Bertrice Small - Adora

“You will be what I want you to be! Adora, Adora, my sweet, little love! Why do you deny the truth of your feelings for me? Will some words mumbled over us by a holy man make those feelings any different?”

“I am not some ignorant peasant girl to be honored by the sultan’s attentions,” she raged. “I am Theadora Cantacuzene, a princess of Byzantium!”

He laughed. “You are first a woman, Adora. And second, my dove, though you are not used to it yet, you are legally my slave. It is,” he teased her, “your duty to please me.” Pulling her back into his arms he kissed her. But it was like kissing a doll for she stiffened her body and compressed her lips tightly together.

Tenderly he rained kisses on her face, hoping to weaken her. It took every ounce of willpower she had to remain impassive to the soft lips that gently touched her closed eyelids, her forehead, the tip of her nose, the corners of her mouth, her stubborn chin. Angrily she turned her head away from him, foolishly exposing her slim, white neck to his mouth, and he quickly availed himself of the opportunity she presented. Deep within herself she felt the beginnings of a tremor as his lips moved swiftly down to nibble on her earlobe, then further down to her breasts. She managed to fight down the trembling, but panic was fast setting in, and her hands tried to push him away.

“No! No!” Her voice shook. “No! I won’t let you do this to me!”

He raised his head, and his black eyes looked deep into her amethyst ones. “You belong to me,” he said quietly in his deep voice. “I do not need papers of ownership to know that. You long to yield to me as much as I long to possess you. Why are you fighting me, my foolish love? Already you tremble with desire, and soon you will cry out your pleasure at the sweetness we will make between us.”

His dark head lowered again, and his mouth fastened over a taut nipple, sucking at it gently, tearing a sob from her unwilling throat. Her walls breached, he now increased his attentions, spreading her thighs so quickly that she had no time to fight him. Kneeling between them, he gained greater access to her lovely body.

Leaning forward, he found her lips once more. This time her sweet mouth was soft beneath his, the lips parting easily. Their tongues stroked each other until she tore her head away with a moan that he recognized as pure passion, and his desire for her flamed higher.

While his lips once more teased at her breasts she felt his great manhood growing hard against her and, unable to restrain herself, she reached down and grasped him in her hands. A groan of agonized pleasure escaped him as she caressed him. She felt his fingers seeking her, sighing with impatient pleasure to find her ready to receive him.

He could wait no longer. Slipping his hands beneath her buttocks he drove fiercely into her-again and again-until finally she cried out, “I yield, my lord!” Only then was he purged of the cruelty that had built up in him. Now she felt his hardness tenderly caressing her, moving with a voluptuous abandon that brought complete pleasure.

“Don’t stop! Oh, please don’t stop!” she was horrified to hear herself beg him. Her own body would not lie still. It moved frantically, seeking to absorb him. It was too intense, too sweet. “God! God!” she cried out, “you will kill me with it, Murad!”

“No, my insatiable little sweet,” she heard him mutter huskily, “I will only love you with it.”

She knew she should fight him, for he was using her shamelessly. Yet she could not fight him. She wanted his bigness, his hardness within her. She could deny no longer the desire racing through her veins and, with a sob of despair, she surrendered herself to him completely.

Through a half-conscious mist she heard him saying her name. Slowly she opened her eyes to find him looking passionately down at her. Color flooded her face.

“I will never forgive you for this, nor myself,” she whispered fiercely, the tears filling her eyes.

“For what?” he demanded. “For making you admit the truth to yourself? That you are a beautiful, desirable woman and that, though you deny it, you love me.”

“For making me your whore!”

“Allah, Adora! Why do you refuse to understand? You are my favorite. Bear me a son, and I will make you my kadin. I will set you above all other women in my kingdom.”

“No!” She scrambled off the bed.

“Stop!” Strangely, she obeyed the angry voice. “Now, slave, come to your master.” For a moment she remained frozen, and his voice cracked sharply again, “To your master, slave!” Reluctantly she turned back to him. “Now, slave, kneel and beg my pardon.”

“Never! Never!”

He quickly pulled her back into his strong arms and began kissing her passionately. She struggled fiercely and he laughed. “I’ll keep kissing you as a punishment until you obey me, Adora.”

