Temptation in Istanbul, page 13
The secret contact was destructive to her willpower against his charm...and yet as deliciously pleasing to her as kissing him.
* * *
Faisal suffered when Maryan ordered Turkish delight ice creams for her and Zara.
The waitress delivered the ice creams quickly.
Zara dived in, making a mess of the lower half of her face. She had sticky pink ice cream and pistachios stuck to her chin, but she beamed toothily at him and Maryan, the picture of contentedness.
After helping wipe Zara up, Maryan tasted her ice cream, her mouth closing over her spoon, her eyes widening as she moaned her satisfaction. It was a soft, low moan, appropriate for their setting, but it lanced a bolt of desire through him. He shifted awkwardly in his seat and watched her all the while.
He was torturing himself and couldn’t stop.
She licked and sucked her spoon, unaware of his perverted fantasizing.
When his chicken breast pudding arrived, Maryan paused from eating her ice cream and looked at the delicacy on his plate curiously. She stroked her tongue over her bottom lip and drove him to a fantasy of their lips meeting again.
“Want a taste?” He held out his spoon, knowing perfectly well he could have asked the waitress to bring a second spoon.
“What is it, Daddy?” Zara leaned over her ice cream, equally intrigued by his chosen dessert.
“Chicken breast pudding.”
Maryan raised her brows. “How is it made?”
“My mom used to make it, and I’ve watched her do it enough times. You tenderize the chicken until it’s soft, then you add milk and sugar, a flavorful thickener like broken rice, and a dash of cinnamon for taste and garnish. It’s thick enough for you to shape onto a plate.” He gestured to the cinnamon checker design atop the square piece of pudding.
Zara pulled a face and poked out her tongue at the description. “Ew! That doesn’t sound very good.”
“Zara, we don’t say that about food,” Maryan chided.
“Sorry, but I don’t want any chicken pudding, please.” And then as if to avoid any pudding finding its way to her mouth, she shoveled a spoonful of ice cream until her cheeks puffed.
Faisal smothered his laugh with a cough. He didn’t want to humor Zara when Maryan was attempting to discipline her.
“So, do you want a bite?”
Maryan eyed his spoon, keeping him on tenterhooks until she nodded. She took his spoon, their fingers touching, his heart beating faster.
She spooned a small bite and tasted the unusual pudding. “It doesn’t taste like chicken.”
“It’s not supposed to. The name is misleading.” He accepted his spoon back from her and tasted the dessert, aware that Maryan’s luscious lips had been around the spoon crossing his mouth. That naughty thought combined with the delectably sweet and creamy bite of pudding had him stiffer below the belt than he’d been in a long damn time. So long, in fact, he didn’t recall ever getting hot and bothered over dessert shared with a beautiful woman.
Maryan isn’t any woman, is she?
He was starting to believe that more with each passing day. The conundrum being that she had six days left with him and Zara. Six days before she left his world, his life...and any chance at sharing his bed again.
It shouldn’t have changed anything. They’d had a perfect understanding last night.
One night.
Maryan said it herself, giving him the best out a man like him could want. A man who wasn’t in the market for a ring, a white picket fence and all the other trappings that were expected with a vow of forever.
And yet he’d flirted with her and tried kissing her outside the café. If she hadn’t stopped him, he would have. No questions asked. No doubts. No care as to how it flung a wrench in their plan to seal their passion away in one night.
So much for my self-control...
Faisal lingered in the café after they were done to pay their bill and leave a tip.
Maryan had taken Zara outdoors. Zara’s giggling was the best music to his ears. Maryan was twirling her. She danced around her nanny, spinning and laughing, and looking so heartwarmingly happy. He dropped enough liras on the table to please the waitress and hurried to join them.
“Where to next?” Maryan asked once he was standing by her.
“I thought we could go check out a park nearby. We’ll have to take the car.” He’d dismissed his driver again, preferring to chauffeur Maryan and Zara himself. It gave them time alone. Time he cherished more than he had ever thought he would. It was a scary but thrilling feeling.
Like experiencing the heights of their pleasure last night.
Maryan had made him feel alive. In a way he hadn’t felt when his business plans flowed smoothly. With her in his arms, Faisal felt indomitable. All-powerful. Like he held all the world’s good fortune in the palm of his hands. Swept up by that flurry of emotion, he’d had a private thought—what if Maryan didn’t leave? What if she stayed with him and Zara here in his home, in Istanbul?
He swallowed to no effect, his anxiety floating to the top of the mire of his feelings.
That morning he’d considered asking her to stay longer and not leave them just yet. One look at her blissful expression and his courage evaporated. What if by asking her to stay he ruined the extraordinarily delightful memory they’d just created together? Then he’d have nothing to remember her by.
And it wouldn’t be fair of him to ask when she’d been adamant about the limit being one night.
She needed to go home to her aunt and uncle. She’d said it herself. The obligation to her family was greater than his desire to keep her in Istanbul. He had to be selfless, no matter how it pained him to be.
“Are you coming?” Maryan was looking back at him, Zara’s hand in hers and a question in her eyes.
He forced a smile for them and nodded his assent.
