Desert Wind Read online

  She helped him to put his feet to the floor and he sat there sagging against her bosom, his head pillowed on her soft breasts. “It was the Diabolusians who did this to me?” he asked.

  “Vicious pirates,” she spat. “Raiders along the coast. They must have taken you to their citadel at Deseo. I have heard there is a prison there.”

  “Infierno,” he told her. “It is deep in the rain forest, far from the coast.” He shuddered. “Why can’t I remember being there?”

  She cooed to him, stroking his forehead. “It will all come back to you, my beloved,” she said. She slid her arm around him and helped him to stand.

  He was embarrassed at his nakedness and unsettled that she stood watching him take his staff in hand to piss. The heat of his discomfiture flamed across his face.

  “You have such a sturdy tool,” she said then giggled, and the sound made him grind his teeth.

  “It is unseemly for you to be watching me, lady. Stop,” he ordered.

  She turned her head away. “It is not as though I’ve never seen your tool, beloved,” she reminded him. “I’ve seen it, held it, accepted it into my body more times than I can count.” She looked up at him. “Though I’ve not suckled it for quite some time.”

  His face flamed at her words and the relieving stream of his urine ceased. He wanted to yell at her to leave him the hell alone but he feared he couldn’t remain standing on his own. He was leaning against her as it was, her arm bracing his back. It took some doing but he began to piss again, eager to lie back down for his legs were nigh to giving out on him.

  “Where are my pants?” he asked as he finished, and she’d helped him to sit on the edge of the bed.

  “You don’t need them for a while yet,” she said, “Now lie down.”

  He didn’t have the energy to argue with her and did as she ordered, lying down on his side. He stretched out his long legs, crooking one over his manhood for she was staring at it as though it were a treat.

  She pulled the lightweight covers over his lean hips then stooped down to pick up the chamber pot. “I need to trim your beard later today.” She carried the chamber pot to the window but before dumping it out, yelled to someone nearby. “Yosun, have you heard the good news? My Devrim is home!”

  He had tucked his hands beneath the cool comfort of his pillow. At her use of what he realized was his name his brows drew together. The name meant nothing to him and he could not dredge forth from his memory any hint that it ever had. He feared that the savage gash to his head had permanently claimed all memory of his previous life and that frightened him. He had no way of knowing what kind of man he was and that frightened him even more.

  “I’m making your favorite meal tonight,” the woman told him as she came back to the bed. “Kashkek.”

  He had no idea what that was, but it didn’t sound good to him. It sounded like something a person would throw up or that a cat expelled along with a fur ball. He was hungry—starving actually—for she’d been feeding him nothing more than softly scrambled eggs, chickpea broth and watered-down tea. His appetite for something more substantial was growing by the minute.

  “You try to sleep while I tend to your chores,” she said, and once again he wondered what chores those were, but he was too worn-out to care.

  Alara stood at the door and watched as the man she truly believed to be her husband closed his eyes. She waited until she was sure he was asleep before tiptoeing over to the bed to look down at him. Gently she peeled the covers from his bare leg for she could not get enough of staring at the hard, muscled body that was now her man’s.

  “Look at you,” she whispered, and sank down to her knees on the floor.

  She ached to run her hands over those bulging muscles, to trace every inch of the strong flesh. She wanted the weight of him pressing her down into the mattress, his powerful legs shoving hers apart, opening her for his invasion, his strong hands circling her wrists to anchor them to the bed. Her body ached with the need to have his stiff cock inside it for it had been a long time since she had known Devrim’s tool. Need pooled deep in her belly and made her juices run. She could feel the thickness, the moisture gathering in her cunt.

  Alara reached down to touch herself as she had many, many times over the years, lifting the hem of her skirt to stroke the heat gathering between her legs. Since Devrim had been gone, when need had become a necessity, she had learned to thrust her fingers into her channel to relieve the building pressure. She had learned how to pleasure herself quickly to relieve that tension, but such ministrations could not compete with the power and the stab of her man’s cock. Though she had contemplated using something to mimic that delicious pressure, she had refrained from doing so, feeling it wrong and against the tenets of the Prophet.

