by Jane Porter
Part of him wanted to rage at her—to demand that she acknowledge that she should have run to him, not from him—but he clamped down on it. Why was he so quick to believe this story? Poor little lost princess, desperate to please her autocratic father. It was the story of every rich, entitled noble he’d ever met in one form or another, and yet somehow Gabrielle had found a way to splash them both across a thousand glossy tabloids—something no other woman had managed in a very long time. She claimed it had been unconsciously done on her part—he thought it far more likely a deliberate act. Her first chance for a full-scale rebellion, for all the world to see. Maybe the perfect princess had indeed chafed against her role—but not in the way she claimed tonight. Perhaps the tabloids had been the best weapon she could come up with, and he the best victim.
“I am your husband,” he said, as mildly as he could, his gaze trained on her face. “It is my duty to protect you.”
“Even from yourself?” she asked wryly.
He did not respond—he only watched her reach for her wineglass, tracking the slight tremor in her hand. She pressed the glass to her lips. Luc wondered how he could find such a simple gesture so erotic when he wasn’t sure a single word she spoke was the truth. She was a liar—she had deceived him and made a mockery of him in front of the world—and still he wanted her.
He wanted her—needed her—with a fury he could neither explain nor deny. It had started as he’d watched her smile her way through a week in Nice, had simmered as she’d walked toward him down the aisle in Miravakia, and had only been stoked to an inferno in her absence. Now that he had tracked her down she was so close to him—just across the tiny table—and he burned.
“I am no threat to you,” he told her, though he knew he made himself a liar as he said it. He didn’t care.
Her eyes met his, large and knowing across the table.
“You’ll forgive me, I think,” she said, with that same wry twist of her mouth, turning his own words back on him, “if somehow I cannot quite believe you.”
The dinner passed in a strange, tense bubble. Gabrielle was aware of far too much—the scrape of her blouse against her overheated skin, the swell of her breasts against the silky material of her bra, the rush of warm, fragrant air into her lungs, and always Luc’s inflexible, brooding presence that she was convinced she could feel. He was too big for the table—he overwhelmed it, his long legs brushing up against hers at odd, shocking intervals, his body seeming to block out the night. She could see, taste, only Luc. She barely touched her plate of grilled shrimp, and was startled when the waiter brought them both coffee.
“You don’t care for coffee?” Luc asked, in that smooth voice that sounded so polite and yet set off every alarm in her body.
She kept herself from squirming in her seat only with the most iron control.
“What makes you say that?” she asked, stalling. She picked up her cup and blew on the hot liquid, wishing she could cool herself as easily.
“You made a face,” he said. “Or I should say you almost made a face? You are, of course, too well trained to make one in public.”
“I don’t think I did anything of the kind,” she said stiffly, aware that he was toying with her, yet unable to do anything but respond as he intended. It made her feel annoyed at herself. As if she was a mouse too close to the claws of a cat.
“I am beginning to understand the intricacies of your public face,” he told her, eyeing her over his own coffee. His gaze was neither kind nor cutting, but it made Gabrielle shiver slightly. She decided to blame the slight breeze. “Soon enough I will be able to read you, and what will you do then?”
“If you could read me,” she replied lightly, “you would not have to wonder if I was lying to you.”
“There is that.”
“Then I hope you’re a quick study,” she threw at him, riding the wave of emotion that flashed through her.
“Oh, I am,” he promised her, his dark voice hinting at things she was sure she didn’t want to understand. Their eyes met and her breath caught—and then his gaze traveled over her mouth, pointedly.
Gabrielle swallowed and put her coffee down.
“Are you finished?” he nearly purred, raising a hand to signal the waiter. He never looked away from her face. “We can head home whenever you like.”
Head home? she repeated to herself. Together?
That was impossible. Surely he didn’t expect …?
“Home?” she echoed nervously. “You mean Cassandra’s house?”
“Is that her name?” He sounded bored. And also amused.
“Surely you have a hotel somewhere?” she said.
His lips twitched. “I own a number of hotels,” he said. “Most of them in Asia—though there are a few in France and Italy as well. None in this country.”
“That’s not what I mean,” she said crossly. “You can’t stay at Cassandra’s house with—with—” She cut herself off. Flustered.
“With you?” He finished for her, his gaze enigmatic. “Can’t I?”
“Of course not. That’s ridiculous. We are not …” She looked down at her lap and saw her hands had curled into fists. Resolutely, she unclenched them both and placed them before her on the table, like a civilized person. “And you can’t think that we—”
“I meant what I said earlier,” Luc said—so unbending, so resolute. His gaze serious. “I expect you to be my wife—in every sense of the term.”
“You’re insane!” she whispered, too overwrought to scream as she wanted to do. Though she felt the force of it as if she had made enough noise to tear at her throat. Or perhaps that was the other part of her—the part that was fascinated by him? The part that secretly wanted to be his wife, in every sense of the term, just as he’d said. She drew in a jagged breath.
