by Tara Pammi
Did she want to refuse him?
No, came her body’s resounding answer. Not when she’d been through nervousness, excitement and every other emotion anticipating this one night. Not when it felt like she’d waited for this, for him, her entire life. Would he be gentle or would that hardness she’d sensed in him spill over to their personal intimacies?
But seeing Spiros had sent her on a strange spiral, as if the rug had been pulled from under her feet just when she was finding safe ground. Thoughts and questions about the past filled her to the brim so that her present, this man in front of her, felt like a stinging slap. As if she had brought a shadow into this fresh, new life of theirs.
He took a swig of his drink while she watched and wiped his mouth roughly. “Do you plan to undress right there in the corridor, querida?”
Silky as it sounded, Eleni didn’t miss the vein of steel beneath his question. “No.” When he didn’t move, she tried to take stock of her situation. “I... I’m sorry I didn’t realize you’d be here tonight.” She sounded so lame to her own ears that she cringed.
“Where would a bridegroom be on his wedding night? Or is it not time for me to hold up my side of the bargain yet?”
Eleni gripped her elbows with her hands as if she could ward off the humiliating hurt that pinged through her.
One man had deserted her years ago without a word and one was bent on punishing her for something she hadn’t done. Tears made her voice unbearably soft, almost fragile.
“Is my desire for a child so cheap in your eyes, Gabriel? Or is it that you can’t force yourself to perform in the bounds of a marriage?”
“I’m not the one who decided to disappear without a word. Imagine my surprise, however, when neither Angelina nor your brother nor I could locate you for well over two hours. Your phone was off, Eleni,” he bit out, “and even I know that that thing is almost surgically attached to you.”
“I must have left it somewhere in all the rush.”
“Even your aide could not locate you.”
Her head jerked up as she realized the truth of his hard mouth, the granite jaw. The deceivingly slumbering stare and the poisonous barbs.
He was angry with her. Blazingly furious. Not even on the night of the masquerade ball had he been like this. A shiver wrapped its fist around her spine. “Gabriel, are you angry with me?”
The question seemed to take him back. As if he hadn’t quite realized it himself. “I’m merely confused, Princesa. You disappeared from the reception for two hours, and then you appear outside your apartments, close to midnight, your hair unraveled, your dress almost falling apart at the seams and I have to confess to wondering what the mystery is.”
Eleni tugged the torn sleeve of her dress against her neck hastily and then realized the futility of the action. He’d drawn his conclusions already.
She pushed her hair from her brow, searching for some suitable story. She couldn’t just admit the humiliating truth. Couldn’t bear to see the cynicism in his eyes when she told him of how Spiros had disappeared from her life and how she had hung on for years before finally giving up.
The scorn in his eyes at her supposed naïveté.
A stillness claimed him as he correctly read her guilty silence. “I’m waiting for an explanation, Princesa.”
“I saw an old friend,” she said, wanting to stick to the truth as much as possible. “We started catching up and completely lost track of time. I—”
“Is this friend a man?”
Drawing her arms around her neck, she shook her head. “No.” The moment the word left her mouth, she wanted to snatch it back. “She... I hadn’t seen her in a long time and it was a shock to see her today, that’s all.”
“You didn’t invite...this friend to the wedding?”
“Her sister used to work here at the palace and she decided to surprise me.” Lie after lie fell from her mouth and she could not stop them. But what else could she say?
That the man she’d once desperately loved had returned after ten years of being gone on her wedding day? Or that he had held her as if his heart was breaking? Or that he’d promised her in an almost-hysterical whisper that he would never again leave her?
“Why is your dress torn?”
She lifted her chin defiantly, a slow burn of anger washing away the guilt. “What is it that you think I have done, Gabriel?”
“No groom wants to be disenchanted with his bride on their wedding night, does he?” Silken mockery dripped from his every word, making a lie of everything the day had represented.