  But now that Devrim had returned, there would be many long nights of writhing beneath him on their marriage bed. There would be countless days of suckling his tool, laving his balls as he had always enjoyed—far more, if truth be told, than he had enjoyed copulating with her.

  Alara had no illusions of how she looked. She was overweight and had been since shortly after their marriage. Her breasts were beginning to sag—they had never been firm and thrusting upwards as most women’s had. Her nether cheeks were lumpy with fat as were her thighs, and a fold of fat hung from the undersides of her upper arms. Hair that was baby fine at birth was now even finer and growing thin on the top. Its color—a soft shade of silvery brown—was the only thing about her waist-length braid that pleased her. In all, she looked more middle-aged with the body of a woman in her late fifties than the forty year old she was.

  Fingering her clit, she forced her mind away from her looks and concentrated on the perfection that was Devrim’s handsome face. She mentally traced the thick, seductively peaked brows, the long, spiky eyelashes, the straight nose, the full mouth that so tempted her to taste its pleasures. In her mind she caressed that strong jaw, stubborn chin, those high cheekbones and the twin dimples that lurked at the corner of his mouth. Her gaze fell to the mole just to the side of the right corner of his passionate lips and her movements beneath her skirt increased in speed.

  She had always found that mole so sensual, she thought as her wet fingers slid over and around and into her heat. How many times had she placed her lips to that intriguing mole?

  She smiled, remembering another mole at the top of his thigh that had garnered her attention often when she had suckled his tool.

  Dragging her eyes down his hard chest, past the deep indention of his perfect navel, to the shadow of his cock hidden beneath the obstruction of his raised thigh, she pictured him hard and oozing with need and that thought made her mouth water with wanting him.

  He surprised her by turning, pulling one hand from beneath the pillow to let it rest on his chest as he moved to his back.

  She drew in a lustful breath for his legs had parted and she had a good view of his staff lying there with its broad, circumcised head crooked over his rippled balls.

  Oh how she longed to take that soft flesh into her mouth and turn it hard as steel! How she wanted to feel the rush of his seed gushing down her throat, to taste him, to savor him, to lick the remaining juices from his shriveled flesh after she had pleasured him. Her body throbbed with needing to run her tongue over his pulsing flesh.

  Increasing her fingering, she found herself staring at the tattoo that now circled his left wrist. It was an intricate design, and although she knew nothing about tattoos, she realized it must have taken a long time to etch into his flesh. Her gaze traced the drawing circling his wrist and dipping down to a point over the back of his hand but like all the women and the majority of men in her village she could not read. She recognized the fire-breathing dragon with talons that curled around his wrist, some of the various symbols that were familiar from old drawings on the cave walls within Mount Saffet that meant honorable, warrior and brave. She stared at the writing and thought perhaps it was Devrim’s name when in reality it read—Ardalan, True Fi
rstborn Son of the Sultan Eshan Jaleem. Had she known, she would not have reached out to wrap her fingers around the sleeping man’s penis as she thrust her fingers deep inside her.

  He woke to watch the lust being fulfilled on the face of the woman who claimed him as his husband. He knew all too well what she was doing for he had caught her at it many times in the last few days. Her actions made him uneasy—a touch disgusted—but who was he to accuse her when all he wanted to do was put his hands to his member and relieve the ache that started there when he viewed her own actions?

  Silently he watched her bring herself to climax and before she could open her closed eyes, he quickly shut his own, willing the heavy erection that had developed in her hand to go away. He felt her squeezing him, running the pad of her thumb over the sensitive head, smearing the fluid oozing there, and had to steel himself not to groan. If he lay perfectly still, she would manipulate him to orgasm whether he wanted it or not, and by the Prophet how he wanted it! He had no choice but to open his eyes and stare into her eyes.

