up from her depths, and she frantically wondered how she could feel anything but hatred at the hands of the man who had recently taken her so before others, not caring about her feelings or according her the dignity any woman deserved. Her hands lifted to seize his hair, her fingers tangling in the night-dark strands.

  Selim acknowledged her tug, lifting his head to meet her eyes. His voice was smooth as silk, low and intimate as he said, “I wish to bring you joy, sweet lady. You must not mind the pain before—” he urged her. “Had you married a staid Englishman in church, and sedately opened yourself to his conjugal visit, it would have hurt the same.” He shrugged.

  "Thus is the way of nature, the way of a virgin's first coupling. I ... regret my temper. You need not fear for your life. My taunting drove you to your rash actions so I will not hold them against you. Only ... let me show you what I can give you, long to give you—"

  He lowered his head and resumed nursing at her breasts, taking his time and giving both orbs equally close attention. One lean hand caressed and shaped one plump mound while his untiring mouth lavished an erotic treatment on the other. His tongue and teeth were relentless devils, urging her to fire, and she felt her body flame at his touch. When his mouth released her tender flesh to drop biting kisses in a stinging string down her quivering middle, she grabbed the covers beneath her, her fingers digging into the mattress as she tried to anchor her rising passion.

  She tensed at the feel of his hot breath wafting over her privates, and almost came up off the bed when his relentless lips and tongue burrowed into her steaming cleft. Against all reason, Susan's emotions took flight as she reared up to grasp his ebony hair, not sure she meant to push him away, or pull him closer.

  Her passion-stunned eyes watched in glassy wonder the wickedly arousing sight of a man worshipping at her alter of Venus. The feelings he invoked were overwhelming, her nerves jumped and sizzled, overloading on sensation. Her inner muscles began to rhythmically pulsate, and she writhed on the bed, lost to all restraint.

  No matter how she admonished herself, forcibly recalling his sins against her, she was too naive and untutored to withhold her body's burgeoning responses. When he reared up on his elbows using one hand to widen her legs, making a place for himself she moaned in fearful anticipation. Slowly, carefully, he inserted his rigid penis in her weeping portal, forging steadily inwards, his goal her heated womb. She arched mindlessly up to meet him, her innocent passion destroying his hard-held control.

  With a guttural imprecation, Selim thrust home and immediately began a pounding assault, all the while whispering hot, smoldering phrases against her lips, her ears, her neck. His body strained against hers, demanding a response, and she gave it to him, raw and unschooled.

  Using his hands, he guided her until she caught the rhythm, then freed them to gather a double handful of her glorious hair, twining it about his knuckles, using it to pull her head up for a ravenous kiss. Their lips opened, meshed, drank deeply of each other. His tongue searched out the darkest recesses of her mouth; the cool roof, the jagged edge
of her teeth.

  She tentatively returned his ardor, her shy tongue venturing forth to twine with his. Her body undulated sensually, melting and steaming under the steady onslaught of his overwhelming caresses. They raced towards the finish—he knowingly, she blindly—both straining and striving to reach the pounding fulfillment shimmering on the horizon of their senses.

  A long finger edged its way into her heated center, rubbing at the small button of nerves, setting up a counter-point of friction that began her unraveling. When he bent to her sensitized breast, sucking an engorged nipple into his mouth, she came up from the covers with a sharp, despairing cry, wrapping her long legs about his hips and squeezing tightly. Her body rocking under thunder-claps of ecstasy, shattering into glittering rainbow fragments, Susan succumbed to the addicting power of his dark mastery.

  Chapter Forty-four

  Wyndmere,

  You probably do not wish to hear from me, but I felt I had to write. Since the trial, I have been doing nothing but thinking and remembering...

  In all our adventures together, I have never known you to be as sloppy as you were that night on the beach. Working closely with you gave me a chance to learn your ways, and I should have known then, what I am positive of now—It could not have been you on that storm-tossed cliff. But if it was not you, then who? I want you to know I applied to the courts to reopen your case, but they denied the petition due to lack of new evidence. I have several leads that I am following. Can you give me any information that would assist my search? Anything you can think of ... You never know what will jog someone's memory. I have listed my direction below. Please contact me as soon as possible. I know you cannot think it, especially when I inadvertently betrayed you so horribly at the trial, but truly, I remain your most earnest friend, and I have never ceased to labor in your behalf—

  Robert Townesend

  Grand Seraglio, Sultan's Quarters

  A month later

  One look at Merri's cousin told Jared his father had bedded the woman. Knowing the Sultan's penchant for cruelty, he dreaded thinking under what circumstances the young woman had been forced to endure his attentions.

  Jared cursed silently, reminding himself of his powerlessness here in his father's domain, and most especially here in the Sultan's private chambers. Lady Susan's ravishment had all ready happened. There was nothing he could do about it.

  It was hard, though, remembering the fire she had revealed at their prior meeting, to see the Lady Susan so ... subdued. No, that wasn't the word. Crushed—yes, that was a better word. She reminded him of a fragile dandelion that had been half blown away. Decimated. What was left was naught but a sad, pitiful remnant. To see her slumped in abject surrender at Selim's feet, leeched of all her spontaneous vitality cut him deeply, yet he could do nothing.

  His many attempts at catching her eye proved futile, countered by Susan's refusal to allow him contact by keeping her head lowered and her eyes down. After a while, Jared gave up, turning his attention back to the half-ignored conversation with the Sultan.

  "...she deserves to be punished!” Selim was saying, his mouth hard, eyes glittering with malice. His gaze softened when he caught a glimpse of Susan's pale, worried face out of the corner of his eye. She hid her agitation well, but he had come to know her expressions over these last few weeks. She was terribly upset over the threat to her cousin. He might just be able to use that to his advantage.

