The Drakon Baby Bargain

by Tara Pammi

  Gray eyes searched her face. The perusal sent heat rushing to her cheeks. Long fingers drifted lazily onto her hips and every nerve in her body pulsed and stretched taut. As if it were possible to become smaller or less curvy by willing one’s body to shrink.

  If he noticed her instinctive reaction to his touch, he didn’t heed it. Back and forth, his fingers traced the curve of her full hips, like butterfly kisses.

  But it was rapt attention that went to her head, as if she had drunk something to make her euphoric. No man had ever looked at Eleni without the consequences of what and who she was.

  Either she was an asset or a liability.

  Either she was too low because she was illegitimate and held no real position of power in Drakos, or she was too much of a hassle to get involved with because she was close with her powerful brothers, the Princes of Drakon.

  She belonged neither with the palace staff, nor on the wall of the East Hall that was graced by centuries of members of the distinguished, blue-blooded House of Drakos.

  “Then my disguise, and my attempt at grabbing this moment under it, must seem like a joke to you. Pathetic even.”

  “You’re wrong, querida. Even I need escape sometimes. Even I have to face the fact that I cannot control everything. That I cannot control fate and all the games it plays with us.”

  A thread of something in his tone tugged at her. As if there was something this powerful man needed that she could provide.

  “I came...because tonight I cannot escape what tomorrow brings for me. Because tomorrow I face something I dread.”

  “Gabriel Marquez, afraid of something?”

  Those grooves of his winked at her as he smiled again. “Shh...querida. You will spill my secrets and ruin my reputation. Now, tell me, what is it that you want tonight?”

  The answer to a question had never come so easily before. “A kiss. I want a kiss.” She swallowed at the flames of desire that licked at his gray eyes. “From a man who wants me. Not a pity kiss, Gabriel.”

  Hands on her hips, he swiveled her with masculine ease. Too shocked by the sudden contact, Eleni turned willingly.

  A glass pane stood in front of them, reflecting their image. Even though she was wearing four-inch heels, he still easily overpowered her in height. She barely came to his shoulder. And his breadth—he was so overpoweringly male.

  She felt like a doll, a fragile doll, compared to him. Not at all a practical, matter-of-fact woman, but a flimsy, fantastic creature of the night.

  Even in the moonlight, it was clear that she was turned on. Her eyes glowed with gold flecks; her mouth, painted vivid red, was wide and vulnerable. She looked stunning, a mix of innocence and desire.

  “Do you still think I would kiss you out of pity, querida?”

  “No,” she said loudly, the whisper of his touch filling her with a sense of feminine power.

  Swiveling in his arms, she vined her arms around his neck.

  When his cool lips slid over hers, Eleni jerked at the contact. For a huge man known for his arrogance, Gabriel kissed with a tenderness she couldn’t believe. He tasted of whiskey and dark passion, and Eleni pressed into him shamelessly.

  As if on cue, his kiss deepened. She gasped and his tongue flicked into her mouth. Stroked over the warm crevices with wicked intent. Tangled with her tongue in an erotic play that had her moaning.

  Hard. Hungry. Hot. He kissed her like he wanted to sink into her. Like she offered him that escape he desperately craved.

  His kiss rained sensation upon her, set every nerve on fire. Eleni sank into him gratefully while his hands moved over her hips, up to her shoulders, and then clasped her cheeks.

  Long thumbs traced the lines of her face, desire painted on his stunning features. He dipped his head again and took her in another stinging kiss.

  Her senses in a haze, she barely paid attention to his words. How could she when he nipped at her lower lip as if he meant to devour her?

  When he kissed her as though he needed her more than air?

  Low and rough, his words sent shivers through her spine.

  Cool air hit her eyes and only then did Eleni realize that her mask had loosened.

  The warm, male embrace immediately turned into a cold frost. Heat dissipated from her and she had to blink to see.

  Her delicate mask dangled from his fingers, and a scowl etched his brow. He stared at the mask in his hands and then at her. Again and again, back and forth, as if he couldn’t believe the sight in front of his eyes.

