by Tara Pammi
Had she actually imagined that she would share a bed with him, invite him into her body, and then remain unscathed?
A hundred thoughts crowding her mind, she turned to flee, just as long fingers clamped over her arm.
The scrape of his fingers over her bare arm was a spark over the ignition. Sensation swirled beneath her skin. Every atom of her being wanted to savor that touch.
“Running away, Eleni?”
His soft taunt raised the small hairs over her neck. “I...” She licked her lips, her mouth utterly parched.
The impact of his touch hit her afresh, the imprint of his hard mouth on hers, the grip of his fingers over her hips... His dress shirt was unbuttoned to his waist, displaying tanned golden skin dotted with sparse black hair. The corded muscles of his throat, the afternoon stubble on his jaw... Eleni closed her eyes to process the devastation he caused to her very equilibrium.
He smelled of cologne and male sweat, an irresistible combination that seemed to fill her senses. Something in the lazy twitch of his mouth reminded her of a tabby cat far too sure of his appeal.
“I was just waiting to see if there would be a break in your focus.” Somehow, she managed a steady voice. “My father lost his temper if I so much as bothered him in his office. Even when I had an appointment.”
“You needed an appointment to see your father?”
“He was a busy man and, at that time, it wasn’t like I was adding any value to the administration.”
When he stared at her mutely, she shrugged. He had a way of looking at her that made her feel naked, and not in the physical way. As if she was still the girl who’d been told that the King was her father and that he’d done a great service by acknowledging her as his, let alone adopting her.
To push Gabriel’s attention away from her, she said, “Angelina and I have been waiting. For over thirty minutes.”
He frowned, and then looked at the big dial on his wrist. “Damn. I completely forgot.” Fingers wrapped around the nape of his neck as he studied his work area. In months of working with him and his team, she had never seen him hesitate like this. Never seen him be anything but confident and arrogant, even forceful in his will.
“Is she mad at me?”
“No, she said I was foolish to be surprised that you hadn’t shown up,” she said, finding her balance again. Talking about Angelina—that she could do. “That much cynicism in one so young, it’s not healthy.”
“I...was working and forgot.” He glanced back at his desk, pushed his hair away from his face. “Maybe it is better if I didn’t join you this evening. We’re both still reeling from our last disagreement.”
Eleni sighed, remembering the staff telling her about the pastries they’d found in the toilet and the pumps that had been shredded to pieces as a result. A thousand-piece puzzle—a map of the United States—was spread out all over the palace. Eleni and Mia had found poor New York in the garden and had laughed nonstop at the girl’s imaginative destruction.
The whole palace and its mother knew of the row that had resulted between father and daughter when he’d found out what she’d done.
It seemed Gabriel couldn’t stop ordering more and more expensive gifts and Angelina couldn’t resist new and imaginative ways to destroy them.
“My daughter and I have matching tempers, Princesa. I have learned that it is wise to stay away from each other when we are riled. I might say something that would cause permanent damage. So, it’s probably a good idea for you to continue on to whatever entertainment you’ve planned for tonight.”
“For goodness’ sake, Gabriel, can’t you look beneath her rebellious actions?”
“She shredded the pumps. She threw the diamond earrings in the garbage. I...”
“Because she wanted you instead. Gabriel, she doesn’t understand yet that you’ll keep her. That you’ll be permanent in her life. That you won’t abandon her like her mother has done. She keeps rejecting anything you give her.”
Eyes like the coldest frost pinned her. “I don’t want a lecture, Eleni.”
“I don’t care what you want. It is my job—” she spanned her hands around them “—to tell you what you’re doing wrong. Stop being so manly and bullheaded about it.”
“Manly and bullheaded?”
“Yes, like all thickheaded men. Look past your own ego.”
“You think me an awful father, Princesa, but since I learned of her existence, I have made changes to my life that I have never done for anyone before. I brought her here, I live with her, I’ve made concessions for her. What else do I need to do?”
“You need to spend time with her, Gabriel. Is that so hard to see?” When he continued to frown, Eleni sighed. “You say you want to bridge the gap between you. You say she is important to you. But in the two weeks that we have agreed on our...deal, you have either postponed, canceled or found an excuse to avoid spending any time with us. With her. Angelina sees through your actions and that’s the message she gets.”
“She seems overjoyed by the fact that you will not be leaving.”
“She is.”
“Then what else does she need?”
“Did you think I would replace you?” Suddenly, she felt a piece click inside her head. She stared at him. “Something in you resists the effort at forging any real connection with her. Is it any wonder she thinks you don’t want her?”
Gabriel stared at the sudden softening of Eleni’s eyes and looked away. His jaw gritted, his head hurt at the realization that the Princess was right again. He had done everything his research said he’d have to do, except spend time with his daughter.
He heard the Princess’s soft tread, the scent of something floral coiling sinuously around his sore limbs. After his row with Angelina, he’d been working nonstop, burying himself in tasks. Because here, there was no place for failure. Here, there was no place for vulnerability, especially his.
