by Alison Kent
Still she hesitated. He had not expected indecision. ‘It has been a long day,’ he said at last. ‘You will stay here.’ He made a decisive gesture.
‘As another hostage?’ she said tensely.
‘No one forced you to take your brother’s place,’ Kemal pointed out.
‘And I still intend to do so,’ Lizzie said. ‘But I will not stay here with you.’ She got up.
Planting his knuckles on the desk, Kemal leaned across. ‘You will stay here—because you have no alternative.’
His angry words seemed to vibrate in the air between them, and after a few tense moments Lizzie sat down again. Kemal was right. She could not do anything that might jeopardise her brother’s release. The Sultan has spoken, she reflected tensely. Kemal Volkan’s sobriquet was well earned, but he was not, and never would be, her master.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘MS PALMER will be staying tonight,’ Kemal told Mehmet. ‘Make guest quarters ready for her.’
Bowing, the elderly man gave Lizzie a gentle smile. ‘This is excellent news,’ he said in heavily accented English. ‘Welcome to the palace, Ms Palmer.’
Lizzie felt a shiver of apprehension run down her spine. What had she agreed to?
‘Perhaps I should put your mind at rest?’
‘Yes, perhaps you better had,’ Lizzie agreed tensely, levelling a stony gaze on her host.
‘The palace is huge. You will sleep in one wing while I will sleep in the other—in The Sultan’s bedroom.’
Of course! Lizzie thought cynically. Where else would Kemal Volkan deign to lay his head? But she was tired, and she was hungry, and common sense overruled any inclination she had left to defy him.
‘Are you reassured?’ he demanded sardonically.
Lizzie held his stare. ‘Reassured? I am reconciled, for now,’ she said, hoping she wasn’t about to make the biggest mistake of her life.
Meeting Lizzie’s gaze in those few seconds, Kemal learned many things: she was certainly strong, but however hard she tried to hide it there was sadness behind her eyes. And those eyes, as he had just discovered, were a very attractive shade of aquamarine. But why should he care what the hell he saw behind her eyes? What was so different about her?
He did care, however much he tried to pretend otherwise, and that irritated him. It was doubtless down to curiosity, which was a great driver. The puzzle surrounding Lizzie intrigued him. And, whatever she was trying to hide from him, he would find out.
‘I hope I can rely on your complete co-operation tomorrow morning,’ Lizzie said as Kemal showed her to the door. ‘Whatever the conditions might be where my brother is, I insist on seeing him.’
Kemal maintained a diplomatic silence, knowing Lizzie was in no position to issue commands. She was like a tigress in defence of her cub where her younger brother was concerned, and he could only approve of that. There were certainly qualities to admire in Lizzie Palmer. But Hugo was old enough to make his own decisions. It was time for Lizzie Palmer to let go—in more ways than one.
‘First thing tomorrow morning, we will move this matter on,’ he promised. He viewed Lizzie’s tense features with a very masculine mix of self-interest and desire. The attraction of channelling her fire and honing it in his own direction was keen—and he would only be doing her a service, after all. Someone had to release the pressure building up inside her.
Kemal saw Lizzie’s eyes glittering like green ice as she stared back at him. Even when she had every reason to be reassured he could still feel her defiance flying at him. But it only fuelled his appetite. Had her beauty and her bravery derailed his pride? Certainly they made him long for the tussle of words between them to end, and for the combat to begin in earnest.
It would have to be conducted somewhere a lot more comfortable than his study, though, he reflected wryly, and it was still a little soon for the bedroom. She would need maximum reassurance, maximum preparation, maximum foreplay. Any haste on his part would only consign her to a life of repression, of inhibition—and, anyway, it pleased him to make her wait.
‘Shall we go somewhere we can relax and talk?’ he suggested, when she made to follow Mehmet. ‘Now that you are reassured about your brother, the business part of our meeting is concluded.’
‘There is no other part to our meeting,’ Lizzie pointed out. ‘This isn’t a social call. I would prefer to be shown to my room.’
