“At my father’s funeral,” she agreed. She remembered too; how could she forget? They’d agreed to marry, and he arrived, bigger and more everything than anyone she’d ever met. Their eyes had met and her whole body had zinged with a current of recognition.
“That was the second time.”
A frown formed on Chloe’s brow. “What do you mean? I think I’d remember if I’d met you before.”
“You were only a child. Nine or ten. I’d come to the palace to meet with the ministry and you were in the pomegranate courtyard.”
“I loved it there,” she said with a nod. “I still do. But I don’t remember meeting you.”
“We didn’t speak. I simply watched you play from a distance. You were in your own world, and your hair was out, long and blonde. You looked like a fairy.”
Chloe’s heart thumped hard in her chest. “I probably looked a mess.”
“I don’t remember the mess,” he said with a shake of his head. “I remember the hair.” And he reached out, catching a lock of blonde between his fingertips, staring at it, transfixed, before he found her hand again, measuring their palms once more. “You were beautiful and tiny – and now you’re still both of those things.” When he swallowed, his Adam’s apple moved visibly in his throat. “How do I make sure I don’t break you?”
She blinked her eyes, and tried to find words that would serve as a response – and she couldn’t.
He cupped her cheek and then pulled away from her.
“You’re tired. Sleep,” he said, lifting her and rearranging her in the bed, so that her head was on the pillows. He covered her with the blankets and the last thing she was conscious of was him standing over her, watching her. Arms crossed over his chest, his face wearing an expression she couldn’t comprehend.
Until he spoke and finally she understood that triumph was the emotion blazing in his dark eyes. “This month we will succeed, habibte.”
Chapter Eight
AS THE MONTH WORE on, Chloe couldn’t ignore her growing sense of excitement. She often found herself staring into space, imagining their baby, counting down the days until she would know if this would be the month that would mark the beginning of their parenthood journey.
It was strange to think of how she’d resisted the idea, at first. How she’d wanted to maintain the status quo, to keep a distance from Raffa in every way: emotionally, mentally, sexually and physically. How she’d thought she could ignore her husband and be happy – how she’d ever thought she was happy without him – and this – in her life.
She lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, her breathing still rushed, sweat beading on her brow. Beside her, Raffa was in the same pose; but not for long. Chloe knew he would stand soon. That he would leave her again.
She was used to it, and yet it was becoming harder and harder for her to maintain an air of nonchalance in the face of his speedy departure. Sure enough, as she tilted her head to face him, he pushed up from the bed, spectacular for his nakedness, broad and big and built like a god of strength. Her mouth went dry as he strolled across the room, every muscle beneath his dark skin rippling in a way that made her insides quiver.
How could she want him again already?
His arousal showed that she wasn’t alone. Would this desire between them ever abate?
She thought of calling to him, of asking him to stay, but hard-fought pride, and a fear of rejection, kept her silent. They were this. Intimate in bed, for a few hours a night – not beyond.
And it was always on his terms.
That realization brought a frown to her face, because it was true. Without Chloe’s comprehension nor approval, at some point, she’d simply started to wait for him. Each evening, she’d shower and dress in something simple, and easy to remove, and she would read, but always her eyes were trained on the door, her ears listening for the hint of footsteps beyond.
And as if she’d conjured them from nowhere, she heard footsteps now, then, a sharp, urgent knock at the door to her suite. It was through a door from her bedroom, so she had no immediate worry that her privacy was to be invaded. Still, she pulled the sheet up under her chin.
“Wait here,” Raffa commanded curtly, changing direction. He grabbed his pants from the floor and pulled them on, sending a look at Chloe from the door to her bedroom.
She leaned forward a little, watching as far as she could. And then, despite his missive, she slid out of bed and reached for her underwear. It had been discarded hastily, but thankfully close to the bed. She pulled it on then stood still as fragments of the conversation reached her ears.
“Malik… happened suddenly … non-responsive…”
And panic sledged her veins. She reached for her gown, pulling it over her hips and sparing herself a quick glance in the mirror as she crossed the room. Her hair was in a state of total disarray, her cheeks were flushed, her lips swollen. She looked like a woman who’d just been ravaged. Well? So?
She stepped into the living area of her suite just as Raffa shut the door. His eyes flew around the room but he wasn’t looking for her.
“What is it?” She demanded.
He startled, his gaze landing on his shirt. He stormed towards it, lifted it over his head and down his body. His face was implacable but she knew that deep emotions were stirring through him.
“Raffa?” She asked, moving towards him, putting a hand on his chest.
The look in his eyes made her heart split in two.
“My father,” he confirmed with a simple nod, stepping away and turning his back from her. “I must go to him.”
“I’ll come too,” she said softly. “If you’ll just give me one minute.”
“No. I must go now.” The words were short and immediately discouraging. “You remain here. I will have a servant send you news when I have it.”
She opened her mouth to object but he was already at the door. He slammed it after himself, and she was alone in the suite.
