by Tara Pammi
Interesting was an understatement when it came to her.
He held the chair for her. Her usual grace fluttered when she almost slipped. Hand at her elbow, Gabriel straightened her. The slide of her lush curves against him startled an instant reaction from his body. “Thank you,” she murmured in a throaty whisper that brought images of her lush limbs beneath him.
Bathed in the setting sun’s light, she made a stunning figure. Anyone who saw her now would never call her plain.
Gritting his jaw, he willed his body to calm, his mind to focus on the moment. This was the most important meeting in his life and he didn’t intend to fail tonight.
“Champagne?” he asked after they settled down.
The pulse at her throat flickered madly, yet when she raised her gaze to him, it was quite steady. “I’m so stupid,” she scoffed, her mouth twisting into a bitter curve.
He frowned, not liking the shutters that fell over her eyes, hiding her from him. He hadn’t realized how much of a lure Eleni Drakos’s artless honesty was until she shut it away. “I don’t know what you mean.”
She raised her arms and moved them over the empty restaurant, the gorgeous view of the sunset, the bucket of champagne. “Even after all your threats and insults, I didn’t regret...seeing you that night. I held on to the belief that until you ripped off my mask, it had been a genuine moment between us. But you just can’t help yourself, can you?”
“Princesa—”
“You will use everything I told you, everything I feel when I see you...to the last drop, to manipulate me to your will.”
Something in the curve of her mouth made Gabriel bristle. Guilt was not an emotion he had ever liked nor had any use for. “I do not see why it is such a hardship for you to spend some time with me and Angelina. Not when you claim to truly love her.”
“Because my life is not a stopgap measure for you.”
“Yet it is for your father, your brothers and even Drakon, is it not? What do I have to do to buy that same loyalty toward Angelina? What is it that I have to do to ensure that you stay in Angelina’s life for as long as she needs you, for as long as she and I need to make a connection?”
Her heart fluttered like the wings of a trapped bird. Her fingers shook around the stem and Eleni hid them in her lap. “You might regret making that offer.”
“There is no condition of yours that I would not meet, Princesa. The world will be at your feet if you agree.”
She licked her pink lips, and his body tightened. Gabriel swallowed a curse. Really, his attraction to her was becoming a problem. For he knew now that his desire to give her what she’d wanted that night hadn’t come solely so that he could bend her to his will. It had come because he’d wanted to explore it with her. And still did. He wanted to taste that lush mouth, he wanted to run his hands and his mouth all over her curves, he wanted to possess her until all the prim propriety that she used as a mask was unraveled, until that self-sufficiency she wielded as a weapon against the world was undone.
Until she was the woman who had kissed him with such hunger that night.
“I want a signed agreement from you that you’ll never again put Drakon’s economy in jeopardy, ever.”
He sat back and took stock of her. Mouth tight with resolve. Eyes glittering with temper. He smiled and took a sip of water just to make her wait for his answer. She fidgeted in her seat, glancing away from him. The woman was good.
“Done,” he said finally. “As long as you meet with all my conditions.”
“I’m not finished yet.”
“Go on.”
“I want that agreement as part of a prenuptial contract. I want Drakon and your company bound tightly so that you can’t threaten us like this again.”
He jerked his gaze from her lovely mouth to her eyes, shock flooding him. “What did you say?”
She pulled her tightly clasped hands out of her lap onto the table, then brought them down again. When she looked at him, resolve filled her features. “I’ve been over what you want of me a thousand times in my head. Of the number of ways you could hold the threat of Drakon over my head. Of how easily you...you would use what I told you about my life, about me that night for your own advantage. Of how fragile Angelina has been since she heard of my plans.”
A soft gasp escaped her mouth, as if this pained her.
“The last thing I want is for her to hate you or blame you when she loses me. The last thing I need is for you to do this to Nikandros all over again because I didn’t make her love you in four months. Or whatever ridiculous time frame you think this needs to happen in. I just can’t take that chance.
“So I’ve found a solution that works for all parties and that will not permanently damage the innocent in all of this. I... I want you to marry me. You will use Drakon to ensure Angelina’s well-being, and I’m hoping you would think twice about destroying it when it becomes as much her life as it is my own. I want...a chance to do right by myself too.”
This time, when he laughed, it was full of sarcasm. Anger fueled him at her outrageous suggestion. “Let me enlighten you, Princess. You will not do right by yourself by hitching your cart to me. I’m incapable of developing romantic feelings for a woman. You’ll only be—”
“It will not be a true marriage. I know what I’m bringing to this arrangement and I know what I’ll be getting.” Eleni would not tie herself to another relationship with yet another man and end up wondering what she lacked all over again. “You would be ensuring that Angelina has a mother who loves her.”
“And you would do all this for your precious Drakon? Expect nothing else from me?” Even as he challenged her, her willingness to martyr herself bothered him. Did neither Nikandros nor Andreas care about her future? Was there no one to look after the damned female?