‘Ah, yes, the dungeon,’ Kemal murmured sardonically. ‘But may I suggest you take some refreshment before your confinement begins?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ Lizzie said, heading for the door.
As she reached it, Kemal was forced to lunge forward and snatch her to safety, before it swung open to admit a servant coming to inform him that food was ready to be served in the sunken lounge. Shaking herself free, Lizzie dislodged her spectacles.
‘Let me help you—’
‘No!’
‘I insist.’ Taking hold of the delicate gold arms between his lean, tanned fingers, Kemal held them up to the light as if to check for damage. It was just as he had suspected. ‘Well, well,’ he murmured. ‘Why do you hide behind these?’
Lizzie was conscious of the servant still hovering. This was not the moment to make a scene. ‘I don’t hide behind them,’ she said tensely. ‘I choose to wear them.’ She held out a stiff hand for their return and after a moment Kemal gave them to her.
But she didn’t need to wear them, he thought, puzzling over the spectacles as Lizzie put them back on. Both lenses were clear glass. The clues were piling up. She couldn’t leave now until he had solved every one of them.
‘We will eat in the sunken lounge,’ he said, refusing her the chance to object.
‘I’m really not hungry,’ Lizzie said, reddening with embarrassment when her stomach growled in disagreement.
‘Well, I am going to eat,’ Kemal informed her. ‘You may do as you please.’
She couldn’t remain in his study alone, Lizzie realised as the servant silently pivoted on his heels and left them.
Kemal stood back to let her pass, and then led the way into another sumptuous room. A richly padded seating area was sunk into a floor of snowy white travertine marble, and torches in high brackets on the walls cast a discreet light over the intimate space. The servants had arranged the food on a long, low table set between two plump banks of cushions.
It was a set for seduction, not a business meeting, Lizzie decided, holding back. But it did look incredibly comfortable—and she was incredibly hungry.
It was also incredibly decadent, she discovered, struggling to keep her pencil skirt below her knees as she sat down. Kemal had no trouble adapting his powerful frame to the exotic relaxation area. Where he was concerned East and West were one and the same, Lizzie realised as he shrugged off his jacket. Loosening his tie, he tossed that aside too, and a tremor tiptoed down her spine when she suddenly realised that they were quite alone. There wasn’t a sound now, other than water splashing rhythmically over tiles somewhere far in the distance.
‘Relax,’ he said, mind-reading again. Stretching powerful arms along the back of his bank of cushions, he viewed her with amusement. ‘Or I promise you will get indigestion when you start to eat. Borek?’
Lizzie stared at him. It was hard to believe this was the same man who had ordered the detention of her brother and his co-workers. But then it was a struggle to impose clear thinking of any sort on a mind churning with such unexpected thoughts. She should never have agreed to move into such sultry surroundings, Lizzie realised, checking her skirt. At least in his study there had been the huge expanse of mahogany desk separating them. Here, on silken cushions, their knees were almost touching.
Kemal’s gaze was disconcertingly direct as he gestured towards a platter loaded with crisp golden pastries. ‘I think you will find borek quite delicious…’
His eyes never left hers for a moment, and Lizzie felt a treacherous heat start to invade her veins as he continued to explain the food to her. Hi
s low, gravelly voice seemed to be telling her something very different from the ingredients he was listing.
‘Or perhaps you would care for a ripe plum?’ he suggested finally, in a matter-of-fact tone.
The change in his voice was as good as an alarm bell. It was as if she had been in an erotic trance—a trance into which he had placed her, Lizzie realised, recovering herself fast. ‘The food does look delicious,’ she admitted coolly, ‘but there are other things to talk about. I’m really not interested in taking a culinary safari,’ she added in a tone of mild apology, ‘but thank you all the same.’
‘Then perhaps you won’t mind if I do,’ Kemal said, refusing to be put off. And, taking his time to select the plumpest fig, he used a small pearl-handled knife to skilfully expose the moist fruit.
Lizzie found she could not look away as he devoured the succulent flesh. His lips, his tongue, the nip of his teeth—the very thorough way in which he went about the task—made the breath catch in her throat.
