by Trish Morey
‘Beautiful,’ he said, and he drew her closer, his lips slanting across hers, a silken touch, a teasing caress, followed by a kiss so soft and gentle that it left her dizzy and breathless and she would have collapsed against him but he had already wrapped his other arm around her and gathered her close against his hard chest.
And he tasted so good, of spice, and heat and the promise of a night of the pleasures of the flesh.
His kiss deepened, ratcheting up her need as she answered the heady demands of his hot mouth and seeking tongue, as she clung to him, breathless, her head spinning in the whirlwind of desire.
He heard a growl—his growl—as he pulled his head back and she looked up at him to see him frown and his dark eyes conflicted.
‘I hope you have a strong stomach,’ he said, and his voice was gruff and contained more than a note of bitterness.
She blinked, confused, an ounce of fear wending its way into the warmth of her arousal as she realised. Nobody knew where she was. Nobody but the polis who had all but handed her over to this man. And she had nobody but herself to blame for being seduced by the promise in his words.
He was a stranger.
He’d promised pleasure.
But there was nothing to say that his version of pleasure equated with hers.
She shivered. What did he have planned for her?
And that flash of fear must have been reflected in her eyes.
‘I will not hurt you,’ he said, though his voice was barely gentler, as if he realised the fears he had triggered, ‘but I warn you now, what you see will not be pretty.’
CHAPTER FIVE
HE’D HAD TO warn her, he told himself.
His usual kind of woman was worldly-wise. His usual kind of woman could forgive anything, be it age, obesity, or deformity, given the right incentive. A night or two in a five or more star resort with all the trimmings. A gown. A trinket. Great sex.
He knew this for a fact.
Because his usual kind of woman blinked and looked away and pretended nothing was wrong and then was only too happy to move on.
This woman wasn’t his usual kind of woman. She might not be innocent in the strictest sense of the word, but she was still more ingénue than sophisticate.
That was why she was now biting her lip. That was why she had run from him in the Spice Market.
And if she had run from him then, what would she do when she saw?
Perhaps he should have let her go after all.
But letting her go wasn’t an option any more. She was his responsibility and now she had chosen what course she wanted for the night. Pleasure, rather than duty, and he could see in her eyes that she was expecting some kind of perfect night. A night to take away as a souvenir of her trip. A holiday fling to tell her friends about when she got home. She was still nervous and shy, but she had convinced herself that this was what she wanted and she was brimming with anticipation, and so responsive and eager in his arms, her mouth so much like a siren’s song, that it had been almost impossible to pull away.
But she was unpractised. Unworldly. And he would not take her to bed without warning her that things might not be as rosy in reality as the light of an Istanbul sunset.
She looked up at him, only the slight tremble in her bottom lip now betraying her hesitancy. ‘I’m a big girl, Kadar. I can cope.’
He kissed her then, mostly because she looked so vulnerable and uncertain and only a little because there was a tiny part of him that feared she might change her mind when she saw, and, God only knew, he didn’t want her to change her mind. Only to be aware.
‘Then come,’ he said, ushering her inside, closing the sliding doors on the fading sky. ‘And I will show you.’
The day had been intense. The evening was proving even more so.
And Kadar, the man who had moved her, the man who had rescued her, was at the centre of it.
Amber’s emotions hovered between excitement and fear, and fear now had the edge. Her body hummed as he shrugged off his coat and took her hand to lead her to the big bedroom.
He flicked a switch and it was just as she imagined. A wide bed with a gold coverlet, drapes in rich jewel colours and Turkish rugs on the floor that brought all the shades of the room together in a splash of silken splendour.
But the furnishings earned no more than a glance, not when it was the man before her that held her interest. He slipped off his shoes and she held her breath, wishing she could do something to slow the beating of her frantic heart.
She had never had a man strip for her before. But he wasn’t doing this to excite her. It was challenge she saw in his eyes, rather than desire, as he peeled off his knitted sweater and his trousers and the black band of underwear until he stood naked before her.
No, he wasn’t doing this to excite her—but how could it not? Even while she feared what could be so horrible that he must show her, it was impossible to stand impassive while he bared his body to her.
And as each item was removed her excitement grew, and with it her confusion.
Because without his clothes, he was beautiful. His bare shoulders and chest and the hair that swirled a pattern that drew the eye southwards to the nest of dark hair from which his member hung, thick and heavy. A sizzle zipped down her spine.
A sizzle that ended on a question, because it was only then that she realised the welt of skin. The redness. The scar over one hip.
Her eyes lingered, her focus tightened, and, knowing he had her attention, he turned slowly. Breath hissed through her teeth.
His back, from his right hip up to his broad shoulders, was a mess of scarred skin, reddened and angry, pulled excruciatingly tight and wrapped over itself in places, left puckered and swirling in others, as if it had melted and been stirred and left to set.
Whatever had happened to this man had happened a long time ago and had been shockingly brutal and she could only imagine the pain he must have suffered not only then but in the months and years afterwards.
