Sheikh's Dark Seduction

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.’

‘I don’t need you,’ she muttered.

‘It’s not up for discussion, and I’m not going anywhere until you’re better. Better get used to it, Cat.’

He was so bossy, she thought crossly. He was making her drink water when she didn’t want to drink anything—glasses and glasses of the stuff. And he was wringing out that little flannel she kept draped over the small sink. Wringing it out in cold water and making her yelp as he rubbed the icy cloth over her protesting skin.

Some time, through the awful pounding which had resumed inside her head, she heard someone knocking at the door and then a low conversation taking place in a language she recognised instantly as Qurhahian. And that was when Murat walked over to the bed, holding a small and golden phial, which he lifted to her lips.

‘Drink this,’ he commanded.

Through bleary eyes, she gazed at him suspiciously. ‘Is it some sort of poison?’

‘You think I’d feed you poison?’

‘Nothing about you would surprise me.’

‘Drink it, Cat,’ he said gently. ‘It’ll make you feel better.’

But it didn’t. It made her feel worse. Thick and viscous, it clung to her throat and was so bitter that she would have spat it out if Murat hadn’t held her lips together and forced her to swallow.

‘Don’t do that,’ she said from between gritted teeth.

‘Then drink it.’

‘It tastes disgusting! Like carpet slippers!’

‘Not a taste I am familiar with. So why not close your eyes and pretend it’s something else? What would you like it to taste like, habibti?’

He was luring her into the realm of fantasy as he’d done so often in the past, and Catrin screwed her eyes against the light and the pain and the awful ache in her heart. He used to call her habibti when he was making love to her. Habibti when he was stroking her hair...

‘I’d like it to taste like warm, buttered toast,’ she said, thinking of a book she used to read as a child beneath the bedclothes, while her mother was crashing around downstairs. She remembered how comforting it had been to escape into the land of fantasy. How the books had allowed her to forget the harsh reality of her real life. Her voice grew dreamy. ‘Or hot chocolate with marshmallows and cream, and chocolate sprinkles on the top.’

‘What else?’ he prompted, his voice very gentle again.

‘Turkish delight by the Christmas tree,’ she continued. ‘And snow falling outside and making everything silent.’

By the time she’d finished speaking, all the liquid was swallowed and her eyelids were growing heavy. Through the flickering curtain of her quivering eyelashes, she could see the watchful gleam of his black eyes.

‘I’m tired now,’ she said.

‘Then sleep.’

She did. One minute she was drenched in sweat and the next she felt as if she were floating outside her body, looking down on the tiny room. While all the time, Murat sat beside her bed, like some granite-faced sentry. The only time he moved was when she needed to use the bathroom and he shrugged her into the robe which was hanging on the back of the door and carried her along the corridor. But she was too woozy to care about the unexpected intimacy of even that.

Afterwards he took her back to her room and laid her on the bed and she looked up at him as he smoothed back her matted hair. She could feel that stupid great flare of love welling up inside her and wondered why it hadn’t left her, as she had been praying so hard for it to do. But he had been kind to her, hadn’t he? More than kind. And kindness could be seductive too—the most seductive thing in the world.

‘Thank you,’ she said, and fell into a deep sleep.

When she awoke it must have been morning, because a chill grey light was coming in through the windows and Murat hadn’t moved from the chair he’d been sitting in. He didn’t even appear to have slept, for his gaze was sharp and alert as soon as she opened her eyes. Only the new beard at his jaw and the dark shadows hollowing his cheeks gave any indication that he must have been there for hours.

And she was lying there in her bra and pants!

Surreptitiously, she reached down for the duvet and hauled it over herself and saw him give a flicker of a smile.

‘This is the bit where you say “what happened?”,’ he said, handing her a glass of water.

‘What happened?’ she questioned, propping herself up on her elbows to gulp it down, achingly aware of him and his proximity.

‘You were sick and now you’re better.’

Fragments of the night came filtering back. The way he’d pushed away those strands of sweaty hair from her brow. The way he’d carried her. She tried to push the image away. To think about things which wouldn’t make her realise how much she’d missed him. ‘I do remember. You gave me something disgusting to drink.’

