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Feeling slightly ridiculous in her jeans and T-shirt, Catrin walked down the aircraft steps to alight on Qurhahian soil and looked up into the starriest sky she had ever seen. She had removed her sweater on the plane but the fierce heat which hit her now was like being hurled into the centre of a furnace. She wondered where Murat was. Why he was not waiting at the bottom of the steps to meet her.
And then suddenly she heard a distant thunder, which gradually morphed into the unmistakable sound of approaching hooves. Her head jerked up to see a huge black stallion cantering towards her and Catrin’s heart missed a beat.
The man on the horse’s back could have been any man, with his anonymous flowing robes and a headdress billowing behind him. But it wasn’t just any man. She would have recognised that powerful frame anywhere, even before the rider grew close enough for her to see his stern and hawk-like face.
‘Murat,’ she gasped. ‘What the hell is going on?’
But he didn’t answer, just leaned right over and caught hold of her before lifting her up onto the saddle. And Catrin was so shocked by the apparent ease of this action that she leaned back into him as he clamped his arm tightly around her waist, dug his thighs into the horse’s flanks and set off.
It felt surreal. The airport buildings receded and tarmac roads soon gave way to sand as the horse entered the desert with a low whinny of delight.
Catrin’s heart was pounding wildly, though she wasn’t sure if that was from fear, or bewilderment, or the sheer excitement of being pressed up close to Murat’s hard body, with his arm locked tightly around her. There were no signs, but he kept looking up at the stars as if he was seeking guidance from those celestial signposts which never changed.
She didn’t know how long they galloped for, only that it felt like the most exhilarating journey of her life—but at some point she realised that a canopied dwelling had appeared in the distance and that Murat was heading towards it. And, minutes later, he brought the horse to a standstill in front of what looked like a very large tent.
But as he jumped down from the stallion and then raised his arms to lift her gently down onto the sand, Catrin realised that this was like no tent she’d ever seen.
Fretwork lamps stood in a glowing circle outside, casting intricate shadows onto the heavy canvas. The shadowed figure of a servant pulled back two lavishly embroidered flaps to reveal the lavish interior within.
‘Come,’ said Murat, adding something in Qurhahian, which caused the servant to melt into the darkness.
Still feeling shell-shocked, Catrin followed Murat into a lantern-lit room of unbelievable splendour. A long day-bed was covered by throws of gold and scarlet silk and heaped with a mishmash of silken cushions. On an engraved table stood a silver pot of what smelled like very strong coffee and beside it were two tiny silver cups. The air was scented with sandalwood though it was underpinned by something much richer and sweeter, something which might have been tuberose.
Catrin turned to see the low divan which stood at the far end of the tent and when she turned back again it was to find Murat’s eyes on her, his expression intense and very watchful. She studied him right back, acknowledging that this was a Murat she had never seen before, looking as if he had stepped straight from the pages of an ancient fable. And she hated the leap her heart gave nearly as much as she hated the way that her eyes ran so greedily over his powerful frame.
He looked...unfamiliar. She had never seen him in his desert robes before and she thought how unfair it was that she had not been given a chance to prepare herself for the impact of that.
He was all dark and gleaming power. The pale gold of the flowing garments emphasised the much darker hue of his skin, and somehow managed to emphasise the hard body beneath. His hair was covered by a matching headdress, knotted with an intricately woven circlet of black silk. And even that was a turn-on. She thought how privileged she had been to see the Sultan’s hair in a past life. To have run her fingers through it and kissed it.
Catrin’s hand flew to her throat in horror.
Privileged to see his hair?
Had she been slipped some kind of drug while she’d been on board the plane, which had wiped her brain clear of any logic or reason? She glared at him. Had he brought her here for his pleasure? To make love to his erstwhile Welsh mistress, before inevitably casting her aside for the princess he would one day marry?
‘Why have you brought me here, Murat? What the hell is going on?’
His gaze was steady; his eyes like chips of black ice.
‘I had to see you.’
She swallowed, telling herself not to fall for it. She couldn’t afford to fall for it. ‘Even if you did,’ she said, sucking in a deep breath and trying to slow down the rapid thunder of her heart, ‘couldn’t you have just gone about it using normal channels? Ever thought of sending an email or even phoning?’
‘And would you have answered?’ he demanded. ‘Would you have been prepared to come here, if I had asked you to? If I told you that the need to see you felt as imperative to me as breathing itself, would you have listened to me?’
There was no doubting the deeply poetic nature of his words, and no doubting that it made her heart race even more to hear them. And they certainly sounded sincere. But Catrin kept her face set in a mulish expression, instinct warning her to protect herself behind the steely armour of anger. ‘I don’t appreciate
being bundled onto an aircraft and flown halfway around the world,’ she spat out, ‘just to satisfy some stupid whim of yours. How on earth did you manage to get my boss to cooperate?’
‘I asked him.’
‘Or bribed him, more likely.’
‘There was no need to resort to such methods. Though I can’t deny that I would have employed them if necessary,’ he said, with a smile obviously designed to make her melt. ‘In fact, he seemed rather captivated by the love-story aspect of my request.’
‘But there is no love story!’ She walked over to the other side of the tent, because his proximity was making it difficult for her to breathe. ‘Your “love” is currently on ice—just waiting for Princess Lucky to waltz in and melt it.’
For a moment he said nothing, just let his gaze travel over her very slowly as if he’d never really seen her properly before.
