Turkish Delights 0.50 - 4.00 Series Bundle

by Liz Crowe

  Her kindness became caring. Her caring became warmth. Then her warmth had become a physical connection Tarkan had clung to for the last months, desperate for something resembling normalcy. It anchored him. Got him through the daily torture sessions he had come to anticipate like they were on some sort of fucked up to-do list. As water was poured into his stomach with a rough tube, or his dental nerve endings prodded with sharp rusty objects, or loud rock music pounded his ears for hours at a time, he held on. Held on knowing at the end, she would be there. She would cradle his broken body, caress his now emaciated frame, and press her lush lips to his forehead, cheeks, and mouth. And for a few moments, he had someone on his side.

  The hours all that time ago, perhaps even another lifetime, came at him in bits and pieces, broken by memories of his life before. He’d resumed his station at the national parliament building after bidding farewell to…to…ah, dear God, Caleb. Lately, memories of his tall, strong, beautiful American lover made him ache with longing. He’d fall asleep in tears and awaken to find himself still huddled in a ball on the thin blanket in the corner of the horrible room that had served as his home for the last nightmarish months. Caleb’s sparkling blue eyes, deep voice, contagious laughter, his strong back, large hands, and soft lips were more real than they’d ever been. Tarkan would hold out his arms and pretend Caleb was there, holding him. It kept him alive.

  His captors had grabbed him about five minutes before the building he’d been guarding became reduced to ruins. He had fought them off long enough to race towards the main office, sustaining third-degree burns on his hand from grabbing the doorknob as the first of four bombs detonated. The terrorists had snatched him away from the carnage, dragged him from the wreckage before the second and third bombs had gone off. They stabbed him in the neck with something, immobilizing him. Now all he knew was this room. Thirst. Pain. Terror. And her.

  ***

  “Beloved?” He croaked. The last forty-eight hours had been difficult. His captors had decided to blackmail his father for his release, realizing the futility of turning him, but had gotten a less-than-acceptable response. No big surprise, Tarkan surmised. His father would be hard pressed to believe his once-dead son was alive, and much less worth the equivalent of ten million U.S. dollars. After almost a month of being ignored and barely fed, their returned attention to him was an unwelcome resumption of the status quo of the last…what? Weeks? Months? His throat felt like it was lined with thorns, his body pummeled by fists, lead pipes, and what might as well have been a couch, or maybe a car, given the way he hurt right now. He tried not to groan. His plan neared completion. Only one element remained. “You have it? What I asked for?”

  There was a shuffling, some loud shouts and then silence. Tarkan thought he might have passed out before he heard her again. He winced and pulled himself to a sitting position, trying not to spend much time cataloging the various alarming aches in his internal organs.

  “Yes, my love. I do. Just as you asked.”

  The door’s bolt lock shot open, and the ancient creak made its usual loud, ear-busting slide to the left. A small shadow crept in and slowly slid the door closed. Tarkan shut his eyes, marshaling every last ounce of strength left to him. He’d spent the hours he wasn’t staring at the dank, moldy walls and ceilings of his universe coming up with his escape plan. And the few moments of mild pleasure with her had cleared the fog from his mind, giving him clarity and purpose. Although the thought of leaving her made him physically ill. In the bizarre daily routine of his life for the last…how many months? Years? He’d become accustomed to its cadence in a twisted way. He opened his eyes, took a breath, as her scent hardened his cock in sickening anticipation.

  “I had to do some terrible things. But I want us to be together forever…as you said. So here, and the man outside is gone, for a while. Let us go into the night as you said.” She held out an ancient looking pistol.

  Tarkan bit his lip, tasted the blood of his own vile lie to her.

  “Yes. My…my darling. Let me, let me kiss you once before…before we go.”

  His shaking hand closed around the gun’s barrel as her lips covered his, familiar, and terrifying at the same time. He let his body lead, forced his brain to disengage. God help him. Her hand gripped his shaft, guided it into her warm, waiting body, and he moaned, calling out the name of his beloved, as his battered body experienced blessed relief and release.

