She leaned forward and whispered hotly in his ear, “I want to see you naked, Amir, my love. I have waited so long, and feared I would wait forever. Now Sebastiano is dead, and I am free to do as I please. It would please me to see you naked,signore. It would please me very much, if the truth be told. Did you think because I am a respectable woman I could feel no desire? Feel no need for you?”
The truth was he had. Amir had assumed it would be up to him to stir desire in her, but now seeing that was not so, he was rather pleased. “I want to see you naked too,” he growled, and his fingers reached around her and began unlacing her gown. He slowly drew the garment down to reveal her exquisite breasts beneath the sheer fabric of her chemise. Bending, he rubbed his face over the soft mounds of barely covered flesh. She shivered, her nipples puckering like flower buds. “I would worship at the shrine of your body, beloved,” he told her passionately as they continued undressing each other until they both stood as the Creator had fashioned them.
He then knelt before her, pulling her body against his face. Her skin was satiny, warm, soft, and scented. His eyes closed, he rubbed his cheek against the tender flesh. The sensation was almost painfully exquisite. She was, he thought, utterly and completely flawless in every way. His desire to join their two bodies rose, but with supreme self-discipline he restrained it. It wasn’t yet quite time.
Bianca almost swooned with the simple joy the touch of his cheek against her skin gave her. Her experiences with her husband had been horrific, but from the passion her parents seemed to have for each other, she knew Rovere’s possession of her was not the way it should be. With Amir it was a far different thing. It was as she had always imagined in her girlish dreams. He stood slowly and carried her to the bed.
She could see the state of his arousal now, and smiled. “Do not wait,” she said to him. “Afterwards there will be time for the rest of it. You want me now, and I would know the taste of true passion, not merely a possession by a man who believes he owns me.” She lay back and opened her arms to him, smiling.
Amir could not deny her honest plea. He loved this beautiful woman, and she had admitted to loving him. “Let me have my way with you but a moment longer,” he said. Then he covered her breasts with kisses, his lips slipping down her torso briefly. Bianca sighed with the delightful pleasure those sweet kisses offered. Finally, he covered her body with his. “I admit to being unable to wait any longer,” he said, sliding between her welcoming thighs, guiding his cock to where it might enter her body.
Then he pushed himself slowly, slowly, slowly into her, for he knew that she had not been used for some time. She was, as he expected, very tight, but her sheath was slick with heated moisture and eager for him. The muscles of that tube squeezed him in an embrace. He groaned loudly with the incredible pleasure she gave him. He kissed her mouth fiercely, and she kissed him back as eagerly.
“Fuck me!”She surprised him, whispering urgently into his ear as he first pierced her, then sank deep inside her. “Do not treat me as if I would break. I am as hot for you as you are for me, my beloved prince. I will not shatter. Your honest passion is nothing at all like the brutal treatment I received at my husband’s hands. Now make love to me as if you mean it! Show me the depth of your emotions—I beg you, Amir!”
He was burning up with his need. He began to use her hard, his cock flashing quickly back and forth within her welcoming body. He felt her sheath tightening and shattering about his cock, but he continued on, a thrust for each long night that he had been denied her passion, although he realized such a thing was really impossible. Still he drove himself in and out, in and out, in and out, seemingly unable to cease his action.
With the edge briefly taken off her own lust, Bianca wrapped her legs about him, encouraging him to greater and greater heights. She felt herself reaching for the heavens and wondered that she did not explode with her pleasure. She was higher than she had ever been. She soared among the stars. This was no passion forced from her by her brutal husband. This time her passion was freely given to the man she could not survive without. They were one! She cried his name over and over again until her throat was raw with the sound. “Oh Amir, my love, my love!”
He thrust and he thrust and he thrust into her softness, but then sensing her passion peaking a second time, he released his own joy, for he could not hold it back any longer. Burying his face in her long ebony hair, he cried her name once,“Bianca!”as he was drained of this first desperate need for her.
They lay still joined for some time, their combined breathing calming itself as they were restored to a state of peace. Finally he withdrew slowly and reluctantly from her wonderful body. Silently their hands found each other, fingers entwining as they stretched out next to each other. She nestled close to him, her head settling upon his shoulder. Reaching out with an arm, he pulled her as close as he might.