She shifted position awkwardly on the unusual seating, hoping Kemal’s mind-reading skills were taking a break. He had the ability to make her long for pleasure, for self-indulgence, to be the fruit beneath his mouth, the object of his very thorough attention. And there was nothing more dangerous to her cause than that, Lizzie thought, looking at him. Not unless she turned the tables on him…
The idea of seducing The Sultan, bending him to her will, played in Lizzie’s mind for a moment, until reason won through and she looked away, knowing she had neither the inclination to allow fantasy into her life, nor the talent for putting her wandering thoughts into practice.
‘You must excuse me for being so greedy,’ Kemal murmured, ‘but when the fruit is sweet and full of juice it requires my fullest attention.’
Lizzie’s stomach lurched. There was something very dangerous in his eyes. She looked away quickly, feeling her cheeks burn. It was such a human look, rather than the cold and very calculating expression she had come to expect. But even when she looked away the image of Kemal—his lips, his tongue working rhythmically and so very thoroughly on the fruit—took root in her mind and refused to go away.
Kemal watched the transition in Lizzie as she sank a little deeper into the cushions, and he allowed the moment to hang long enough for her full lips to part and her small pink tongue to sneak out to moisten them. Then, reaching for another plump fig, he said, ‘Would you like me to prepare this one for you?’
‘Thank you—’
‘And feed you?’
Lizzie realised some minutes must have passed while she was in a daze. Now he was holding out a plate of prepared fruit. ‘That won’t be necessary, thank you,’ she assured him quickly.
But Kemal brought a piece up to her mouth before she could stop him, and, brushing the warm sweet flesh against the full swell of her bottom lip, he murmured, ‘Open wide.’
Lizzie’s gaze slid away from the disturbing look in his eyes to the even more worrying strength in his hands. She noticed that he had unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled his shirtsleeves back to reveal powerful forearms shaded with dark hair. There was hard muscle and sinew showing clearly beneath the tanned flesh, and he was so close she could feel his body warmth reaching out to envelop her. Sandalwood invaded her senses and his warm minty breath mingled with her own.
‘I’m really not hungry,’ she said faintly.
‘Of course you are,’ Kemal insisted, placing the fruit between her lips. ‘And anyway, you don’t have to be hungry to enjoy this.’
Well, that was true at least, Lizzie thought, closing her eyes as she drew the fruit slowly into her mouth.
It pleased Kemal to see the faint flush on Lizzie’s cheeks, and to hear the raised pitch of her breathing. Her full lips parted again when she had swallowed, as if she was waiting for him to fill them once more. Obliging her, he watched as she tested the next piece of fruit delicately with her tongue. He hardened instantly, and when she drew the firm flesh into her mouth he almost groaned out loud.
Now they were both slaves to erotic thoughts, he mused as his senses soared to a new level. ‘This fruit is so ripe,’ he murmured, feeding Lizzie another mouthful, ‘it is practically begging to be eaten.’
Another sharp intake of breath mingled with his words, and when their fingers brushed, trying to dab at some escaping juice on her lips, their eyes met too.
It was enough for now, Kemal brooded with satisfaction. She was firmly secured upon his erotic hook, and very soon he would reel her in.
‘My brother—’
As she spoke she frowned and drew away. She was so sensitive to his thoughts, to his slightest change in mood—he would have to be more careful in future, Kemal realised at Lizzie’s soft and unexpected exclamation. She was a far more complex creature than he could ever have imagined, more intriguing than he could ever have wished. He liked it that way.
Lizzie forced herself back into an upright position on the cushions, and, seizing a large linen napkin, wiped every trace of juice from her lips. ‘Do you give me your word that Hugo is all right?’ she said, fixing a determined expression back on her face. She would not be led astray, or distracted from the only reason she found herself in this position.
‘I have given you my word,’ Kemal said, straightening up too.
‘When can I see him? Tomorrow?’
‘Before Christmas.’
