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He should be angry. He was angry, but with himself. Not since he’d been a teenager had he come so close to having sex with a woman without using protection.
What the hell was wrong with him?
Thank God she didn’t seem the kind of woman who wanted to make small talk after sex. He snapped off the shower and handed her a towel and so what if he was a little brusque as he passed it to her? He had things on his mind.
What had he been thinking? One minute he’d been in control and pleasuring her the way he knew women liked to be pleasured, and the next he was almost forgetting the most basic of rules.
Thank God his friends—Zoltan and Bahir and Rashid—would never find out. They would love that if they knew. They’d have him married off. Written off. Same thing really.
He threw his towel on the floor.
It was just a mistake. It had been a while and the sight of the curved perfection of the sweep of her bare back had momentarily side-swiped his brain. That was all.
It wouldn’t happen again.
‘Are you hungry? Do you want anything to eat or drink?’ he asked as she towel-dried her hair.
Her hands paused and she blinked up at him with her beautiful blue eyes, her wet hair tousled and curling in tendrils around her face.
Medusa, he thought, with the power to turn a man to stone. That would explain it. And then dismissed the thought as ridiculous in the next breath.
‘I could do with something to drink. Coffee?’
‘Make yourself comfortable in bed. I’ll bring some.’
Night had fallen while they’d been in the shower and now the black sea was lit with the lights of ships and a silver glow from the moon.
She was in bed when he returned, the covers pulled up over her breasts, but it wasn’t that that threw him. It was that she was even here. He wasn’t used to women being in his bed. Rarely if ever he’d bring a woman back to his apartment. Never he’d entertain the thought of her staying until morning.
And yet this woman was staying until morning.
Only, he reminded himself as he put the tray down on a side table, because she was leaving early to join her tour group.
He wasn’t making an exception, so much as adapting to circumstances.
It didn’t mean anything, no matter how good she looked there.
‘This is service,’ she said, scooting up higher in the bed, her arm modestly holding the covers over her breasts.
And that, he realised, was the difference right there.
His usual kind of women didn’t do modesty. They were all about advertising their wares, even when he told them he wasn’t in the market to buy, in the hopes they might convince him to change his mind.
He’d never change his mind.
He put a tiny cup of coffee and a glass of water beside her, and offered her the Turkish delight.
‘Oh, I love this,’ she said, taking a piece and clearly savouring it as she put the sweet in her mouth.
‘I know,’ he said, when she looked up at him questioningly. ‘I saw you in the Spice Market, remember? I remember the look on your face when you tasted some.’
‘Oh.’
She turned her face away and reached for her coffee, but not before he’d got the distinct impression she was blushing. A woman in his bed blushing. He shook his head. It was turning into a night of firsts.
She sipped her coffee and kept her gaze averted and he was compelled to ask.
‘Why did you run from me?’
Her head wheeled around and yes, he’d been right, because there were the telltale red stains on her cheeks. ‘What?’
‘In the Spice Market. Why did you run?’
‘I didn’t—’ she began, her eyes wide with denial, before she saw his raised eyebrow and turned her eyes up to the high ceiling. ‘Okay,’ she said with a shrug, ‘I can see it might look that way. It’s just that you startled me a little. You looked so...’
She paused mid-sentence, her teeth scraping her bottom lip.
‘So—what?’
‘Intense.’
He smiled. Intense was exactly what he’d felt the moment she’d smiled. ‘You have a unique beauty. It is hard not to stare at you.’
Her eyes were wide and lit so brightly blue, her cheeks flushed, her lips pinked and slightly parted and his groin ached anew.
‘You’re doing it again,’ she said, sounding suddenly breathless.
And he took her hand and pressed the back of it to his lips. ‘I know.’
She gasped and he felt her tremble under his lips.
‘Is that why you did it?’ she whispered. ‘Is that why you got involved back there, with the coin seller?’
