by Tara Pammi
A deal sealed with passion!
Illegitimate and overlooked, Eleni, Princess of Drakon, yearns for a family. At a masquerade ball, one stolen kiss with a stranger sparks an opportunity! Gabriel Marquez wants her to care for his child—could this be Eleni’s chance to strike a deal of her own?
Gabriel, Drakon’s biggest investor, is shocked by Eleni’s bold bargaining...but a convenient marriage would be advantageous to them both! He’ll gain a stand-in mother for his daughter, and Eleni the baby she longs for. Except Gabriel hasn’t predicted the fire raging between them...one which will bind them together forever!
“Come now, Princesa. You had the nerve to propose marriage to me. Don’t shy away now.”
“I…I do not ask for your fidelity or your love, Gabriel. I do not need such delusions in my life. I only ask that you give me…”
Such color filled Eleni’s cheeks that Gabriel stared, transfixed. Her lips trembled and she dug her teeth into the lower one. Lust punched him like an invisible blow, and it was all he could do not to tug at that lower lip and taste her himself.
“Eleni?” he prompted, in a harsh voice set on edge by the delectable temptation she made.
“I want a baby. A child of my own. I was in the process of going through adoption agencies when you…you threatened to pull your company out of Drakon. It’s not something I’m willing to give up on—for anyone.”
Every muscle in his body stiffened. Every instinct he possessed warned him to walk away from this deal with this woman. But even as he processed it, he had to admire her guts.
“A baby? You’re bargaining for a baby?”
The Drakon Royals
Royalty has never looked this scandalous!
To the outside world, the Drakon Royals have the world at their feet. Yet beneath the surface black-hearted Crown Prince Andreas, his daredevil younger brother Prince Nikandros and their illegitimate sister Princess Eleni hide the secrets of their family name…
Until one brush with desire, and then all the Drakons find themselves at the heart of their very own scandal!
Find out what happens in:
Crowned for the Drakon Legacy
April 2017
The Drakon Baby Bargain
June 2017
Look out for Andreas’s story
September 2017
You won’t want to miss this outrageously scandalous new trilogy from Tara Pammi!
The Drakon Baby Bargain
Tara Pammi
www.millsandboon.co.uk
TARA PAMMI can’t remember a moment when she wasn’t lost in a book—especially a romance, which was much more exciting than a mathematics textbook at school. Years later, Tara’s wild imagination and love for the written word revealed what she really wanted to do. Now she pairs alpha males who think they know everything with strong women who knock that theory and them off their feet!
Books by Tara Pammi
Mills & Boon Modern Romance
The Sheikh’s Pregnant Prisoner
The Man to Be Reckoned With
A Deal with Demakis
The Drakon Royals
Crowned for the Drakon Legacy
Brides for Billionaires
Married for the Sheikh’s Duty
The Legendary Conti Brothers
The Surpise Conti Child
The Unwanted Conti Bride
Greek Tycoons Tamed
Claimed for His Duty
Bought for Her Innocence
Society Weddings
The Sicilian’s Surprise Wife
A Dynasty of Sand and Scandal
The Last Prince of Dahaar
The True King of Dahaar
Visit the Author Profile page at
millsandboon.co.uk for more titles.
Contents
Cover
Back Cover Text
Introduction
The Drakon Royals
Title Page
About the Author
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
EPILOGUE
Extract
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
ONE KISS...
Eleni Drakos stood at the outer fringes of the black-and-white-tiled ballroom and peered through her elaborate mask.
One kiss from any man who’d look at her with warmth and desire, a man who could make her forget that a chasm of cutting loneliness was all that stretched ahead in her life.
One kiss because it was her thirtieth birthday and she was quite sick of her stagnant life, of pretending that the sight of her sister-in-law with her swollen belly didn’t send a shaft of ache through her, or that she didn’t crave a family of her own.
She’d lived her entire life within the rules her father, King Theos, had set, ensuring that her brothers, Andreas and Nikandros, had everything they had ever needed.
What she hadn’t foreseen was that in the end, she would be alone. Just as she had been all these years.
She walked aimlessly at the fringes of the vast oval-shaped ballroom, the cut-crystal chandeliers making the resplendently dressed men and women glitter. She wasn’t the only one hiding her identity behind the mask. The masquerade ball was an annual tradition of the House of Drakos and yet, with her father Theos’s dementia becoming worse, it had not been held in four years.
But because the conservative traditionalists were balking at Andreas’s continued absence after their father’s death, and they feared that Nikandros and Gabriel Marquez’s partnership was a risk to Drakon’s economy, Eleni had suggested that they hold the ball again as a way of pacifying them.
And then she’d put the ball together in three weeks.
Scanning the stunningly dressed women and tuxedoed men who were dancing to a slow waltz, satisfaction filled her veins. Her fingers tingled to look through her fabled to-do list and check it off.
The black-and-white mask she’d bought on her trip to Paris last week went particularly well with the dark red lipstick. Piled high in a chignon, wispy tendrils of her usually unruly hair kissed her jaw.