“I love you,” he said quietly.
“I love you,” she responded. “You are the only man I have ever or will ever love.”
The admission filled him with untold happiness, for she had captured his heart and soul in her two small hands. His grandfather’s harem was filled with women sent for the purpose of expressing loyalty. Most never shared the sultan’s bed. When Mehmet wished to honor someone, he would usually give away these women, who, having been trained in the arts of passion while in the harem, were excellent examples of feminine perfection with a thorough knowledge of female skills.
This was how Amir had obtained the two women who were his wives. Gifts from his grandfather, both were good women rendered sterile before their arrival in order that Amir would father no children—particularly male children who might one day challenge the Ottoman’s rule. There was little chance that Amir, son of Jem, son of Mehmet, would ever inherit the throne. And if by some quirk of kismet he did, then he would take fertile women to give him sons and daughters.
Both his wives were pretty, although neither could be called a beauty. Maysun was three years older than he was, and Shahdi was a year younger. He was fond of them, for together they kept his home a pleasant and orderly dwelling. He slept with them occasionally, and treated them well so that they were content in their lives. But love them? No. He did not love them. He had never loved them. He had never loved anyone until he had set eyes upon the woman who now cuddled next to him replete with passion.
They were now lovers and for the next month spent every waking and sleeping moment together. They were oblivious to anything but each other. Krikor, the prince’s slave man, grumbled with the changes in his master’s life. He did not like change, he said. Still, he could not help but chuckle now and again at Bianca and Amir. Agata and the other women servants of Luce Stellare smiled and sang at their work, very content to see their beautiful mistress and her beloved prince so happy. Bianca deserved some happiness, the women of the villa agreed. It was past time.
Then one day a messenger arrived bearing a message from the lawyer representing Sebastiano Rovere’s estate. He wished to speak with the widow himself, and requested that she return to Florence. Bianca considered it, but then she sent back a message in her own hand telling the lawyer that if he wished to speak with her, he must come to Luce Stellare. She had no intention of leaving her home.
To her surprise, the lawyer came, and with him her two stepsons, Stefano and Alberto Rovere. Bianca was forced to house them, as her isolated home was nowhere near a village or an inn. “I don’t want you here when they are here,” she said to Amir. “If they see I have taken a lover, they will assume I left their father for you.”
“Such a thing would not have been possible,” the prince said to her. “How could we have met in the first place?” He didn’t like the idea of leaving her alone with her late husband’s sons or the lawyer.
“Common sense is not something the Roveres have. Now that he is dead, they will do what all families do. They will attempt to make him the victim of a bad wife in order to preserve some bit of respectability for him. They would not bother with me at all except that as his widow I have come into an inheritance,” Bianca said.
“Will you accept it?” he asked her, both curious and jealous.
“No, Amir, of course not. I want only my dower portion back in full, with interest. I cannot continue to live on my father’s generosity, Amir, nor do I want to, for it means I must obey my father once again. I will purchase the villa from him, and invest my monies with the di Medici bank. I would be independent. Lorenzo is not his late grandfather, Cosimo, but he will see that I am taken care of, I am certain,” Bianca told her lover. “Once I counted him a friend. I hope that he still considers me such.”
“I want you to marry me,” the prince told her. “I want to take care of you, Bianca. I want to keep you safe from any harm.”
“You already have two wives, Amir. And you cannot marry me,” Bianca said quietly. “You are an infidel. I do not believe the sultan’s grandson is about to convert to Christianity, is he?”
“No,” he admitted with a sigh. “That in itself would be treasonous for me.”
“Then we are at an impasse,cara mia.Yet I am perfectly content to remain your lover,” she told him. “I have no obligations. My family sacrificed me to save themselves, and I am not likely to ever forget that. I love them, but I will not be ruled by them again.”
He looked at her, surprised. “What has happened to you?” he asked her.
Bianca smiled. “Your love has made me strong, Amir. I do not want to be a frail female dependent on a father, or a husband. I can take care of myself. It pleases me to live in my own house. It pleases me to have Amir ibn Jem as my lover. I will be owned by no man ever again now that I know what real freedom is all about.”