But no way was she going to do as he said! If Malik had taken a turn for the worse – heaven forbid, if he had already met his end – she was going to be there. She was going to be there out of respect for the man who was like a second father to her, and she was going to be there for her husband. Because whether he realized it or not, he would want support and strength before the night was out.
She took a moment though to straighten her hair and apply the bare minimum of make-up. If she was going to defy her husband, the King, then she wasn’t going to do it looking like she’d just rolled out of bed. It wasn’t vanity, so much as respect for this ancient palace and the people who inhabited it.
Only minutes after her husband had left her suite, Chloe was doing the same. Her servants were waiting, as always, and fell into step behind her; it didn’t occur to Chloe to mind. She walked as quickly as she could without breaking into a run, but as she got nearer to her father-in-law’s wing, her heart was racing as though she’d sprinted a marathon.
The door was open, and inside was a hive of activity. Nurses, servants, a doctor, and in the middle of it all, her husband. He stood beside Malik’s bed, his face cast from stone, his eyes on his father. She couldn’t see Malik clearly, but she moved deeper into the room, and Malik was the first to see her. His lips parted and just for a moment, for the briefest instant, a weak smile crossed his face. He held a hand out to her, limply, but it spurred her forward.
She took it in hers and lifted it to her lips, kissing his aged, papery skin, then straightened. Her husband was looking at her and the intensity of his expression almost bowled her over. For once, she couldn’t have said what he was thinking or feeling, she knew only that something dark burned within his gaze. She swallowed and gave all her attention to her father-in-law.
“What happened?” She asked her husband, without looking at him.
Raffa didn’t speak, so Chloe lifted her gaze to his face.
“What happened, Raffa?” She asked with icy hauteur, and from the bed, heard a rattling laugh wheeze from Mali
k’s slender frame. His fingers squeezed hers.
“A heart attack,” Raffa said finally. “And you should not be here.”
She ignored him, purely because it felt safer than entering into an argument with her husband over the ailing frame of her father-in-law. But she stayed where she was, her head bent, her smile intended for Malik.
Activity swirled around them, with Raffa’s command of the situation apparent. From the way he spoke to the medical personnel and gave orders to servants, he was in charge of all that happened in the room.
“It’s going to be a long night,” he said eventually, and when Chloe lifted her head, their eyes met. “Nothing is served by you being here.”
It was cold, and it was hurtful, because he was shutting her out. He was drawing a line in the sand between them. He belonged here; she didn’t.
She bit down on her lip, hating that the foreign taste of salty tears spread through her dry, aching throat.
“I’m making trouble,” Malik said, his face alarmingly pale, kindness in his eyes.
“Yes, you attention seeker,” she teased, pushing her worries and hurt from her mind, smiling at him in a way that she hoped would assure him he would be fine. She didn’t want him to be afraid.
“Sheikha.” Her husband’s word was a warning.
She glared at him, then bent down and kissed Malik’s brow. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”
She didn’t see the way Raffa watched the interaction. The way the hint of a frown crossed his face, nor the way his eyes lingered on her body the whole way from the room. At the door, she looked back, but only towards Malik – so she didn’t realise her husband was still watching her.
It was the middle of the night, but Chloe wasn’t tired. She was restless, humming with an energy born of worry and anxiety and doubt and hope. She paced her room for a long time, walking restlessly from one side to the other, before picking up a book at random from the shelves of her room.
It was a book of ancient mythology, translated into English, which made it easier for Chloe to follow the elaborate tales. She lost herself in the story of an eleventh century beast, formed by sand and sunshine, that was as hot as the molten core of the earth itself, a beast that had been left all alone when his mate, a being of stardust and water had been taken into the heavens to float above the earth. The beast wandered the deserts of Ras el Kida, tormenting villages, sacking homes, smiting all that he encountered, purely because he couldn’t live without his mate. All day he raged, but at night, he was still, a huge shape held frozen to the spot, so that he could stand and look to the heavens, hoping to see his mate, hoping for her to see him.
Chloe fell asleep before she could reach the end – the beast’s demise. From the inside out, his heat tore him apart, his malevolence no match for this world.
When Raffa entered her suite hours later, as the sun was beginning to slide over the kingdom, his wife was lying, fully dressed, on the bed, a book on her chest.
Curiosity for what she’d been reading had him moving across the room and lifting it, careful not to disturb her. The ancient text was one he knew well, despite not having read it nor thought of it since childhood. The story was well known in Ras el Kida, and in fact, a pile of ancient rocks just past the Northern way-bearing point of the Aläbi desert was thought to be the ruins of the Beast.
It was a cautionary tale but he didn’t need to learn about the perils of love from children’s stories. He’d had his own front-row seat to that lesson, courtesy of his parents.
“Raffa?” Her eyes pierced him, their blue clarity seeing right into his soul, so he had to work hard to straighten and assume a look of distant unconcern. “What time is it?” She pushed up to sitting and angled her pretty face towards the windows, then looked back at him.
“Dawn,” he murmured, stepping closer and reaching down, touching her hair against his will, his fingers moving of their own accord, finding the blonde lengths and freeing it from the style she’d pinned it into.