  "I grant that her words were inflammatory, however, I ask that you take into account the extenuating circumstances—"

  "We have had this conversation before, my son,” Selim said firmly. “She will be punished!” Selim watched Jared's expression change, his features tightening with determination until they assumed the hard, ruthless look of a warrior, and Selim smiled, knowing he had succeeded beyond his fondest hopes! His son's protective instincts were awake and at full alert where his woman was concerned.

  "I will not allow you to hurt her.” Jared was adamant. His eyes flicked towards the silent woman who sat at the Sultan's feet, and back. Like you have harmed this one! His unspoken words were loud between the two men who looked so much alike; both sets of golden eyes growing hot with anger and antagonism.

  Susan fidgeted, aware of the building tensions in the room, uncomfortable at being its focus. She knew the Prince was angry on her behalf, but really, what could he do? She avoided his persistent gaze, refusing to meet his eyes. She did not think she could bear to see the reflection of the pitiful thing she had become.

  She was so confused. Somewhere during this long, hellish month, she had suffered a sea-change, and no longer knew what she was, what she wanted. She only knew she craved, yet hated, the heady swell of sensations she tasted under the relentless conditioning of the man who called himself her master. The limits he had forced her past ... the things he had done to her—and she'd wallowed in—the sheer, unimaginable, fantastical feelings he coaxed from her with his devil's magic!

  Her body tightened in response to the flood of explicit memories. Her face flushed as the core of her womanhood liquefied and spilled over with heated desire.

  She shuddered, recognizing the true depths of her situation. Selim's expert handling had awakened the ravening hungers of her body, stripping away her flimsy covering of civilized manners to lay bare the wanting, needing animal inside.

  Her turbulent passions were at the mercy of her tormentor; a man who demanded her full sexual surrender, never allowing her to hold any portion of herself back. He was relentless in his conquering of her body, never ceasing his maddeningly diabolical assaults until she begged, weeping, to experience his total possession.

  Only then would he generously give her what she craved ... what she needed like air in her starving lungs. Give her the hard, hot length of him. And though doubtless it was not in his plans, he always lost himself in her embrace, in the end, giving her back in full measure, the control he had wrested from her.

  Every night, he took her ... sometimes twice a day, three times—whenever the whim moved him. He conditioned her body to answer to his, honed her passions until they were in sync with his. Until only he could give her what she needed with increasing frequency.

  Now, responding in newly acquired habit, she turned to the Sultan, her look sultry and urgent, yet despairing; the pleading, despondent look of an addict desperate for the next “dose", hating the poison needed for basic survival. She felt like a whore, paid only in the dark coin of temporary satiation. The sex never satisfied her for long. She always needed more.

  As if his body were attuned to her, as if he could smell her arousal, Selim suddenly broke off, abandoning his conversation in the midst of a sentence. He glanced down to find Susan's eyes trained on him, and his own lit up with inward fire, recognizing her blatant need.

  He turned to her, ran a caressing hand through her straight, cornsilk hair, eager to show her off to Jamal. “My chosen haseki,” he informed his son. “Possibly the new ikbal ... though that remains to be seen. I have named her Sari Kar.” His words were addressed to Jared as he lifted Susan's face, planting a lingering kiss on her trembling lips.

  "Yellow Snow for her hair and the frosty way she looked at me—” Smiling into Susan's green eyes, now back-lit with raging desire, he shook his head, continuing wryly, “I shall have to find a name more suitable, for it seems the summer thaw has set in."

  Flames shot through Susan from where his lips touched hers, yet even as she burned with the strength of her arousal, she felt the familiar, knife-edged blade of shame ripping at her soul. That he could speak so of her so before others—even if it were his son—cheapened both her and the acts she committed with him.

  "...Retire to our chamber and await me,” her royal lover was saying when next she was capable of noticing anything other than that sharp, stunning pain, “in the manner in which I have taught you."

  The look he slanted her way was one of warning, making her recall his last lesson and the punishment he had meted out when she'd da
red to disagree with him.

  "A slave approaches the bed of her master from the foot, on her knees and belly, low to the ground. You will so approach our bed unless and until I give you leave to do otherwise—"

  "I will never see you as my master. My ravisher, perhaps my executioner."

  "A slave is naked before her master, unless he gives her leave to adorn herself ... and then she should take care to please her master in her manner of dress—"

  "An interesting idea ... for you, and an easy one to enforce, for you ripped my only garments that first day, and have not allowed me others while in these rooms. However, I have decided my dignity is not dependent upon dress or the lack thereof. After all, Christ was naked on the cross, and never was he more dignified than when he suffered for others!"

  "I wouldn't know, I am not of that faith. But I do not take your point in any case, for you do not suffer for others, do you? Or ... do you call what you endured earlier a sort of suffering? If so, I must say, never before have I witnessed someone in the throes of such exquisite torment. How sweetly you writhed beneath me, clutching at my back, biting and nipping at me! What glorious pain you must have suffered, shivering apart around my deeply buried shaft!"

  "Stop it! I will not hear you!"

  "Yes, you will. Oh, you will! I shall enjoy exposing all your inner passions, your carnal impulses, one by one, until you are totally revealed, and come to me freely—a woman who takes deep pleasure in pleasing, and receiving pleasure from her master!"

  "I will never come to you so..."

  "We both know that you will. Do you lie to yourself as well as to me?"

  "I do not lie!"

  "Now you force me to prove your lie..."

  "Please do not touch me! No! Stop! I said ... ooh! Oh, god!"

  "So soon, my heart?"

  "...please...!"

  "Sweet Snow ... cold Snow ... yes, melt for me! You like this, no? And this...? But you love this best, do you not?"

  "Oh, yes ... yes! Yes—oh, yes—oh, yes—!"