  Her lips burned with his kiss, but this was not the same man. He looked at her as if—she searched his expression—as if she had somehow betrayed him.

  “What is the meaning of this, Ms. Drakos?” The mask fell at her feet with a whisper. “What the hell kind of a joke is this?”

  She stepped back, the steel in his tone cutting through any foolish delusions she might still be clinging to. “It’s not a joke. It’s nothing,” she whispered and turned away.

  Barely had she gone two steps before a vise-like grip had clamped over her upper arm and turned her. “Why are you here tonight? What do you want from me?”

  The nerve of the man! “You approached me. You...you ordered me to stay and keep you company. You... I only spoke the truth.”

  “So I’m supposed to believe the Plain Princess of Drakon—” he bit out her moniker with such sarcasm that Eleni flinched “—walks around masquerade balls, accosting men for kisses? That this is your nightly routine?”

  “I did not accost you at all. And yes... I wanted a kiss. I wanted to feel less lonely for one night. I wanted...” Her voice caught, but she didn’t back down. “Which scenario threatens your masculine ego—that a woman could want to kiss a man, or that in your arrogance you think I came here looking to somehow trap you into kissing me?”

  “You lied to me, Princesa. I asked you straight and you said you didn’t know me. Maybe you even got a little power trip from the fact that you knew who I was and I didn’t know who you were. Maybe it’s a little game you play every night with powerful men.”

  “You’re crossing the line!”

  “I’m sick of deceit and lies. If it is a kiss you want, here it is!”

  If Eleni had had any sense, she would have slapped his arrogant jaw, hard. But no, when he touched his lips to hers again, she melted. She had no will or control over her body.

  When he licked the seam of her lips, she gasped open for him, like a sunflower.

  When he plunged his tongue into the cavern of her mouth, she shamelessly pressed against him.

  His hands moved to her bottom and he pressed her against him, until she felt the evidence of his arousal. Until the hard planes of his body were stamped onto her soft curves. Until she was moaning, spreading her legs to feel more of him.

  The kiss was over before it had begun, and yet it seemed to spin her senses. And the man who had delivered it looked at her as if she had agreed to sell her soul for pennies. “If you’re that desperate for a man, maybe ask one of your powerful brothers to set you up with one, Princesa,” he said mockingly. “The next man you play your little game with might not be as forgiving as me for your duplicity.”

  Eleni stared at him, shaking from head to toe, burning with the unspent desire that he had aroused in her. Desire, she now realized, he had aroused with the sole intention of punishing her.

  “I would not kiss you again if you were the last man on earth, Mr. Marquez,” she shouted but he’d already gone.

  Try as she might to fight the temptation, she couldn’t help but run her fingers over her stinging mouth. Couldn’t stop tasting him on her lips.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Three months later

  “I HATE THIS PLACE, I hate that I had to give up all my friends and move here and I hate you.”

  The loud, blistering announcement exploded inside the conference room like a small detonation, jerking twelve heads toward the twelve-year-old girl standing just inside the room. Face scrunched, eyes brimming wi
th fat tears, his daughter, Angelina, stood glaring at Gabriel Marquez.

  A pounding began behind his left eye.

  He had made his father’s small construction company into a billionaire real estate firm, he owned major chunks of multinational companies, he had palatial residences in nine different cities in the world, but this was one problem, it seemed, for which he had no solution.

  Angelina had come to live with him three months ago after her mother had passed away suddenly—a model he had met in New York, years ago.

  His own daughter was a stranger, because until the accident that had killed her, Monique hadn’t had the decency to tell Gabriel that he had a daughter.

  Now Angelina looked at him as if he were a monster, as if he had taken away the one person who had loved her.

  He hadn’t been able to have one normal conversation with her in all the weeks she had been in Drakon with him.

  “Angelina, calm down and wait for my meeting to finish,” he gritted out. His jaw hurt with how tightly he had leashed the urge to vent his frustration that he was floundering just as much as she was.

