IT WAS BARELY a hostel, tucked as it was in the back laneways near the ancient city walls, but it was cheap, despite it being located so close to many of Istanbul’s famous and ancient sites. She saw him studying the shabby exterior and faded paintwork and knew what he must be thinking. ‘Best value in Sultanahmet,’ she said, before she held up a hand. ‘Don’t come in, I’ll be right back. It won’t take me a minute to grab my pack.’
He didn’t argue and she wasn’t surprised, knowing that someone like him would have never set foot inside such an establishment and would hardly be tempted to now for fear of contracting some communicable disease or worse.
Hurriedly she gathered the few things she’d left in her tiny shared room, and then did a quick scan of her pack’s contents, checking there was nothing missing. Travel itinerary. Toiletries. Then she went sickly cold when she couldn’t find her bracelet. It had been there this morning, she remembered thinking about wearing it, deciding against it because it would have been too bulky under her jacket, but it had been here, she had seen it, she was sure she had seen it...
She pulled stuff from the pack, unzipping zips, rummaging frantically and all the while sick with fear. And just as she was accepting that she’d have to report to Reception that someone had been in her room, she pulled out a pair of sneakers from the bottom of her pack and the bracelet rolled out from inside onto the bed. Relief washed over her as she swooped on it, holding it to her chest, remembering she’d tucked it safely away before she’d gone out early this morning.
It was a trinket, nothing more, but it held such sentimental value for her. She’d never forgive herself if she lost it.
And then, because Kadar was waiting for her outside and she’d taken much longer than she’d intended, she bundled everything back in her bag, zipped the bracelet safely into an internal zipper pocket and closed the door on the cheap hostel bedroom. At least for one night.
And what a night it promised to be.
One night with a man who with one look could make you tremble and quake and want for something you’d never known you’d missed.
Until now.
She checked out of the tiny hostel with a myriad questions running through her mind.
Had her great-great-great-grandmother Amber met with such a man? The family history whispered behind hands was that Amber had been kidnapped into white slavery, but had she chosen to stay so long by choice? Because she’d met a man like Kadar with heat in his eyes and seduction in his words?
After today, she could almost believe it possible.
Not that it explained why she had returned to England. So many questions she would never know the answer to. But at least she was here, walking the same laneways and seeing the same sights Amber must have seen one hundred and fifty years ago. How amazing those sights must have been to her then, when she’d been brought up in the rolling green fields of Hertfordshire.
Amber wasn’t staying either. She’d be gone tomorrow morning. And given the time she’d spent unpacking and repacking while panicking about losing her great-great-great-grandmother’s bracelet, it would be a wonder if Kadar and his heated eyes were still outside waiting for her.
She emerged from the hostel and looked around, heart thumping, unable to locate him anywhere on the busy street, suddenly afraid she’d taken too long and that he’d either lost interest or found some other stray to adopt for the night.
But no, he wouldn’t leave her, she remembered. Because he’d promised the polis he would watch over her until she joined her tour group. It was only then, when she’d calmed down, that she spotted him standing away to one side a little further away, in the shadow of the ancient wall, busy talking into his mobile phone.
She didn’t have to wait to let him know she was ready. He looked up almost as if he’d sensed her watching him, pocketing his phone in the next instant.
And maybe she was imagining it. Maybe she was making castles in the air, but the look he sent her across the street as he pocketed that phone was pure lust and enough to make her body hum and her throat purr.
She’d accused him during lunch of stroking her with his words. Now, as he strode a path between cars across the street, he was as good as stroking her with his eyes.
And she liked it.
Even under her leather jacket, her breasts plumped and firmed, her nipples peaked, the rub of her jacket against her flesh like a sensual caress. Under her jeans, her thighs clenched at the prospect of spending the night with this man.
For a girl who’d only ever believed she could make love to a man that she was in love with, her actions were foreign to her. Reckless, even.
She was about to have sex with a stranger and her body was already humming in expectation of it.
How did that work?
She didn’t know. She didn’t understand it. All she knew was that she wanted this night and she would have it, to take away as a souvenir of this exotic journey to the east. Maybe just a taste of what her great-great-great-grandmother Amber had experienced all those years before her.
‘All set,’ she announced a little nervously as he approached, her pack looped over one shoulder.
He unthreaded the pack from her arm and took it from her. ‘This is all you have?’
She shrugged. ‘I travel light.’
He raised an eyebrow at that. ‘Which makes you an unusual woman,’ he said, and she smiled, but it was only half a compliment he was offering, because secretly it only supported what he’d already decided about her. He was in no doubt her bag would be a good deal heavier on her return journey, and not just because she would return home with the requisite amount of cushion covers and scarves. He didn’t believe for a moment she was an innocent as she made out and there would be plenty of passing street vendors and the trinkets that were on offer to take advantage of before she went home.
Not that he was worried.
If she ventured on the side of illegal again, as he was sure she would before she was done, she’d be someone else’s problem.
They made small talk as he led her through the streets and alleyways of Sultanahmet, past tiny coloured timber houses clustered together in the narrow laneways, past stone relics and foundations of more ancient times. And he wasn’t Turkish, but he’d lived here long enough that he could provide the history of the area and the stories of Istanbul’s long and colourful past. She listened, though he wondered how much she was taking in, because he could sense her nervousness in the brightness of her eyes, and her excitement in her breathless responses.
It amused him. The little rabbit was out of her depth and trying desperately not to show it, but every time they swayed towards each other and their arms brushed, she would jump and catch her breath and lick her lips and pretend nothing had happened.
He smiled. He’d never felt the urge to brush his arm against another’s more.
By the time they reached the stately entrance to the restored nineteenth-century building where he lived, she was breathless.
She turned her eyes upwards, taking in the double-level entry with its columns and grand doorway and high arched windows.
