by Tara Pammi
Nothing satisfied him anymore.
Nothing he had done over the last few weeks had distracted his mind from the warm woman he found in his bed every night when he returned to his bedroom.
When he had snarled at Eleni and asked if there wasn’t a spare room in the entire damn palace, the minx had looked at him serenely and said she hadn’t wanted to give any of the staff a chance to gossip about them.
She’d also pointed out that “wasn’t the entire reason he had married her to provide Angelina with a secure, home atmosphere? The security of knowing that there wasn’t just one but two people who cared about her?”
Of course, having never shared a suite, much less a bedroom with a woman, Gabriel had no idea what he had signed up for.
Day after day, his damn wife’s “stuff” crept all over the apartment, taking up space. If he reached for a shirt, there was her yellow dress that had made her look like a voluptuous sunflower.
If he reached for his cuff links, there was her jewelry case filled with the funky costume jewelry she apparently loved collecting.
If, after a long day at work, he went in for a shower, there she was in the giant tub, filled with frothy bubbles and a hundred candles playing peekaboo with damp, soft flesh he wanted to caress, bare thighs he wanted to kiss.
He was the real estate billionaire and even his bathroom was not his own.
The pocket-sized minx was driving him so insane that any given minute he either wanted to throttle her or kiss her senseless.
The only reason he hadn’t stalked out of those apartments was now standing behind him.
Calling him papa without even realizing she was doing it.
Whatever torment Eleni was causing his flesh—and he worried he was going to be walking with a permanent hard-on—Gabriel grinned and bore it, for Angelina had bloomed like anything in the last weeks. The sparkle in his daughter’s eyes every day, the transformation from a sullen child to a lovely, cheerful girl was amazing.
Clearly, his wife knew what she was talking about.
“If you are busy, Papa,” came the tentative voice again, “I’ll return later.”
“No, stay, querida,” he replied softly.
Willing the tension in his muscles to ease, swallowing away the urge to snarl, as he’d been doing at everyone else, Gabriel put his pencil down and turned.
Her dark hair bound in a tight braid and clad in a white shirt and jodhpurs, Angelina looked like a little champion. “Had a good riding lesson?” he asked, signaling her to come into his office.
After a reluctant minute, she slowly entered. He smiled for the first time in days. Like him, his daughter was a very calculating sort of person. In every interaction between them, he could almost see her weighing the risks and advantages.
Wondering if he could be trusted. And yet, if Eleni had been present, she wouldn’t have hesitated even barging in.
“It was a good lesson, although Ellie didn’t join us.”
“Oh?” he said, striving to keep his voice casual. For one thing, he hadn’t known that Eleni was joining Angelina during her riding lessons, although he couldn’t say he was surprised.
Apparently, among all her numerous talents, his wife was a superb equestrian. He hadn’t yet seen her ride but Angelina couldn’t stop talking about it.
It also hadn’t taken him long to realize that Eleni was a very hands-on person, even when it came to matters of Angelina. Nothing was trivial enough—not Angelina’s education, not her outfits, not even shopping and ice-cream trips were delegated to a nanny or an assistant. Yet, he was also aware that she’d shed none of her other duties.
Since Nik’s wife, Mia, was late into her pregnancy with twins and damn Andreas was still MIA, Eleni was playing hostess for Nikandros for many of the state functions of Drakon.
While he grumbled about her taking up space in his suite, the quiet in those rooms when she was out on the social whirl or some palace affair had become unbearable.
Perversely, it bothered him that she had a full life without him when he should be glad that she hadn’t made any demands of him again. That he had acquired a mother for Angelina without having to make any emotional investment.
So why did he feel as though slowly but surely the Princess was winning a game he hadn’t even realized they were playing? Why did he sometimes catch her gaze on him with such stark yearning in it, the same deep, visceral need he felt when he found her scrunched up tight on one side of his bed?
She rarely came to bed before him and she was dressed and breakfasting on the veranda with her tablet in hand when he woke up. Gabriel had seen the evidence of her hard work in the bruised shadows under her eyes, in the sunken tightness of her features.
If she didn’t slow down, Eleni would work herself into an early grave. Yet the woman had a stubborn will that no one could shake.
“So, tell me, are you two fighting?” Angelina prodded.
“Didn’t you ask her the same question?” he said, tugging on her braid.
As had become a habit between them, she swatted his hand away first. But then didn’t let go completely.
As if she needed the guise of that slap to touch him.
“You growl and grumble like a grumpy giant, Gabriel. Of course it took her time to become familiar with your...physicality.”
“Is that why you flinch every time I touch you?” he’d asked Eleni, falling into the lure of those wide, fluttering eyes.
“Why don’t you touch me now and see?” the minx had taunted him.
The Princess had become bold. Just like his daughter, there was always a sparkle in her eyes, a spring in her step. It was strangely exhilarating to see Eleni come into her own as a mother.
She’d be a fierce lioness, a great mother to any of their children. The errant thought dropped into his head like a small explosive.
With a muffled curse, he ran his fingers through his hair. If he took her, and every cell in his body wanted to, Gabriel knew he was making a deeper commitment. It could never be a convenient arrangement. He already couldn’t bear the thought of another man with her, much less touching her or kissing her. And if he did, he couldn’t just move on to another woman.
It was not the example he wanted to set for his daughter. And more than that, it was not what the Princess deserved.