“I told you before. I’m neither a saint nor as dull as they make me out to be,” she snarled back, frustration and guilt coiling into a rope within her.
He shrugged and the movement bared one dark nipple. “Angelina said to say good-night. She insisted on waiting for you, but I finally was able to persuade her to go to bed.”
The knot in her stomach twisted some more. She felt like she was on a swing of emotions, going high and low on guilt and regret and anger. All because the one man she’d desperately needed was ten years late, and the man she had promised herself to in his place now stared at her as if she had betrayed him on the very eve of their wedding.
For the rigid set of his mouth and the hard look in his eyes said what he wouldn’t voice. “I’m sorry. I completely—”
“Lost track of everything, you said. Despite the fact that Angelina worries unnecessarily when people disappear all of a sudden. You know, after her mother’s accident and all.”
A mewl of regret fell from her mouth. She knew what Angelina suffered having seen the panic in her eyes when her dog had been missing one afternoon. “You’re beating a dog that’s already down,” she whispered. “I already said I’m sorry. Nothing is more important to me than the fact that Angelina feels safe and loved.”
Gaze intent on her face, he nodded. “And the worry you put me through, querida?”
Her gaze jerked to his. He had to be joking.
“You worried about me?”
“Yes. Until now you were just the Princess of Drakon, mostly ignored, working behind the scenes, blending into the palace walls, but now—”
“That’s not true,” she protested, slow anger burning in her chest.
He pushed off from the wall, dropped his glass onto a side table and neared her. “Now you are Gabriel Marquez’s wife. There will be unwanted attention. There will be media curiosity. Whatever you do, there will be someone with a phone or a camera around.”
The scent of him filled her nostrils. One long finger reached out and traced the seam of her torn sleeve, drawing a line of fire against her bare shoulder. He radiated such warmth that Eleni thought she would go up in flames. “One chance, Princesa. You have one chance to tell me where you were.”
Her cheeks flushed with heat but Eleni gazed back at him steadily. “Nothing has happened that warrants this kind of questioning from you.”
His head tilted. His disbelief stood between them like the wall of a fortress, crumbling the tenuous connection they had made with each other the past few weeks. He was again that ruthless stranger who didn’t trust her at all.
“Now, should I tell you something I have been wanting to say all day to you?”
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Not trusting the dangerous glint in his eyes. Not trusting the sharp craving of her own body.
Spine stiff against the wall, she licked her dry lips. His gray gaze zoomed in on the movement. Hands on the wall over her head, he leaned forward until their bodies grazed. Such honed power filled him, such heat emanated from him that she was drawn toward him with every breath, against her own will.
With a flick of his finger, he pushed the torn sleeve aside. Traced the intimate fold of her arm, the rising curve of her pushed-up breast.
Then while he held her gaze with his, he bent and pressed his mouth to the bared flesh.
Eleni gasped low in her throat.
The flick of his tongue sent a molten spark
to the flesh between her legs. An ache throbbed into life there and she clenched her thighs tight to hold it off, to stop from falling into the sexual miasma of his presence.
“I have wanted to rip that gown off you from the moment you walked toward me. But since you gave that pleasure to—”
“A suit of old armor did it, Gabriel,” she said huskily, desperate for the coldness in his eyes to abate.
“To someone else, I will settle for having you in my bed tonight. I will have to settle with knowing that it will be me moving inside you, Princesa.”
“I—”
And before she could respond to that sultry statement, he closed his mouth over the flesh he had licked. And sucked it between his teeth.
Head banging hard against the wall, Eleni let out a low sound. Pleasure exploded inside her body. The graze of his lips moved to the upper swell of her breast while his hands molded the dip of her waist, the flare of her hips. “You were made to be loved, Princesa. This body, every whimper and moan that comes out of your mouth...they belong to me.”
Rough hands rucked her dress up and up until his palm pressed between her clenched thighs. “Let me in, Princess,” he uttered roughly.
