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  His hands settled at the snap of her skirt. “I like this thing,” he said as he slid the zipper inch by agonizing inch. “Kinda reminds me of those sexy little shorts you wore that first time—”

  Her whole body tensed. She didn’t want to think of that night right now, didn’t want to think about the last time she let uncontrollable desire get the best of her. Her fingers pressed against his lips. “I’d rather not revisit unpleasant memories.”

  She caught the quick hint of a frown across his features but he hid it quickly as he slid her skirt and thong off, leaving them to pool around her feet.

  “In that case,” he said as his shirt slid off his massive shoulders, “I better get down on creating some new ones.”

  Lyrical…mysterious…and dazzlingly erotic. Don’t miss

  Noelle Mack’s new story in THE HAREM, coming in

  December 2006 from Aphrodisia…

  Yasmina sat down on the edge of the fountain, soothed by the rhythm of the bubbling water. She 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 it above the water and an unusual fragrance filled the air. Yasmina drew back.

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

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

  “I did not know that 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 further 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 that 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, leaving the two mortals who had dared to intrude upon her music-making to themselves.

  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 worse, 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 that 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 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.