“Gabriel...all your intentions will be for nothing if your actions don’t back them up. What is it that you find so hard about this? Please, let me understand.”
“There’s nothing I find hard, Princesa.”
Instead of walking away, she put her hand on his arm, a soft tinkling laugh falling from her mouth. “How like a man to say that.”
He turned around, intending to set her down. Yet when he looked at her, the soft light of her brown eyes stole through him, loosening up hard places inside him. Making him remember things he’d rather forget. “I had custody of my half sister, Isabella, when I was eighteen while my mother was cleaning up her own act.”
“She was engaged to Andreas but she...”
He swallowed the frustration that sat like a lump in his throat. “Had an affair with Nikandros, yes. Isabella was just like my mother, flighty by nature, never settling on one thing. And I think the fact that I resented her only made it worse.”
“You resented her?”
“I don’t know. I think I did. My mother had her after she deserted my father and got pregnant by her lover. When they came back, she was pregnant with her. My father died a couple of years later and Isabella became my responsibility, I was hardly the loving older brother. At that point, I barely...”
“What, Gabriel?”
“I barely trusted a woman. I...was busy building my empire.
“I always felt guilty that I might have pushed Isabella over the edge with my judgment when she was just an innocent. That, had I been a better brother, she would have had more security. Every time I see Angelina, I remember my treatment of my sister, I guess.”
“And you think you’d rather not try than risk failing?”
“Isn’t it better that she hates me, that she holds me responsible for everything that happened to her rather than me messing her up even more? What if she sees my resentment of her mother? Won’t she be caught between her mother’s memory and loyalty to me?” His gaze was far-off, his mouth rigid with tension. “Like you say, maybe I decided it was better this way.”
“
Then please let me tell you that it is not. Every time you cancel on her, every time you put work or something else before her, you’re losing a little more of your daughter, Gabriel. Please, trust me to help you through this. Trust that I will not let you fail. Or else all of this is useless.”
Gabriel lifted his gaze to Eleni’s, something inside him shifting. He’d never trusted a woman with anything. Of course, he had friends that he liked, even respected, but trusting a woman... He’d lost that ability even before his mom had walked out on him and his father.
He’d lost it when he’d seen her break her promise again and again. He’d lost it when instead of being the adult, she’d filled his ears with her own struggles. He’d lost it when she’d forced him to grow up too fast.
Her brown eyes wide and open, Eleni looked back at him. The lift of her chin, the tilt of her mouth—she radiated a perplexing combination of confidence and innocence that fascinated Gabriel even now.
He glanced down at her fingers moving over his, felt the fragile pulse at her wrist beneath his fingers. In the week that they had announced to the world their plans, she’d come under close scrutiny by the media.
Every single one of those write-ups had been uncomplimentary toward the Princess, while he had been hailed as the perfect catch. Her background had come under scrutiny—the fact that her mother had been Andreas’s nanny and had an affair with the King under the Queen’s nose, that her mother had effectively sold Eleni to the King, that since no man had ever shown interest in the Plain Princess this match with Gabriel had been orchestrated by her powerful brothers.
Yet, the Princess had only held her head higher through all the dirt dished by the press, had only carried herself with the dignity that seemed to have been bred into her very bones, while he and Nikandros negotiated their prenup contract in which she gave generously of herself to Drakon.
She’d wanted no accolades, no acknowledgment for what she’d done.
The only time she had interrupted the negotiations had been to ask, with a flush staining her cheeks, that any children they might have would be provided for.
For all her alleged dirty blood, the Princess of Drakon was an asset to the House of Drakos. A woman unlike anyone he’d ever met.
A woman Gabriel didn’t quite know what to do with now that she was going to be his. A woman who unnerved Gabriel in how generously she loved his daughter and her brothers.
He took her hand in his and turned it over. Traced his fingers over the dips and highs of her palm. Heard the soft flutter of her breath every time he touched her, which had been mostly accidentally after that searing kiss. Heard her breath hitch into that irregular rhythm.
Her artless, instant reaction goaded the devil within him.
“Gabriel?”
He lifted her hand and kissed the center of her palm. Smiling, he let it go when she jerked it back as if scalded. He stood still, used now to the beat of desire in his muscles.
Forced himself to have the patience to wait.
“Fine. I will trust you, Princesa. In this, at least.”
Any control Eleni thought she had wrested of the situation, of the dynamic between them, disappeared like mist when he held the bottom of his dress shirt and pulled it up over his head in one fluid motion.
Her jaw fell with an audible click. “What...what are you doing?” she croaked out, heat staining her cheeks.
Ropes of leanly defined muscles stretched dark, olive skin. There wasn’t an inch of extra flesh on his body. Rubbing a hand over her nape, Eleni was humiliatingly aware of the soft, pillowy cushioning of her own hips and thighs.
Of her unfashionable figure.
Of how her cheeks were plump and her nose far too prominent.
Of how little she had to offer a man like him.
And still, she couldn’t unglue her feet from the floor and walk away. Couldn’t say “this is off,” even to save her pride.
She stared in fascination as he balled up the shirt and threw it into the corner. Heard the splash of water as he went into the adjoining bathroom.
