Captive of Kadar

by Trish Morey

  She brushed her jeans off as she stood to collect her things together. ‘In honour of your visit, you mean?’

  He shrugged. ‘It has been a good year. It is an occasional custom.’

  She shook her head as she collected up her shopping. ‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘I thought you were just a businessman. But the people here seem to love you.’

  ‘Who are you?’ he countered. ‘I thought you would spend your time in Burguk idly shopping, but then I find you have wooed the entire village.’

  Her smile widened as he offered her his hand and she filled it with the handles of her bags. ‘I shopped, don’t worry.’

  * * *

  Amber lay on the Sultan’s bed, her body slick with sweat as she panted her way down from the dizzy heights Kadar had taken her to.

  Above the bed the constellations had been reproduced so that it seemed as if they were lying under the desert sky, the stars tiny pinpricks of light.

  Amber wanted to pinch herself. She’d come to Turkey in the hopes of getting a taste of the country her great-great-great-grandmother had so clearly loved, never expecting that she’d find her own adventure.

  Would have pinched herself, if she’d been able to use her hands.

  ‘Um, I hate to bother you, but...’

  Kadar lifted his head from where he’d buried it against her neck when he’d collapsed against her, his brow drawn into a frown that lasted only as long as it took her to tug on her bindings, and his frown disappeared and turned into a smile.

  ‘You have a problem?’

  ‘Only if you don’t untie me.’

  His smile grew wider and made her toes curl and her mind send an alert to be careful. A playful Kadar was a dangerous beast. A playful Kadar made her wish things that were playful might be more permanent. And that was a dangerous place to be.

  ‘I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before—the perfect way to keep you out of trouble.’

  ‘You’ll be in trouble if you don’t untie me.’

  ‘No sense of humour,’ he joked as he kissed her cheek and reached up to untie her hands. His skin smelt of sweat and sex and hot-blooded man and she breathed him in, wanting to imprint it on her mind so she would never forget.

  She rubbed her wrists as she brought her arms down and he captured them in his hand and kissed the insides of her wrists. ‘Does that hurt?’

  ‘Not really,’ she said, though she’d tugged hard against her restraints, because it was worth a little pain to feel this man between her legs and feel his chest against her breasts and his mouth upon her lips.

  A little pain was so worth it.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THERE WAS A holiday mood in the village the next day and it seemed as if the entire valley was celebrating, all the people of the small villages and towns coming together to celebrate a good year.

  They gathered at the local football ground, setting up food stalls and braziers to ward off the chill, a colder night forecast because the snow clouds had scudded away and left the sky clear. Big spits roasted whole sheep turning the air mouth-watering. Amber recognised the man she’d bought the pomegranate juice from the day before and the man who’d sold her the souvenirs, both excited to meet her again and introduce her to their wives and families. And the children who’d shown her around the town brought their parents to meet her. Half the town seemed eager to meet her.

  She was charmed by the welcome, and especially by the little girl she’d met the day before who held her hand and stayed by her side when the other children were all running around.

  They dined on the spit-roasted lamb with okra and tomatoes and smoky eggplant topped with bright red pomegranate seeds and a dozen other salads besides, plus the best bread Amber had ever eaten, all washed down with apple tea and the local white wine.

  And afterwards, as the colour drained from the late afternoon sky, everyone took their seats in the big spectator stand and Kadar was introduced to cheers and he climbed onto a podium and gave a speech she couldn’t understand a word of, but it was clear the speech was a success, because the crowd was all smiles and cheers and applause and she felt good just being part of the celebration.

  Everyone, it seemed, wanted to have a word and shake his hand as he made his way back into the stands and alongside her and he spent time listening to them all. She watched him as he gave them each time, one by one, and felt an insane amount of pride.

  Which was mad, because he wasn’t hers to be proud of, and she was only here because of his overblown sense of duty, but she was proud all the same. Because she was here, and every now and then it was just nice to forget the real reason why they were together.

  He apologised for the delay once he’d managed to reach her side.

  ‘Your workers love you,’ she said. ‘No boss should ever apologise for that.’

  He looked at her strangely, and at the little girl sitting in her lap, and then smiled. ‘Wait until you see what’s coming next. The best fireworks in the world, made right here in the valley of Burguk.’

  As the last of the light leached from the sky they watched a fireworks spectacular the likes of which Amber had never seen. Bright colours lit up the sky in wheels and airbursts and fireballs shooting across the sky, turning night back into day, the air filled with the gasps and cheers of the onlookers, and all overlaid by the ever-present smell of sulphur.

  And on her lap sat the little girl—Ayla, she’d learned her name was—her dark eyes wide with wonder, her mother sitting alongside, a baby wrapped snug in her arms.

  When the last of the smoke had drifted away and it was time to hand a now sleepy Ayla back to her family and go, the little girl roused with the motion and put a hand to Amber’s hair and said the first words she’d heard her say. She turned to Kadar. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She asked if you’re a princess.’

  Amber smiled and shook her head at the young girl. ‘No. Not a princess. Just an ordinary everyday girl.’

