He could see her momentary hesitation—as if she recognised that there could be no going back from this. So don’t ask me, he prayed silently. Let me take you to bed and kiss away the questions. Let’s forget tonight ever happened and just enjoy what is within our grasp.
‘Have you been seeing someone you’re intending to marry?’
He made an impatient movement with his hands. ‘My whole adult life has been spent meeting prospective wives,’ he said. ‘You know that. I’ve explained it to you. I told you about Princess Sara. I told you all about the others—the ones I deemed unsuitable.’
‘That’s just a clever way of avoiding my question. A simple yes or no will suffice.’ She licked her lips, as if playing for time. ‘Have you been courting another woman?’
There was a pause.
‘I’ve been in discussion with the King of Zaminzar’s daughter, yes,’ he said eventually. ‘With a view to marriage, yes again.’
‘And did you...did you sleep with her?’
Her question was so quiet that he had to strain his ears to hear it and Murat glowered in response. He wondered if she was aware that she was severely testing his patience, and that he would not be interrogated like a common thief. Yet once again something in her green eyes smote at his conscience and he found himself shaking his head.
‘No, I did not. And I am shocked that you should ask me such a question when I’ve told you that I never sleep with more than one woman at the same time.’
‘You’re shocked?’ she echoed and then shook her head. ‘You are unbelievable, Murat. Unbelievable.’
Murat could feel the slow smoulder of rage building up inside him and he let it come. He let it heat up his blood and his skin, the way it did just before he rode into battle. Because rage obliterated pretty much everything else, and it was much easier to live with than regret.
‘You do not own me,’ he said. ‘And you do not have exclusive rights to me. Even if I had wanted to have sex with her, I couldn’t have done so—because the kind of woman I will eventually marry is not the kind of woman who will give her body freely to a man.’
There was a long and disbelieving silence as she stared at him.
‘Unlike me, you mean?’ she questioned.
He shrugged. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘Or maybe you should. Maybe it’s good for me to hear you admit that there are two types of women. The type who become wives and the type who become mistresses.’
‘But I never promised you marriage, Cat,’ he said. ‘I made that clear from the start. I told you that our relationship could never be anything other than temporary. Didn’t I? Or did you think that my words were empty?’
Cat stared at him, feeling some of her anger evaporate as she forced herself to take stock of what he was saying. Yes, he had told her all those things; right from the start he’d been honest with her. He’d told her that she could be his lover, but never his bride. And what had she done? She’d reassured him that she was perfectly okay with that. She’d even managed to convince herself that theirs was the kind of relationship she wanted. That she was modern enough not to care about convention. That she was so messed up from her past that she didn’t want a relationship with all the normal rules.
But somewhere along the way something unexpected had happened. She had started to care for him, and that had never been part of the plan. She’d been so eager to hold onto him that she had moulded herself into the sort of woman she thought he wanted her to be. Like some kind of sexy geisha, she had put his needs before her own every time. Always smiling; never complaining; she had accepted whatever came her way.