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“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.
&nbs
p; “Listen.” He lifted a finger to her lips, to encourage silence, and then smiled as he wrapped his hand around her waist, holding her flush to his body.
He moved slowly, his hips nudging hers, and she did as he said: listening.
And she heard it.
The whispering of the wind, fast and insistent, melodious as it passed through the windows of this carved building; the desert animals – tigers sprinting and calling to one another, birds flying overhead, their songs filled with the magic of this ancient land.
She pressed her cheek to his chest and danced with him, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