“I apologize!”

“I said kneel and beg my pardon.”

She shot him a furious look. “I would rather kneel to you, you lecher, than endure your kisses.” She struggled from his grasp and, falling to her knees, burlesqued the humblest slave. “Forgive me, my lord.”

“My lord, and master, Adora.”

She grit her teeth in rage. “My lord and master,” she finally managed to say.

He pulled her up and kissed her again.

“You promised!” she shrieked, outraged that he would break his promise so quickly. “You promised not to kiss me again!”

“I did not,” he chuckled, pleased at having made her obey him. “I said I would not kiss you as punishment. Now I kiss you to reward your improving behavior.”

“I hate you!” she wailed.

“Do you?” His black eyes sparkled maliciously. “Then perhaps that explains why you begged me not to stop making love to you just a while ago. Little fool! Tonight is just the beginning for us, Adora.”

Then his mouth closed savagely over hers again. And looking deep into his dark, passionate eyes she knew that she was lost. The miracle of her short-lived marriage to Alexander was gone forever. This was a new life, and she had no choice but to face it.

Murad and Theadora
1361 to 1390

For the next few days they remained camped in the hills. Murad would allow no one but Adora to wait on him. Though the other servants might serve her and do her bidding, the sultan insisted that his beautiful royal slave do everything for him from bathing him to cooking their meals. This latter was proving a disaster, and Murad finally relieved her of that particular task after several badly cooked and burned meals.

“I cannot believe that anyone with your intelligence could be so clumsy, so inept at the cookfire,” he chuckled as he rubbed lamb fat on her latest burn.

Furiously she yanked her hand away. “I have been trained to use my mind, not my hands! Inept at the cookfire! I should hope so! I am a princess of Byzantium, not a servant!”

A slow, lazy smile lit his features. “You are my slave, Adora, and while you may not be skilled at cooking, you are becoming skilled enough in other matters to make me forget your lack of culinary ability.”

With a cry of outrage she hurled a silken pillow at him, snatching up a cloak she ran from the tent. But his deep mocking laughter followed her. She fled to a small, rocky glade set above the camp, a place she had discovered just the day before. It was lushly carpeted in thick, deep green moss, and hidden by beech and pine trees. She sat by a small natural basin hollowed out of the rock by dripping water.

She wept. She was not a slave! She was not! She was a princess born. She would not, could not, be his whore. She twisted the sodden linen handkerchief. The problem was that men treated her as a pretty plaything, a soft body upon which they could satisfy their lusts. An empty vessel, like a chamberpot, into which they could empty themselves. God! Had it always been like that? Must it continue to be?

The courtesans of ancient Greece were respected for their intellects as well as their bodies. So were the queens of ancient Egypt, who had ruled with their men as equals. But she could hardly expect that kind of thinking from a race just a generation off the steppes, who still preferred tents to palaces. These men expected their women to cook over fires and care for animals. She laughed aloud. At least she hadn’t been subjected to the indignity of pitting her wits against a herd of goats! She had an uncomfortable feeling that the goats might outwit her. She could almost hear Murad’s laughter.

On a branch beside her a wild canary sang his exquisite song, and she looked ruefully up at him. “Ah, little one,” she sighed. “At least you are free to lead your life as you choose.” A bird had more control over its life than a woman! She rose to return to the encampment, and was startled to find the sultan standing in the shadows of a large rock, watching her.

Irrational anger flooded her. She had thought of this glade as a personal retreat. “Am I allowed no privacy?” she snarled at him.

“I feared for your safety.”

“Why? What you want of me can easily be given by a thousand women far more eager to please you than I am.” She attempted to push past him, but he gripped her cruelly about the soft upper arm. “You will bruise me!” she cried at him.

“And if I do? You are mine, Adora! Mine to use as I so choose!”

“The body, yes!” she flung at him. “But unless you have all of me, you have none of me. And you will never possess my soul!” Her voice was triumphant.

A black fury engulfed him. For four days she had been spitting at him like a hellcat. He could render her helpless to desire, but when he was finished with her, her amethyst eyes mocked him, telling him that he did not really own her. His anger had become uncontrollable. Kicking her legs out from beneath her, he sent her falling to the ground.