  That they were strangers to each other was not his fault.

  His board members stared between him and Angie like spectators at a tennis match, ready to feed fuel to the wildly spreading rumors that Gabriel Marquez was an abysmal father.

  Anything he did and said was news to the press. But the fact that he’d successfully hidden the existence of a daughter, who’d been born out of wedlock, for twelve years, sent them into a feeding frenzy. That his daughter hated him with every breath and, even worse, didn’t know him at all would be the cherry on a very nasty cake.

  “If I waited for you to finish one of your unending meetings, I would wait forever. All I want is to—”

  Gabriel shot up from his seat, frustration boiling over in his blood. “You behave like a spoiled brat, with no concern for others’ time. Has your mother taught you no manners?”

  Her flinch fell on him like a poisoned dart, sinking deep. Goddamn it, nothing he said ever worked with Angelina. The tears that she had somehow contained in those big eyes fell onto her round cheeks, drawing paths down to her neck. “I wish you had died instead of Mom. I wish you weren’t my father. I wish—”

  “Angelina! That’s enough,” a feminine voice shot out.

  Shock traveled through Gabriel as his daughter, who’d barely exchanged one civil word with him in three months, instantly looked contrite. Her round shoulders straightened and something shifted in the planes of her juvenile face, already struggling to show signs of adulthood.

  He startled when Eleni Drakos pushed her chair back and walked toward his daughter, her expression one of sternness and yet somehow kindness at the same time.

  Gabriel frowned as her pumps click-clacked against the marble floor. In three months, he hadn’t been able to quite put his finger on the woman the media disparagingly called the Plain Princess.

  An opinion he didn’t agree with anymore.

  Unlike her tall, dark brothers, the Princes of Drakon, Eleni Drakos, on first impression, was a mousy woman. Ten years ago, she’d barely ever met his gaze, hiding behind King Theos’s fierce temper.

  Since he’d arrived in Drakon a few months ago, however, he’d watched the brisk efficiency with which she ordered the palace staff around—and even his staff.

  Every time he turned around, there she was, a petite dynamo. Only now, as he saw her reach Angelina, did he realize how much his staff and he had depended on her to smooth out numerous problems between his company and the palace in those first few weeks.

  How much the Crown Prince Andreas and the Daredevil Nikandros relied on her.

  His frown deepened as her slim hand went around Angelina.

  She whispered something and instantly his daughter’s expression cleared. A hesitation emerged in her eyes but Angelina wiped her tears, and then to Gabriel’s shock, a tentative smile curved her mouth.

  A tight ache emerged in the nether regions of Gabriel’s heart. Three months with a string of nannies each more expensive and efficient than the next, three months of gifts and presents to make up for twelve birthdays, three months of fighting the urge to tell her that it was not his fault, not once had Angelina looked at him with anything remotely bordering on the affection in her eyes as she looked at Eleni Drakos now.

  What magic had the Princess wrought on his child? To what purpose? When had Angelina become acquainted with her?

  Shock buffeted him in fresh waves when Eleni softly nudged Angelina toward him.

  The wariness in his daughter’s eyes dealt a swift kick to his gut more painful and wretched than anything Gabriel had faced before. But for the life of him, he hadn’t been able to forge even a tenuous connection between them.

  It was as if fate was laughing at him.

  He’d willfully become this man who avoided emotional entanglement at any cost. Now, try as he might, it seemed he couldn’t connect with his own daughter.

  “I’m sorry,” Angelina whispered, her eyes bright and big.

  She didn’t call him Papa but he knew better than to expect a miracle. She turned to the Princess as if waiting for another cue, as if she could only bear to do this small thing—look at him without hatred—for the Princess.

  Breath balled up in his throat, for he’d never felt this strange anticipation.

  Hands firmly on those small shoulders, the Princess gave his daughter a cue.

