And then he pulled what looked like a pair of tea towels from a rack, only longer. One he lashed around his own waist. The other he slipped around her back and tied it at the front over her breasts.
‘Have you ever had a Turkish bath?’
‘No.’
‘You should, before you go home. An afternoon spent in the hamam is not to be missed. But until then, let me give you a taste.’
He slid his hands under the cloth. ‘But we can dispense with these,’ and he slipped his fingers into her panties and slid her perfectly serviceable and utterly boring underwear down her legs.
And she wasn’t naked, not technically, even though the cloth was short enough to be considered indecent and left her legs bared to his gaze, but the combination of his touch on her skin and the knowledge that there was nothing more between them than a few threads of cotton set her skin tingling.
He drew her into the shower stall and sat her on the ledge while he dipped the metal dish into the wide bowl, testing the temperature before tipping the bowl slowly over her shoulders.
The water flowed over her in a warm rush and he filled the dish again, and lifted her chin and poured water over her face and head, scrunching her hair, repeating the action until she was drenched.
And then he took the soap, olive-oil soap, he explained, and soaped her arms and shoulders , rinsing it off with another dish of water.
There was something very sexy, she realised, about a man wearing only a cloth knotted low at his hip when his muscles moved so clearly under his skin as he worked. Especially when that cloth was distended by what lay beneath. It was sexier than if he’d been naked.
Was that how he felt? And then she glanced down at the now sodden cloth, to see it plastered to her body, her breasts, her waist and the jut of her nipples plain to see.
Kadar finished with her arms and knelt down and started work on her feet and legs, his hands slippery with soap, massaging circles up her calves and over her knees and higher to her thighs.
She reached for him and he stilled her hands, putting them down on the ledge. ‘Sit,’ he told her. ‘Be patient.’
It was a torture of sorts, this slow deliberate assault on her senses, as his fingers came achingly close to her core and her muscles clamped down.
He knew what he was doing to her. He knew and he smiled and placed that leg down and started working on the other.
‘You’re a cruel man, Mr Kadar.’
He smiled and massaged his thumbs into the arch of her foot until she cried out with the pleasure and the pain before he shifted his attentions to her ankles. More water. More soap. More slide of skin against skin past her knee, until once again he was stroking her inner thigh, stoking her need.
And took his hands away again and she had to stop herself from whimpering as he took the soap and spun it in his hands, the smile in his dark eyes almost wicked as he reached his slippery hands to her legs and slid upwards, and this time he didn’t stop.
She gasped when his thumbs brushed her curls but his smile only widened and his thumbs didn’t stop there. They made lazy circles over her mound while his fingers continued to caress her thighs. Those thumbs ventured mercilessly lower, and still lower, so achingly close and yet nowhere near close enough for the need that he was building inside her.
‘Oh, God,’ she said. ‘We do only have one night.’
And he laughed, low and husky, but something in her appeal must have worked, because his slick fingers joined the game and her thighs opened on a long sigh, the stroke of his fingers like a precious gift.
And somewhere in the waves of sensation building inside, it occurred to her that if this was foreplay, then she’d been missing out a whole lot of years.
She blinked half-shut eyes open, half-drunk-with-sensation eyes trying to focus as she watched him take a dish of water from the basin and pour it between her parted thighs, a slide of warm water against sensitive flesh, sluicing away the soap.
He smiled at her then, and she thought how handsome he looked through her sex-addled eyes and how pleased he looked with himself and that now that she was so relaxed and less nervous he would no doubt make love to her.
God, his fingers had been fantastic there, but it was him she wanted, deep inside her.
Except he didn’t make love to her. Not with the part of him that was still pushing hard under his own cloth.
Instead his smile widened and he pushed his arms under her legs and pulled her closer to the edge of the ledge and dipped his head down.
She tensed, and reached for his head. ‘No!’
‘Why?’