She gave him a fleeting look of curiosity and then turned to walk away with his daughter toward where he’d parked his car.
Faisal trailed them slower, his head and heart at war over what to do about his growing attachment to Maryan. If he asked her to stay, it’d be a selfish request, but it would also make him happy. But if he let her leave him and Zara he had no doubt in his mind they would lose her forever.
And forever... Forever was the problem.
* * *
Maryan had no guess as to what Faisal could be thinking.
They didn’t speak while he drove them to their next destination.
He parked his ultra-fancy sports car near the gates of an urban park sharing the grounds of the Topkapı Palace. Another place she’d meant to visit before leaving Istanbul. Before she asked what he was thinking, and whether their plans had changed, Faisal grabbed Zara’s hand and stepped up to her.
“We’ll go through Gülhane Park and head west first. There’s another mosque I’d like to show you.”
So far Faisal hadn’t disappointed her with his city tour. It helped that Istanbul was new and welcome to her. The city was a paragon of splendid views, friendly citizens, and appetizing foods and drinks.
And Gülhane Park was enchanting.
Wonder-struck, she admired the forested park, its well-tended gardens full of tulips and a tranquil creek. Zara stopped them at a colorful signpost of the park’s name to take a photo with her phone, all three of them. Faisal asked a passerby to help them with the picture. While the friendly stranger waited for them to get into position, Zara instructed Maryan and Faisal to sit on either side of her.
“Daddy, you sit here. And Maryan, you sit beside me this way.”
Her bossy attitude inspired a laugh from her father and an indulgent smile from Maryan.
The stranger snapped a couple of photos before handing Zara’s phone back and leaving.
They took more pictures at Zara’s behest in front of the Column of the Goths, an ancient Roman victory column. Once they passed the gate out of the park, Maryan sensed Faisal dropping back to match pace with her. Zara was absorbed with her phone and the photos they’d taken on it and walked ahead of them.
“We should talk.” Faisal brushed his hand along hers as they walked closer together.
“About?” she asked.
She had a clue of at least one thing they could discuss, but she wouldn’t put words in his mouth. She’d rather hear what he thought without any more suppositions.
“Last night,” he said, his voice dropping to a tantalizing whisper. “Being with you was...”
Mind-blowing? Soul-shattering? Exquisitely and incomparably perfect?
“Fun.”
“Fun?” she repeated, a hollowness setting in all over her body.
He slowed and stopped her with a hand to her elbow. Staring down at her, he frowned, confusion touching his attractive face. “Wrong word?”
“No,” she said, forcing herself to say it again when he tilted his head to the side and appeared unconvinced, “No, you’re right. It was fun.” Fun came out fast and harsh, and with a thread of a growl in the one syllable.
Faisal pulled his fingers through his long curls. She slipped her arm out of his hand and met his troubled eyes.
“You’re angry,” he said, regret roughening his voice.
“I’m not,” she flung back, and walked away.
He caught up quickly, his strides matching her clipped pace. Zara had left them behind when they’d stopped, but she was within visual distance. At least Maryan didn’t have to worry about losing her. Clearly the same couldn’t be said for Faisal.
He wasn’t yours to begin with. One night was all it was supposed to be.
She blinked fast to stop the tears. Crying now would unleash all sorts of problems. Faisal would feel guilty and have even more power over her, and Zara would wonder what had gotten her so upset.
Don’t cry. Do not. Cry.
“Maryan.” He beseeched softly and touched her shoulder.
She jerked out of reach, stopped fast and whirled on her heel to finish confronting him. She’d get the last word in, and then they would close the book on this chapter and move on.
But before she said anything, Faisal blurted, “Fun wasn’t the first word that came to mind. It really wasn’t.”
She sucked her lips in, wanting to believe what he said yet still feeling raw and awfully vulnerable. Keeping silent felt the best course of action. Sure enough, her quiet roused him into continuing his speech or apology or whatever it was.
“Spectacular. Unlike anything I’ve experienced before. Chemistry off the charts.” He shuffled in place then, his palm curling over the nape of his neck and a shyness overtaking him. “For lack of a better word, it was perfect. I can’t think of any other way to describe it.”
“Perfect,” she said softly. So softly it was a wonder that he heard her.
“Perfect,” he rejoined with a crooked smile. “Are you still mad?”
She shook her head, and his smile spread wider and crinkled his eyes. She turned his words over in her head, her heart lighter and her body shrugging off the frosty remains of her crushed ego and heartache.
They walked then, lapsing into a peaceful silence and following Zara out of the park toward their next stop in that day’s leg of the tour.
The New Mosque offered a brief respite from the heated moment in the park.
Pigeons flocked to the square at the foot of the steps into the seventeenth-century imperial mosque. Maryan had done some research on the Ottoman-era structure. It was only one of many mosques constructed by the women closest to the all-powerful sultans of that era. Their wives and mothers.
Faisal purchased three cups of wheat from an elderly merchant working a mobile stall and handed Maryan and Zara one each.
“The pigeons have come to rely on the food,” he said, showing Zara how to feed the birds without upending her cup and spilling the wheat inside.
