A frisson of wonder ran the length of her spine. This was an ancient kingdom, and their child would one day take up a place on its throne. The job of carrying, birthing and raising that person fell to her. Having a child under any circumstances must be awe-inspiring, but this?
The enormity of what they were doing filled her now with a deep sense of amazement. The beginning of a pregnancy might already be flourishing inside of her! At the very thought, she pressed a flat palm to her stomach, and a clear image of what their baby might look like flooded her mind.
“They married impetuously and against my grandfather’s will. She was engaged to someone else, but then, she met my father. They fell in love.” He said the final sentence with derision, an indictment of such a foolish notion.
“You think there’s something wrong with that?”
His eyes contained raw cynicism as they lifted to clash with her. “Yes.”
She laughed, despite the cool disdain emanating from him. “So love is bad?”
He was watchful now, and he reached for his wine, his long fingers curving around the glass, his eyes not leaving her face. “Surely you’ve had sufficient reasons to form this conclusion yourself?”
Chloe was careful not to react. In truth, it had been a long time since anyone had spoken to her – albeit obliquely – of her parents’ affair, and she found that Raffa’s knowledge of this matter was strangely unsettling. “Sometimes I forget that you’re not just my husband.” Her smile was wry. “You aren’t simply a man I’ve married, nor a stranger who knows nothing about me. You know all my secrets, all my truths, and yet none of them by my own admission.”
“That bothers you?”
“It disadvantages me,” she agreed quietly. “You know that my mother and father were miserable together. That he came to hate her, and me as a result of that. That the older I got and the more I looked like her the harder he found it to be around me. You know that his hatred made her miserable…” Her voice faltered a little.
“And you?” He asked silkily, the question surprising her.
Chloe guarded the pain fiercely. “Their relationship had nothing to do with me.”
“You’re their child.”
And despite the fact she didn’t easily blush, Chloe felt heat rising into her cheeks and she found it hard to meet his eyes. “We were talking about you.”
His laugh was a jolt of warm treacle into polarized muscles. “Because you find it easier to interrogate me than be interrogated?”
“Do you intend to interrogate me?”
His eyes locked to hers, and a jolt of sensual heat travelled from one to the other. “Definitely. Later. And I intend to be very persuasive.”
She couldn’t answer; words failed her.
“So?” Lazily, he reached for his fork and speared a piece of octopus. “You were only a child when they separated?” His frown showed his attempts at recollection. “Apollo told me he was fifteen? So you were, what? Five?”
She nodded jerkily. “Six.” She cleared her throat, fixing him with a clear gaze that disguised the tormented direction of her own thoughts. “My father was always a busy man. Even when they were happy together, he still had very little time to give us.”
Raffa’s smile was grim. “Yet you chose to marry the ruler of a kingdom? Did you imagine I would be any different to your father, habibti?”
“No,” she answered instantly. “I believed you’d be very much the same.”
The defiant tilt of her chin intrigued him. “And you welcomed that?”
A brittle laugh escaped her. “I like certainty,” she said after a moment’s consideration. And refusing to be cowered by the directness of his stare, she continued, “I knew what I was getting when we married. I knew you would have your concerns, your life, and that you wouldn’t want me to be a part of it. Not more than was necessary, in any event.” Unconsciously, she lifted her left hand and stared at the enormous engagement ring. “And while you were busy being Sheikh, I would be free to live my own life.”
There was a hollow ring to the words that had the Sheikh wondering at what kind of messed up lack of independence had led her to believe that a royal lifestyle, under the microscope of a fascinated press and adoring public, would be preferable to being single?
“So despite your parents, you still have faith in the institution of marriage?”
“Our marriage is nothing like theirs,” she said with a grim smile.
“How did it differ?”
“Our marriage is barely a marriage,” she pointed out, distracting herself by reaching for a small wedge of peach and sliding it between her lips. His focused attention on the action almost threw her train of thought. “Up until a few nights ago, we hadn’t seen one another in six months.”
“Whose fault is that?” He prompted.
She laughed in spite of herself. “Oh, no, you don’t! You don’t get to rewrite history, Rafiq Al-Khalil. You wanted me here about as much as I wanted to be here – which is to say, barely at all. I think it suited us both to have a degree of separation in our marriage.”
He nodded slowly, but there was something like regret in his face. “And yet how quickly you’ve become an addiction in my blood. How did that happen?”
She was startled – startled, shocked, pleased, surprised. She swallowed, and looked upwards, towards the stars overhead.
“I like to know what’s expected of me,” she said, returning to their earlier, safer conversation.
“You like safety,” he said with a nod that was rich with approval.
“Yes.”
“I understand that.” He pushed up a little straighter. “In this way, we are the same. For me, surprises are to be abhorred. Even the good ones.”
She shifted her shoulders. “I don’t think there’s any such thing.”
“True.”
“It was hard on me, though. The divorce. Then again, what six year old wouldn’t have been devastated?”
“Did you want to stay with
