did she have, when the thought of him walking out of her life made her feel as if someone were trying to hack open her heart with a blunt chisel?
That was when and how she had become a rich man’s mistress. She had gone to London to be with Murat and slowly but surely her independence had begun to ebb away. The job she’d found at a big hotel soon proved incompatible with her new life, because quickly she learned that was the first rule of being a mistress.
You always needed to be available.
Murat told her that his world was full of pressure and that she—uniquely—soothed his frazzled nerves. He liked her being there when he arrived in England and didn’t want her working shifts and wasting precious time when she could be with him. He waved aside her initial protests that she couldn’t possibly use his charge card. He told her that he had more than enough money for both of them. That she was, in effect, acting as his housekeeper since she made his apartment feel like a home.
So she had let him slide that plastic card into her brand-new designer wallet. Just as she’d let him kit her out in silks and satins and started having her hair done regularly at one of London’s most exclusive hair salons.
She hadn’t thought about how long it would last. She hadn’t thought beyond each glorious day. But she had started to like him more and more. And that was when she had started trying to make it perfect. The perfect relationship to make up for her very imperfect childhood.
She learned that expensive fabrics felt better against the skin than cheap ones. She learned to enjoy visiting the spa in preparation for his visits, and having her body pummelled and anointed with buttery creams. She learned to fill his many absences with the short courses available to rich women with plenty of time on their hands. She did musical appreciation and flower arrangement. She got herself a cordon bleu certificate and learned about different wines. She found that she had a real passion for the history of art. Suddenly, she was getting herself an education.
He introduced her to first one colleague, and then another. Sometimes they brought their wives, sometimes their mistresses. She discovered that her time at the Hindmarsh Hotel had proved very useful, because she could talk to almost anyone with an easy charm. She learnt to read up about people before meeting them and to impress them with her knowledge of wind farms, or fracking—or whatever was currently occupying the business life of her royal lover.
In a way, she was teaching herself to become the perfect consort of a powerful man, but there was no prospect of such a permanent role. Not for her. He needed to marry a pure-blooded royal; a bona fide desert princess. He had been very honest about that, right from the start.
They had understood each other, or so she’d thought. And because there had been no lies or pretence, she’d thought it would be easy to accept the rigid terms of their relationship.
And it was. At least, at the beginning it was. It was love which was the killer. Love which made her want more than she was ever going to get...
* * *
‘Cat?’
Murat’s shuddered use of her name brought her thoughts crashing back to the present and Catrin opened her eyes to find his face inches away from hers. She could see the gleam of his black eyes and feel the warmth of his breath as his naked body melded close to hers, her breasts flattened against his hair-roughened chest.
‘What is it, my beauty?’ he questioned, his breathing unsteady as he ran his hand possessively down over the curve of her hip. ‘You were miles away.’
No way was she going to admit to inhabiting the dangerous landscape of the past—or tell him about all the stupid doubts which had been crowding her mind. She shook her head and pressed her body closer, feeling his hardness pushing insistently against her wet heat.
‘I’m here now,’ she whispered. ‘And I’m all yours.’
But for how long? she wondered.
Parting her thighs, he thrust deep inside her—but even as her body opened up to welcome him, she could feel another hint of darkness closing around her heart.
‘OKAY. SO HOW about this? Does it work for you?’ Walking across the room on sky-high heels, Catrin stopped in front of the TV soccer game which was currently engrossing the Sultan. ‘Am I suitably dressed for this dinner with Niccolo Da Conti?’
Either it had been a boring game or she must have put on exactly the right dress, because Murat took his eye off the ball and focused on her instead, a slow smile of appreciation curving his lips.
He was wearing nothing but a small towel wrapped around his hips and his hair was still damp from the shower he’d taken directly after making love to her. Catrin could still feel the faint flush to her skin, together with the still galloping race of her heart. She swallowed. It had been some homecoming.
‘Turn around,’ he said softly.
She obeyed his command, aware of the wash of air over her bare thighs as she turned, because beneath her delicate lilac dress she was wearing the stockings he always insisted on.
Usually she enjoyed this deliberate little show, which was staged to allow Murat to be openly voyeuristic. Sometimes he might ask to see the tops of her stockings and she would tease him with a provocative flash, like an old-fashioned cancan dancer. Whatever it was he wanted, she did her best to oblige. It was another of the lessons Murat had taught her: that a man need never stray if he had a generous lover at home.
But she still couldn’t seem to shake off those doubts which had been bugging her all day. They were sliding over her skin like snails and leaving a trail of something cold behind. She could sense that something in her life was changing and she wasn’t sure what it was. She remembered that odd look on his face when he’d been making love to her earlier.
Was he growing tired of her?
Her pulse picked up an unsteady beat, because she didn’t want anything to change. This situation wasn’t perfect—she knew that. These snatched moments with Murat were never enough—but she liked her life as it was. There were definite advantages to being with a man who was emotionally off-limits. At least they didn’t waste time with rows or unreasonable demands. And if she disregarded this stupid love idea, then hadn’t she landed herself a pretty good deal, on balance?
But if Murat was tiring of her...
Catrin thought of the alternatives which lay open to her, trying to imagine where she would go from here. Because hadn’t she allowed her modest ambitions to fall by the wayside since moving in with Murat? What about that little tea room in the Welsh mountains which had once been her dream? The great idea that she would bake home-made cakes and sell them to hungry mountaineers, but which now didn’t seem quite so appealing.
Wasn’t the truth of it that living with Murat had subtly helped change her dreams, and now the thought of any kind of life without him was simply...unimaginable? Their lives had become interwoven, but the Sultan definitely called the shots. Sometimes she felt like a young sapling which was being bent by a warm and powerful wind. Like now.
So when he told her to turn around, she did—with a graceful twirl which made the silk chiffon of her dress swirl round her like a ballet dancer.
‘You mean, like that?’ she said lightly.
‘I
