‘You are not cold,’ he said grimly. ‘You are burning up.’
‘I want the duvet.’
‘Not now, Cat,’ he said. ‘Stop fighting. Let me deal with this.’
His soft command lulled her as it had lulled her so often in the past. Her head fell back against the lumpy pillow and her weighted eyelids began to close, until she felt his fingers at the fly of her jeans and her eyes flew open.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘You think I’m so desperate that I’d take advantage of a sick woman?’ His voice was bitter; his mouth a contemptuous slash. ‘Let me assure you that I have nothing but your welfare in mind right now—and it’s clear that, while you may have been helping care for your mother, you certainly haven’t been looking after yourself.’
She wanted to tell him not to bother, but she couldn’t. All she could do was lie there like a piece of meat on a block as he began to undress her, like some awful parody of the way he had undressed her countless times before. But there was no softness or appreciation in his touch now. She was aware of him tugging at her zip and slithering the jeans down over her hot thighs in a way which was almost clinical.
And suddenly, she was too woozy to care. Even when he peeled off her T-shirt and one of her breasts brushed against his palm as if it had been programmed to do so. Through the haze of her growing fever, she sensed his momentary hesitation. As if he was remembering how once he would have dragged his thumb across her bra to incite the puckering nub.
But he withdrew his hand as if he had accidentally plunged it into a pit of snakes. And it hurt to think that now he was repulsed by her, when once he hadn’t been able to get enough of her.
Feeling like an unwanted sacrifice, Catrin lay there in her bra and pants, while Murat withdrew his phone from his pocket and began to speak in rapid Qurhahian.
CAT SWAM IN and out of a strange and swamping fever which seemed to have taken her prisoner. She remembered feeling cold. Freezing cold. But she was forced to curl up into a foetal position, because Murat was stubbornly refusing to let her cover herself with the duvet.
Murat?
Was she delirious?
No. It seemed she was not. Her eyes flickered open to see the hawk-like Sultan sitting beside her bed, his dark body very still and watchful. Murat was in her room. He was filling the tiny space as if it were his right to be there.
‘Why are you still here?’ she heard herself mumble at some point. ‘Didn’t I tell you to go?’
‘You did. Repeatedly. But I’m here and this is where I’m staying. Looking after you, if you must know—since you seem incapable of taking care of yourself.’
‘I don’t need you,’ she muttered.
‘It’s not up for discussion, and I’m not going anywhere until you’re better. Better get used to it, Cat.’
He was so bossy, she thought crossly. He was making her drink water when she didn’t want to drink anything—glasses and glasses of the stuff. And he was wringing out that little flannel she kept draped over the small sink. Wringing it out in cold water and making her yelp as he rubbed the icy cloth over her protesting skin.
Some time, through the awful pounding which had resumed inside her head, she heard someone knocking at the door and then a low conversation taking place in a language she recognised instantly as Qurhahian. And that was when Murat walked over to the bed, holding a small and golden phial, which he lifted to her lips.
‘Drink this,’ he commanded.
Through bleary eyes, she gazed at him suspiciously. ‘Is it some sort of poison?’
‘You think I’d feed you poison?’
‘Nothing about you would surprise me.’
‘Drink it, Cat,’ he said gently. ‘It’ll make you feel better.’
But it didn’t. It made her feel worse. Thick and viscous, it clung to her throat and was so bitter that she would have spat it out if Murat hadn’t held her lips together and forced her to swallow.
‘Don’t do that,’ she said from between gritted teeth.
‘Then drink it.’
‘It tastes disgusting! Like carpet slippers!’
‘Not a taste I am familiar with. So why not close your eyes and pretend it’s something else? What would you like it to taste like, habibti?’
He was luring her into the realm of fantasy as he’d done so often in the past, and Catrin screwed her eyes against the light and the pain and the awful ache in her heart. He used to call her habibti when he was making love to her. Habibti when he was stroking her hair...
‘I’d like it to taste like warm, buttered toast,’ she said, thinking of a book she used to read as a child beneath the bedclothes, while her mother was crashing around downstairs. She remembered how comforting it had been to escape into the land of fantasy. How the books had allowed her to forget the harsh reality of her real life. Her voice grew dreamy. ‘Or hot chocolate with marshmallows and cream, and chocolate sprinkles on the top.’
‘What else?’ he prompted, his voice very gentle again.
‘Turkish delight by the Christmas tree,’ she continued. ‘And snow falling outside and making everything silent.’
By the time she’d finished speaking, all the liquid was swallowed and her eyelids were growing heavy. Through the flickering curtain of her quivering eyelashes, she could see the watchful gleam of his black eyes.
‘I’m tired now,’ she said.
‘Then sleep.’
She did. One minute she was drenched in sweat and the next she felt as if she were floating outside her body, looking down on the tiny room. While all the time, Murat sat beside her bed, like some granite-faced sentry. The only time he moved was when she needed to use the bathroom and he shrugged her into the robe which was hanging on the back of the door and carried her along the corridor. But she was too woozy to care about the unexpected intimacy of even that.
Afterwards he took her back to her room and laid her on the bed and she looked up at him as he smoothed back her matted hair. She could feel that stupid great flare of love welling up inside her and wondered why it hadn’t left her, as she had been praying so hard for it to do. But he had been kind to her, hadn’t he? More than kind. And kindness could be seductive too—the most seductive thing in the world.
‘Thank you,’ she said, and fell into a deep sleep.
When she awoke it must have been morning, because a chill grey light was coming in through the windows and Murat hadn’t moved from the chair he’d been sitting in. He didn’t even appear to have slept, for his gaze was sharp and alert as soon as she opened her eyes. Only the new beard at his jaw and the dark shadows hollowing his cheeks gave any indication that he must have been there for hours.
And she was lying there in her bra and pants!
Surreptitiously, she reached down for the duvet and hauled it over herself and saw him give a flicker of a smile.
‘This is the bit where you say “what happened?”,’ he said, handing her a glass of water.
‘What happened?’ she questioned, propping herself up on her elbows to gulp it down, achingly aware of him and his proximity.
‘You were sick and now you’re better.’