She closed her eyes as he jerked violently against her, muttering something soft and indistinct in his native tongue, and Catrin could feel the salty prick of tears at the backs of her eyes as his body grew still at last.
For a moment, neither of them said anything and then his hand tightened at her waist. ‘Cat?’
Keeping her eyes tightly closed, she said nothing. There was nothing to say. She didn’t know what she expected next, but it was not to hear the sound of slow and rhythmic breathing.
Cautiously, she turned her head to look at him.
He was asleep!
The callous brute had fallen asleep!
Anger and indignation flooded through her. How could he go to sleep after what had just happened? Something she had let happen. After everything she’d vowed not to do, it seemed she was as weak as a kitten when it came to resisting him.
And now what?
Was she expected to lie here and go to sleep, too? To trot down to breakfast in the morning and face those people as if nothing had happened?
She couldn’t.
She ran the tip of her tongue over bone-dry lips. It seemed that, despite all the experience she had gained, she was still capable of being completely naïve and stupid. Or had she really imagined that intimacy wasn’t going to happen with a man as virile as Murat? A man she still loved and wanted, no matter how much she told herself it was wrong.
Because as always Murat was in charge. Everything he touched, he controlled—even here, in a house he did not own. He was still calling the shots, wasn’t he? Just as he always did. Having sex with her even though she’d told him she didn’t want it.
But you did want it, didn’t you?
And if she stayed here, it was only going to happen again. She would keep making the same mistakes, over and over.
Cautiously she rolled away from him, but he didn’t stir and she forced herself to lie there until she could hear the sound of the other guests going to bed—the sounds of their goodnights echoing through the silence.
She lay there until the hand of her watch crept around to two o’clock and the house was completely still, and then she slipped from the bed, tiptoeing across the room to switch the light off. Murat stirred a little, but he did not wake.
Under the cover of darkness, she felt more secure. She crept over to the wardrobe and fished out a clean pair of panties and then put on a pair of cotton trousers beneath her dress. Wrapping a soft pashmina around her neck, she walked quietly over to the desk where Murat had left the official paraphernalia which accompanied him everywhere.
With fingers which were miraculously steady, she found his wallet. The amount of Euros inside was substantial, but she needed enough to pay for a taxi to the airport and a one-way ticket on a commercial airline. So she didn’t feel a flicker of guilt as she extracted a wad of notes.
Sliding her feet into her canvas shoes, she picked up her handbag and crept from the bedroom. Through the silent house she moved, using the back door of the kitchen to gain access to the grounds.
Beneath the starry skies, all was quiet and she thanked heaven that there were no guard dogs patrolling the premises. But her heart was still thundering with anxiety as she slipped among the shadows to the boundaries of the property, terrified that one of the bodyguards might hear her.
Among neat rows of broad beans and tomato plants, she found an unlocked gate—presumably one used by the gardener—and she let herself out. Her breathing was laboured as she descended the dusty track they’d driven up earlier. In the distance, she could hear a faint grunting sound and then a rustle. She wondered if that was the sound of wild boar, scrabbling around in the forested area, then told herself not to let her imagination run away with itself. Because rural Italy wasn’t so different from rural Wales, was it? She had grown up in the countryside and knew there was little to fear as long as you were sensible.