Strapless and snug around her chest, her black-and-red silk ball gown accentuated an hourglass figure no amount of careful dieting could reduce, dipping at her waist and flaring into a full flounce.
The four-inch stilettos she had pushed her feet into boosted her five-two height, flashing her toned leg through the thigh-high slit. She’d been stunned when she’d looked at her reflection in the gold-filigree full-length mirror.
She’d always be plain compared to her half brothers, the Princes of Drakon; the media frequently reminded her by calling her the Plain Princess, but in that moment, she’d thought she had almost looked beautiful.
Good enough for the House of Drakos, her father would have said.
She continued wandering across the ballroom, marveling at the magnificence of the hotel.
It had been a crumbling Victorian-style mansion with out-of-date plumbing and bad interiors, but in three months Marquez Holdings Inc. had renovated it into a world-class destination for the nouveau rich that were pouring into Drakon, thanks to Gabriel Marquez’s interest.
The ruthless real estate mogul was a guest of the palace of Drakon, and had been in Drakon for three months to oversee his company’s investment in Drakon.
Casinos, luxury resorts that rivaled the King’s Palace in style and ambience, mountain escapes, a world-class racing circuit—the map of Drakon was changing under Mr. Marquez’
s and her brother Nik’s deft guidance.
A modern-day Midas, as the media called him, Eleni wouldn’t have believed the transformation of the building Gabriel Marquez had wrought if she hadn’t visited it herself almost a year ago.
Taking a sip of her chilled champagne, she looked down over the lush gardens. The scent of roses was thick in the air; a clock struck midnight at the old church in the city’s main square.
She took a longer sip than was wise, felt the bubbly kiss her throat cold and sighed. It was a sound that seemed to come from the depths of her lonely soul.
The night stretched empty in front of her again.
“Why the long sigh, querida?”
The deep, slumberous voice sent a shiver down Eleni’s spine that rivaled the tingles in her throat. Heart beating faster, she turned, bracing her hand on the balcony balustrade. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your—”
“Stay.”
With the one command, he made her spine lock. Even her father, who had been a bossy, hard-to-please man, had never ordered her around like that. “Excuse me?”
“Stay and keep me company,” the man repeated, not even a little taken aback by her stiff tone.
With his back to the wall, the man was huge. Like a bouncer at a nightclub, he was tall and powerfully built.
A veneer of power clung to his frame. Unlike the other men at the ball, no mask covered his face. Only shadows.
His blue-black hair framed his face in thick, unruly waves. The fine white dress shirt, unbuttoned at the throat, clung to lean muscle. The breadth of his frame sent tremors through Eleni.
She couldn’t stop her gaze from traveling down his length. One foot crossed over the other and stretched the fabric of his trousers, revealing the hard musculature of his thighs.
Eleni swallowed the strange anticipation that seemed to rise in her throat. He pushed off from the wall.
She barely swallowed the soft gasp that rose to her lips.
Roughly chiseled masculine planes, a wide, sensuously cruel mouth and a nose bent in the middle—it was Gabriel Marquez, the very man she’d been mooning over for months. The man who reminded her she was a woman every minute she spent in his company. The desire and need that she’d thought had disappeared with Spiros still burned bright in her.
The ruthlessness that had made Gabriel a legend in boardrooms across Europe screamed from every inch of him.
Her heart pumped faster as she waited for him to recognize her.
His dark slate-gray eyes studied her. He’d never so much as rested his gaze on her in three months of long meetings and numerous requests she’d dealt with. Not once had he shown any awareness that she was a woman.
No, then she was Princess Eleni Drakos, the facilitator for his firm, the grease between his company and the palace. But now she was a masked stranger, and something flared in those depths. Something that made her aware of how thin the silk of her dress was, of how tightly her skin seemed to be stretched.
“Such a wealth of regret and—” he paused while his gaze seared her “—need from a beautiful woman’s lips...it feels like a challenge to any man.”
“It wasn’t...need,” she retorted instantly, somehow negating what she had meant to say.
“Come, querida, isn’t the idea of the masquerade to be open about our innermost desires while we hide our outward selves?” He traced the lower edge of her mask with a finger. Sensation zoomed from the spot. “You’re safe behind that mask.”
When his finger continued its journey back down and reached the indent over her upper lip, Eleni grabbed his wrist. If he touched her mouth... “Why aren’t you wearing one?” she asked, wishing she didn’t sound so breathless.
“Because I don’t have to hide myself to express what I want. Nor do I need to validate myself by hiding from the world who I am.”
Arrogance dripped from his every word. But why not? There wasn’t one single woman in the palace who hadn’t lost her breath over the sight of him.
“You sound far too sure of your appeal.”
He shrugged. “I am Gabriel Marquez, Ms....?”
