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Just a woman holding a man with nothing but passion between them.
It had felt good to hold a woman that way, and to have her hands hold him. It had felt good to hold Amber that way.
There was no miracle. He had not forgotten his scars, because he would never be able to forget them when they twisted and pulled with every movement, but for once in his life making love to a woman, he hadn’t cared.
He watched her make her way to the other side of the display case, her fingers trailing along the wooden edge, her blue eyes lingering on an item or to read a description before moving on, making out she was innocence itself, even though he could see the tension around her eyes and in the set of her mouth.
What was going on in her head right now?
She looked up and threw him one of those dazzling smiles that seemed to flick a switch inside him, lighting up all the dark corners inside him, and his body responded the only way it knew.
What was it about her? They had spent days and nights together and still he felt the tug of her body on his. Still he hungered for her as he had that day in the Spice Market.
And for the first time in his life he could remember, he wanted to be wrong.
He didn’t want her to be a thief.
Because he didn’t want to be able to like someone who was capable of that.
His phone buzzed again and he checked the screen, and excused himself, knowing there was nothing she could do, even if she wanted to.
This place might be no Topkapi, the security systems no way near as sophisticated, but there was no way she was getting her hand on any of the pretties.
Not on his watch.
Three more days, he told himself. Three more nights to enjoy, and then she would be gone.
Then his life could be normal again.
Why didn’t that make him feel better?
* * *
When he took her to bed that night, she couldn’t help but think about the Amber who had gone before. Who had walked these very rooms and slept in this same bed, looking up at the same constellation of stars. She felt her presence everywhere she looked.
Had the Sultan’s eyes burned hot as Kadar’s did for her?
Had his hands worshipped her, peeling off her clothes, one by one, turning touch into a delicious assault on her senses?
But tonight was no delicious assault and there was no repeat of the tender lovemaking of last night after the fireworks. Instead, there was an edge to their lovemaking, her fears playing on her mind, the ghost of the Amber of long ago whispering in the darkness, even while Kadar took her body higher and still higher.
And there was a tension in him too. It was there in his tight body and his clenched jaw, and the desperate way he drove into her, again and again, almost as if he were punishing her.
Almost as if he were punishing himself.
But then even the air around them felt tightly sprung and ready to snap, and shimmering with expectation, as if waiting for something to set it off. A room full of mousetraps and ghosts and her mind in the centre of it, spinning in circles around her fears. Kadar. Love. And a bracelet she had to somehow get home.
Love.
And that was the greatest fear of all.
And still Kadar pounded into her, his body sleek with sweat, taking her body inexorably in one direction, the pressure inside her building until her mind had no option but to let go and go with it, and her fears were left spinning aimlessly behind while her mind emptied of everything but sensation and a spiralling need for more.
In the end she didn’t come. Not willingly. Her climax was wrenched from her on his cry as he shattered inside her. Not a cry of victory, but an anguished cry that tore at her heart as it sent her hurtling apart.
Tears spilled from her eyes, unwanted, unbidden. Tears that spoke of pointlessness and fear and a love that was never supposed to be.
‘Amber?’ He cradled her in his arms and his tenderness was so at odds with his lovemaking of before that it only compounded her own anguish. ‘Did I hurt you?’
‘No,’ she said, though she knew he would.
He kissed her forehead, the tip of her nose and her chin before his lips met hers, the briefest, most heart-wrenching brush of lips against lips. ‘Then what’s wrong?’ His breath was warm against her skin, and flavoured with him. She would miss it so when she had gone, and suddenly everything was conspiring to her wretchedness.
‘Nothing. Everything.’
He swept the hair from her brow, tendrils that had curled and become glued to her skin in the heated cauldron of their lovemaking. ‘What do you mean?’
She sniffed, her mind awhirl, wondering what she could do or say that would make sense of her tears. ‘It’s nothing. Really, it’s nothing.’