“Tell yourself whatever you need to tell yourself, Gabrielle,” he threw back at her, his dark eyes glittering. He leaned forward, seeming to loom over the table, dwarfing her before him. “You play the offended innocent so well, but you’re fooling no one.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she blustered, with all the bravado she could summon.
“All I have to do is touch you,” Luc murmured, reaching over and capturing her hand with his. He laced his fingers with hers—the contact shocking, intimate. Flesh against flesh. Electricity leapt between them, igniting her blood—making her gasp. Her breasts felt heavy, and once more she felt that hot, wet need between her legs.
His dark eyes shone with a hard, masculine triumph.
“And again,” he said quietly, with an intense satisfaction that she couldn’t mistake, “you are made a liar.”
Outside the restaurant, Gabrielle fought for composure while Luc called for his driver.
She wanted to rage at Luc—for his high-handedness, for his ruthlessness, but most of all because she feared that he knew things about her body, about her, that she was afraid to discover.
She knew she could not survive this. Him. No matter how loudly her body clamored, no matter the searing ache radiating out from her core. He would change her, mark her. She couldn’t let it happen—and yet, as he had proved, all he had to do was lay his fingers against hers and her body betrayed her in an instant.
She was desperate.
But she had to keep her plastic, perfect smile on her face, no matter what. She had to act delighted when Luc returned to her side, and she had to gaze at him adoringly as they waited for the car. All of which she executed flawlessly, as if she really was the carefree new bride he wanted her to be.
What would it be like if I was that blissful new bride? a traitorous voice whispered. If she had not run—if she had stayed with him that evening—where would they be now?
Gabrielle shook the disturbing questions away, and concentrated on maintaining her composure. Luc accused her of being an actress, as if it was something shameful, but he was lucky she’d had the training she’d had. Without it she might have shattered into pieces right there on
the street and left it to the photographers to clean up the mess.
“Finally,” Luc said, much closer than she’d expected, as his sleek black car approached the curb.
His lips barely touched the delicate shell of her ear, and yet she felt the hot lash of desire spike in her belly and then flood through her body. She hated that he affected her this way. She hated that her knees weakened at the thought of the night to come, even when her mind balked.
There would be no night to come. She barely knew the man! She’d been in his company for all of six hours in total—including their wedding! He was delusional if he thought she would leap into bed with him—no matter if he was, technically, her husband. No matter if her own body seemed to want him in ways she was afraid to explore.
She knew that she would be burned without recognition—forever altered—if he got his way, and she could not allow it to happen. She had to hold on to what little sense of self she’d somehow wrested from the ruins of the last week—from her whole previous life as a dutiful, controlled princess. It was as if she’d finally woken up from a very long bad dream, and here was a nightmare in human form, threatening to suck her back down under.
But she kept her smile firmly in place as Luc handed her into the backseat of the luxurious sedan. She opened her mouth to thank him, but his attention was caught by one of the men standing in the pack of photographers jostling for position around the car.
Luc stiffened almost imperceptibly, and the harsh curve of his mouth went glacial. It was frightening to watch—though Gabrielle allowed herself a quick moment of relief that he was not looking at her that way. As if he would like to tear the man apart with his bare hands, and was strongly considering doing so.
“Silvio—what a delightful surprise,” Luc said in deeply sardonic Italian. “What brings you to California? A vacation?”
However angry he had been with her—and was still—Gabrielle knew he had never used that horribly cold, vicious tone before. Not on her. Not yet. She shivered. The other man, obviously a paparazzo if the camera slung across his neck was any indication, seemed oblivious. He even smiled at Luc, a bland and casual smile that drew attention to his cold eyes, as if he could not sense the danger.
“Where my prince goes, I follow,” he replied in the same language, his mockery all too evident. “How’s married life treating you, Luc? Is it all you dreamed now that you’ve finally run her to ground?”
“And more,” Luc said, baring his teeth. “I’m sure I’ll see you around.”
“You can count on it,” Silvio shot back.
“I always do,” Luc retorted, that feral smile in place.
Then, much worse, he climbed into the car next to Gabrielle, closed the door, and turned all that icy ferocity on her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
LUC was silent as the sleek car hugged the twists and turns that led up into the hills—but it was a kind of silence that was much worse, Gabrielle thought with mounting trepidation, than anything he might have said.
She could feel him. Without looking at him—because she didn’t dare—she could sense the way he lounged against the butter-soft leather seat, his indolent posture at odds with the dark power that seemed to hum through him like a live wire. She could feel anger come off of him in waves, like heat. The way his dark eyes consumed her sent terrified shivers down her spine. He seemed to fill the entire car with his presence—crowding her, pressing against her, cornering her—though he was not touching her at all.
How could he do such a thing? How could he seem to possess her without so much as lifting a finger?
She called her reaction terror, but some deep feminine knowledge inside her knew better and whispered the truth. Her breasts felt swollen, surging against the confines of her bra, her blouse. Her breath came too fast, too shallow. Her legs felt restless, and a kind of panic made her want to squirm, to run, to scream. It clawed at her throat and teased at her eyes, and she didn’t know what she would do if the pressure grew stronger. Would she burst? Explode?
