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“Be that as it may, if you had wanted to get to know me then you could have.”
“Fine,” she conceded with a sharp jerk of her head. “You’re right. But I can’t make love to a stranger. I’m just not wired that way.”
“How little you know of your body,” he said, almost regretfully. “You were quivering in my arms just now, and I guarantee that your insides were churning with wants. That your knees were weak and your belly tight, your breasts tender, your mind spinning with ways in which to find pleasure…”
“Stop it,” she pleaded, heat suffusing her cheeks. “A physical response to that kind of stimulus is normal.”
He didn’t respond and she was glad – glad that he resisted the temptation to point out that she knew nothing of such things.
“My father doesn’t have long,” he said heavily. “We cannot delay.”
“So what? You want me to strip naked? Go to your room? My God, Raffa. I’m a woman, not an automaton.”
“You are a woman,” he said, his eyes narrowed. “A woman with needs that I will take very good care of.”
“You are even more arrogant than I’d imagined!” She stamped her foot. “You can’t just dictate something like this to me.”
“You want to negotiate? You want me to agree to spend time with you? To get to know you? Fine. Move to the palace and we will do both.”
She stared at him with a feeling that she’d been backed tightly into a corner.
“Surely I can just come to the palace every few weeks. Stay in the capital, in my own home. Or you can come to me…”
“No.” He slashed his hand through the air. “This is not a game, Chloe. I need an heir and you are the only woman who can provide me with one.”
“So what I want doesn’t matter?”
“You wanted to marry me, and you have done so. You want children – your brother has told me as much.”
Anger slashed inside of her – directed at her husband Raffa and her brother Apollo. Birds of the same feather, flocking together, as always. Of course Apollo had divulged the stupid drunken conversation they’d had on the night of her twenty first birthday.
But she hadn’t known then what lay in store. She hadn’t known that only weeks later her father would be dead, that the marriage contract he’d negotiated would be the only way to honour and love the man she’d never had a chance to know in real life. That marrying Raffa had been her only way to claim a loss she couldn’t put into words.
“Apollo doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Chloe muttered, lifting fingertips to her temples and rubbing wearily. “He’s misinformed.”
“So you don’t want children?”
“No. Yes.” She expelled a plaintive breath. “One day, yes, I do. Very much. But …”
“It has to be now.” He crossed his arms over his broad chest. “If you cannot do this, if you want to leave, it must be now.”
“My God, Raffa! You’re not serious? You think a divorce would be good for your father? Why can’t we leave things as they are?”
“If I divorce you, I will remarry within a month. It is a slight delay, but considerably better than no prospect of an heir whatsoever.”
“You’re giving me an ultimatum,” she said, her shock genuine. It was a shock that filtered down to her core. “You’re threatening to throw me out if I don’t accede to this plan?”
His eyes held hers for a long moment and she could have sworn a glimmer of anguish ran across his handsome face before he was pure, arrogant Sheikh once more.
“Yes.”
And for no reason she could pinpoint, she felt remorse in that statement. She felt apology.
How absurd! This man apologized to no one, least of all his wife.
“I would never do that to your father,” she said after a beat had passed. “And you know that.”
Raffa expelled a breath and nodded. “Yes.”
