A Mediterranean Marriage

Beneath the burning probe of Rauf’s measuring appraisal, she felt her breath feather in her throat for she could hardly wait to feel his mouth on hers again. ‘Are you?’

‘Very much…’ Rauf husked, a bitter sort of amusement lancing through him, for there was no doubt in his mind now that the reluctance he had met with before could only have been a deliberate ploy to make him all the keener. ‘Especially as you don’t seem quite so nervous as you used to be around me.’

Hot pink surged into Lily cheeks and her uneasy gaze dropped from his in embarrassment at that unexpected reminder. ‘I got over that.’

But when had she magically got over it? Just yesterday when she’d appreciated that he held the future of Harris Travel in his hand? Dark, dangerous thoughts threatening, Rauf tuned them out with single-minded purpose and let his fingers slide into her gorgeous hair to tug the golden weight of glossy strands round her taut shoulders where it coiled and slid downward again in a tumbling mass. ‘I always wanted to see you wear it loose like this.’

‘It’s too long…gets in the way.’ The smouldering entrapment of his golden gaze kept her still. She could hardly breathe and her heart was thumping as though she had run a marathon, making it difficult for her to speak. Her breasts ached and a liquid sensation of heat was stirring at the very heart of her so that she pressed her thighs together in sudden guilty mortification.

‘I love it…’ Rauf confided thickly, dropping his lean, strong hands to her slender hips to raise her to him. ‘I promise you…it won’t get in my way.’

He captured her lips in a slow, searching onslaught that sent her senses spinning. The very taste of him was pure intoxication and the feel of his sensual mouth sublime. All that still approached rational thought was stolen from her in the first few seconds and then the sheer pleasure of what he was doing to her took over. He explored the tender interior of her mouth with a seductive expertise that made her gasp and cling, fingers biting into his broad shoulders with helpless impatience, tiny little tremors assailing her quivering length while she melted and burned for more.

Rauf lifted his dark head. ‘Time to make a move…’ he growled, springing upright.

Before she had even surfaced from the effects of that last lingering kiss, he had bent and swept her up into his arms to stride across the basoda and into a connecting hallway.

Lily stole a confused ennervated look up at Rauf. ‘I can walk…’

‘I like carrying you,’ Rauf imparted with a slashing smile that brought his lean, devastating features to vibrant, charismatic life.

Her heart leapt inside her at the appeal of that smile.

Rauf shot a charged glance down at her. ‘I’m taking you to my bed, güzelim. If you don’t like that idea, say so now…’

Something akin to panic seized Lily in initial response to that invitation. His bed. Wasn’t it much too soon for that development? But was she about to refuse the only male who had ever managed to make her want him? Taking into account his strong pride and their past history, he would never approach her again. This time around he expected an adult relationship and evidently he saw no reason why they shouldn’t just go straight to bed. Having stuck by her moral principles would be cold consolation if she lost Rauf again at their expense. And, all nerves and shyness aside, if she was truly honest with herself, the mere idea of finding out what real passion was like with Rauf just left her limp and weak with wanton, wicked longing.

‘Lily…?’ Rauf prompted, strung high on the suspicion that he had fallen for yet another come-on destined to end in a freezing-cold shower.

Lily collided with sizzling golden eyes and butterflies broke loose in her tummy. By dint of clutching his shoulder, she lifted herself up to find his tempting mouth again for herself and gave him her answer that way. He succumbed with a roughened groan of appreciation and flattering immediacy. It was at least a minute before Lily got a single brain cell operating again and by that stage she was being set down on a superb gilded and carved bed. Instant tension froze her there.

Rauf backed off just to fully enjoy the sight of her there on his bed, her wonderful hair draped round her in a rippling sheet of gold, fairy-tale-princess style. She looked breathtaking. As he shed his jacket where he stood, quite unable as yet to actually imagine touching her, his tawny gaze rested on her and narrowed with sudden decisive force.

He was going to keep her! No way was he letting her go again. Why should his moral code sentence him to self-denial in his private life? He would take her back to Istanbul and set her up there in an apartment. In a cosmopolitan city, such arrangements were understood. If a faint current of unease assailed Rauf on the score that his female relatives were about as sophisticated as home-baked bread and as quick to pick up on gossip about him as high-tech listening devices, he blocked it out fast. At the age of thirty, he told himself that he had an indisputable right to live his life as he saw fit.

‘I can’t take my eyes off you…’ Rauf confessed with roughened appreciation.

Lily watched him jerk loose his silk tie and let it fall and her tension level hit another high. She could not take her eyes from him either, but then nor could she quite believe that she was on his bed so soon after her arrival in Turkey. She felt terrifyingly shy and self-conscious yet being with Rauf still felt so right to her. But then he had stayed in her heart, hadn’t he? Her memory of him locked there with magnetic determination and ferocious staying power. Taken aback by a truth that she had denied for so long, Lily focused on Rauf with dawning comprehension and understood why her resistance was nil around him. She had never got over loving him.

‘Do you do this all the time?’ Lily heard herself ask without even being aware that she was about to frame such a leading question.

Halfway through unbuttoning his shirt, Rauf stilled in surprise.

‘I mean…’ Lily continued unsteadily, her tongue reacting to her anxious thoughts faster than caution could instigate a hold on it. ‘…just kiss and go straight to…er…bed?’

‘Not since I was a teenager.’ Somehow, Rafe acknowledged a second later, that was not the most comforting of thoughts.

Her cheeks flushed, Lily bent her golden head. ‘I just wondered.’

Without hesitation, Rauf gathered her up and kissed her with drugging intensity. ‘This is us…that’s different,’ he pointed out.

Stepping back from her, he peeled off his shirt. Lips tingling but mouth running dry, Lily stared: he was all sleek, rippling muscles and bronzed skin. He was magnificent. A haze of dark curls outlined his pectorals and arrowed down into a faint furrow over his flat, taut abdomen. As he embarked on removing his well-cut trousers, treating her to a view of his narrow waist, lean hips and a disturbing glimpse of long, powerful, hair-roughened thighs, Lily actually thought she might have a heart attack then and there. Dragging in a stark sudden breath, she dredged her attention from him, but his disturbing image stayed stamped behind her eyelids: incredibly male, big, dominating. Rampantly sexy too, just rather panic-inducing.

‘I forgot to offer you lunch…’ Rauf commented without warning.

‘Lunch?’ Lily echoed as the mattress gave beneath his added weight. Without glancing in his direction, she endeavoured to look less like a reclining statue. Having watched his boxer shorts hit the rug, she wasn’t quite ready as yet to embrace the visual challenge of him in all his unadorned glory.

‘Later…’ Rauf promised, closing a long, confident arm round her to tug her back towards him, shift her hair out of his path and reach for the zip on her dress.