  “Shh…” she whispered as his hips bucked and he came inside her, shouting out for Caleb to help, to find him and rescue him. But he knew it was not to be. He had to rescue himself. Now. He fisted his hands in her hair. Pressed his lips to hers, and imagined the hard, beautiful body of his one true love above his. It was the only thing that had sustained him for this long, never-ending nightmare.

  She caught her breath, and something metal pressed into his other hand. A key. “Go,” she whispered into his ear. “I release you.”

  He leaned back. The terrible, awful, soul-sucking light turned her face a jaundiced yellow. But the dark pools of her huge eyes were shining. A tear ran from one, then the other. Tarkan’s heart sped up. “But, we must go. Together. As I said.”

  She smiled and cradled his bearded face in her rough hands. “No. I was not going with you, ever, beloved.” She ran her tongue across his dry, cracked lips. Held him close. Panic took over, pierced him like a bolt of lightning. He had to go. Now. This was his one chance. But he froze, as his cock shrank and exited her body. She was letting him go? Like this, after months? Years? Of taking his essence, everything he had while the rest of him was beaten, starved, subjected to every manner of torture, sensory overload and deprivation and then ignored. As he’d been for at least a month until his captors decided to ask his father for money in exchange for his empty shell. He sighed and held her close. But she stood, releasing him, body and mind and soul.

  “No!” He heard himself, saw his hand reach for her, sensed his heart contract, and his brain seize in terror. How could he function without her? How could he leave her here?

  “Beloved.” Her voice was firm. “This is your moment. Go. And live again.”

  She pulled him to his feet, helped him reassemble what passed for clothing, brushed his long length hair out of his eyes, and shoved him to the door. “Now! This is the time! Hurry! Before they return. Beloved, I will always be with you.”

  Tarkan nodded on some kind of pain-addled, post-orgasmic autopilot. Faces he’d forced out of his mind for the last eons of time he’d been held flashed bright and real before his eyes—his parents, his twin, his little sister. Tarkan put a hand over his dry lips to hold back the sob that threatened. Caleb.

  He jammed the key in the door, palmed the small gun, slipped out through an alarmingly narrow space, and moved down the quiet hall. The first real sunlight he’d encountered in God knows how long shot a spear of pain straight between his eyes. He stumbled into a strange courtyard, falling twice before locating a hand pump. He poured fresh water over his hands and filled his shrunken belly until he threw up, then filled it again, unaware of the tears that rolled down his face until he tasted the salt in the water he gulped.

  Chapter One

  The fact that Caleb had gone nearly nine months without the dream searing his sleeping nerve endings made its reappearance that much worse. The robed figure kept moving back, out of his reach. Screaming people raced around, getting in his way, keeping him from reaching the man who kept floating away. He followed the figure. He had to know. Familiar, dark-skinned hands stretched from the black recesses of the ugly brown cloth. Then they both burst into flames as Caleb reached out. The smell of human flesh frying was not something he’d ever smelled before, but he somehow knew it was this that made him want to gag and vomit.

  He had to see Tarkan’s face for himself. Prove he was truly gone. He snatched the rough fabric away from the figure’s face, Tarkan’s name on his lips, tears clouding his vision. He saw him, his strong, handsome features, firm jaw, aquiline nose, and thi
ck beautiful lips once, just long enough to scream his name before it turned—becoming a dark, evil face that laughed at him before disappearing in flames.

  “No!” Caleb shot up in the pitch-black room, breathing heavy, his heart pounding. “Shit.” He ran a hand over his eyes, wiping away the wetness. Flopping back down on his damp pillow, he groaned. It was so vivid. The same exact dream he’d had, whenever he’d let himself go to sleep sober enough to remember dreams, for the past two years. His body clenched as if for a fight, his muscles tensed and ready to spring. He couldn’t get the sick taste of burning flesh out of his mouth. He sat back up and swung his feet to the floor, leaning on his knees to try and calm his racing pulse.

  Water. That’s what he needed. His tongue seemed glued to the top of his mouth. He was familiar with this sensation. It had been a constant for him in the months after getting the news of Tarkan’s murder. His lover had been blown to smithereens along with his entire battalion of Turkish soldiers who’d been guarding the parliament building in Ankara. When you went to bed stone-cold drunk, you tended to wake with extreme cotton mouth. But he hadn’t done that since…. Caleb shook his head and stumbled into the bathroom. After gulping down what seemed like a gallon of water and pouring a couple of glasses of the stuff over his sweaty hair, he stared at himself in the mirror.