The car pulled up in front of Cassandra’s house, and Gabrielle stared at the pretty Craftsman façade—though she did not see it. She was aware only of his quiet, brooding presence behind her as she stepped from the car. She could feel only her own body’s panicked response in the staccato beat of her heart, the heat that suffused her, and the tell-tale dampness between her legs.
How could this be happening? When he seemed so angry—so furious with her? Had she no self-respect at all?
But then she already knew that she did not—could not have. A woman with self-respect would surely not have found herself married to a stranger. She would not have married him, and if she had she would not have abandoned him at their wedding, only to be pursued across the world like some runaway bride. Whether she called it weakness or a lack of self-respect, it worked out to the same thing in the end—didn’t it?
“Come,” Luc said, taking her hand with his in a dictatorial gesture that pulled her closer to his body—too close. His dark gaze seemed to glitter in the dark night, and his mouth pulled into a merciless line. “It is time to stop playing these games.”
She did not exactly run. She opened the door and then hurried away from him. Luc watched her move with a quiet satisfaction, knowing she walked far too quickly for someone unaffected.
He knew better. He’d seen the high color on that gorgeous face of hers. He’d watched her growing agitation on the drive home.
Seeing Silvio—that gutter-swine—had only solidified the rage he’d been carrying around ever since the humiliating moment he’d realized that his perfect, proper princess had in fact done a runner and left him to face the consequences of her choices. Silvio was the worst of the paparazzi who had hounded Luc for years. And he’d been after a story like this for ages—ever since Luc had lost his temper in what seemed now like another life, and blackened the lowlife’s eyes at his parents’ funeral.
That had been the last time Luc had been splashed across so many tabloids—the last time he’d excited so much scandalous comment. Since then there had been the odd photograph, depending on who he happened to be dating, and the usual complaint that he was “notoriously reclusive.” When in truth he simply did not wish to fund Silvio’s parasitic existence.
Damn Gabrielle for playing right into Silvio’s hands. Damn his wife for giving scum like Silvio ammunition.
But Luc knew exactly how to make her pay.
His gaze lingered on the sway of her hips, the twitch of her hair against her shapely back. He smiled—hard.
He was looking forward to it.
Inside the house, Gabrielle fled across the living room and found herself face-to-face with her reflection in the sliding doors. She placed her palms against the cool glass, surprised when her hands didn’t sizzle with all the heat she was sure she was letting off.
Luc did not turn on the lights when he came in behind her. A streetlight from outside spilled into the room, lengthening the shadows he stalked through, as quiet and as dangerous as some lethal jungle cat.
She was his prey. She could feel it in a primal way, down into her bones.
“There is nowhere left to run, Gabrielle.” His voice was so low. Menacing. It seemed to vibrate against her spine, sending waves of reaction radiating out and consuming her.
“I’m not running,” she said, tilting her chin up. She hated how childish she sounded. So pointlessly defiant. He laughed. It sent a new chill through her.
“You should have known how this would end,” he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken. “You should have known better.”
“I don’t know you at all,” she said—but it came out as little more than a whisper.
And it was a lie. She knew things she would prefer to ignore. Her body knew him better than she wanted to admit—and it cried out for him in the darkened room, no matter how she longed to deny it.
“You are mine.” Possession and finality rang in his voice.
“You do not own me,” she breathed at him
, bracing herself against the glass door and straightening her back against him. “No one can own another person!”
“Does it make you feel safer to think so?” he asked, mocking her. “Do you think political correctness will help you tonight?”
She didn’t know what she thought—she only knew he was too close, and every cell in her body screamed at her to flee. To do anything and everything she could to escape what was coming as surely as day followed night. To hold on to herself—because he would raze her to ashes in his wake, and who knew what she might be when he was finished?
Luc stopped behind her. His hands came up to hold her shoulders. He traced the shape of her arms beneath his palms. The reflection in the glass blurred his features slightly—made him seem more approachable, somehow, less remote.
Or maybe it was the way he touched her that made her blood sing his name, and washed away any half-formed thoughts she might have had left of escaping him.
She felt the warmth of his skin through the thin fabric of her blouse. She felt the surprising hardness of his palms as they moved along the lines of her body.
As if he was testing her. Training her. The thought made her belly clench.
She shuddered, and felt herself weaken. She who was already so weak where he was concerned. A delicious, terrifying languor stole through her, moving like fire in the wake of his hands, daring her to ease back against the hard, solid length of his body, as if she could no longer hold her head high of her own volition. She felt him against every inch of her back—too hot to the touch.
She should say something. She should remind him that they were strangers. She should try to put him off somehow. It was too soon—it would always be too soon. She should refuse to do whatever it was he was planning to do—was already doing.
She knew that there would be no turning back.
But she couldn’t seem to move.
He used his mouth then—heat and breath against her temple, her neck, the fine bones and hollows near her collarbone.