‘I agree that taste-wise it’s not up there with nectar,’ he said wryly. ‘That was what we call a Dimdar. It’s an old desert remedy made from the sap of a rare cactus which grows in the Mekathasinian Sands, and which desert warriors have been using for centuries to treat their ailments.’

She was horribly aware that the inside of her mouth felt gritty and stale. ‘I need a shower.’

‘I’m not stopping you.’

But she felt horribly vulnerable as she struggled out of bed. As if she’d been caught with all her defences down and she wasn’t sure how best to erect them again. Grabbing an armful of clothes, she went along the corridor to the communal bathroom, but the face which stared back at her from the mirror confirmed her worst fears. She touched the sweat-soaked tendrils of her hair, which hung around her pinched face. Murat had seen her like this. Unwashed and pale and looking nothing like the woman he had once lived with.

She told herself she was no longer his arm-candy, nor was she trying to impress him. Nonetheless, she spent a long time in the sputtering shower, half expecting him to be gone by the time she returned to her room. He hadn’t, of course, and she blinked at the scene which greeted her. He had made the bed and boiled the kettle and was now pouring boiling water into two mugs, in which bobbed a couple of teabags. It made such a comforting yet incongruous image, that for a moment she felt as if she were right back in the middle of her delirium.

He glanced up as she walked in, his black eyes lingering on her for a moment longer than was necessary. ‘You look better,’ he commented.

‘That wouldn’t be difficult. I feel much better.’ She put her damp towel in the linen basket, knowing what she needed to say. But it felt strange to be doing so without her arms looped around his neck or her lips brushing against that unshaven jaw. ‘I want to thank you for what you did.’

‘It was nothing.’

‘Yes, it was.’ She tried to concentrate on the situation as it was, rather than what she wanted it to be. She suddenly realised why he’d once told her that he wasn’t in the habit of seducing virgins. Their dreams are still intact. And hers had been, hadn’t they? No matter how hard she’d tried to convince herself that she didn’t do the dream stuff—she could see now that she had been deluding herself. She’d believed that she was immune to emotion because she had wanted to believe it and because it had allowed her to buy a ticket into his life. He’d wanted a no-strings affair and she’d convinced herself that she was happy to go along with that. But maybe at heart she was just a woman who’d been longing for him to commit to her all along.

‘I’m very grateful for all you’ve done, but I won’t take up any more of your time,’ she said, watching him squeeze out a teabag. ‘There must be something important needing your attention.’

‘I can take care of my own timetable, Cat,’ he said, handing her a mug of tea. ‘I want you to tell me about your mother.’

She felt her cheeks growing red. ‘I told you everything last night.’

He shook his head. ‘Not really. You spoke in terms of a problem, but not in terms of a solution. Has she ever tried rehab?’

‘Rehab’s expensive.’

‘So that’s a no?’

‘Of course it’s a no!’ she bit back. ‘We’re ordinary people, Murat. Where do you suppose we could find that kind of money?’

His eyes didn’t leave her face. ‘You could have asked me.’

‘But that would have involved telling you—and I didn’t want to tell you, for reasons you can probably understand.’

‘I’d like to meet her,’ he said suddenly.

‘Well, you can’t.’

‘What are you so scared of, Cat?’

Surely even he knew the answer to that. She didn’t want to see the disgust on his face when he saw just how sordid her home life had been. And it wasn’t fair of him to want to intrude on her life like this. Because this wasn’t what happened in their particular relationship. They had separate lives. Separate futures.

Yet as she saw a familiar look of determination glinting from his eyes, she wondered what she was trying to protect herself from. She didn’t have to try to impress him any more. It was over. It didn’t matter how many of her dark secrets he discovered, did it?

‘If you want to meet my mother then we’ll go and meet her,’ she said. ‘When did you have in mind?’

‘How about now?’ His gaze searched her face. ‘That is, if you’re feeling well enough.’

