Seduced by the Sultan(11)

                ‘A cactus!’ She looked at him perplexed, and pursed her lips together. ‘A horrible prickly cactus?’

                ‘That is the general perception of the plant, yes,’ he agreed, his voice dipping into a silken caress. ‘But it happens to be one of the world’s most underrated examples of vegetation. Not only can they can store water and survive in the most arduous of conditions, but they provide nourishment and have many medicinal properties.’ He smiled again. ‘As well as producing flowers of quite breathtaking beauty.’

                Rapt now, Catrin nodded. His words sounded...incredible. Like poetry. She wanted to hear more of them. They made her want him to whisper things. Things which weren’t about plants. Things about her. Things about...

                Her cheeks were burning as she walked to the other end of the bar and took ages pulling a pint of beer for another customer, because it was wrong to think that way. She knew that there were two types of men and this one was the wrong type. Hadn’t her mother always told her to look in the mirror if she needed any proof about the wrong type?

                ‘Why are you blushing?’ he asked softly.

                She looked up and suddenly she could think of nothing but him. Common sense and playing safe seemed like quite reasonable endeavours for other people, but not for her. Everything she’d ever been told about handsome, dangerous men began to trickle away, like the froth on top of the pint she was pulling. She looked deep into his eyes and wondered what it would be like to kiss him.

                ‘I’ve never actually seen a flowering cactus,’ she said.

                He smiled, and there was the heartbeat of a pause. ‘Haven’t you?’

                The next day, a delivery was made. At first it looked like a regular florist’s delivery—with its shiny cellophane and fancy ribbon. It was only when she opened it that Catrin discovered the succulent green leaves of a cactus on which bloomed miniature petalled suns, in shades of cerise and rose. She’d never been sent flowers before and she’d certainly never been given anything like this. The originality and unexpectedness of the gesture stabbed at her heart with a fierce kind of joy.

                She guessed it was inevitable that she should agree to have dinner with him. What she didn’t anticipate—and which afterwards surprised her as much as him—was ending up in Murat’s four-poster bed overlooking Bala Lake that very same night.

                It was wild. Or rather, she was wild. She had never known something could feel so good. Her hands splayed eagerly over his naked body as he kissed her and she clung to him as greedily as a barnacle to a rock. At first, he seemed a little taken aback by her passion, but the moan he gave as he thrust deep inside her made her feel almost powerful.

                The next bit wasn’t great because it hurt and because he was furious that she’d omitted to mention the small matter of her virginity.

                ‘Why me?’ he demanded afterwards, as if giving someone your innocence were a burden rather than a gift.

                ‘Because...because I’d waited for someone who knew what they were doing and you fitted the bill. I wanted it be fantastic. And it was. Why?’ She rolled over, resting her elbows on his chest and looking straight into his eyes. ‘Is it important?’

                ‘Of course it is,’ he said. ‘I’m not in the habit of seducing virgins. Their dreams are still intact.’

                ‘Too late,’ she teased, her mouth trailing over his hair-roughened chest.

                He did it to her again. And again. And the third time she lay trembling in his arms, kissing the same spot on his shoulder, over and over again. He was stroking her hair and when she spoke, her voice was dazed.