  “Please don’t do that,” he asked. “Not when I’m sleeping.”

  Her face took on an avid look. “But you are awake now, my husband. Let me pleasure you.”

  If he protested, she’d keep at him. He’d learned that already. He was too weak, his head hurting too bad, to fight her over what he knew was going to happen no matter what he said.

  “All right,” he said on a long breath.

  Her smile was beatific as she scrambled up on the bed and wedged herself between his thighs, pushing his legs farther apart. On her knees, she bent over him, taking him into her mouth, grunting with satisfaction as his cock became even more tumescent.

  She was good—a veritable expert—at suckling him, he thought. Her mouth was hot, her tongue nimble, her throat capable of taking his full length. While her left hand held him close to the base of his shaft, pulling his flesh taut, her right was gently kneading his testicles, her mouth sliding up and down his rigid length. She lightly twisted her left hand—swiveling him in her tight grasp as she worked her mouth up and down him, her head moving in circles counterclockwise to the motion of her hand. Her tongue stabbed at the slit of his head and he tensed, grabbing handfuls of his pillow to keep from moaning. She lapped at his stiffness, slurped the juices, pressed her lips together and exerted an unbelievable amount of force on the head of his rod. He could not keep from lifting his hips—giving her all of him, wanting all she could do. His hands came down to grip her head, to begin for her the rhythm that would take him where he needed to go. His heels were digging into the mattress as he strained upward, his breathing shallow and quick. Her practiced lips increased the pressure on his head and he came—violently, wrenchingly, the very root of him feeling as though it would thrust from the back of her head so far inside her mouth had be pressed.

  He collapsed as the last tremor of pleasure rippled through him, spurted from his member. His hands fell to the bed to either side of him and he went limp, completely sated. He could not even move as she licked his cock clean of even a trace of cum.

  Pushing herself up in the bed, she looked down at him with a benevolent expression, her head cocked to one side. “Did I please you, husband?”

  He could do nothing save nod. What little energy he had was spent and sleep was reaching up with comforting arms to take him to Her breast.

  “Perhaps next time you will be inside me,” she said, and got off the bed. “Here, have a sip of water before you fall asleep. You are still dehydrated.”

  Grateful for the cold, sweet water she brought him, he drank greedily never knowing, never suspecting, the water was laced with a strong sleeping potion to keep him weak and tied to her bed.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Halim stared at the man who had come scurrying down from the crow’s nest as though he were monkey. As agile as one of those critters, the man was thin and gangling, his waist-length black hair tied back in a queue that from a distance might pass as a tail. He had scurried down the spar—swinging from crosstie to crosstie effortlessly and—like an acrobat—had landed gracefully on his bare feet. He grinned at Halim’s open-mouth stare and strutted off.

  “I’ve never had a man take to the seas as that one has,” Captain Kemen Vasquez remarked.

  “Who is he?” Halim asked, unable to take his eyes from the sailor.

  “I don’t know what his true name is—I never ask when I hire a man on—but he goes by the name Exento.” The captain grinned. “That is the Diabolusian word for freed. My guess he’s running from something or someone.”

  “He is Hasdu?” Halim asked.

  The captain shook his head. “No, but he hails from your part of the world. If memory serves, he’s Ojani.” He scratched his cheek. “Why are you so fascinated by him, Halim? Do you know him?”

  Halim shook his head. “No, but he is a dead ringer for someone I used to know.” Grief welled up in Halim and he had to tear his gaze from the sailor.

  “Someone whose life was taken the day yours so drastically changed?”

  “Aye,” Halim agreed.

  “A good friend?”

  “My prince,” Halim acknowledged.

  Captain Vasquez studied the man he had brought onto the Halcón when he and his men had stopped to investigate the dead men lying on the Kishnu beach. Looking for spoils, the men had discovered Halim barely alive and had dragged him before their captain, expecting bounty for a Hasdu head. Had the survivor been a Hasdu tribesman from Rysalia, his head would have ended up on a pike, but as it was, he had become a reluctant passenger. “How is your back now?” Vasquez inquired.