Her throat constricted. ‘She won’t be expecting us. She won’t have had time to tidy the place up.’ She said the words as if she came from a normal house. As if she had the kind of mother who had ever bothered tidying up.

‘I don’t care,’ said Murat. ‘And before you say anything, I’d actually enjoy making an impromptu visit for once. Do you have any idea what usually happens when I plan a trip somewhere? How entire rooms are repainted and new furniture bought?’

‘You’re unlikely to get anything like that at my mother’s house,’ she said flippantly. ‘You’ll be lucky to get fresh milk, let alone fresh paint.’

His expression didn’t change. ‘Shall we go?’

‘Well, you’ve asked for it,’ she said as she looked round the room for her shoes.

She locked the door behind them and followed him down to the hotel car park, where his two black limousines were inciting a lot of interest.

In no time at all they had left the little seaside town and were driving past fields blurred with rain and dotted with the dripping forms of motionless sheep. She saw the grey buildings of villages and sometimes the fluttering of the distinctive Welsh flag, with its proud scarlet dragon set on a green and white background. The car picked up speed as they headed south, until tall columns of factory chimneys began to appear in the distance.

At last their small convoy entered a street which was barely wide enough to accommodate the width of the two cars. Rows of tiny identical houses lay before them and Catrin tried to imagine what they must look like to Murat’s eyes. Did he see the stray piece of garbage which drifted over the pavement, or notice the peeling paintwork on her mother’s front door?

She dreaded what the inside of the house would look like. If her sister was still here, then at least she could have relied on the place looking halfway respectable. But Rachel was now back at Uni and, while grateful that she was out of the inevitable firing line, Catrin was a mass of nerves as she rang the doorbell.

At first there was a pause so long that she wondered if her mother was down at the local pub. And didn’t part of her pray that was the case? So that they could just go away and this awful meeting would never happen? But she could hear the distant sound of the TV, and the slow shuffle of footsteps which greeted Murat’s second ring told her that her hopes were in vain.

The door opened and Ursula Thomas stood there, swaying a little as she peered at them—her stained and scruffy clothes failing to hide a faint paunch. Her once beautiful features were coarsened and ruddy, and the emerald eyes so like her daughter’s were heavily bloodshot. And just as she did pretty much every time she saw her, Catrin felt the inevitable wave of sadness which washed over her as she looked at her mother. What a waste, she thought. What a waste of a life.

‘Catrin?’ Ursula said, her gaze focusing and then refocusing.

‘Yes, Mum. It’s me. And I’ve brought a...friend to see you. Murat, this is Ursula—my mother. Mum, this is Murat.’

Ursula looked up at Murat and gave him a vacant smile. ‘You haven’t got a smoke on you by any chance?’ she said.

Catrin half expected Murat to turn around and walk straight back to his car, but he did no such thing. Instead, he shrugged his broad shoulders as if people asked him such things every day of the week.

‘Not on me, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘May we come in?’

Ursula looked him up and down before opening the door to let them in.

As they picked their way over the discarded shoes and empty plastic bags which were littering the small hallway Catrin watched as Murat followed her mother into a tiny sitting room which reeked of stale smoke. On a small table next to a faded armchair stood a half-empty tumbler of vodka. Beside the glass was a crumpled cigarette packet and an overflowing ashtray. A game show blared out from the giant TV screen and the sound of the canned studio laughter added a surreal touch to the bizarre meeting.

Catrin wanted to curl up and die but her shame lasted only as long as it took for her self-worth to assert itself. Because she had done nothing to be ashamed of. This was not her house, nor her mess. And Ursula was ill, not wicked.

She glanced up at Murat but the expression on his hawkish face gave nothing away. He glanced down to meet her eyes and gave her the faintest of smiles.

‘I wonder if you’d mind going out to buy a packet of cigarettes, Cat?’ he questioned calmly. ‘While I have a talk to your mother.’

The request threw her. Confused her. She wanted to refuse, but something told her that refusal wasn’t an option.

‘Okay,’ she said, and left her mother blinking in some bewilderment as she realised she was going to be left alone with the towering figure of the Sultan.