  Again, something about her smile snagged him while she and Angelina walked toward him. That his daughter, who treated him as if he were plague-ridden, had found someone to connect with should have been a good thing.

  Instead, all he felt was a yawning chasm in the pit of his stomach.

  “Now, Angelina,” the Princess said, and her voice shivered over his spine. The taste of her came to his lips, his hands fisting against the sensation of her curved hips. It was a sensation he hadn’t been able to get out of his head in three months, even as he’d become more and more aware of her husky, low-pitched voice, of the way her dress shirts seemed voluptuous on her body, of the tug of her mouth on one side when she was being sarcastic, of her every movement. Of the fact that she’d avoided meeting his eyes since that night at the masquerade ball.

  No woman had ever messed with his head quite so much by trying to ignore him.

  I just wanted a kiss, Gabriel.

  Had she?

  And now here she was with a wide smile bestowed on his daughter.

  Muddy brown eyes glinted with warmth, the edges of them tilting up, revealing hints of heritage no one, he was sure, knew about.

  The smile seemed to spread to her entire body as she looked at Angelina. It snagged his attention, and every other man’s attention, he noted with a flare of annoyance.

  “Remember what we talked about,” she said. “First we express our anger and hurt in a constructive way instead of hurling accusations at someone, however well deserved they may be.”

  His daughter nodded like an angel, lifting her chin in a show of condescension toward him. That put-upon anger and the skinny shoulders pretending to be so unaffected, caused Gabriel to feel a realization slam into him: hateful words or not, his daughter was very much just a kid.

  And he wouldn’t have seen it if not for the woman silently glaring at him over Angie’s furiously nodding head. Her judgment of him was clear in her deepening frown.

  “You went on your trip again. You not only left me with that...horrible nanny, but you also forgot my birthday. Mom would’ve never...” A choked sound emerged from Angie’s throat. “Mom told me you didn’t live with us because you were a busy man. Not because you didn’t care about me. But now... I know she was lying to protect me. It’s clear that you never wanted a daughter.”

  Pushing away the Princess’s hand from her shoulder, Angie ran out of the boardroom, leaving a minefield of silence behind.

  No, he’d never wanted a daughter. He hadn’t been in a relationship with her mother, which he th
ought was why she’d never told him.

  And yet when he’d seen Angelina for the first time, Gabriel had known his life had forever changed. To his own surprise, he hadn’t felt an ounce of resentment.

  He’d only wanted to welcome her into his life.

  But Angelina wouldn’t give him a chance. Frustration and fury twisted inside him.

  He took a few steps in her direction when he heard the soft command.

  “Leave her alone, Mr. Marquez.” A pregnant pause, as if the Princess couldn’t believe her own audacity. “For now. Please. Don’t force her to take back those words just because your ego is smarting.”

  A burning feeling emerged in his throat and Gabriel realized it was shame.

  The Princess was right. He was only thinking about how this affected him, how he wanted to fight the tug of failure.

  He’d moved mountains and built castles, immersed himself in the world’s real estate games, and yet he didn’t possess a single thing that would bring his daughter closer to him.

  With one nod, he dismissed the meeting. He watched the quick shuffling of papers on the dark mahogany desk, heard the whisper of chairs as if it were all a background score, his attention fixed on the woman he had forced himself to ignore for three months.

  And utterly failed.

  He didn’t want to have anything to do with this woman who’d made it so easy to unburden himself. Who had, for the first time in his adult life, made him question his choices, his very lifestyle. Made him wonder about the depth of love his father had nurtured for his mother, before it had destroyed him.

  * * *

  She shouldn’t have spoken to him like that. She shouldn’t have confronted him. She definitely shouldn’t have chastised him as if he were a negligent staff member.

  Eleni sighed as her hands brushed against her soft leather bag.

  Now he’d probably forbid Angelina from even seeing her. And while she’d miss Angelina with an ache, it would be so much worse for the little girl.

  Only last week had Angelina started opening up to Eleni, since she’d come to see that Eleni had no hidden agenda that involved her father.