  She was anything but ordinary, Kadar thought as they headed back to the Pavilion of the Moon.

  Anything but everyday.

  And when they went to bed and she handed him the silk scarf to bind her wrists, he said, ‘No,’ and let the shred of silk flutter to the floor. And she blinked but she turned around and he took her shoulders and turned her back to face him. ‘No,’ he said again, urging her down upon the big wide bed, before climbing on top. ‘No ties this time.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘You haven’t recoiled in horror yet. I’m thinking I can handle it if your fingers brush my scars.’ He hesitated. ‘If you can, that is.’

  And she wound her arms around his neck and pulled him into her kiss.

  Their lovemaking that night was tender and achingly sweet. He sighed as her fingers stroked the hard nubs of his nipples, growled when her fingernails raked slowly down his sides and reached for him, hard and wanting.

  And when he slid into her, Amber almost cried out with the sheer bliss of the connection.

  Afterwards, as they lay facing together in the bed, and Kadar lazily stroked his hand up and back along the curve of her side, he asked her, ‘Why did you let a stranger’s child sit in your lap?’

  She smiled. ‘Ayla is sweet. Who could resist her?’

  ‘You have a way with children.’

  ‘Lucky, really, seeing that’s what I do.’

  ‘You work with children?’

  She dipped her head. ‘I teach at a special school in Melbourne, for children who have problems, physically or developmentally. It’s good work. Rewarding work.’ And a way to help other children when she’d been too unknowing and too young to help Tash.

  ‘That is a noble thing to do.’

  ‘Not noble,’ she said, shaking her head, as she told him about her tiny cousin who
had died aged barely ten. ‘But useful, I hope. I just want to do something that helps.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I see,’ and his smile told her he did understand, and his thumb made slow, lazy circles over her hip for a while, so that Amber was almost lured into sleep by his restful touch.

  ‘Ayla has a crooked leg.’

  Amber blinked open her eyes and bit her lip. ‘I know. I didn’t want to ask.’

  ‘I will ask then. Perhaps her family were too shy to ask for help.’

  She raised herself up on her elbow. ‘Is this your village? Is this where you came from? Is this why you care so much?’

  He shook his head. ‘My village was further east and much smaller, nominally part of Iran, but so close to the border with Armenia and Azerbaijan that our elders felt beholden to no one.’

  She ignored the fact he’d finally answered a question he’d skirted around that very first day and concentrated on what he hadn’t said. ‘Was?’

  ‘My village is gone.’

  Spider legs of dread crawled down her spine. She thought about the scars on his back. The scars of someone who’d suffered flames, or even worse. ‘Fireworks,’ she said on a leaden breath.

  He didn’t say yes or no, just kept sweeping the palm and the fingers of his hands along her side. It should have been soothing—in any other circumstances it would have been soothing—but instead she could feel the weight of the world hovering above his fingertips. The weight of loss. And so she didn’t press. She let him take his own time.

  ‘Most of the village was employed in the industry,’ he said at length. ‘It was illegal, of course, and poorly managed, but it brought a poor village employment and money, hard currency that some insisted be used for health services and schools for the community before improvements in safety. Safety was the responsibility of the owners, some said.

  ‘And it did bring money, for a time, but then it brought death and destruction. Nobody knows what happened—it could have been anything to cause a spark—but they had fireworks stockpiled high for a celebration and something set off a chain reaction. An explosion ripped through the factory, and once started there was no stopping the fire, and no chance for those caught inside, even if they had survived the initial blast.

  ‘My family. My father and mother, my three brothers and my infant sister all perished.’

  His hand stopped moving as his words petered out.

  ‘But you, you made it out.’

  He took his hand away, looked at her with eyes that stared at her, both bottomless and empty. ‘I had argued with my father that morning. I had pleaded with him that I wanted to go to the new school and learn for a proper job, not go to work in a factory.

  ‘He told me I must work in the factory, alongside my brothers.’

  ‘You shouldn’t feel guilty,’ she said, ‘because you argued. Because you survived. They would not want that.’

  ‘It wasn’t that I survived.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘It was because I wasn’t there.’

  ‘But your burns...’

  ‘I wasn’t burnt trying to escape.’ He shook his head, his jaw set hard. His eyes weren’t empty now. They were filled with pain. Of betrayal. Of loss. Of hurt beyond what was humanly endurable. ‘I was trying to get in. To save them.’

  She shuddered, her voice a whisper. ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Six.’

  She swallowed as she attempted to picture it. To imagine. A scene of conflagration, where the world in which you lived had turned into hell, with people trying to escape the fire, to flee, and a small boy running the other way to try to save those he loved.

  He turned his gaze towards the constellation of stars built into the ceiling over the bed. ‘My mother was upset that morning with the argument I had with my father, the baby crying. I should not argue with my father, she told me, even when I had discussed it with her and she thought one of her children should have a chance at a life in the city. So I pretended to go along with them all and I went to the factory with them, but then, when my father’s back was turned, I sneaked away to the school. I was in my second class when I heard the explosion, when the ground and walls shook and the windows of the new school blew in. And I knew then, that I should be with them.’

