“Chloe.”
His voice cut through her grief, through the companionship of being with Amit, through the sun itself. Raffa strode towards them, his manner imposing, his frame larger than any man’s should be. His hair was up, and his eyes were watchful.
She focused on Amit’s drawing. Her smile was brittle. “Aren’t these sketches good, Raffa?” She murmured, looking for something to say that was normal. That would avoid any kind of emotional conversation. Hadn’t she hoped to avoid seeing him at all? Wasn’t that why she’d had an aid deliver her note?
Damn it, she should have left immediately.
“Leave us a moment, Amit,” he said, softening the words with a tight smile directed at his son.
“Yes, your highness.” Amit stood and bowed first to Raffa, then to Chloe, before disappearing into the palace.
“You didn’t need to chase him away like that,” she said huffily.
“I wanted to speak with you privately.”
“Then you could have asked me to come with you – he was drawing.”
“You are Sheikha. It is not for you to remove yourself from others.”
Chloe didn’t have the energy to argue with such absurd logic.
“Did you want to speak with me?” She asked.
“I received your note.”
“I presumed as much.”
“You cannot go away.”
“Why ever not?” She asked with surprise. “I’m not your prisoner, I’m your wife.”
“And you may very well be carrying my baby. You must be kept safe. Protected.”
“I’m going to the city, not out into the deserts on camel’s back,” she pointed out with tart acidity. “Besides, I’m not.” She cleared her throat of its aching rawness. “Pregnant, I mean.” Her fingers pulled at a blade of grass and she stared at it as though it were the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen. She didn’t observe the look that passed over Raffa’s face. First of surprise, and then of something much deeper and darker. Something like the unprecedented sadness that was in her heart.
“So,” she stood slowly. “I’ll go home for a while and then come back…”
He jerked his head, standing with her, staring at her. “It’s normal for it to take time,” he said after a moment. “It’s only been one month.”
And emotions burst through her, emotions she refused to share with him, emotions she would indulge only when she was able to do so without spectators. Her voice was thin, but cooly contained when she spoke. “Of course it’s normal,” she agreed. “But I see no point in being at the palace right now. So unless you want to keep me here against my will, I’ll say goodbye.”
Raffa kicked the horse’s side and leaned closer to the mane, his eyes focused on the sun waves glistening in the desert. Heat radiated from the earth beneath him but he saw only Chloe’s face as she’d been two mornings ago. Her expression so coldly contained, her chin tilted, her shoulders squared. She had been unbreakable, and yet he’d felt a vulnerability resonating from her, a pain that he understood.
They’d made love every night for weeks.
He’d expected success, as well.
Was that arrogance? Foolishness? He had been so certain she would conceive easily.
But it had only been a month – and what he’d said to her was true. He’d researched it. It could take up to a year to conceive. Heaven forbid. Elena had fallen pregnant in one night – one mistaken night had been all it took to conceive Amit. What if it did take Chloe longer? Six months? A year?
Malik wouldn’t make it, but that no longer seemed to matter. Having set their ship on this course, he knew how right it was. The country needed a baby – a legitimate heir – no matter how long that took.
His hair flew behind him, and from the distance, Raffa looked like a king of old. Like a warrior off to battle in this ancient land where natural strength predetermined leadership.
He blinked and Chloe was before him once more, but not as she’d been in the garden on the morning she’d left the palace. He saw her in his arms and his bed, her face flushed, her eyes fevered. He saw her without her veneer of ice-cold distance, he saw the passions that ran through her, and he ached to see more of that.
Suddenly, the fact she’d left the palace bothered him.
I’m your wife, not your prisoner, she’d said. And she’d been right. But in that moment, with the midday sun beating down on his broad back, Raffa wished he had thought to imprison her after all.
Her place was at the palace with him.
A week in the city had restored Chloe’s equilibrium. When the helicopter touched down at the palace, she was able to step off it with a sense of calm and contentment.
They would fall pregnant eventually, and in the meantime, she would have more of Raffa. More of his passion. Because once she was pregnant, that would be the end of this. There would be no more making love, no more sharing their bodies, kissing, tangling their limbs, stroking one another, showering together, driving each other crazy.
Not for anything in the world would she deny herself the pleasure of conceiving a child, but the small silver lining to the fact she wasn’t pregnant was that they would continue trying.
And when they were done, she would find Raffa’s absence from her bed and her life to be a pain made bearable only by the life burgeoning within her.
She didn’t need to let her husband know she’d returned. Her security detail communicated with his. He would have heard by now that she was on her way back. Sure enough, when she entered her suite of rooms, he was waiting.
Her servants were behind her, but he dismissed them with a single look. He was wearing flowing white pants and a gold kaftan, and his skin was darker than when she’d left, tanned by time in the
