by Tara Pammi
And the video... Christos, she wanted to slap whoever had shot it and quietly handed it to Gabriel.
In fact, she wanted to give a piece of her mind to all of them—the imbecile who had sneaked up on her and shot it; Spiros, who’d been half-delirious; ending with her husband, who blew hot and cold in the space of a minute.
Was it his ego that had been bruised or had Gabriel truly wanted her with that craving she’d seen in his eyes last night?
Was it her he didn’t trust?
Or women in general?
Would she be left in a limbo once again, tied to a man who didn’t want her, but now spoken for? Married but never a wife?
Mother to Angelina but not even the possibility of another child?
The darker her thoughts went, the tighter her throat became until she was angry with herself.
Self-pity had never solved anything for her.
She pushed away the duvet and got to her feet. Ordering a coffee, she quickly brushed her teeth, washed up. When breakfast arrived, she ordered it to be arranged on her balcony.
From up here, she had a view of the beautiful gardens that Mia tended to and the riot of color there pushed her spirits up. She grabbed her tablet and began to make a list of things she had to accomplish that day. Nothing was unconquerable as long as she was in action.
First, she’d have to make sure Angelina wasn’t still upset over yesterday.
Second, she’d have to see if Mia needed any help.
Then, she’d have to check with Nik and see if he’d heard anything from Andreas.
Sighing, she continued to add items to the list—at this rate it would be at least a year before she could approach Gabriel again—and finished her coffee.
A staff member brought her a white envelope. Reaching for it, she frowned. “What is it?”
“One of the palace staff said it was given to her by a man and asked to be specifically given to you.”
Eleni thanked her and opened the note inside.
Eleni,
I’m sorry for frightening you like that. But seeing you as another man’s bride was torture for me, pethi mou. I saw the same shock and hope in your eyes.
This time no one will separate us. This time I intend to claim you for my own. Neither your brothers nor your husband scare me. Not anymore.
Wait for me, my love.
Yours,
Spiros
Cold sweat trickled down her nape stealing the warmth of the sun.
Why was Spiros writing to her like this? What the hell did he mean no one could separate them this time? Did he think she was anything but shocked out of her mind to see him?
She needed to talk to him. Find out why he had left her like that last time. Find out why he thought she would welcome him with open arms when he hadn’t had the decency to approach her for so many years.
It was only in the past two years that she’d finally looked to the future. Only with Andreas’s help, even before her father’s death, that she’d realized that she didn’t have to spend her life grieving over a man who hadn’t looked back.
And just when she had reached for a future, there was Spiros.
The shock of seeing him yesterday now gave way to other questions.
Why now? Why was he writing to her like this? Where had he been and what did he want from her? And why was it all cloaked in such mystery? Annoyed beyond measure, she tore the letter into small pieces. Found a vicious satisfaction in the childish act.
She added “Move On” to her bullet points and sighed. If only it were as easy as that.
A long shadow fell on her tablet blocking her view and Eleni looked up.
“Move on from what?”
His gravelly voice played a chord in that place between her thighs. Steady heat climbed up Eleni’s cheeks.
Dressed in black trousers and a long-sleeved gray shirt that made his eyes gleam doubly, Gabriel was watching her. His jaw was clean shaven, his hair wet and slicked back.
Belatedly, Eleni moved her hand over her tablet. “That list is private.”
Her breath left her afresh as the breeze carried the scent of soap and skin from him to her.
Ruggedly masculine and gorgeous, he made her mouth dry and her heart ache in her chest. The platinum ring she had placed on his unfamiliar finger gleamed bright in the sun.
A symbol of their relationship, of his commitment to her. She looked down at her own hand and her own ring. The sapphire winked at her, mocking her.
So much for thinking he was much more approachable and easygoing than her father or her older brother, Andreas. “Is there something you needed?” she said, determined to be civil.
His gaze stayed somewhere on her shoulder so she tilted her own head to see what. Her silk robe had slipped off her shoulder, and the morning sun showed the startling bruise his mouth had left on the upper swell of her breast.
Eleni blushed furiously just as his fingers circled her nape and tugged her closer. When the pad of his thumb moved over the purple mark, a sliver of pain made her gasp. A shard of pleasure shot through to her core, making her damp.
Pain and pleasure, he’d given her both yesterday. He hadn’t been able to help himself, she realized now, as she felt the solid strength of him surround her. The idea of a helpless Gabriel, a Gabriel who was a slave to his need for her—it unleashed a sense of power that she’d never quite known.
Was she being delusional yet again?
When she leaned into him just so that the tip of her breasts brushed his muscular arm, she felt the faint shudder that traversed his huge body. Mirth bubbled up in her chest.
He was not immune to her, she realized with unabashed curiosity. He didn’t trust her, he didn’t want to want her, but this gorgeous, powerful man did want her. Suddenly, the dynamic between them was more fluid. Less absolute.
Like she too had a say in where this convenient marriage of theirs went. Was that why his reaction had been so out of character? “Gabriel,” she finally said, locking her fingers around his wrist. Tension filled his body, permeating through to her.
“I did that?” he asked, his voice male and low.
