Untouched Until Her Ultra-Rich Husband

by Dani Collins

  Luli did what she had done with every other witch who thought she could backhand her with a compliment.

  “Gabriel called me cunning the other day, didn’t you?”

  Over the rim of his glass, he asked her if that was really how she wanted to play this, as if he didn’t think she understood who she was dealing with.

  “I did,” he admitted after a beat. “And I meant it.”

  Someone else came up, forcing Brittany on her way. Gabriel held court for the rest of the evening, continuing to introduce her as Mae’s manager even when a professor from a prestigious design school asked if Luli had ever considered modeling, providing the perfect opportunity to talk about her pageant experience.

  Gabriel squeezed her hand, however, warning her to demur.

  “Every tall girl is told they must model or play basketball, aren’t they?” she said.

  “Not every girl is told as vehemently as I’m telling you. I have contacts at several agencies. Gabriel, she needs to be immortalized in the pages of Vogue, wearing Chanel. You can’t let these cheekbones languish in an office.”

  “Why not? Mine do,” Gabriel said with blithe conceit. “Luli is one of the best programmers I’ve come across. I’ll fight to keep her.”

  She couldn’t tell if he was being sincere, but the man moved on and other people moved in.

  “You’ve been quiet,” Gabriel said a few hours later, when they arrived back at his penthouse. “Was it too much?”

  “No,” she murmured. “It was just a long night of being ‘on.’ My face hurts from smiling.”

  “Don’t feel you have to. I don’t.”

  She had read that memo in his expression of bored tolerance.

  She’d seen his home earlier so she wasn’t as agog returning to it, but was still taken aback that he lived in this massive split-level mansion in the sky. The foyer led to a sunken lounge where the exterior wall held another of his spectacular aquariums. It formed the inside wall of the infinity pool outside—which looked down onto Central Park.

  She lowered to the sofa, its cushion stuffed with goose down, he had informed her, when her first time sitting caused her to gasp with a sense of sinking into pure luxury. All of his furniture was custom-made for him by an Italian couture house that hand-turned legs and hand-stitched pleats into leather and velvet.

  They measure me like my tailor, even ask me which side I dress, he’d drawled.

  One of his servants appeared with a pot of Chinese tea, something she had confessed to craving after her breakdown in Paris. It appeared every night now, without her asking for it.

  “Thank you,” she said with a warm smile for the maid.

  The woman curtsied.

  Luli sighed. I’m one of you, she wanted to say, but Gabriel dismissed her.

  “I thought Brittany might have said something to upset you,” he said as the door closed. He shrugged out of his jacket and loosened his tie, throwing both on the back of the sofa, gaze staying fixed on her.

  “When?” She set aside her shoes and wiggled her toes with relief. Then she picked up her skirt as she walked across to where the tea had been left on the bar.

  “She came out of the ladies’ room after you did and smiled at me like she had sunk my battleship.”

  “Please.” Luli glanced over her shoulder so he could see her brow crinkled with scorn and pity. “I know a school in Venezuela where she could learn to be a cat with actual claws.”

  “So she did say something.” His voice tightened.

  “She told me you slept together.” She paused in pouring, glanced at him again and saw by his tense expression that it was true. She ignored the fresh strip that admission peeled off the back of her heart. “Actually, she asked whether you had told me that you’d been lovers.” She finished pouring and set the pot aside. “I said you probably didn’t think it was important enough to mention.”

  He looked away, but even in the subdued lighting she saw the twitch of his mouth.

  “Then she warned me that she could blackball me among the social elite here. I told her I’d never heard the expression, but that she must feel very disappointed things hadn’t worked out between you, and maybe it was because she talked about you behind your back.” One spoon of sugar. “I said I’d ask you. She didn’t like that.”

  She heard his snort.

  “Then I told her I would look up blackball so I understood exactly how that works.” Her spoon clinked as she stirred.

  He swore under his breath, head hanging and shoulders shaking. “Every time I worry about you, I discover you’re perfectly capable of taking care of yourself.”

  “Are you?” she asked, facetious, but also with tendrils of jealousy still working its poison through her veins in thorny little stings. “Why would you sleep with someone like that? What happened to saving it for someone special?”

  “I’m not a virgin.”

  She turned fully around to see his hands had balled in his pockets. His jaw had hardened. All of him had.

  “Is it easier to remain celibate when you know what you’re missing?” A horrifying thought occurred. “Have you been seeing someone while we’ve been—?”

  “No! When would I even—We’re together all the time. I have been celibate since we met and no, it is not easy.”

  “Then... How long does this marriage have to last, Gabriel? Are we supposed to wait to have sex until it’s over?”

  “What are you asking? Whether you’re allowed to have sex with other people? No. Neither of us is stepping out. It’s gossip we don’t need and would jeopardize the believability of this marriage.”

  “So I’m just supposed to live here with you, wondering what sex would be like?”

  He closed his eyes and sounded very beleaguered. “I’ve told you why we shouldn’t have sex.”

  “Because you might hurt my feelings when this is over. Well, I’ll tell you what. It hurts my feelings that you’d have sex with someone like her and can’t bring yourself to make love to me.”