Christmas…Christmas… Lizzie swallowed hard, determined that nothing she was feeling inside would show. But as she watched Kemal fastidiously clean each one of his strong, tanned fingers on a square of linen, she knew, just from the slight emphasis he put on the word, that he had already begun to understand the power that even the mention of Christmas allowed him to wield over her. It was as if he could see where others had been blind, and his intuition frightened her more than anything else. The ugliness in her past was not for public view.
The shadow flitted across her face so fleetingly Kemal might have missed it had he not been watching for precisely that reaction. It confirmed all his suspicions about Lizzie Palmer, and supplied a framework into which he could place the pieces of the jigsaw. When the puzzle was completed he would know all there was to know about her. Already he knew that Christmas was the source of some deep-rooted pain. But there was more.
‘Shouldn’t you ring your parents to let them know where you are?’
Up to that point it had been just a game for him. But instantly Kemal regretted his graceless probe. From the look on her face he might have hit her.
‘They’re dead,’ she said flatly.
The light that had burned so brightly in her eyes was completely extinguished, he noticed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said after a while.
‘Don’t be,’ Lizzie said. And the way she compressed her lips warned him not to push her any harder. ‘If all the holiday flights are full, how will the men get home?’ she asked.
For a moment Kemal was surprised by Lizzie’s change of tack, her swift recovery. ‘That’s my problem,’ he said. ‘Once everything is resolved to my complete satisfaction we will talk about the men.’
‘But I’m here. Why can’t they go now? Shouldn’t you at least be trying to book their flights?’
Irritation rose inside him. No one pressed him. Ever.
Maybe it was time. Maybe it might be more fun this way. Maybe he should try it for a change…
A shiver ran down Lizzie’s spine as she tried to gauge Kemal’s reaction. His eyes were so changeable—one moment silver-grey, and hard like steel, the next dark and unreadable. The sooner Hugo could get back home, the sooner he could stir up a hornets’ nest of lawyers to get her out of this mess. She had to have some sort of goal to work towards. Or did he mean to keep them all as hostages? Had her offer been in vain?
‘I must have something to work towards,’ she said. ‘The least you owe me is a proper answer.’
‘I owe you nothing,’ Kemal said, his gaze sharpening as he looked at her. ‘I accepted your offer, freely made. You will stay her
e. Your brother and the other men will return home when I say.’
Tension between them was suddenly snapping again, like an electric current along a wire, and there was an edge to Kemal’s voice Lizzie hadn’t heard before. There was something primal and fierce at work, and it should have warned her off. But instead it only redoubled her determination.
‘Sit down. We haven’t finished,’ she said sharply when he moved to get up.
Kemal froze in position and slowly turned to look at her. For a moment the air hummed with his incredulity. ‘Oh, yes, we have,’ he told Lizzie in a dangerously soft voice. ‘And now I will have someone show you to your room. We will meet again tomorrow, at nine o’clock prompt.’
‘Just wait—please—’ Lizzie struggled up from the cloying embrace of the soft silk cushions and managed to catch up with Kemal at the door, grabbing his wrist.
Kemal gazed down, noticing how quickly she snatched her hand away from his naked arm. They were an explosive combination. There was nothing about her he would not find out at a time of his own choosing. ‘Yes?’ he said.
‘Where am I to sleep?’ Lizzie asked.
‘Didn’t I tell you?’ Kemal said.
‘No, you did not,’ Lizzie informed him. ‘Other than to assure me that it would be in a wing well away from you.’
‘And so it shall be,’ he assured her.
‘So where—where, exactly?’ Lizzie pressed.
‘Don’t concern yourself,’ he said. ‘I’m quite certain you will be delighted with your suite of rooms.’
‘Which is where?’ Lizzie asked, glancing around at a number of archways leading to different areas of the palace.
Kemal took a moment, and she didn’t like the look on his face one bit.
‘In the harem,’ he said at last.
‘You’re asking me to sleep in your harem?’ Lizzie demanded, her heart pounding with indignation.
Leaning back against the door, Kemal folded his arms and granted her a long, considering look. ‘Don’t flatter yourself, Ms Palmer,’ he said.