Free Turkish Delights Series by Liz Crowe Page A

middle of the Bosporus and played edgy music to anyone within a ten mile radius. She usually loved it. The rebellious concept resonated deep in her psyche. But tonight it irritated, represented useless noise that meant nothing.
    It had been a week since the night she’d last seen Levent, the night she’d wanted more than anything for him to fill all the emptiness she’d carried with her since childhood. Her body had ached for him. She’d done everything she knew how to do to prove it to him. But he’d denied her.
    She sighed and put a hand over her eyes. They could be together. She knew it. He was what she wanted, but apparently her father knew what she needed and had conveniently produced him in the form of one Major Ronald Harrison, tonight at the dinner table. He’d made valiant noises about her newly shorn hair. Deflecting her father’s scorn over her action, he’d been very supportive. But she had been in no mood to tolerate either of them. Trying to ignore the small voice that spoke, telling her that Levent may want her but had done the right thing cutting off their encounter last week, she blew out a puff of air, rolled onto her back, and berated herself.
    She truly didn’t want to act spoiled. But from the moment she could remember having a thought, she knew her father dismissed her as a burden—a female he had to support and then pawn onto some other man. She’d found her own happiness, first with Levent as a child until he was taken from her, then as an ignored daughter in her mother’s house. She’d found a few friends, but they had been ripped out of her life when she had to return to this god-forsaken country once again. It simply wasn’t fair.
    She sighed and ran a hand down her breasts, memories of Levent’s eager touch, the huge bulge under his zipper that she’d caressed briefly. Her face flushed and her thighs trembled. Damn him anyway. What was his problem? She was willing to forgo anything her father might provide in the way of approval. But he was so…oh hell. So utterly and completely sexy, so masterful with his lips and hands, and so bloody stubborn.
    His voice permeated her dreams, his laugh, the wicked gleam he’d get in his eyes just before he taught her something dangerous or forbidden all those years ago, it was maddening. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, willing him out of her head. But he wouldn’t go.
    She glanced over at the expensive formal dress hanging on the dressmaker’s dummy in the corner. It was red, at her insistence, cut classically on the bias with a tight skirt and guaranteed to hug every curvy inch of her to perfection. Turkey was full of stellar dressmakers. Her father had procured one who’d produced one of the most beautiful dresses she’d ever worn. But she didn’t want it. Didn’t want to go to the stupid dance with Ron. Handsome, yes, and polite, and very straight laced, he had tried to grope her a little tonight when her father had left the two of them along in the study after dinner. “Your hair will grow back,” he’d kept reassuring her as if she cared. She’d let him touch her. Why not? It left her cold, but she was ready to unburden herself of virginity. It was obviously something she didn’t need. If the chosen one wanted it, she might just let him have it.
    When the interference noise on the radio became too much to bear, she pushed the whole stupid thing onto the floor. Pacing the room accomplished nothing. Her skin crawled as if covered with ants, her every nerve ending exposed and raw. She’d skipped class for a week, unwilling or unable to risk seeing Levent again. She didn’t trust herself around him anymore. She was either going to throw him down on the floor and make him take her, or she was going to gouge out his beautiful eyes if he told her once more it “wasn’t meant to be.”
    She settled on a bath and yanked the faucets all the way hot. The servant girl came running upstairs at the sound, fresh towels