  “Brittany? That’s what this is about?” He shoved a hand into his hair. “People want things from me, Luli. All the time.” He spoke with the infinite weariness of a battle-scarred warrior. “Sometimes it seems simpler to sleep with someone who is transparent in their motives. I didn’t realize how much she drinks or I wouldn’t have gone near her. It lasted less than a week.”

  He had said his father drank himself to death. She wanted to ask how bad it had been, but the remote cloud around him told her it had been very bad. Her heart tremored, urging her to go to him, but his stillness held her off.

  “I don’t drink,” she pointed out. “No more than you do.”

  “I’ve noticed. I appreciate it.”

  “So...?”

  “Luli. You’re far too vulnerable.”

  “You just said you don’t have to worry about me.”

  “Yet I do.”

  “Well, I’m worried about you! You have sex with people you don’t even like.”

  “That was one misjudgment. Just...give it a rest,” he sighed. “We can’t, okay? I can’t let you start thinking this is real.”

  “How is having sex making this more or less real? People who are married have sex. You’re afraid that if we sleep together, I’m going to want you to fall in love with me?”

  “Yes.”

  She folded her arms, aching because she already wanted that. Her marriage already looked very bleak, filled with lust and craving and deep yearning while he felt...nothing.

  “I can’t say I wouldn’t,” she admitted. “I’ve always wanted someone to love me.”

  His expression tightened as if her words had scored a line through him. “It’s not as idyllic as it sounds, trust me.”

  “How do you know? Have you loved someone?” The world tilted and nearly dropped her off the edge into cold,
airless space. “Is that why—”

  “No,” he said, taking her aback with his harsh tone.

  “No? Not even your parents?”

  “Of course my mother.” He sounded like she was yanking out his teeth.

  “Not ‘of course.’ I have no feelings for my father and terrible ones toward my mother. If you loved your mother and she loved you back, that’s good.”

  “Well, I have grief over the loss of my mother, because I loved her. And terrible feelings toward my father. He couldn’t handle her loss at all. It was a nightmare. Because he loved her. He railed and wept and broke things. He told me love was agony and never to let myself feel it.”

  For once Gabriel had stepped outside his jaded, impervious shell. He was breathing fire, snarling and showing his claws.

  “I wouldn’t bother taking the advice of a man who was drunk and slurring from ten in the morning on,” he continued, “but he would grab me and cry against my chest, fall to his knees and tell me he loved me. He made me promise never to leave, never to get hurt or get sick or die. I was seven. I didn’t know how to promise that! And I don’t know if I loved him, but I do know it was agony.”

  Oh, Gabriel. She swallowed, thinking of him being confused and grieving, then picked on at school. So alone.

  Until he had money. Then everyone wanted to be his friend.

  She abandoned her tea and went across to him, took off her earrings and made him give her his hand so she could put them in his palm.

  “I love these. They’re beautiful. But I don’t want to keep them unless you want me to have them. You’ve given me things I need, Gabriel. You’ve given me someone who listens and draws me a bath and calls me intelligent. That’s far more valuable to me than anything you could buy me.”

  She closed his fingers over the earrings, then ran her thumb across the hard bumps of his knuckles. She wanted to kiss his fist, which felt silly and too impactful. Emotions suffused her that she didn’t know how to express. There was gratitude, definitely, but other nameless things that urged her to reach out and offer, search for something in him, but give up to him at the same time.

  “I have nothing to give you that equals any of that.” Her voice creaked.

  His mouth opened in protest, but she squeezed his hand.

  “Only me,” she continued. “And I want to. It’s okay if you don’t love me. But I want to touch you and hold you and feel those things you make me feel. I want to know what it might feel like if someone did love me.”

  His breath hissed in and he pulled his hand from her touch, thrusting his closed fist into his pocket.

  She set her hand on his chest. “I don’t want you to protect me from you or myself. I want you to let me become the woman I want to be.”

  He made a strangled noise and pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes clenched shut.

  “Please?”

  “I’m only a man, Luli,” he said in a rasping voice. “When this all goes to hell, I want you to remember this moment. I tried to be honorable.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “REALLY?” EXCITEMENT AND TREPIDATION and anticipation all came together in a war inside her.

  “I’ve been wanting to tear that gown off you all night.” He opened his eyes and there was such atavistic light in his gaze, her heart stuttered.

  “Don’t! I love it.” She looked down at her cleavage. “Plus there’s tape that will sting so bad if you pull it too fast.”

  “You were put on this earth to drive me crazy. Go. Lock yourself in your room or meet me in mine. Now.”

  She picked up her skirt and ran up the stairs, hearing him take them two at a time behind her. She let out a wild laugh, riding an adrenaline rush. She went straight to his room where she whirled to confront him.

  He came in behind her, shirt open and pulled from his tuxedo pants, edges wafting like wings.

  She gasped in awe at the sheen of his burnished skin stretched taut across lean muscles. He stalked her on panther feet and grasped her hips, dragging her into a soft collision with his bare chest. His mouth came down on hers in a blatant claim of ownership. His lips were hard. Devouring. Insatiable.