  Halim shifted his broad shoulders. “There’s still pain but it grows less and less each day.”

  The Asaraban had been taken to Vasquez’s personal physician as soon as he had been brought onboard, and after examining the unconscious man, the healer had pronounced a badly crushed vertebrae in the man’s back. He had recommended surgery but Vasquez wanted to give the man his options before making such a dangerous decision for him.

  “You can either let the surgeon operate to remove the vertebrae and replace it with a piece of bone from your hip or you can risk becoming a cripple, unable to walk. The choice is yours,” Vasquez had explained. “I know which I’d choose.”

  Halim had opted for the surgery, although the pain in his hip from which the surgeon had chiseled bone to replace the crushed vertebrae hurt far more than the pain in his back. He still limped, but the surgeon swore that would stop when the hip was thoroughly healed.

  Vasquez watched Halim as the older man’s gaze followed the one calling himself Exento. There was a hunger in Halim’s stare that said more than words ever could have. “You were close to your prince?” he asked.

  “I thought of him as a son,” Halim replied then grinned. “I have seven daughters at home in Asaraba.”

  “You poor man,” Vasquez commiserated. “I have five so I know a portion of what you’ve gone through over the years.” He hooked his index finger down his long nose. “Although all five have different mothers.”

  Halim laughed. “Wicked,” he pronounced.

  “You are sure you want us to put you ashore in Kensett?” Vasquez asked. “It’s a long walk to Asaraba, my friend.”

  “I have to inform my sister she has lost her husband and the sultan his only son,” Halim answered, his smile vanishing. “Neither is something I look forward to doing.”

  “Who will undertake the rule of your country now when the sultan goes to his reward?” the Diabolusian pirate captain asked.

  “There are sons of the sultan’s three brothers, but not a one of them worthy of leading our people,” Halim replied. “One is a girly man if ever there was one. He is afraid of his own shadow and another is a scholar who gets lost going from one end of the palace to another, his nose buried in a book. As for the other two?” He shrugged. “The Prophet help us, but I couldn’t begin to imagine which one would have the sense to sit the throne. That will have to be left
up to the senate.”

  “Have you any notion of what the sultan will do to avenge the destruction of his army?” Vasquez asked. “I can’t imagine a man with the reputation of Eshan Jaleem to sit idly while the Kishnu thumb their noses at him.”

  “He will amass another army,” Halim answered, “and send us back to wipe out as many as we can. That will take time. While new men are being trained and equipped, the sultan will ride us with raking spurs. He will not take the death of his son in stride. Prince Ardalan was the future of Asaraba.”

  “What kind of man was he?”

  Halim smiled sadly. “A great man. A brave man. A man who wanted to lead our country in peace. He was as tired of war as his men were and he would have made a wise ruler. The sultan is a vindictive, cruel man, who relishes the torture of those who do not agree with him. He’s as liable to slap me in prison for surviving the massacre as not.”

  “And you want to go back to that?” Vasquez queried.

  “Not really, but Asaraba is my home. My family is there. I wouldn’t be much of a man if I simply walked away.” He was watching Exento shimmying up another spar.

  “That one did,” the Diabolusian said, nudging his chin toward the agile sailor. “I warrant he left behind at least a wife, possibly a great deal of debt. Men do not embrace piracy with the welcome he did without there having been problems far more pressing than the threat of ending up being hanged for pillaging the coasts.”

  “It is uncanny how much like Prince Ardalan he looks,” Halim said. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear they were the same man except the prince was muscular, his hair much shorter and there was a regal bearing the monkey man could never emulate.”

  Vasquez looked from Halim to Exento then back again, his brow furrowed. “What if our man could take your prince’s place?” he asked quietly. “How hard would that be?”