“No, I do want something...”
“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 her 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 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. “A baby? You’re bargaining for a baby?” But even as he processed it, he had to admire her guts.
“Yes. As far as the outside world is concerned, as far as Angelina is concerned, we’ll be a family. I’ll help you forge a connection with her. I’ll not make any demands of your time or your emotions. I’d love her as if she were my own. We will lead separate lives except when needed by our children.”
“If only the media could see you now... Mad King Theos taught you politics well. Even your brothers I’m sure could not have come up with a better strategy to bind my company to Drakon.”
She flinched and shrank back into her seat. She looked down into her lap as if to hide her stricken expression. “You think I want this? To marry a man who looks upon me as if I’m trapping him, a man whose affairs are notorious for their short shelf life, a man I have to negotiate with for a child? It will be a marriage of convenience, Gabriel. You will do it for Angelina and I for Drakon.”
Any idea that the Princess was manipulating him dissolved at the fury in her eyes.
Gabriel pushed away from the table and went to the empty, glittering bar. Silence stretched in all the spaces between them as he examined his own emotions. That anger he wanted to hold on to was fleeing fast. No one could accuse the Princess of
Drakon of being without logic.
He ran a hand through his hair roughly as he heard her movements. Felt the heat from her body stroke his senses. Once she was with him and Angelina, in whatever capacity, he knew that he would have the Princess of Drakon in his bed. The attraction between them was far too consuming.
But for the first time in his life, he could not do as he wanted. He could not take the Princess to his bed and spoil the chance of Angelina having her in her life.
Would an amicable arrangement between them, masquerading as a marriage for the world, for the sake of his own daughter, be so bad? Would binding the Princess to him in the most legal means be the best for his daughter?
“Being a father... It’s a role I still haven’t settled into, with Angelina. You want me to give you another child knowing that he or she will always look at me and feel as if I’ve rejected them.”
Such ache resonated in those last words that Eleni felt her own heart twist at them. In a matter of seconds, he changed from an arrogant, ruthless businessman to a man familiar with pain. The man she’d met on a moonlit night.
She grabbed his hand with hers on impulse, forcing him to relax his fist. “But you will not be a failure. You will have me to guide you. I know what it feels like to be that child, Gabriel. I know what that kind of a father looks like. I would not expose a child of mine to such a father. You’re not that man.
“Your desire to do the right thing by Angelina is what landed us in this...situation. As much as I hate that you hold the fate of everything I love in your hands, I understand your reasons. We will just be a couple who shares children and who loves them. Successful marriages are built on less.”
“And if I say no?” He turned toward her, numerous overhead lights wreathing his hard features with a deceiving softness. “Will you walk away from Angelina? Will you let ruin come to Drakon?”
Eleni forced herself to give him a smile. Or as close to a smile as she could get. Negotiating with Gabriel was like banging glass against a rock. Nik had warned her, outright forbidden her from doing this. But what choice did she have?
Loving that little girl, loving Drakon and her brothers had never felt like a boulder around her neck.
“Yes.” Whether she’d be able to withstand it, she didn’t know. But she couldn’t let him ruin Drakon. Not when she could stop it. “Angelina will hate you for what you’re doing. Drakon and its people will suffer. And it will all be on your own head.”
Eleni didn’t wait for his answer. She’d had enough of the seesawing of her own feelings. Enough of bargaining for the one thing she wanted in her life.
If he didn’t agree to this, then he was truly a ruthless bastard, she repeated to herself. A man whose heart was so deeply buried that he might as well not have had one at all.
She’d reached the small courtyard outside the restaurant when she felt his hand on her shoulder. Heart thudding in her chest, she turned around. The black shirt and trousers he wore blended in with the darkness surrounding them, leaving only an outline of the sheer breadth of his shoulders, of his imposing height.
Of his overwhelming masculinity and what she’d boldly demanded of him.
Both his hands landed on her shoulders now and tugged her toward him. As if he too was struggling to see her in the scant moonlight.
His fingers bit into her flesh. “An arrangement then, Princesa? No demands, no expectations?”
“Yes,” she said, licking her lips. Longing twisted through her when her legs tangled with his. Her hands landed somewhere on his chest, where his heart boldly thudded underneath one palm. Hard muscle and slumbering heat—there was so much of him that Eleni felt suddenly fragile, feminine. “No demands and no expectations.”
“No fidelity required?”
“Not after you give me a baby.” She tried to sound matter-of-fact but goodness, he was too much man. Her voice sounded husky, uneven instead. “Really, Gabriel. It would not be a bad idea for you to curb your...activities in that area in the short term anyway. Let Angelina see you make her a priority. Not your business, not your love life. But her. Let her see that we love her, and we’re in this together, for her. In the meantime, you could...we could...”
His white teeth gleamed, giving her a hint of his feral smile. The sound of his mocking laughter lashed against her senses. She felt utterly drowned in the scents and sounds and feel of him. “So I’m allowed to sleep with my wife until then but no longer?”