Maryan flicked her wrist, showering wheat grains on the square. A herd of pigeons fluttered nearer to her to scavenge the ground for the fresh wheat. She tossed them more, laughing with Zara when the pigeons brushed their legs in a mad dash to peck the ground clear of food.
When Zara finished her cup, Faisal replenished her with his. He hadn’t fed the pigeons, appearing satisfied with watching his daughter experience it for them both.
Eventually he left Zara to continue scattering small handfuls of wheat to the hungry pigeons and wandered over to Maryan.
She sensed he wanted to pick up where they’d left off speaking.
“I am sorry if I made you think anything else,” he said. “It’s just we decided that it would be a night...”
“I know.”
“Can you tell I’m regretting it?”
She couldn’t believe her ears. Did Faisal want her for more than one night? Not that it changed anything. She had a responsibility to help her aunt and uncle. They were family. Family helped each other. She’d been helping hers all her life.
A promise of countless more sultry nights with Faisal wasn’t enough to keep her in Istanbul.
And the one thing that possibly could cause her to waver from her plans would never, ever, not in a million years happen. It didn’t stop her from thinking it.
If he loved me...
But, as she knew, that was an impossibility.
Faisal pushed his hands into his pockets, gazing at her with an intensity that manifested an ache all through her body. “Am I wrong to assume that we should revisit our terms?”
What would be the point?
Maryan clued in that she’d asked the question aloud when Faisal’s eyes grew larger, his brows vaulting higher. Crud, she thought, cursing her runaway mouth.
“You’re right,” he said with a slow nod and the saddest smile. “I shouldn’t have even brought it up. No, we were smart to have kept it to one time only. No strings, no commitments and above all else: no complications.”
No hearts broken. No lives irreversibly changed, for better or worse.
She left those thoughts to herself. It was hard enough recalling why they’d chosen to limit their passionate attraction.
Harder to do it while falling deeper into his eyes and glimpsing the same longing she had for him staring back at her with equal force.
Faisal’s ringing phone took that moment to interrupt. Maryan watched him pull it out and stare at it before he looked up to her with an apologetic expression. Figuring it had to do with work, she nodded dismissively before he asked, and he walked away to answer the call.
Maryan went to Zara and found them a spot on the staircase of the mosque to watch the pigeons being fed by passersby.
When Faisal returned to them, he still had the phone in his grasp.
“What’s the matter?” Maryan asked, sensing the change in him. There was a pep in his step. A joyous gleam in his eyes. And a curl to his smiling mouth that had her lips pulling up in return.
“It’s done. It’s really done. Aydin and Erkin have agreed to the deal, and my team’s just received their signed preliminary documents.” He shook his head, the bewilderment taking hold of his handsome face. “There’s still the finalizing of the contracts to complete, but then that’s it. We’re officially partners.”
“And you’re building your oil rig and helping Somalia,” she added encouragingly.
He looked at her then. Really looked at her, his smile softer, his eyes suspiciously glassy. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“What did I do?”
“Aydin was impressed by your speech. I know he was.”
“You don’t,” she argued, losing the battle when his boyish grin dazzled her into silence.
“I just do.”
Maryan nudged her chin at his phone and hugged his daughter closer. “Is that what the call was? Do you have to go in to work to oversee your team?”
“No...”
She pursed her lips, not liking that he trailed. Last time he’d done this they’d ended up going to dinner together—
And having the hottest, most perfect sex of my life after.
“We’ve been invited to a party the day after tomorrow to announce the partnership officially.”
Before Maryan could give him the third degree, Zara sprang up and hugged her father’s legs.
“Do I get to go to the party, too?” she asked sweetly.
Faisal laughed. “Yes, you’re coming with us, too.” He met Maryan’s eyes when he said that last part. She strayed from her doubts, her worry falling off the edge of a cliff, and her memory of their wickedly hot night playing in her mind again. A part of her still couldn’t believe their lovemaking meant more to him as well. She never wanted to come down from her cloud nine.
Maryan was riding that emotional high when he said, “I have to make some calls, though, so I’ll be a little while. That won’t be a problem, right?”
Any red flags that might have been triggered were quashed by her good mood. A mood that Faisal had greatly contributed to.
Which was why she said, “Make your calls. We’ll be here waiting for you.”
Faisal sneaked a private smile full of heat at her. Planting a kiss atop his daughter’s head, he left them then. Maryan watched him go, Zara tucked against her side again, the two of them waiting for Faisal’s return. She pushed aside the foreboding sense that she should be worrying. She trusted him. Cared for him.
Loved him.
Maryan stiffened and then relaxed into that truth.
She did love Faisal.
She didn’t know when it had happened. Probably when she felt perfectly safe in his tender and passionate embrace. Or perhaps it was whenever she watched him with Zara—watched him be playful and loving with his daughter. Then again, now that she gave it her full attention, she must have fallen in love with all of him. And not all at once. Yes. That’s how it happened. Gradually, as she stripped each layer to the hidden truth of him, down to the most secreted parts, her attraction and attachment to him grew stronger and the love sprung forth naturally.
