Devil's Daughter by Catherine Coulter Page A

make you happy, master.”
    Kamal sighed and reached for her. She mewled and whimpered softly as he caressed her. He did not know whether she feigned pleasure at his touch. He knewshe did not expect him to care what any of his harem girls felt. She was here for his pleasure, and not her own.
    He kissed her soft mouth and let his hand rove over her breasts and belly. She parted her thighs as he gently stroked her. He knew a moment of surprise that she was warm and moist, until he realized that her maiden’s passage had been oiled. It was a reminder she wasn’t a woman who desired him, but a slave whose body belonged to him. He stretched out on his back, knowing she would know how to arouse him. He closed his eyes and let himself respond to her fingers and mouth. He was at the point of taking her when he chanced to look into her eyes. They were wide with fright. I am being a pig, he thought, treating her as if she had not a thought or a feeling.
    “I will try not to hurt you, Maya,” he said softly. Slowly, as gently as he could, he pushed into her. He felt her taut maidenhead, and stilled, waiting for her to absorb the feel of him inside her. To his surprise, she suddenly thrust up her hips against him, drawing him deep within her. He heard her cry out. He had the cynical thought that she had likely been taught to cry out. She started to writhe beneath him, and he said sharply, “Maya, hold still. You but hurt yourself needlessly.”
    When at last he lay on top of her, his head resting beside hers on an embroidered pillow, he realized she was stiff beneath him and came up on his elbows.
    “Thank you, Maya,” he said, and lightly kissed her. He saw that she was staring at him uncertainly, and said in a weary voice, “You gave me great pleasure. You may go now, Maya, and rest. Hassan Aga is waiting outside. He will give you a token of my pleasure.”
    “Yes, highness,” she said, and quietly left him.
    His body was eased somewhat, but his mind was not. Maya was like all the other women in his possession. Even Elena would only pretend to listen to him, lower her lashes seductively, and tell him that she didn’t understand him. He remembered with vague regret the European women he had known. Though they lived by rules as rigid as any in the Muslim world, they knew freedom that neither a Muslim man nor a Muslim woman could conceive. They spoke their minds, loved with discretion, and had spoiled him with their willful and entrancing freedom.
    Kamal sighed and rolled over on his belly. He knew he must take a wife soon; it was expected of him. It was his duty to his people and his position. If he did not marry and produce a son, his half-brother, Risan, now nearly twenty, would be his heir. Until Lella’s child was born. Risan could never cope with the com-plexities and the responsibilities that would face him as Bey of Oran. Risan was happiest among the rais, captaining his own ship, preying on the hapless merchant vessels that had not paid tribute to the Dey of Algiers.
    “The girl, Maya, highness. She did not please you?”
    Kamal looked up to see Hassan Aga standing uncertainly in the doorway. “Enough, old friend. I trust you gave her a jewel or something to compensate her for her maidenhead.”
    “Indeed, merely a small token.”
    Hassan turned to leave, but Kamal stayed him. “No, Hassan, remain with me a moment. Come, sit down.”
    Kamal pulled on a bed robe of soft crimson silk andjoined Hassan beside a small table surrounded with soft embroidered cushions.
    “You do not act like a man who has just relieved his needs, highness. You are thinking about Europe, perhaps, and the Corsican who keeps England’s eyes focused away from us? Or perhaps”—his voice deepened—“you dwell on the two ships taken under your seal?”
    “Yes, and ordered, as you suspected, by my mother.” Kamal rubbed his fingers over the knotted muscles in his neck. “At the moment, I think about honor. There is little of it in any of