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Kalim apparently understood. He bowed without speaking and slipped past Raffa, through the doors, returning to the party. Raffa took his space on the balcony, shutting the glass doors behind himself.
“You are not to speak to him.”
Chloe’s skin prickled and though his direction was something she had already decided, and something Kalim had also suggested, she bristled at the tone of Raffa’s words and tilted her chin with a burst of her own anger. “You cannot tell me who I may and may not associate with,” she warned. “I’m not yours to control.”
“Oh, aren’t you?” He demanded, closing the gap between them and placing a hand on either side of the balcony behind her, effectively trapping her between him and the hip-height wall.
“You will not speak to him.”
“And if I do?” She insisted, defiantly.
His eyes swept shut and a muscle jerked in his jaw.
“I will lock you in a tower and throw away the key,” he said darkly.
She knew it was an idle threat, a joke, even, but Chloe’s hackles rose. “How dare you say that? Who is he? What is he to you? How can a simple conversation have made you so angry?”
“Because you are my wife,” he said darkly, as though it explained everything.
“Yeah.” She agreed. “And that means I have just as much right and duty and obligation to speak to your guests at these parties.”
“No more parties,” he said, shaking his head. “I won’t have men like Goran think they can come to you and---,”
“And what?” She demanded, interrupting him, and lifting her hands to his chest to push him away. But he was like steel, impenetrable and unmoving. “And talk to me?” Her laugh was a harsh, angry sound. “Move out of my way. I’m going back inside.”
“Like hell you are.” He shook his head, his eyes holding hers, beseeching, lost, and then he kissed her. He kissed her desperately, pleadingly, achingly. He kissed her with all the passion that flowed through them.
She pushed at his chest but he kissed her harder and then his hands lifted from the balustrade, pressing against her back, running along the silky fabric.
“You are no one else’s to look at. No one else’s to touch,” he said into her mouth, and she whimpered, because he was right. Until her dying day she would be his; all his.
His kiss lit fires in her blood and the hands that had sought to push him away now wrapped around his waist, holding him close, holding him to her as though he were her lifeline.
“I hated seeing him with you,” Raffa said, all anger gone, just desperate passion in its place. He dropped his head to her décolletage and nipped at her flesh there, and his hands found the zip of her dress, lowering it just enough to reveal more of her creamy cleavage to his hungry eyes.
“It was only a moment,” she said, the words halting.
“It was a moment too long.”
“Then why is he here? Why did you invite him?”
“I… he has a standing invitation,” Raffa grunted, and his mouth nuzzled her breast, pushing the fabric low enough that he could take a nipple in his mouth.
Chloe didn’t want to think about Goran any longer. She tilted her head back, abandoning herself to this wave. Her eyes sought the stars of heaven but they were blanketed by thick clouds, for once, and the sky was black.
“I want to rip this dress from you,” he warned.
“I think that might cause rather more than Goran to look at me.”
He lifted his head and it was as though he was just, in that moment, recalling where they were. “Go back to your room, Sheikha, and wait for me there.”
Chapter Ten
“HE’S GONE.” KALIM PASSED a glass of scotch to Raffa, who held it in the palm of his hand.
“Did you know he was coming?”
“No one did. Last I heard, he was in Kithati province.”
