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For Catrin, it felt like another small triumph. She knew it didn’t mean much, but for her it meant a good deal. The hours which lay before them seemed to have endless possibilities. And she was the one making all the choices.
* * *
They walked across Hyde Park and ate breakfast croissants in a café overlooking the glittering waters of the Serpentine. They walked along the riverbank, before making their way to Covent Garden, where they found a small art gallery which was, inexplicably, almost empty. It felt liberating to walk from painting to painting, discussing each one in detail, and she almost forgot the shadowy presence of the bodyguard hovering discreetly in the next room. She made Murat stand in the queue at the cinema and could tell from his attitude that queuing was an entirely new concept for him. She knew that one word would lead to them being whisked into the grandest seats and generally being fussed over, but Catrin didn’t want that. She didn’t want anyone to know who he was.
She wanted him all to herself.
Afterwards they went to Soho, mingling with crowds of tourists and theatre-goers beneath the gaudy lights. They ate hot slices of pizza and then found a quiet pub in one of backstreets, where they sat quietly drinking cola.
In the taxi home he held her hand, turning it over to study her palm as if he were reading her future. And Catrin felt stupidly choked by the simple gesture, quickly turning her head to look out of the window before he could see how suddenly vulnerable she felt.
‘Cat,’ he said.
Blinking away the sudden moistness in her eyes, she waited until she had composed herself before she turned to look at him. ‘What?’
‘Don’t ordinary couples usually kiss in taxis?’
She shrugged. ‘I have no experience of kissing in taxis.’
‘You do now,’ he said roughly as his pulled her into his arms.
This was no semi-chaste kiss like the one they’d shared in bed last night. This was lust: pure and potent. Her breathing grew erratic as his finger traced a provocative line over the zip of her jeans and she gasped helplessly into his mouth.
‘I
want you,’ he whispered. ‘And if I could, I would have you now. Right here. In the back of this cab. I’d like to pull your wretched jeans down to your ankles and thrust myself deep inside you. I’d like to watch you writhe around on the seat and then I’d like to see you tip your head back and come, while the scent of our sex filled the air. Would you like that, Cat?’
‘Stop it,’ she whispered, her mouth so dry that she could barely get the words out.
‘I don’t want to stop it, and neither do you.’
The cab slowed to a halt and Cat was still trembling as they got out and she stood waiting while Murat pulled out his wallet. She remembered him telling her that, unlike many royals, he always carried cash with him because it made him feel slightly ridiculous to have to ask one of his aides for money.
But she frowned when she saw the driver peel off some change and hand it to him and she stepped forward.
‘Um. We gave you a fifty-pound note, not a twenty,’ she said.
The driver mimed incomprehension, but Cat was nothing if not persistent and she stood her ground and argued the point, until eventually they walked away with the correct change.
‘You know, I could have easily afforded to lose thirty pounds,’ said Murat wryly as they rode up in the elevator.
‘That’s not the point,’ she said, looping her arms around his neck. ‘It’s a matter of principle. You shouldn’t have to pay more, just because you’re rich.’
His lips grazed over hers. ‘Quite the little hustler, aren’t you?’
‘They call it being street-smart,’ she said lightly. ‘And it’s only because I’ve had to be.’
They shut the door on the bodyguards and turned to each other, but, although the removal of their clothes was fraught with hunger, the sex which followed was different from anything Catrin had known before. For a start, Murat’s fingers were trembling as much as hers as he undressed her and for once his smooth dexterity seemed to have deserted him.
He didn’t usually frame her face in the palms of his hands and look down at her as if he was only just seeing her properly for the first time.
But she didn’t usually have to bite back tears during sex either—aware that her pleasure was heightened by a cruel reality which reminded her that the end of the affair lay just around the corner.
CHAPTER SIX
THE SEX WAS different.
Actually, Catrin quickly realised that pretty much everything was different.
