Seduced by the Sultan(7)

                She wondered what he would say if she told him the truth. If she told him she wished he would confound the gloomy expectations of her mother and make a decent woman of her. She wondered how he’d react if he knew that night after lonely night, when he was back in Qurhah and she was lying alone in this great big bed—sometimes she allowed herself to fantasise about marrying him. About him taking her back to his desert country as his bride...his Sultana—where she would learn to speak his language and bear him fine, strong sons and live with him to the end of her days.

                She guessed that he would probably recoil with horror—and then she wouldn’t see him for dust. Because after more than a year of her being Murat’s mistress, any sign of commitment was just as distant as it had been when he’d plucked her from the valleys and brought her to London, quivering with passion and innocence and a fierce sexual hunger.

                He’d said from the start that there was no future in this relationship and that marriage was never going to happen. She’d known that when he took a bride, it would be one as unlike her as it was possible to be. And even though she’d told herself she was fine with that, sometimes she wondered if she was just kidding herself. Lately, she had found herself longing for some kind of commitment. For the comfort and security she’d never really had.

                But that was a waste of time and energy.

                ‘Would you like me to tell you how much I missed you?’ she said eagerly.

                ‘You may tell me whatever you please, my beauty—just as long as you let me reacquaint myself with these magnificent breasts of yours,’ he said, disposing of the now tattered brassiere with a careless flick of his fingers. ‘For I have been dreaming about licking them like this.’

                Catrin stifled a moan. ‘So have I.’

                ‘Shall I play with your pretty nipples?’ he continued. ‘Shall I lick them and suck them and make you wet in lots of different places?’

                ‘Oh, yes, please,’ she breathed.

                ‘And is there anything else I should do?’ His hand began to move down over the concave dip of her torso. She felt the exploratory caress of his palm as it skated over her belly, a forefinger briefly circling the faint dip of her navel before it continued its journey. ‘Anything else I can tempt you with?’

                ‘Can’t you...guess?’ she whispered.

                ‘I can try. I think you might want me to slide down these rather schoolmistressy panties you’re wearing...’

                ‘You don’t like them?’

                ‘They are a fantasy I didn’t realise I had until now. I just want to get the damned things off.’

                His finger hooked inside the garment to give action to his words, but then it stilled. Lifting her head to see why, Catrin looked into his face and she saw something in his eyes she didn’t recognise. Something which made her screw her face up in confusion because...was it sadness she read there?

                ‘What is it?’ she whispered. ‘Murat—is something wrong?’

                But the sadness—if that was what it had been—had now been replaced by the much more familiar smoulder of lust.

                ‘No, nothing is wrong,’ he growled as he slid the panties down over her knees and started to kiss her.

                Catrin shuddered out a sigh as he brought her closer to him, because this was a dance she knew so well that it had become almost second nature to her. Her sexual experience before she’d met Murat had been zero, but the Sultan had changed all that. He had taught her so much. To trust her body and to love it. And that sex was the most sublime of all pleasures and she should never feel guilty about enjoying it.