‘Do I repulse you?’
She looked levelly at dark eyes cast over his shoulder.
‘Do you want me to be repulsed?’
He spun around. ‘What?’
‘You’re burnt. Scarred. It’s impossible not to notice. So now that I have noticed, do you want me to ask how it happened, or to ignore it?’
‘Ignore it.’
‘Fine. Then that’s what we will do. And in that case,’ she said, with her hands at her jacket, ‘I think one of us in this room is overdressed.’
It was the most brazen thing she’d ever said. A second later her jacket was flung to the floor and that was the most brazen thing she’d ever done. Until she followed it with her top and boots and jeans and stood there less than a minute later, in her perfectly serviceable, totally unsexy underwear.
That was when she faltered, wrapping her arms around her midriff and looking up at the ceiling. Good grief, what was she thinking, making out as if she were some kind of striptease artist? She was way out of her depth. Way out of her league.
It was his hands that tugged her arms open. ‘Why did you stop?’
She shook her head and lowered her eyes to his. ‘I’m no good at this. I can’t pretend to be something I’m not.’
‘No good?’ he said, and took one hand, and guided it to his erection, hard and wanting. This time air rushed into her lungs. She looked down as he bucked under her hand. God, he was so beautiful. So big and rock hard. ‘Do you still think you are no good at seduction?’ She blinked up at him as his hands reached behind her and eased free the tie holding her hair, letting her hair tumble over her shoulders. ‘You are a beautiful woman, Amber. Beautiful and desirable. Believe it.’
With this man’s hands in her hair, with her hand cupping the weight of his thick erection, she almost could. A
nd then he kissed her again, and his hands skimmed over her shoulders and back and he was easing her bra straps down her arms and air stroked her breasts and tightening nipples as her bra fell away.
She gasped into his mouth as his hands encircled them, unable to stop herself from trembling, while his thumbs stroked her nipples, coaxing them still harder, and her senses buzzed and sparked, and the aching space between her thighs pulsed with an unrelenting need.
God, had she felt this breathless before? This utterly boneless?
He scooped her into his arms, as if sensing her weakness and her nervousness, but confusing her when he bypassed the bed. ‘Where are you going?’
‘We have the entire night. There is no rush. A shower will relax you.’
Her body sizzled at the thought. She’d be surprised if she didn’t damn well steam when the water hit her skin.
The bathroom was like nothing she’d ever seen before. There was a huge shower stall with a marble shelf on three sides and a big basin carved from alabaster under a tap that he started to fill. A decorative metal dish held a block of soap and a rainforest showerhead sat above.
And then he pulled what looked like a pair of tea towels from a rack, only longer. One he lashed around his own waist. The other he slipped around her back and tied it at the front over her breasts.
‘Have you ever had a Turkish bath?’
‘No.’
‘You should, before you go home. An afternoon spent in the hamam is not to be missed. But until then, let me give you a taste.’
He slid his hands under the cloth. ‘But we can dispense with these,’ and he slipped his fingers into her panties and slid her perfectly serviceable and utterly boring underwear down her legs.
And she wasn’t naked, not technically, even though the cloth was short enough to be considered indecent and left her legs bared to his gaze, but the combination of his touch on her skin and the knowledge that there was nothing more between them than a few threads of cotton set her skin tingling.
He drew her into the shower stall and sat her on the ledge while he dipped the metal dish into the wide bowl, testing the temperature before tipping the bowl slowly over her shoulders.
The water flowed over her in a warm rush and he filled the dish again, and lifted her chin and poured water over her face and head, scrunching her hair, repeating the action until she was drenched.
And then he took the soap, olive-oil soap, he explained, and soaped her arms and shoulders , rinsing it off with another dish of water.
There was something very sexy, she realised, about a man wearing only a cloth knotted low at his hip when his muscles moved so clearly under his skin as he worked. Especially when that cloth was distended by what lay beneath. It was sexier than if he’d been naked.
Was that how he felt? And then she glanced down at the now sodden cloth, to see it plastered to her body, her breasts, her waist and the jut of her nipples plain to see.
Kadar finished with her arms and knelt down and started work on her feet and legs, his hands slippery with soap, massaging circles up her calves and over her knees and higher to her thighs.
She reached for him and he stilled her hands, putting them down on the ledge. ‘Sit,’ he told her. ‘Be patient.’
It was a torture of sorts, this slow deliberate assault on her senses, as his fingers came achingly close to her core and her muscles clamped down.
He knew what he was doing to her. He knew and he smiled and placed that leg down and started working on the other.
‘You’re a cruel man, Mr Kadar.’
He smiled and massaged his thumbs into the arch of her foot until she cried out with the pleasure and the pain before he shifted his attentions to her ankles. More water. More soap. More slide of skin against skin past her knee, until once again he was stroking her inner thigh, stoking her need.
And took his hands away again and she had to stop herself from whimpering as he took the soap and spun it in his hands, the smile in his dark eyes almost wicked as he reached his slippery hands to her legs and slid upwards, and this time he didn’t stop.
