How to answer it? What to say? Raffa rarely experienced uncertainty, but now, he felt it in spades.
“Relax, your highness,” she said, her American accent thicker than usual. Or perhaps he was just noticing it more, noticing everything about her as though they’d been hyper charged. “I was joking. I know you’re too busy to pander to my every curiosity and need.”
He grimaced. Great. He’d just achieved the exact opposite of what he’d set out to. As she walked past, he wrapped his fingers around her wrist and pulled her to his body, holding her there. Her eyes flew wide and her lips parted. It would have been so easy to drop his lips to hers. To drive his tongue into her mouth and kiss her until she was purring like a kitten. To make love to her here in this city that had seen so much, and meant so much, to his people.
“Let us have a rule then,” he said, the words softly seductive. “You will not come here without me.” He lifted his hand and padded a thumb across her lower lip.
“What if I want to come here every day?” She said logically, but the words were throaty and thickened by breath.
“Then I shall have to join you.”
She swallowed and turned her head, something like misery fleeting across her beautiful face. “You don’t have to protect me, Raffa. And you don’t have to … pretend … to care for me either.” She took a step away and there was such a dichotomy in her slender body that he ached for her. She was beautiful and strong, fiercely so, but there was a vulnerability underscoring that strength that made him want to wrap her in his arms and hold her to him always. “If I come to the ruins, I’ll be sure to bring a security detail. Okay?”
No, he wanted to shout. That wasn’t okay! He didn’t want her out tinkering with artefacts and gasping at carpets unless he was there to see her pleasure, to vicariously experience her delight for himself. But wasn’t that exactly the problem? He put his needs above hers – always. He wanted to see her pleasure, and so what? He would deny her experiencing it if he couldn’t witness it?
“Fine, if you wish,” he agreed with a sinking feeling in his gut. “Shall we eat?”
“I’m okay. Just thirsty.” Her eyes didn’t meet his and he wanted to shout into the sky, to peel back the blankets of time and reach into their past, to change things from the very beginning.
“Your stomach was like an orchestra a moment ago.”
“Thanks a lot,” she murmured softly. “I can eat when we get back to the palace.”
His gut kicked, and he felt as though he’d been knifed through his chest. She just wanted to go back to the palace? She wanted to be away from him?
So what if he continued with the outing he had planned? Would that be yet another example of him riding roughshod over her needs?
“I had intended to show you something else,” he said, reaching into one of the horse’s bags and pulling out a glass bottle of water. He handed it to her, their eyes locked. “But if you would prefer to return to the palace, of course that is your choice.”
13
HER CHOICE? THAT’S WHAT he’d said, and yet as Chloe stared across at her husband, her heart twisted and her stomach hollowed out.
Her choice?
Nothing would ever be her choice again.
Not because they were married, not because he was a King.
But because she loved him, and she needed him. Not just sexually – in every way. Whatever time he was willing to spend with her was a breadcrumb she couldn’t ignore.
It was pathetic. Weak.
Desperate.
But she didn’t think she could fight it.
“You’ve gone to so much trouble,” she said stiffly, turning away from him, both grateful for and hating the way she could seem so unaffected. Would life be easier if she weren’t so naturally cold? Would their relationship have been different if she’d worn her heart on her sleeve more? “It would be rude to ignore that.”
His guttural noise was one of impatience. “I do not care for good manners. You are my wife. Say what you want!”
She startled, his outburst totally incongruous with the pleasant time they’d been having. She blinked, staring at him thoughtfully, completely hiding the way her heart was rabbiting in her chest. “I just did.”
A muscle jerked in his jaw as he met her gaze, his own laced with steely intent.
“Fine. Are you ready?”
She nodded, holding the water bottle out for him to take. He curved his fingers around it and pulled, so that she moved towards him instinctively. His head was angled towards hers and up close, she could see that his breathing was rushed.
Her own matched it, in and out, but her lungs couldn’t gain sufficient air.
“Well, Sheikha? Are you ready?”
Ready? For what? Her brain was mush. He bent down, lower and lower, so his face was only an inch from hers and she could smell him and taste him and she needed him so badly she groaned, swaying her body forward.
But he didn’t kiss her. Instead, his hands curled around her hips and he lifted her over his shoulder, his hands resting on her bottom as he moved towards the horse. He deposited her onto its back with a lack of ceremony that had her glaring at him – and craving him all at once.
He lifted up behind her, his strength apparent in every movement he made.
“Where are we going?” She asked, as he reached around her and took the reins, needing to have some kind of sensible conversation before she said what she was thinking – that she wanted him to take her there, on the sands of the desert, in the shadows cast by the ruins of this great, old town.
“To see a myth.”
She frowned, but there was no opportunity to question him further. He kicked the