He came out, water running in rivulets over his naked chest, glistening in the light falling from the windows. He dried the front of his chest, under his arms and around his neck with a towel, all the while holding her gaze with a devilish glint in his own.
“You look flushed, Eleni. Are you unwell?”
Eleni licked her suddenly dry lips, could think of no answer.
He threw the towel into the corner where it joined the shirt. Then he pulled on a fresh white shirt and faced her. His chest gleaming golden brown, he stood in front of her.
Eleni breathed compulsively, the scent of male sweat and cologne making her muscles twitch in response. “What is it that you want of me?”
The most unholy twinkle filled his gray eyes. “Button my shirt.”
Eleni stared at the ridge of his chest muscles as the shirt flapped in the soft breeze. Sparse hair covered it, narrowing down into a line below his navel and disappearing into his trousers. Her fingers shook at her sides and she balled them.
Finding the sheer will that had, in the end, tamed the ferocious man that her father had been, Eleni looked up into Gabriel’s eyes. “I have been celibate for too long, Gabriel. It has to be the only reason for this...almost-violent reaction to you. Once I sleep with you, the power won’t be in your hands so much.” She started toward the door. “Don’t keep your daughter waiting any longer,” she threw over her shoulder, without turning.
The mocking laughter that followed her stayed with her for nights to come.
* * *
Eleni waited in the courtyard for Gabriel, the evening uncommonly cold for autumn.
A flurry of activities had followed the night after she and Gabriel had taken Angelina to see the musical. Father and daughter didn’t say much to each other still, except when they argued, but the fact that Gabriel had been present at dinners and every other evening activity Eleni had suggested for the three of them had not been lost on Angelina.
The girl was as stubborn as her father for she didn’t ask him for anything. Yet Eleni had seen the anticipation in her eyes that she struggled to hide, the tilt of her chin when she heard her father’s voice.
Just as she had seen Gabriel’s gaze lingering on Angelina. He had completely shut Eleni down when she’d asked after his sister again. Still, he had given her a lot to mull over.
It was hard to see a different facet of the arrogant businessman, the gorgeous billionaire who had no soft edges. Yet, the fact that his behavior when he’d barely been an adult weighed on him, spoke of a man who had soft edges. Of a man who felt things deeply.
Eleni herself struggled to keep a little rationality about the upcoming wedding. Spending evenings in his company at myriad activities was all well and good for Angelina but not for her own feeble defenses.
Gabriel, she’d learned in the last two weeks, was a charming companion, a humorous storyteller and when the mood stuck him, which was far too often, the very devil himself.
He taunted her senses relentlessly—soft strokes on her wrist, the graze of his body when he sat too close, the dig of his fingers over her shoulders when they posed for a picture at one of his blasted, endless parties. It was as if he was determined to send her over the edge. As if he was determined to punish her for her comment about resisting him.
Somehow, the attraction between them had become a cat and mouse game, and Eleni was alternately thrilled and overwhelmed at being chased by the most powerful, gorgeous man in the world.
She melted under his caresses, despite knowing it was all a game to him. That she was a novelty.
“Get in, Princesa.”
They were on their way to another one of his parties—something Gabriel insisted she attend when all she wanted to do was hide from the scrutiny.
Coloring at the obvious amusement in his tone, she stepped into the limo and found herself being thoroughly appraised by the devil in front of her. Heat swamped her as he took in the beig
e silk cocktail dress she had chosen to match the four-inch stilettos that had gold threads winding around her ankles.
Mouth twitching, he kept his gaze on her ankles. Tingles began in her skin as if he had caressed that part with those rough fingers of his. Eleni uncrossed and crossed her ankles, which made her only doubly aware of the slide of the sensitive skin of her thighs. “What?” she demanded finally, her body a thrum of sensations.
“I thought you didn’t like heels.”
“How do you know that?”
“Angelina asked you when we went to play in the park the other day and you said you felt like you would fall and break your head every time you tried a pair.”
Eleni sat back against the soft leather, struggling to hide her reaction. She had no inkling that Gabriel paid any attention to the things she said. And she couldn’t help the warmth that stole through her that he did.
He cleared his throat and looked up, a slight rasp in his throat. “Although I must admit I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite so sexy—” his eyes gleamed dark in the intimacy of the limo “—I would prefer my fiancée with her head intact for the wedding.” He leaned ahead on the seat, his long legs bracing hers on either side, crowding her with that masculinity of his. “Why, Eleni?”
She shrugged. “I felt like a change.”
He arrested her with his hands on her wrists when she would have retreated farther into the leather. “How do you think I will give you what you want if you flinch every time I touch you?”
Eleni forced herself to relax, knowing he was right. “I... I’m just not used to constantly being touched. And I wore the damn heels because I’m tired of feeling so short next to you. As if I could forget it, the media reminds me incessantly of how different I am from your usual type.”
“But I like how you feel against me, Princesa. So fragile and small. My masculinity feels stroked around you.”
She snorted. “Your masculinity hardly needs to be stroked, Gabriel.”