She gasped when his thumbs brushed her curls but his smile only widened and his thumbs didn’t stop there. They made lazy circles over her mound while his fingers continued to caress her thighs. Those thumbs ventured mercilessly lower, and still lower, so achingly close and yet nowhere near close enough for the need that he was building inside her.
‘Oh, God,’ she said. ‘We do only have one night.’
And he laughed, low and husky, but something in her appeal must have worked, because his slick fingers joined the game and her thighs opened on a long sigh, the stroke of his fingers like a precious gift.
And somewhere in the waves of sensation building inside, it occurred to her that if this was foreplay, then she’d been missing out a whole lot of years.
She blinked half-shut eyes open, half-drunk-with-sensation eyes trying to focus as she watched him take a dish of water from the basin and pour it between her parted thighs, a slide of warm water against sensitive flesh, sluicing away the soap.
He smiled at her then, and she thought how handsome he looked through her sex-addled eyes and how pleased he looked with himself and that now that she was so relaxed and less nervous he would no doubt make love to her.
God, his fingers had been fantastic there, but it was him she wanted, deep inside her.
Except he didn’t make love to her. Not with the part of him that was still pushing hard under his own cloth.
Instead his smile widened and he pushed his arms under her legs and pulled her closer to the edge of the ledge and dipped his head down.
She tensed, and reached for his head. ‘No!’
‘Why?’
And she’d been about to say that Cameron had never—could never—except she felt the flick of this man’s tongue against her tender flesh and sensation unplugged her brain. It was either that, or the crack of her head hitting the tiled shower wall as he drove her wild.
There was no pain. Only pleasure. Because nothing could detract from the mounting pleasure of his tongue working magic, of his lips tugging and teeth nipping so gently but, oh, so purposefully. As his fingers played at her entrance and his lips tugged on her most sensitive flesh and his fingers slid inside and there was no holding it back and the storm was upon her.
He pulled her face down to his and she came, clenching around his fingers, kissing lips that tasted of him and tasted of her, as she rode out the storm front.
She clung to him as the shudders subsided, feeling suddenly guilty and gauche and so unpractised. ‘I’m sorry,’ she panted. ‘Apparently I couldn’t wait.’
The sound of his low laugh rumbled against her, rumbled through her. ‘Don’t be sorry,’ he said as he pulled himself away and and coaxed her to her feet.
She stumbled against him. ‘I don’t think I can stand.’
‘You don’t have to,’ he told her as he turned her and had her kneel with her back to him on the wide marble ledge.
She went willing and breathless, her body still humming. Whatever happened now, she reasoned, was all for him and she would do her best to make it as good for him as it had been for her.
Although it had been so good...
One of his hands slid up the length of her back to her shoulder, the other sent seeking fingers to her core.
There was nothing for her spine to do in response but to arch and curve into his touch. He groaned then, as if she were the one torturing him, and then she felt the press of him there—right there—where his fingers had been and exactly where she had wanted him from the moment he’d offered this one night of pleasure.
A connection she’d sensed from the very first moment their eyes had connected across the Spice Market.
His hands anchored her hips, and she felt her tension mir
rored in his as he hovered and kept her there, waiting on the brink.
He gave a strangled curse and pulled away but before she’d turned he was back, the foil packet ripped asunder, the rubber already rolling on, and he was back. Mercifully back, his hands holding her hips steady as he slowly and purposefully pushed into her.
Her head lolled back as he filled her.
Filled her and lingered, his body against hers, inside hers, the connection complete. She tried to cling to him while he withdrew, and hold him there, for he was almost gone, when he thrust into her again, deeper this time if it were possible. And then again. And then his hands left her hips and stroked her breasts and teased her nipples and she whimpered with need while her hands lay flat on the tiled walls. All she could feel was desire.
And want.
And need.
How did that work? Surely it was impossible for a woman who’d just been blown apart by the touch of a wicked tongue and clever mouth to feel that coiling, building spiral of sensation again so soon?
But no. Not impossible. Not now. Not with this man.
He pumped faster. Harder. His ragged breathing bouncing off the tiled walls. His mouth was at her throat, his hands squeezed her breasts and his hips slapped against hers and somehow the impossible happened, because for the second time in one day she felt her need building and spiralling and focusing until all there was was this man feeding her need and the only thing she wanted was more and the only place she wanted to go was higher.
He touched a fingertip to that sensitive nub of nerve endings and gave her more.
He took her higher with each deep thrust.
Until she could take no more and there was no place left for her to go but to shatter like a wave crashing on rock. She heard a cry of release and recognised her own voice. Kadar went rigid behind her and she heard another cry, coarse and triumphant and his, as he found his own release.
He slumped over her, his mouth at that sweet spot where her shoulder joined her neck, his choppy breathing fanning her skin. With a final parting kiss to her skin, he pulled free and snapped on the shower. Within a few moments the shower stall was filled with steam and he helped her from the ledge and held her as the water cascaded down over them both.