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She pulled stuff from the pack, unzipping zips, rummaging frantically and all the while sick with fear. And just as she was accepting that she’d have to report to Reception that someone had been in her room, she pulled out a pair of sneakers from the bottom of her pack and the bracelet rolled out from inside onto the bed. Relief washed over her as she swooped on it, holding it to her chest, remembering she’d tucked it safely away before she’d gone out early this morning.
It was a trinket, nothing more, but it held such sentimental value for her. She’d never forgive herself if she lost it.
And then, because Kadar was waiting for her outside and she’d taken much longer than she’d intended, she bundled everything back in her bag, zipped the bracelet safely into an internal zipper pocket and closed the door on the cheap hostel bedroom. At least for one night.
And what a night it promised to be.
One night with a man who with one look could make you tremble and quake and want for something you’d never known you’d missed.
Until now.
She checked out of the tiny hostel with a myriad questions running through her mind.
Had her great-great-great-grandmother Amber met with such a man? The family history whispered behind hands was that Amber had been kidnapped into white slavery, but had she chosen to stay so long by choice? Because she’d met a man like Kadar with heat in his eyes and seduction in his words?
After today, she could almost believe it possible.
Not that it explained why she had returned to England. So many questions she would never know the answer to. But at least she was here, walking the same laneways and seeing the same sights Amber must have seen one hundred and fifty years ago. How amazing those sights must have been to her then, when she’d been brought up in the rolling green fields of Hertfordshire.
Amber wasn’t staying either. She’d be gone tomorrow morning. And given the time she’d spent unpacking and repacking while panicking about losing her great-great-great-grandmother’s bracelet, it would be a wonder if Kadar and his heated eyes were still outside waiting for her.
She emerged from the hostel and looked around, heart thumping, unable to locate him anywhere on the busy street, suddenly afraid she’d taken too long and that he’d either lost interest or found some other stray to adopt for the night.
But no, he wouldn’t leave her, she remembered. Because he’d promised the polis he would watch over her until she joined her tour group. It was only then, when she’d calmed down, that she spotted him standing away to one side a little further away, in the shadow of the ancient wall, busy talking into his mobile phone.
She didn’t have to wait to let him know she was ready. He looked up almost as if he’d sensed her watching him, pocketing his phone in the next instant.
And maybe she was imagining it. Maybe she was making castles in the air, but the look he sent her across the street as he pocketed that phone was pure lust and enough to make her body hum and her throat purr.
She’d accused him during lunch of stroking her with his words. Now, as he strode a path between cars across the street, he was as good as stroking her with his eyes.
And she liked it.
Even under her leather jacket, her breasts plumped and firmed, her nipples peaked, the rub of her jacket against her flesh like a sensual caress. Under her jeans, her thighs clenched at the prospect of spending the night with this man.
For a girl who’d only ever believed she could make love to a man that she was in love with, her actions were foreign to her. Reckless, even.
She was about to have sex with a stranger and her body was already humming in expectation of it.
How did that work?
She didn’t know. She didn’t understand it. All she knew was that she wanted this night and she would have it, to take away as a souvenir of this exotic journey to the east. Maybe just a taste of what her great-great-great-grandmother Amber had experienced all those years before her.
‘All set,’ she announced a little nervously as he approached, her pack looped over one shoulder.
He unthreaded the pack from her arm and took it from her. ‘This is all you have?’
She shrugged. ‘I travel light.’
He raised an eyebrow at that. ‘Which makes you an unusual woman,’ he said, and she smiled, but it was only half a compliment he was offering, because secretly it only supported what he’d already decided about her. He was in no doubt her bag would be a good deal heavier on her return journey, and not just because she would return home with the requisite amount of cushion covers and scarves. He didn’t believe for a moment she was an innocent as she made out and there would be plenty of passing street vendors and the trinkets that were on offer to take advantage of before she went home.