“How is he?” She asked, her eyes holding his, the anguish so easily discernible in her expression easily matched by his own heart.
He had thought her cold, at one time. Now, he saw her so much more clearly. There was passion inside of her, so much passion that perhaps the only way she could contain it was to repress it completely.
“He’s weak,” Raffa said, the words lodging in his throat, each a stone in his windpipe. “But doctors are optimistic.”
“Oh, thank God,” she smiled, a smile of such beauty and relief, her love for Malik easy to see. But then, like the sun hiding behind a storm-cloud, she sobered, pulling herself away from him mentally, hiding from him. “Thank you for coming to tell me,” she added after an icy beat had passed.
The ease with which she could shut him out had always fascinated him; now, it angered him. He couldn’t have said why; certainly not because he needed her. He was a man born to be King, he needed no one.
And yet… the removal of her affection, her warmth, was something he definitely railed against.
“You’re reading nursery rhymes?” He asked, the question gruff and yet somehow teasing.
She shrugged, her mode defensive. “Is there something wrong with that?”
He sat on the edge of the bed, and she stiffened in a way he hated. Was she afraid of him? He had been angry the night before. Not with her, with the situation they found themselves in. He’d wanted to protect her from seeing Malik, and yet she’d come to his bedroom anyway, she’d ignored his command, she’d done what she always did: exactly what she wanted.
Or was it what she needed? Her affection for Malik was genuine; had she wanted to see the old man so badly, to assure herself he was okay, to be there for him if he wasn’t?
“No.” He lifted his hand to her cheek in a gesture of intimacy that surprised them equally. “You were frightened last night.”
“Weren’t you?”
Raffa hadn’t admitted to fear in a long time. “The idea of him not being here is not an easy one to grapple with.”
“It’s the way of things,” Chloe offered softly.
“I know.” Raffa dropped his hand, but to her hip, where his thumb padded across the sheet slowly. His eyes watched the gesture, a frown on his brow. “He’s just always been such a force to be reckoned with.”
“Yes.” She sighed. “I felt the same, with my father. His death was sudden. There was no time to reconcile myself to the fact that it was the end, no time to fix what was broken between us.”
“You wanted to, though?” Raffa inquired.
“I wanted, more than anything, to be close with him.” Her smile was wistful. “But he didn’t want the same thing, so I have no reason to think I would ever have had success, even if he’d lived.”
“Your father was a stubborn man,” Raffa muttered.
“I know. But he was larger than life to me, someone I’d looked up to forever. There’s a void in my world now, even though he never really wanted to be a part of it. Does that make sense?”
Raffa’s eyes scanned her face. “Yes.”
“I’m sad for all the things we didn’t get to do, the conversations we never had, the laughs we didn’t share. I’m sad for what could have been, not what was. He was nothing to me, really, except a figure of ideals that would never come to pass.”
Raffa was surprised by the description, for it was so insightful, so correct, and so sad. “He was a fool to push you away. He spent a lifetime punishing you for your mother’s failings.”
“And then he died,” she said crisply, pulling away from him, stepping out of the bed and walking towards the window. The dawn light was a glistening gold and it caught her hair so that it sparkled as if it were a crown. “My point is, you get to say goodbye to your father, you get to fix whatever is broken between you.” She turned to look at Raffa and he was watching her as though she were a drug he couldn’t fight his addiction to. “Real peace for your father will come from knowing you forgive him.”
Raffa
’s spine was straight and he took great care to give nothing away. But his blood was raging, and there was a ringing inside his ears. “Forgive him for what?”
Chloe tilted her head to one side. “For forcing you to marry me.”
The room was silent, the air filled with heavy, reverberating accusation.
“What are you talking about?”
“I know there’s something between you.” At his look of uncertainty, she ploughed on. “Oh, he never spoke of it directly, but I know him well. I understand him. There’s an estrangement between you both. And it’s easy to guess at the cause.”
Raffa’s laugh was not one of humour. “I’m thirty four years old. You think my marriage to you might be the only bone of contention in my relationship with my father? You don’t think that something else in these thirty four years might have caused us to argue?”
Chloe’s frown showed she hadn’t considered it, and deep inside of him, something like sympathy began to swirl. For her to be so quick to blame herself for a state of affairs that had lasted a great many years spoke of her insecurities, yet he couldn’t address that.
“I just presumed…”
“I love my father, Chloe. I admire him, respect him; I am immeasurably proud of him. He was a great king, but he was not always a great man.” He found his eyes couldn’t hold hers. He came to stand beside her instead, looking out to the desert. “He made many mistakes. Then again, who hasn’t?”
Beside him, his wife bristled. He felt the stiffening of her spine, the angling of her face.
“Elena,” she exhaled softly, and the name had him jerking his gaze to her.
“What?”
“You were in love with Elena, and despite the fact she fell pregnant, you weren’t allowed to marry her. That’s what you argued about?”
“I was never going to marry Elena,” Raffa said thickly, the words weakened by his surprise, and his unwillingness to discuss his ex at all, let alone with his young wife. “My father didn’t approve of our relationship, but that is not why I left her.”
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