  Her body responded in a flowering throb that made all of her hurt. She moaned at the pleasure-pain of it and he immediately dragged his head up.

  “No?” he asked through gritted teeth.

  “Yes,” she breathed. Groaned. She tangled her hands in his hair exactly as she had wanted to and urged him back to kissing her. She pressed her tongue to his and cried out with excitement when he sucked on her.

  Wet, fiery kisses went down her to her throat. His arms folded all the way around her narrow waist and he held her tight and still, teeth against the straining cord in her neck.

  “Tell me you want this,” he said against her skin. “Because I’m barely hanging on to control.”

  “I do. So much.” She pushed her hands beneath his open shirt, freeing his shoulders, wanting to touch all of him.

  He straightened to throw off his shirt and she saw his eyes, feral and ravenous. It sent a dangerous spire of hunger into the pit of her belly. Lower. Liquid heat pooled between her legs and she clenched with emptiness and longing.

  “Take it off, then.” He nodded at her dress.

  She swallowed and ran her fingertips along the inner swells of her breasts, watching him watch her lift the strap off her skin. She turned and gathered her hair onto the front of her shoulder, revealing the zipper at her spine.

  He released it. Slowly. The lace relaxed and his hot hands took possession of her bared waist. He kissed the top of her spine and his humid breath fogged near her ear.

  “The way you smell drives me insane. I want to lick every inch of you.” His teeth nipped her lobe and her nipples tightened so hard and fast, they stung. She pressed her thighs tight together, trying to ease the ache that shot high and hot between.

  She eased the dress down off her shoulders, but before she had it fully off her arms, his hands stole forward to claim her breasts. She stilled, head falling back against his shoulder as he fondled her, filling her with lassitude. Her backside instinctively pressed into the firmness behind his fly and his breath hissed at the way she writhed against him. His hands tightened on her and she felt his teeth again, scraping the tender place where her neck met her shoulder.

  “Keep going,” he demanded, pushing into her butt, confusing her a little when he added, “I want to see you.”

  She kept herself snug against his fly as she turned her sleeves inside out peeling them off. He stepped back then, just enough to let her push the clingy dress off her hips. She stepped out of it and turned.

  His gaze claimed her in a lazy exploration that was nearly tactile, taking his time and leaving a burn of awareness at each curve and swell. He only held her one hand in his own, wasn’t even squeezing, but somehow he kept her in place for his leisurely inspection. His free hand came out and his finger hooked into her thong at the hollow on the front of her hip.

  And finally, his gaze lifted to meet hers.

  She only licked her lips, waiting. His heavy touch eased the one side down her hip, then skimmed across, grazing her mound on the way.

  She jerked and the corners of his mouth deepened with satisfaction. He slid the other side down an inch, teased her again with the back of his knuckle against the humid seam of her folds.

  “Gabriel,” she whispered in a helpless throb.

  “Is this what you want?” The thong cut across the tops of her thighs while his touch traveled back to center and barely touched her, petting ever so lightly.

  She bit her lip, embarrassed by the release of moisture there, but so wanting him to stroke into it.

  “Say yes.”

  “Yes,” she obeyed in a thready voice.

  He traced the center line of her, slowly deepening the caress, driving her mad so she was biting
her lips, eyes clenched tight, waiting and waiting.

  There.

  Her mouth opened in a soundless scream as he found the swollen knot of nerves that craved his touch.

  He made a noise that was a growl of satisfaction and a snarl of torment.

  “Please,” she whispered and blindly reached out.

  “You’re okay.” He stepped closer, folding her arm behind the small of her back as he kept her hand in his and embraced her. Held her up. His other hand kept torturing her while his mouth found hers. “Feel,” he said against her lips, and continued his delicious torture.

  She curled her free hand around his neck and kissed him back, lost in a sea of sensation as he dragged his mouth across hers and her twisting scraped her nipples against the hair on his chest. And his hand, oh, his wicked, masterful hand found a wonderful rhythm that she met with abbreviated thrusts of her hips.

  She tried to tell him she wanted him, all of him, filling that ache. She wanted that hard shape she could feel so implacably against her hip, but she was drowning in this kiss and the pleasure and suddenly she was showered in the spell of climax, shivering and clinging and gasping.

  And Gabriel was laughing softly. “I knew,” he said against her lips. “I knew we would be like this.”

  * * *

  She went bonelessly onto his bed like a gift. Her hair pooled in ribbons of brunette satin, framing her face. Her gaze was soft, her mouth pouted and swollen from their kisses. Her limbs splayed weightlessly and her curves beckoned.

  His mouth watered as he stripped the last of his clothes. Somehow he remembered a condom when the only thought in his head was that he had to be against her. Over her. In her. He noted the hint of apprehension as she watched, studying his engorged shape, and knew he would die if he had to wait.

  But wait he would. As long as it took.

  He settled over her and cupped her face, letting himself burn in the fire of need and craving and anticipation of relief. When he kissed her, he tasted hesitation. He felt the tension in her thighs as she nervously made room for him.