Her temper flared. “Yes, just as it was you who put me in a temper, Gabriel. Not the man in the video.”
A blank mask fell over the expression in his eyes again. With such thick lashes, no wonder she could never make out what he was thinking. “I apologize.”
“For thinking I had gone to bed with another man in the hours between the reception and our wedding night? Or for taking that as a challenge and proving that you could still seduce me? Did it soothe your ego to know that you have that power over me? Is it that old ‘I don’t want you but my ego will chafe if you so much as look at another man’ thing?”
Gabriel blanched, knowing that every word out of her mouth was true. He didn’t have an excuse for his behavior.
Even in the corrosive anger that filled him at the thought of that video, he had been a beast to her. He had seduced her, brought her to that raw precipice of pleasure just to prove that she was putty in his hands.
She had called him on it too. The depth of his own bitterness when he’d always breezed through his relationships with women disconcerted him.
Maybe because he’d fallen for the act. Maybe he’d assumed her to be a saint, just because she was such a good mother figure to Angelina.
Maybe the damned woman had got beneath his skin.
Whatever it was, he had never lost control of himself like that. Never had his emotions been in such a riot.
Cheeks flushed with sleep, hair mussed, she looked like a red-blooded male’s wet dream. As if all her beauty had needed to bloom into such voluptuousness was a man’s touch. His touch.
Even now, all he wanted was to pull her to him and kiss her. To taste her mouth that trembled in such anger. To strip that flimsy robe and nightgown from her body and see the glory of her full curves in sunlight. To mark her again and again until she was covered in the scent of him. Until she forgot ever
y other man.
“I have no excuse for my behavior,” he finally said, meeting her soft gaze. “I should not have laid a finger on you last night.”
Her shoulders fell on a long exhale. The lines of her face softened and she looked up at him. Her skin glowed with that golden sheen but there were dark shadows under her intelligent eyes. “Since you’re determined to be bloody-minded, it falls to me to be the sensible one. To explain.”
Gabriel wanted to leave. To not delve further into the woman who was clearly messing with his head. To keep their arrangement strictly platonic, her demands be damned. And yet, he was aware that he would not.
That the identity of that blasted man in that video and what he meant to her would haunt him, leaving him useless for anything else.
“I did give you a chance, Princesa. You lied.”
Pink filled her sun-kissed cheeks. She licked her lips, looked up and her eyes widened at whatever she saw in his gaze. He didn’t care what. A low hum had already begun in his muscles as he took in the silken way her nightgown clung to her curves.
God, she’d been a dream in his hands last night.
“I... I was in shock.” She sat down and looked at her fisted hands in her lap. “I hadn’t seen him in ten years. For a minute there on the dance floor, I thought him a ghost.”
“You had more than two hours for your heartwarming reunion, Princesa. Two hours to process it.”
“Have you never hidden something humiliating from others, Gabriel? Or were you born like this—invulnerable and hard-hearted?”
“Tell me about him, Eleni. And the truth this time.”
A ghost of a smile touched her mouth, as though the memory of him pulled it from her. “Spiros was a ray of light in my life. He...never judged me for my birth. He made me laugh. He told me he loved me for myself, not for what I could mean to him. Or who I was connected to. Before I had formed a bond with Andreas or even Nikandros, Spiros was there, always ready with a laugh and a joke.
“He...used to tell me I was the most genuine person he’d ever met.” Another smile. Another thread of that wistfulness in her voice. As if she’d lost something infinitely precious. “That he couldn’t help loving me. He was a shoulder to cry on when my father’s cruelty was too much to bear. When I felt like I was stuck between Andreas’s cold control and Nikandros’s impulsive defiance and couldn’t lose either. When I felt like nothing I did would ever make me different from who I was. Spiros made me feel wanted. Just for myself.”
“What happened then?” he cut in harshly, infuriated that his own heart was racing.
“On my nineteenth birthday, he asked me to marry him. I said yes. He kissed me in the courtyard garden, said he would speak to my father the next day. That’s the last I saw of him.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I didn’t see him again until he appeared at the reception last night. It was like he had disappeared into the night. For years, I thought he had met with some unfortunate accident. Andreas inquired with his family and found out recently that Spiros had just upped and left for the States. They didn’t know anything about me or that he’d proposed. I... I just couldn’t believe he was back. I went when he asked if we could talk, and I stood there, still in shock, when he hugged me and kissed me.
“When I returned to our suite, there you were. Even if I had told you the truth, you wouldn’t have believed me, Gabriel. You already believed the worst.”
He had. He did. Until now, he hadn’t realized how much his own mother’s lies had stayed with him. “Do you love him?”
It was the last question Eleni expected him to ask, this husband of hers who had reminded her again and again that he thought every emotion was a weakness. That he didn’t believe in marriage, much less love.
That theirs was a cold, clinical arrangement.
“I loved him years ago. With every breath in me. I believed that he and I...we could be truly happy. Greeting card happy.”
“Greeting card happy?” He looked so nauseated that Eleni laughed.
“Like Mia and Nikandros,” she said, and looked away.