  Silence surrounded them. A silence hung with sorrow and the horrors of the past.

  ‘Who saved you?’ she asked at last.

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t get far. I couldn’t. All I felt was heat and then something fell on me and then nothing, and the next thing I knew, I woke in a hospital in Istanbul and it hurt so much, I wished I was dead.

  ‘Mehmet found me. He saw the reports in the paper, of a village that had been wiped off the face of the earth, of a child with no family, not expected to live. He called for the best doctors, the best experts. Somehow they brought me back from the brink of death and kept me alive, though there were many times I wished they hadn’t bothered. I lost count of the number of operations and skin grafts.’

  She shuddered. It would have been excruciating for anyone to bear, let alone a small boy with no family around to support him.

  ‘Mehmet is a good man.’

  He rolled onto his stomach, his head on his crossed arms, exposing the tangled scar tissue that was his back in a way that he’d never done before, and it warmed her that he was relaxed enough to do it in front of her now, even while his story chilled. ‘The best of men. He schooled me himself until I was strong enough to go. He guided my footsteps. I was lucky.’

  Lucky.

  It was an odd word for a man who had lost everything and nearly his own life to boot.

  She leaned over and tenderly kissed his shoulder at the place where skin met scar. For a moment he stiffened, and then she felt him relax under her lips.

  ‘Does it still hurt?’

  ‘It pulls.’

  And that would hurt. Probably nothing compared to the pain he’d endured through his years of operations, but no doubt more than what most people could bear.

  She pressed her lips softly to his skin again, thinking about the damage that could be done when things went wrong and about the people she’d met today, the families and the workers who adored their boss, and shook her head on a sigh.

  ‘What?’ he said, rolling back onto his side, lifting her chin with his hand.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ she said. ‘After all that happened to you, how can you even stand the thought of fireworks? And yet you manufacture them. You employ half the valley. What if the same thing happened here?’

  ‘You think I would let that happen to these people? Of course, it can be a dangerous business. But it can also be done safely. There are no children in my factory. No babies. No stockpiles to explode if an accident did happen.’

  He curled his hand around her neck, his fingers lacing into her hair, his gaze drinking her slowly in from her toes to her head, making her scalp tingle and setting her senses alight.

  But it was the look in his eyes that triggered the flame deep down inside her, once again triggering her need. Dark eyes that burned with their own smouldering heat.

  ‘Don’t you see, who better to run a fireworks factory than a man who understands what is at stake if something goes wrong?’

  He brushed her hard nipples with the backs of his fingers, turning her skin of her breasts goosebumped as he pulled her head towards his, and she sensed this was madness and could do nothing to stop it.

  Who better? she asked herself as he pulled her against his hot mouth.

  There was no better.

  There was only Kadar.

  * * *

  He lay there under the soft glow from the pinpricks of light from the constellation of stars above the bed, listening to her even breathing, her head on his shoulder, her hair spilled like a river of gold
across her pillow, her pale skin pearlescent.

  Who was she, this woman who had stumbled into his life and wedged herself in so tight? Who was she, that he would spill the details of his life to her? Details that nobody but his closest friends knew—Zoltan and Bahir and Rashid, his friends from university, and Mehmet, of course, who’d been there and witnessed it all firsthand.

  He never thought about children, not having his own, and yet he’d looked at this woman with a child on her lap and he’d seen the woman she would be with her own child—a dark-haired child that he had put in its mother’s belly.

  Where had that come from?

  And why did a few days suddenly seem too short, when he was used to a woman lasting no more than a few hours? Why did the thought of putting her on plane back to her home country make his breath stall and his chest tighten?

  He wanted her gone.

  He wanted his life back.

  He’d wanted those things all along.

  And yet...

  He looked at her sleeping. A sultan would be proud to have her in his harem. As his favourite.

  Why shouldn’t he?

  No. A sultan wanted progeny. A sultan needed to have a son or preferably a host of sons so that the bloodline could continue.

  A sultan needed family.

  Kadar didn’t.

  A family was the last thing he wanted.

  Because if you didn’t have family, then you couldn’t lose them.

  He eased her head away and she sighed in her sleep and rolled over, her breathing settling back into regular, while he punched his pillow and cursed the sleep that was proving elusive.

  Madness.

  Because he wasn’t a sultan and he didn’t have favourites and he wanted his life back the way it was and nights without a headful of questions.

  There was no question about it, no question at all.

  It would be better once she was gone.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  AMBER LOVED HER DAYS in the Burguk Valley. When he wasn’t needed for meetings with officials or at the factory, Kadar took her sightseeing, showing her the highlights of the wide weather-scoured basin. He took her to other cliffs where in past ages the shepherds had taken shelter and made their homes in the rock as they once had before the Pavilion of the Moon had been carved out the same for a Sultan’s retreat. They walked trails along ancient trade routes that took them past centuries-old rock churches, still with frescos of rich reds and golds on the walls and ceilings, and Roman rock tombs and aqueducts.