“Precisely.” Embarrassment burned her and Eleni suddenly thanked the cloak of the night. The devil gleamed in his smile, winked from the glitter of his eyes. Taunted her with the sound of his mockery. “I suspect that by that time whatever novelty I hold for you will have worn off. As long as you’re discreet with your affairs, it will not affect the children or me.”
He cupped her nape with such possessive intent that Eleni shivered. Rough fingers crawled up into her hair, tilting her head up. “You’ve got all the little details figured out, haven’t you? Princess Eleni Drakos to the rescue, huh?”
She’d no idea whether he was still teasing her or if he was angry. All she could do was feel. Feel the imprint of his fingers on her scalp. Feel the hard contours of his hips against her belly. Feel the hot beat of his breath against her face.
“And you, Princesa?” Suddenly, his lips grazed hers, and she jerked at the streak of heat that raced through her. She whimpered when he did it again, never settling his mouth against hers. But teasing and taunting, delighting and declaring the fact that she could have him sign a hundred contracts and check a hundred conditions, but when it came to this fire between them, when it came to the slide of his lips over hers, she bent to his will. “Will you seek out lovers when you want a man in your bed in some later years too?”
She raised a drugged gaze to his, and fierce masculine satisfaction filled Gabriel’s every vein. Her finger pads pressed into his chest and he wanted to feel them all over him. He wanted her beneath him, all lush, glorious curves bare, the polite mask she wore unraveled. He wanted that woman from the masquerade ball in his bed. “What?”
The thought of a lover hadn’t even entered his mind for months now. How could it, when he was obsessed with the little warrior in front of him? But the thought of her with another man...no, she would not need another man, he promised himself.
If the Princess wanted an amiable arrangement, he would give it to her. But only after he had spoiled her for any other man. “Will you look for a lover, Eleni? When this marriage becomes an arrangement again, when you do not need me?”
“I would never do anything that would harm my kids or damage the reputation of the House of Drakos.”
“Right answer, Princesa,” he whispered, before dipping his mouth to hers.
Shivers passed through her slender frame before she stiffened in his arms. Blood rushing south, he bit that lower lip that always tortured him and with a husky groan, she opened her mouth.
He dipped his tongue inside it, holding her head for his onslaught. She tasted of heat and innocence, her tongue tentatively coming to tangle with his.
If he had had any reservations about her counterproposal, Gabriel forgot them, lost in the hunger raging through his body.
The Princess in his bed, and a bridge between his daughter and him—maybe this marriage wasn’t such a bad idea for the near future.
CHAPTER FOUR
PLAIN PRINCESS SNARES REAL ESTATE TYCOON!
Love match or convenient arrangement fixed by her powerful brothers?
ELENI TRIED TO ignore the bald headline she’d seen on a popular social media site that morning as she walked toward Gabriel’s apartments in the palace’s west wing.
At six foot three and with a muscular frame, he was sexuality incarnate. Add the reach of his name, the sheer confidence that seemed to exude from his very pores, his talent as one of the foremost architects of their time and his real estate empire—Gabriel was every woman’s dream man.
Yet, he had remained an elusive bachelor fo
r so many years that the world’s gaze had shifted to the woman who had persuaded him into a momentous commitment. For the first time in her life, Eleni was the center of attention, and the limelight only made her uncomfortably aware of how poorly she measured up to him in the world’s view.
When she and Gabriel had broken the news to his daughter, Angelina had thrown herself into Eleni’s arms, her lanky frame shaking from head to toe. That they were doing right by the little girl had stopped Eleni from questioning the sanity of it all as the media and the palace had been thrown into a whirlwind at the news.
The very morning after their deal had been agreed, Gabriel had invited Nikandros and her to a meeting. From the man who kissed her like his life depended on it to the ruthless businessman in the boardroom, the transformation in him was radical. Furious, Nik and his lawyers had pushed to fill every small loophole that Gabriel could use to back out again while he had sat there, calm as you please, dictating the terms of their marriage and sending curious looks her way.
Angelina was already skipping on the front steps, excited about spending the evening with Eleni and her father. Eleni went into the sitting room. Finding it empty, she went into his study.
High windows poured sunlight over the tall, broad form bent over his desk. Sleeves rolled up to his elbows showed corded forearms dusted liberally with dark hair. His pencil and scale looked like tiny implements in his huge hands and yet there was a kind of grace in his movements as he measured and drew on the tabbed white sheet.
Heart palpitating at dangerous speeds, Eleni noted the stretch of his black trousers over his buttocks and thighs, the tight stretch of his shirt over his back muscles.
Jet-black hair fell over his forehead and he pushed it away.
He was immersed in his work—a design for a new resort at the foot of the mountains in Drakon.
And yet, as she stared at the lean fluidity of his powerful body and caught the soft susurrations of the pencil across the paper in the background, all her insecurities came rushing forth.