Catrin let herself out onto the narrow street and sucked in some of the damp, cool air. On the other side of the street, she saw a curtain twitch and she turned to trace some of the old, familiar steps of her childhood. The little corner shop was still there, hanging on despite the inexorable march of the out-of-town hypermarket, and she bought a pack of cigarettes and a carton of milk.

She didn’t have a clue what Murat was going to say to her mother but right then she didn’t care, because she trusted him to do the right thing. He might have been emotionally closed down as a partner, but she’d read enough about Qurhah to know that he was revered as a ruler, both at home and abroad. And in truth, wasn’t it a comfort to have someone else taking over like this, even if it was only for a short while? Hadn’t the burden of responsibility always fallen on her?

She’d spent her life trying to shield Rachel from the fall-out of this sordid and erratic life. She’d cooked meals from store-cupboard scraps and bought food at the end of the day from the nearby market, when they were practically giving the stuff away. She’d known survival in bucket-loads, but she’d never known comfort. She had always been prepared for the final demands landing on the doormat. Or the telephone being cut off because the money put aside for the bill had been drunk away.

Maybe that was what had made her so determined to hang onto what Murat had offered her. Like some urchin who’d spent her life shivering outside in the cold, hadn’t she also been attracted by his lifestyle, which had cushioned her in unfamiliar luxury?

By the time she got back with the cigarettes, she found her mother slumped in the armchair, but the ashtray had been emptied and the glass of vodka replaced by a mug of black coffee. Murat emerged from the kitchen, his jacket removed and his shirtsleeves rolled up.

‘What’s going on?’ Catrin questioned, handing her mother the packet of cigarettes and watching as she began to tear at the cellophane wrapping with trembling fingers.

‘Your mother has agreed to go into rehab,’ he said.

Waiting for the stream of objection which didn’t come, Catrin narrowed her eyes. ‘How can she?’

‘I wonder if I could have a word with you, Cat?’ Murat’s voice cut through her words as easily as a hot knife slicing through butter. ‘In private.’

She joined him in the kitchen where, to her astonishment, he had started making inroads into the enormous pile of filthy dishes which were piled up in the sink. Shutting the door behind her, she stared at him in confusion.

‘Is this for real?’

He nodded. ‘Completely.’

She swallowed, not wanting to believe it. ‘What did you say to her to get her to agree to something like that?’

‘I repeated exactly what you told me. I said that she was going to kill herself if she carried on that way.’ His black gaze was very steady. ‘I think I managed to convince her that you and your sister would be completely devastated were that to happen. I told her that you’d both already suffered enough by watching her wreck her life and her health. I asked if she wanted to save herself, before it was too late. And then I said that I was prepared to pay for her to go into a rehabilitation unit.’

Wildly, Catrin shook her head. ‘I can’t let you do that,’ she said. ‘I looked into it once. It costs thousands of pounds.’

‘Which I can easily afford, as we both know. The money isn’t important.’ He stepped forward, stemming her objection by placing a forefinger over her lips. ‘Let me do it, Cat. I want to.’

Angrily, she jerked her mouth away from the touch of that distracting finger, hating the fact that her body could react to him even in moments like this. ‘Why? You don’t even know my mother.’

‘I think we both know why. For you.’

‘As a kind of pay-off?’ she questioned bitterly.

‘That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose, although I’d prefer not to think of what we shared in terms of money.’

‘Really? Don’t you think you’re being rather naïve? It was a transaction, Murat,’ she said. ‘You know it was.’

He flinched, but the gaze he fixed on her face was steady. ‘Let’s not quibble about what our relationship was, or wasn’t. Let’s just think about your mother. Surely she deserves this chance?’ he persisted. ‘Especially when I can send her to the best place money can buy.’

Catrin pursed her lips together. Of course he could. Murat could buy anything he pleased. Anything and anyone. He had bought her, hadn’t he? Purchased her just as surely as if he’d walked into a store and asked for a woman who would be willing to begin a brand-new life as his mistress. And she had gone along with it. She’d almost bitten his hand off in her eagerness.