But her legs were already spreading of their own accord, making a space for him at the innermost core of her.
The slide of his abrasive palms over the tender skin of her inner thighs, the stroke of his hot breath over her neck, the way he had pressed her into the wall with his hard body—Eleni was in heaven and hell.
The sensory input was too much, her body breathing hard to play catch-up.
She wanted to beg him to go slow, to give her a second to get used to the invasive intimacy of his caresses, but she was new to this sharp pleasure, was floating away in it and the required words would not form.
His palm covered her mound and her breath hissed out of her in uneven jerks.
“Your hair glints like burnished gold, Princesa. Are you the same here?” Wicked whispers brushed against her swelling flesh, while his fingers boldly opened her up for his exploration. “Shall I kiss you here, Eleni?” One finger dipped inside of her and she arched against him. She had never been so aware of her flesh there, tight and throbbing. Wet and aching.
Then he rubbed a finger over the swollen hood crying for his touch.
Shivers bunched in her muscles making her fevered and achy all over. She tried to reach for him but he was far too strong as he caged her in place with his body. When he flicked that bundle with deft, continual strokes, all breath left Eleni.
“Please, Gabriel...”
His mouth moved over the swell of her breast, toward the achy center that had hardened into a knot. “I shall make you as crazy as you did me today, Eleni. I shall make you beg.”
A sharp cry left her as he tore the bodice and closed his mouth over her nipple. “Oh...” Eleni bit her lip hard. It was the only way to stop herself from begging.
“I warned you, Eleni. I abhor lies and deceit.”
The bitter anger in his words barely registered on the sensual haze that filled her mind and body. Stretched taut against the wall, Eleni lost her grip on her will.
Moans and whimpers fell from her mouth, erotic sounds that seemed to fuel her husband’s dark demands of her.
His strokes deepened in speed and rhythm until she was riding his hand, grinding her wanton flesh against his palm with a madness she had never known.
His wicked lips pulled at her sensitized nipples while his fingers set a punishing rhythm she couldn’t fight. He let the sensitive flesh go with a popping sound that vibrated in tune with the throb at her core. Teeth digging into his shoulder, Eleni sobbed as pleasure splintered in her lower belly and poured through her muscles in deep, clenching spasms.
Turned inside out, she felt raw, utterly spent.
She fell onto him like a rag doll, shattered and bare, tears crowding her throat.
The most intense, earth-shattering experience of her life and he had given it to her in anger. Ice frosted her heart even as tendrils of heat filled her muscles.
While she was still trembling, her heart thundering in her chest, while her muscles were still struggling to return from that heightened state, his hands moved to her thighs and he picked her up, as if she were a china doll.
Pressed against the granite wall of his chest, her breasts felt sore, heavy. Sleep battered her in waves and Eleni struggled to stay afloat.
She’d triggered some emotional reaction in this hard man. Yet the woman in her caved to the man in him, to the masculine possessiveness with which he carried her off. To the deep want etched in the strong planes of his face.
No one had ever wanted her like that. No one had ever shown her a hundredth of the emotion he showed. But even through the lingering waves of her climax, she knew he didn’t trust her, that whatever this was between them, it was far from what she’d imagined for them.
When he threw her onto his bed, she tried to move back and tangled her legs in her own dress. When she tried it again, his hand held on to the edge of her skirt. The loud rip of the fabric punctured the sensual web.
Heart thudding, Eleni looked up. “Gabriel?” She said his name, half surrender, half retreat.
Masculine challenge glinting in his eyes, Gabriel leaned his torso toward her. His rough hands crawled up her skirt, on top of it. Knees, thighs, belly, the hollow between her breasts, his broad palm touched her everywhere.
Need coiled deeper and tighter in her again, for this time she knew what he could give her. Her body was desperately eager for another explosion. Somehow Eleni found the sense to still his hands when they reached the bodice.