Suddenly, she felt his fingers under her chin, the rough dig of his thumb onto her jaw. His hard gaze held hers, as if he wanted to plumb the depths of her soul. As if he could will her into giving the answer he wanted. Which was what?
What did Gabriel want? All her confusion about Spiros misted when she gazed into his gray eyes, when she felt his gaze on her.
“You haven’t answered my question, Princesa. Do you love this man?”
Faint tension filled his frame. Something inside her goaded Eleni, something she’d never felt before. “Would you let me go if I did?”
“No.” The word was like a detonation between them, a gauntlet thrown down. Eleni shivered under his touch, aware that his interest in her was personal. She didn’t know how but she knew it and it sent a thrill of excitement and fear through her. “If you leave our marriage now, if you turn your back on Angelina, I will—”
“Yes, yes, you will sink Drakon, you will raze the house of Drakos to the ground etc. etc. Really, Gabriel, your threats are becoming tiresome. I have never walked away from a promise I have made.”
He continued to stare at her, as if he didn’t quite believe her. This matter of trust between them had to be dealt with. Their being at each other’s throat like last night could only hurt Angelina, or any other children they had.
He had listened to her—that had to be enough for now.
That he was attracted to her filled her with a rare sense of feminine power that she’d never known. When he stood up to walk away, she looked up at him. They had crossed some line in their relationship. That awareness tingled in the very air about them.
And Eleni was far too confused by her own reaction to question his right now. Too scared to ask what he wanted of her. “I came to tell you that I’m appointing security personnel to guard you. It’s a measure your brothers should have taken long ago.”
Hurt splintered through her. “Is that for my protection or for spying on me?”
He shrugged, and for the first time since they had met, he was the one that looked away. Tension tightened around his mouth. “As my wife, you need the protection,” he said, and walked away.
Leaving her question about trust unanswered. But at least he’d called her his wife.
Leaving her claimed, even though he hadn’t touched her again.
* * *
Eleni looked around the huge bedroom with satisfaction. The staff had unpacked most of her stuff and put it away in Gabriel’s bedroom. A thrill shot through her as she walked into the stadium-sized closet. When Gabriel had arrived in Drakon, he’d only been a guest of the palace, and yet he’d been given one of the best apartments. His company was a billionaire investor in Drakon, and Nikandros had wanted no deficiency in their hospitality.
Eleni herself had chosen this apartment for him. It afforded a gorgeous view of the mountains in the distance on one side and the ocean on the other. The best of Drakon’s views for Gabriel Marquez.
But in seven months, nothing had changed in the suite. No photo frames adorned the side table, not even a picture of Angelina. No keepsakes of his family.
With a frown, she remembered Gabriel hadn’t known of the little girl’s existence until a few months ago.
She could imagine his wrath that Angelina’s mother had hidden such a big truth from him. But beneath that, she wondered now, did he feel betrayal too? Had it perhaps skewed his perception of women? Did he think all women would betray him given the smallest chance?
She had received two more notes from Spiros and she had torn them both up without even opening them. He was in her past; Gabriel was her future.
She’d decided to give him no thought unless he showed himself to her. Unless he stopped playing these silly games with her.
In the meantime, she was determined to sort out her marriage, whatever it took. Gabriel might not want her as his wife but he was attracted
to her. They had to move past the impasse they seemed to be at—their relationship was neither the calculated arrangement they initially thought, nor was it going forward.
Beneath the hardness and cold demeanor, there was a man with integrity. A man who loved his daughter, hard though he found it to express it. A man who’d had shown her in three weeks of marriage that he was charming, funny and loyal to those he considered his.
A man who looked at Eleni like she was the tastiest morsel he’d ever seen.
A man who grunted and grumbled when Eleni offered him advice about Angelina but followed it because he wanted his daughter to be happy.
A man who took on Nikandros because he thought she was being taken advantage of by her brothers.
She liked her husband, she realized, running her hands over the sheets. Gabriel’s scent—musky and something of the sea—sent acute longing threading through her.
She wanted a proper life with him and Angelina. Even with his sidelong glances—sometimes fuming, sometimes so hot that she thought she’d sizzle on the spot—the last three weeks had been the happiest she’d known in a long time. Maybe ever.
Throat full, she straightened a few ties in the closet.
It was the sense of belonging he’d given her, she knew. With Gabriel and Angelina, she had a place. Father and daughter—while negotiating a tenuous truce between each other—had made Eleni feel invaluable to them. Made her feel wanted.
She’d do anything to make that permanent.
She’d just have to prove to him that this marriage and this life she shared with him and Angelina was everything to her.
Respect and loyalty and belonging—it was more than she’d ever expected.
She reached for her tablet, opened her to-do list and added an item.
Seducing Gabriel would be more than a bullet point in her list soon.
* * *
“Are you and Ellie fighting, Papa?”
The question zoomed out of Angelina’s mouth while Gabriel was finishing up the designs for the last mountain resort his company was building in Drakon.
He ripped up the blueprint in front of him and wadded it into a pulp. Restlessness like he’d never known filled him, marring the pleasure he had always found in his work. The pleasure he’d found in making money, or in a sexy woman.