  His skin was darker than usual, as he’d returned from three weeks in the south of Turkey. Days spent on the beach, reading, running, and sleeping had gone a long way towards restoring his equilibrium after the extreme emotional swings of the past few months. Nights in the arms of his lover, Adem, had done even more towards that goal. The two men had spent the entire eight weeks together after meeting on a 1Night Stand Blue Cruise in the Turkish Mediterranean back in Southern California. As Caleb coped with the traumatic aftermath of his friend Elle’s near brush with death during childbirth, Adem had stayed by his side. He’d spent a fair bit of their time in Turkey absent, the other parts edgy and pissed off, busy most days, re-establishing control over his successful restaurant on the Mediterranean coast so Caleb had a lot of time to make up for. But their nights had been spectacular, and his heart had continued its slow healing process. His return to the States had been hard, but he needed to get back to his life and his job as Elle’s personal assistant.

  Ellery Kensington was his dearest friend and his boss. The CEO of the pharmaceutical company, where he’d worked for her for over ten years, was now back at work. Two healthy and beautiful children were at home with the nanny while her husband, Emre, worked as a new professor in the UCLA School of Business. Emre. Caleb shuddered as a sudden chill crawled down his spinal column at the thought of him. When he had discovered that his boss lady had the hots for Tarkan’s twin brother, it had been all fun and games—until those two had gone and fallen in love, married, and moved to California. He glared into his own bloodshot eyes. What was his problem? All was re-established as good in his world. While he’d never go a single day not missing his lover of nearly six years, he was happy, wasn’t he?

  “Get a grip,” he growled at himself. After taking a leak and splashing yet more water on his face at the sink, he yanked on the boxer shorts he’d discarded on the floor in his haste to get at Adem’s body earlier. He smiled. Then frowned when he realized Adem was not in their bed. One glance at the glowing clock gave him the answer to the where-the-hell-did-he-go question. Four a.m. Which meant it was ten a.m. in France. Which meant Adem was on the phone yet again.

  He made his way down the hall towards the kitchen and heard Adem slamming things around, talking in rapid-fire Parisian French. Gleaming state of the art stainless steel appliances, an eight-burner gas range, double ovens, and gigantic Sub Zero fridge made up Caleb and Adem’s favorite room in his penthouse condo—for many things.

  He smiled at the sight of his lover, clad in soft flannel pants, pacing, running slim fingers through long black hair. Caleb leaned against the door jamb a moment, trying to let go of the dream. But his heart kept pounding, and he was still so damn thirsty. He pulled a glass from the cabinet and filled it from the fridge’s filtered water source. His rudimentary French helped him understand that whoever was on the other end of the line was getting an ass chewing for letting Adem’s real estate deal fall through. Apparently he, or she, was a lamest possible asswipe of an estate agent, and Adem was firing him/her. Caleb downed another glass of water, unable to quench his raging thirst, and watched Adem’s back from across the room. The tip of his cock tingled, and he sat, hoping to quell the rising lust he got whenever he was in the other man’s presence.

  Adem slammed the phone down on the counter, and Caleb watched the mess of expensive electronic pieces scatter across the marble expanse. He knew better than to say anything. When his lover was in full French-Pissed-Off mode he was best left alone lest one was ready to be on the receiving end of a string of curses and thrown All Clad cookware. He sipped his water and calmly ducked, avoiding the remains of the smart phone hurled at his head. Adem glared at him, chest heaving, eyes dark and shining with fury. Caleb rose, no longer willing to curtail the horny energy raging through him at the sight of Adem’s bare chest, the line of ebony dark hair below his six-pack leading right where Caleb was staring. Dear God, the man had such an effect on him.

  He closed the five-step distance that separated them in only two and wrapped one hand around the back of his lover’s neck, clutching his soft silky hair. He needed him, so badly. Worse than ever for some reason. The demons he’d thought dispelled were back if that fucking dream and his inability to shake it were any indication. The only cure was to bury himself in Adem’s body, his lips, hair, eyes, and ass. Yes, most especially, his ass.

