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Raffa did the math. “The Veronica years?”
She grimaced. “Yes. Of course, I never met that stepmother.”
“I did. You haven’t missed anything special.”
Chloe shrugged. “Diego didn’t want me.” She took a sip of her wine and then met Raffa’s eyes. “It took me a long time to come to terms with that; to accept that he wished I hadn’t been born. It’s somewhat freeing to be able to say that now, without fear, without grief. As a statement of fact, as it is. He didn’t want me.”
Raffa was as still as stone, and just as silent.
“Apollo he wanted. Apollo he loved. Apollo he was proud of. And how I wished he’d felt that for me! I spent years wishing, wanting, trying so hard. Do you know the happiest I’d ever seen him?”
“No?” Raffa asked, though he feared, in fact, he did.
“When I said I’d marry you. For just a moment – barely even a moment, actually, his eyes glowed with something like the indulgence he afforded my brother at all times.” She swallowed. “I’ll never regret this marriage.”
Raffa, across the table, felt his gut shift as though it were being tumbled through stone. “He wanted this marriage for us.”
“I know.”
It didn’t assuage the sense of darkness that was beginning to spin inside of him; a growing feeling of being somehow out of control. “And what did you want?”
She frowned, her beautiful face pulled taut by a need to be strong and smart and right all the time. He understood those compulsions, for he shared them. “I wanted to be happy.”
“And are you?”
She had a habit of pulling her lower lip between her teeth when she was thinking. It was a small gesture, but one that he’d come to recognize as her way of prevaricating.
“Don’t think. Answer.”
“Is that a command?”
“Yes.”
“I thought the interrogation was to come after?”
“I’m King. I get to choose.”
“Oh, I see.” She lifted her glass and sipped again. A breeze lifted off the desert, bringing with it the fragrance of heat and the sound of a night bird, flying in the distance.
“Answer me, or pay the consequences.”
Chloe wasn’t sure she could even remember what he’d asked, she knew only that her breath was burning inside her lungs and all she could think about was the way his body felt when it moved within her. Heat spread from cell to cell, a contagion of desire making thought and speech difficult.
After several seconds of silence, he released a growl. “You choose consequences?”
She nodded slowly, a smile playing around her lips, so that he pushed up to standing and rounded the table. He extended his hands to her and she put hers in them without hesitation. When he pulled her to standing, her body cleaved to his.
“Dance with me.”
“That’s my consequence?”
“Yes.”
“There’s no music.”
“Isn’t there?”
She frowned.
