Seduced by the Sultan(48)

                She coughed again and this time her whole frame was wracked with paroxysms. ‘It’s just a cold.’

                ‘It is not just a cold. It’s a damned fever.’

                ‘Whatever.’ Cat could feel the light touch of his hand on her clammy brow as new waves of dizziness swept over her. Suddenly, the chattering was making her teeth hurt and she felt as if ice had started creeping around her veins. She started trying to pull the duvet out from beneath her but her fingers were fumbling too much. ‘I’m c-cold.’

                ‘You are not cold,’ he said grimly. ‘You are burning up.’

                ‘I want the duvet.’

                ‘Not now, Cat,’ he said. ‘Stop fighting. Let me deal with this.’

                His soft command lulled her as it had lulled her so often in the past. Her head fell back against the lumpy pillow and her weighted eyelids began to close, until she felt his fingers at the fly of her jeans and her eyes flew open.

                ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

                ‘You think I’m so desperate that I’d take advantage of a sick woman?’ His voice was bitter; his mouth a contemptuous slash. ‘Let me assure you that I have nothing but your welfare in mind right now—and it’s clear that, while you may have been helping care for your mother, you certainly haven’t been looking after yourself.’

                She wanted to tell him not to bother, but she couldn’t. All she could do was lie there like a piece of meat on a block as he began to undress her, like some awful parody of the way he had undressed her countless times before. But there was no softness or appreciation in his touch now. She was aware of him tugging at her zip and slithering the jeans down over her hot thighs in a way which was almost clinical.

                And suddenly, she was too woozy to care. Even when he peeled off her T-shirt and one of her breasts brushed against his palm as if it had been programmed to do so. Through the haze of her growing fever, she sensed his momentary hesitation. As if he was remembering how once he would have dragged his thumb across her bra to incite the puckering nub.

                But he withdrew his hand as if he had accidentally plunged it into a pit of snakes. And it hurt to think that now he was repulsed by her, when once he hadn’t been able to get enough of her.

                Feeling like an unwanted sacrifice, Catrin lay there in her bra and pants, while Murat withdrew his phone from his pocket and began to speak in rapid Qurhahian.





                                      CHAPTER TEN

                CAT SWAM IN and out of a strange and swamping fever which seemed to have taken her prisoner. She remembered feeling cold. Freezing cold. But she was forced to curl up into a foetal position, because Murat was stubbornly refusing to let her cover herself with the duvet.

                Murat?

                Was she delirious?

                No. It seemed she was not. Her eyes flickered open to see the hawk-like Sultan sitting beside her bed, his dark body very still and watchful. Murat was in her room. He was filling the tiny space as if it were his right to be there.

                ‘Why are you still here?’ she heard herself mumble at some point. ‘Didn’t I tell you to go?’

                ‘You did. Repeatedly. But I’m here and this is where I’m staying. Looking after you, if you must know—since you seem incapable of taking care of yourself.’