Eleni racked her brains for a name that had no association with her or the House of Drakos. She’d taken every precaution not to betray her identity at this ball tonight, including arranging it so that she was thought to be still in Paris by her staff and even by her brother Nikandros. Only Mia knew she was here. And the last thing she wanted was for this man to figure out who she was, especially now that he was staring at her with such male interest that she felt heady and drunk.
“You didn’t think of a fake name before you decided to come to the ball tonight?”
A taunt in his question brought her gaze to his. Humor lurked in his eyes and Eleni felt something in her loosen at the sight of it. The twitching curve of his bold mouth unraveled a hidden streak she didn’t even know she had. “A name was not required for the goal I had in mind.”
His gray gaze gleamed with pure delight. “Now you make me more curious. Still, I would like a name to call you as I figure out what specific goals you had in mind for tonight. And how I can help you succeed in achieving them.”
Awareness flooded every inch of her body and Eleni stood shaking in its wake. His bold eyes swept over her face, stilling for a second more on her mouth. His nostrils flared and a wave of heat seemed to emanate from him.
He was attracted to her, she realized with a sudden leap of her heart. The man who had never given her a second glance was attracted to her.
“Cinderella,” Eleni whispered, after a moment’s thought.
His eyes crinkled at the corners and warmth filled his eyes. It was such an unfamiliar, unusual expression on his usually serious face that Eleni stared hungrily. The man was gorgeous, but his smile made him breathtaking. “And is it the cruel stepsisters and stepmother that you’re hoping to hide from tonight, Cinderella?”
A smile came to her easily. As easily as the giddy response. She felt like a teenager, bantering and flirting with the boy she’d been sneaking glances at for a few months. Wild and beautiful and wanted, as if she were any one of those women who were even now skillfully laughing and flirting with available men, women who knew the cues and their own worth, women who would spend the night in a lover’s arms.
Women who hadn’t been waiting their entire life for a man who’d promised the world. Women who had the guts to go after what they wanted instead of mourning a man who was long gone from her life.
She hadn’t thought Gabriel Marquez would be the one who’d seek her out, but in her wildest dreams, wasn’t this what she wanted? So why not take what she’d come for? Why not live for the moment?
Why not believe in the fantasy that she was beautiful and desirable and confident, and that the fire she saw in his eyes was all for her?
“You were right on the first guess,” she said, jumping into the moment with both feet.
A vertical line formed between his brows, his arms coming to the balcony to cage her. “You sound familiar, Cinderella.”
Shoulders rigid with tension, Eleni fought to keep her face straight. Was it the way she had said his name? Or was her disguise not enough to hide who she was?
The levity disappeared from his eyes, leaving them stone cold. “Did you come to the ball looking for me, Cinderella?”
That set her back up like nothing else could have. Lifting her chin, she met his gaze square. “You think a lot of yourself, do you not?”
“Women seek favors of me all the time,” he said, the taunt back in his tone. “One does become a little jaded.”
“It must be nice to believe the world revolves around oneself.”
He threw his head back and laughed, sending trails of pleasure whispering over every inch of her skin. The broad shoulders shook with his laughter, which was a deep, masculine sound. Sleek grooves appeared in his rugged face, rendering that hard face a little beautiful.
“The more I listen to you, the more I like you. Tell me truly, have we met before?”
“I doubt I would forget you.” The cage of his hands shrank around her, teasing her nostrils with the scent of him. Sandalwood and musk and something so essentially masculine it made her want to throw caution to the winds and burrow into his skin. “So if it’s not a beastly family, who are you hiding from tonight, Ella?”
She flinched at the way he shortened her name and wished fervently that the shadows had hid it from him. Her brother Nik had always called her Ellie and so did Mia. To hear it fall from Gabriel’s lips—it was thrilling and dangerous like nothing else.
“A clingy, dumbstruck lover?” Something hard entered his eyes. “Or a disgruntled husband?”
“No, no husband—” she half choked on the word “—and no lover either.
“I’m hiding from myself,” she said, giving voice to the sentiment that had been gnawing at her for a while. “For one night, I wanted to be someone else, something else. I wanted to be daring and beautiful and a woman who lived in the moment. I wanted to be anyone but me.” She caught the wistfulness in her voice and colored. “I’m sure you could not understand even if you tried.”
He smiled and the grooves in his cheeks made his square jaw even more masculine. Straight white teeth gleamed in the silvery light, the lower lip jutting out in its fullness.
Having grown up surrounded by arrogant, unbending men like her father, King Theos, and half brother Andreas should have made her impervious to the aura of power that surrounded Gabriel, should have made her wary of that ruthless quality that pretty much had ruled her life when her father had been alive.
But it didn’t.
For some unknown reason, she had always found herself drawn to Gabriel. To his confidence and arrogance.
“What makes you say that?” he ventured softly, as if he really wanted her opinion of him.
“You are Gabriel Marquez. Your reach and power...you own every space you enter, isn’t that what they say?”
He shrugged, as if it were all matter of fact. “I have strived all my life to become what I am, to own everything I do today. And, no, I have never wished to wear another’s skin.”