Seduced by the Sultan(12)

                ‘That was...amazing.’

                ‘I know,’ he said, running the tip of his tongue over her ear. ‘They say it takes a little practice for a woman to orgasm.’

                ‘Then I think it’s very important I keep practising,’ she said solemnly and he laughed.

                ‘You are a curious mixture,’ he observed slowly, ‘of the unworldly and the seasoned.’

                ‘And is that a good thing or a bad thing?’

                ‘I can’t quite decide,’ came his answer. ‘All I know is that I find you quite enchanting and I’m not sure that I’m prepared to let you go.’

                She snuggled up to him. ‘Then don’t,’ she whispered. ‘Keep on holding me, just like that.’

                They were both talking about different things, of course. As someone who had learnt never to project, Catrin was thinking about the glorious present, while—unusually for him—Murat was speculating about the future. She said goodbye, telling herself that she would probably never see him again—but to her astonishment he returned the following week, when she had two whole days off.

                ‘You see,’ he said lightly. ‘I just can’t keep away from you.’

                She made no attempt to hide her delight as he pulled her into his arms. For the first time in her life she understood the meaning of the expression walking on air. She found herself thanking some unknown fate, which had brought her to the other side of Wales, leaving her to conduct her love affair without fear of her mother turning up and creating a scene.

                But that was something else she liked about Murat. He wasn’t interested in her family, or her background. Why would he be, when this was never meant to be anything but temporary? It meant that she didn’t have to go through the agonising torture of explaining what her home life had been like.

                They booked into the same hotel overlooking Bala Lake and for two whole days they scarcely left the bedroom. She wondered how she was going to cope when he went back to his other life. His real life. His desert life, which he’d told her about and which had no room for someone like her.

                She tried not to think about it, but it was impossible not to. It was hard to equate her fierce lover with a man who ruled a vast kingdom and rode a black stallion over hot and arid sands. She ran her fingertips through the rich silk of his ebony hair and tried not to think about losing him.

                Did he guess at her thoughts, or did he read it in her eyes? Was that why he came out with his extraordinary proposition on that last afternoon, before he was due to drive back to London for a business dinner?

                ‘Come away with me,’ he said, pulling on the jacket of his elegant Italian suit.

                She blinked. ‘Where?’

                ‘To London. I have an apartment there. You could live there.’

                ‘With you?’

                He gave a funny kind of smile. ‘Well, sometimes.’

                If only she hadn’t been so naïve. If only she’d realised what she was getting herself into, and that women like her were never offered permanence. The only permanence in Murat’s life was his palace and his busy schedule in Qurhah. The trips he made to England were fleeting and irregular and he certainly wasn’t offering her a conventional relationship.

                But she wasn’t used to convention—or relationships. She was a stranger to commitment and she told herself she didn’t do emotion. Emotion brought chaos—and she’d had enough chaos to last a lifetime.