  “You need to relax.” He growled before covering Adem’s mouth with his. The other man grunted and shoved him away. Caleb grinned and raised an eyebrow at the look in the dark eyes across from him, keeping his hand wrapped in Adem’s long hair, letting his thumb rub just under his jawline. “You know I’m right.” His voice was rough as he pulled the man to him, their tall bodies well matched, one long and lean, the other taut, firm muscle. Their lips collided; tongues tangled as Caleb reached into Adem’s flannels and gripped his long, firm cock. “Mmm hmmm…. I told you.” He muttered into his lover’s dark, spicy skin, licking and sucking his way down his long neck keeping a firm grip on the other man’s glorious, velvety-skinned shaft.

  Adem groaned and leaned back against the counter. Caleb worked his way down, flicked the dark copper buds of his nipples before sucking in earnest, bringing an involuntary thrust to his lover’s hips. He ran his thumb over the pearly moisture that beaded the tip of Adem’s cock. “Mmmm…may I?”

  “Merde. You’d better or I’m gonna turn you around and fuck you. Your choice.” He fisted his hands in Caleb’s hair as he made his way back up to Adem’s full lips, parted them, captured them, and owned him, sweeping his tongue inside and gripping his morning-stubbled face between his hands.

  Something in him was aching in actual pain after that dream and he couldn’t place it. Terrified at the concept of the whole horror engulfing him again, he moaned when Adem shoved him back, pure unbridled lust in the dark chocolate brown of his eyes. Adem cupped his chin in one hand, keeping him at arm’s length, and tugged his boxers down. His hips jerked at the sensation of Adem’s fingers passing over the weeping head, at his firm grip and tug.

  “On second thought.” Adem pressed his entire body against Caleb’s. “I think it is I who want to be fucked. No?” He covered Caleb’s mouth, fucking him already with his tongue, proving his need with the press of his erection into Caleb’s. Impending orgasm made Caleb whimper.

  “Yes,” he whispered. “Yes. Please, I…need….” Caleb was alarmed to feel tears behind his eyes.

  “Shh….” Adem’s low voice made Caleb’s entire body break out in a chill. God he loved this man. He somehow knew what Caleb needed, instinctively, unselfishly, knowing he’d get as good in return. But he was no doubt more emotionally in tune than Cale
b would ever be, and for that he was forever grateful to have climbed onto that boat eight months prior. “I know. I know, my love.” His kiss was gentle, but with purpose and Caleb’s body relaxed, his heart loosened its clutch of fear from the dream as Adem turned and put his hands on the stainless steel island top. Caleb ran both hands down Adem’s smooth back, to his hips, around to his taut stomach, down both thighs, and back up, settling his own erection in the lovely cleft of his lover’s ass as he gripped the other man’s uncut cock in one hand.

  Adem made a low sound in his throat and arched his back, giving Caleb what he needed, tossing his long hair back, enticing Caleb’s fingers to wrap in its dark lengths once again. The sound of their combined breathing filled the room, and Caleb reached into the nearby small drawer filled with hand towels and a carefully placed tube of his favorite lube. He leaned over Adem’s lean body, kissed his way down from the man’s shoulders to the small of his back.

  “Oh yes, my love, take me. Fill me.” Adem pressed into Caleb’s body, spreading his long legs farther apart. “Hurry. I need you.”

  Caleb pressed one lubed finger into Adem’s tight hole, groaning as his cock twitched and leaked yet more of his own fluid. He kept his other hand on his lover’s shaft. He loved bringing the man to the brink, bringing them both to the ragged edge of orgasm then stopping, briefly, before taking him, hard, shoving high into his body, reaching his gland and feeling them both explode together. But today, he didn’t think he could wait. Today, as the California dawn was breaking over the horizon, turning the huge, expensive kitchen a dusky pink with impending sun, he knew something had happened. He didn’t know what it was, but it had the potential to kill him, to actually lay him out dead with shock. But what? His brain fogged as the primal need to fuck took over.