“Wait, Gabriel,” she whispered, the words coming as if through a long tunnel, as if from a rational mind disjointed from the yearning desires of her body.
He sat at her feet, every inch of his rugged face taut and rigid. “Ah... I did not take you for a tease, Eleni.”
Sweat beaded her forehead, her body unwilling to let go of him. Through sheer will, Eleni pushed herself onto her elbows. Her dress billowed around her legs as she leaned her forehead against his shoulder.
He stiffened, his fingers pushing at her shoulders.
She clasped his bristly jaw willing him to listen. “I don’t want our first night together to be spent in doubt and mistrust. I don’t want a child conceived like this.”
“We have nothing but that, Princesa. You’ll never have a child if you want us to come together in some sort of transcendent emotion that doesn’t exist.”
“Don’t say that.”
“All we have is this mindless lust.”
“Because I angered you?”
He pressed the heel of his hand to his eyes, and then sighed. Resignation in his gray eyes pierced deeper than his anger. “Because you lied, Eleni. Because you proved that for all the moral pedestal you stand on, you’re just like every other woman on the planet. That you’re what I thought you that first night.”
“What are you talking about?”
He shook a phone in her face. A sick feeling climbed up her throat as he pressed Play. A clip of Spiros and her played like a reel from some ghastly nightmare.
Whoever had shot it should be given a prize, Eleni thought hysterically, for they had shot them from the side. His gaze devouring her, Spiros held her still form in his arms so tight that no one could doubt the meaning of it. He was frantic, almost mad as he ran his hands over her body.
It looked like a lover’s caresses, and yet she knew in her heart, he hadn’t touched her like that at all.
Bile filled Eleni’s mouth as he pressed fevered kisses all over her face all the while muttering things no one could hear. But the shock in her face, that was not visible.
The clip seemed to go on interminably until Eleni grabbed the phone from Gabriel and threw it across the room.
“Gabriel, listen to me. It’s not like that at all. Spiros and I—”
Gabriel stood up from the bed, his face set into cold lines. “You had your ch
ance. Now that I have your measure, I feel better about this whole arrangement. To think I felt guilty that you deserved better! That you were being cheated out of everything in this stupid arrangement. Of course you have a nice little lover on the side. Now I see why you were so ready to sacrifice yourself on the altar of Drakon.”
Eleni pushed back from him, the depth of his bitterness like a stinging slap against her flesh. “Gabriel, you make me sound positively Machiavellian.” A bitter laugh fell from her mouth. “It is no wonder you couldn’t forge a bond with Angelina, is it? You have nothing but a stone for a heart. Nothing but poison filling your veins.”
Utter frost dawned in his eyes as he stepped away from her. As if she had contaminated him. “I don’t give a damn who you cavort with...but one word of it reaches the press, one word of your duplicity reaches Angelina’s ears, you will regret the day you walked into my life.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
WARM SUNLIGHT KISSED Eleni’s face when she opened her eyes. An achy awareness pulsed between her legs. The sheets seemed to caress her very skin; she’d never felt such delicious languor.
The smile fell from her face as the events of the past night came back to her. She ran the back of her hand over her eyes and came away with smudges from her mascara and tears, she was sure. If not for the unfamiliar awareness between her legs, she’d have thought the whole thing a bad dream.
But Spiros had stolen her away from her own wedding reception. And Gabriel had known and been furious about it.
Eleni sat up in her bed and rubbed her eyes with a groan. Thoughts came and went, like pictures in a kaleidoscope. And suddenly she saw things with a clarity that had been lacking last night. How could she have seen clearly when Gabriel’s barbs had wounded her so deep?
But why had he been so angry, so irrational? Why, when he’d always seemed so uncaring, so blasé about their impending nuptials?
She’d expected anger, yes, even his derision. But his reaction had been personal, as if she had somehow disappointed him? As if she had hurt him?
She snorted and cursed herself. As if anything she did or didn’t do could affect the blasted man.