So what the hell was he then signing on for? A true marriage? A relationship with respect and loyalty she already had from him, so was this about passion? God forbid, emotion?
“Papa, you’re not listening.”
Falling to his knees, which he knew she liked, Gabriel made an apologetic face. “Sorry, Tesoro.”
“Anyway, I wanted to ask Ellie if you and she were fighting. She’s been a little quiet this past week and to be honest, I think she’s very sad,” she said with the stunning perception of a child. “I went to see her yesterday afternoon and she...she wasn’t feeling well. So I wanted to ask if you were the reason and to tell you to lay off.”
“Lay off?” he said, his mouth twitching at the fierceness of her tone.
“Yes, lay off. I think she’s already in shock about her old friend. As strong as Ellie is, it’s a lot of people to worry over.”
His interest perking up, Gabriel casually said, “Old friend?”
“I heard Nik and her talking about it. She was crying and he held her and said he was sorry. I have never seen her like that.”
A jolt went through Gabriel. He couldn’t imagine his strong, efficient, smart wife crying. There was a core of steel inside of her, he realized now, an integrity nothing could puncture. She had loved the man who’d deserted her for years, remained loyal to him.
Gabriel had never known anyone to be capable of such depth of feeling.
“Please, Papa. Will you be nice to Ellie and ask after her?”
It was the first time his little girl had asked for something. It was the first time she’d looked at him as if he were capable of something good and positive.
But even if she did
n’t, nothing could stop him from finding out exactly what his wife was crying over. “Of course,” he said, hugging his little girl.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT TOOK GABRIEL all of two hours to locate his wife.
He looked in the direction in which the groom pointed and came to a standstill at the sight in front of him. With a nod, he dismissed the groom and another staff member, feeling strangely possessive of her.
Without that brisk, matter-of-fact quality to her, she looked fragile and lonely and a rush of protectiveness filled him.
She sat atop a huge pile of hay, her arms around her knees tucked tight against her chest. As if she meant to scrunch herself into nothingness. Shards of sunlight filtered through the wooden slats of the barn, picking out the bronze and gold highlights in her hair. Bathed in the sunlight, she looked like a golden goddess—untouched by cynicism, all soft edges.
“Princesa?”
She looked up, her eyes wide and round in her face. Wariness filled her expression, a sudden tension in the slender set of her shoulders. “Why do you insist on calling me that in that mocking tone? It says you think I’m anything but.”
“Does it matter if I think you a princess or not?”
“No,” she said, half to herself. “Did you need something? Is Angelina looking for me?”
“I don’t need anything, but Angelina’s worried for you.”
“She’s sweet, but I didn’t think it was proper for her to see me like this.”
“I defer to your superior judgment on that.”
“Why are you suddenly being nice to me?” she said, not even looking at him.
“I have been ordered to be nice to you. With the fiercest of threats.”
“Ah...now I get it. This is Angelina’s doing.” As if he did not give a damn about her.
“If I had known you were...unwell, I would have come after you myself.”
“Please, all we have is honesty, Gabriel. Don’t take that away too.”
“Relationships are not my strong point and ours...our relationship hasn’t been easy or straightforward from the beginning.”
“Because you decided that I deceived you. Because you’re incapable of trust.”
That kiss had stood between them from the beginning. He had unburdened himself, thinking her a stranger. But what if she’d been telling the truth and all she’d wanted was a simple kiss?
What if the truth was really that simple and that complicated?
Even as she pretended to be happy with her lot, that version of Eleni had been so vulnerably open.
I wanted to be someone else for one night.
And he’d taken it away from her. “I was angry that day. I had just found out what Monique had hidden from me. I came to the ball wanting to be anyone but myself. Women and deceit seemed to go hand in hand in my head that night.
“I knew the Princess of Drakon. Finding out that the enchantress I had just kissed was that princess was a shock. Like nothing was the same or sane in my life anymore. I don’t think I even realized how much I had begun to count on you. How much your presence meant.”
“You’re just saying that now.”
“No. There was always a quiet strength about you, even back then. No wonder you were the only one your father listened to, the only one who could calm his rages.”
A strange stillness came over her as he closed the door behind him and drenched them in darkness.
With the world and the day shut away, there was a damp chill in the barn. The setting sun sent tendrils of orange light through the rafters. The long line of her neck bared, she looked up at him, the golden flecks in her eyes becoming prominent in the shadows. He saw her swallow as he reached her, saw that flash of yearning before she blinked and shut it away.
Her arms tightened around her. “I came here to be alone.” Even when he’d been his snarliest, grumpiest self, she’d never used that tone on him. Like she had no use for him.
“So that you could grieve over...over him in private?”
The same thought would have sent him running in the opposite direction even a week ago. Today, he wanted to comfort her.
Gabriel Marquez comforting his wife over the loss of her lover. Surely the world had turned upside down?
“Yes, something like that.”
“You’re stuck with me, Princesa.” The words left his mouth and he realized he meant it. In more ways than one.
He lowered his huge body next to her on the same pile of hay and she instantly shifted. But she was limited by the wall on the other side and his thigh pressed against hers.
The sides of their bodies pressed, and then folded against each other, the soft whisper of it amplified in the dark. The scent of hay and damp earth filled his nostrils.
“Eleni...no one is worth your tears.”
“He is. I’ve known him for years. I’ve loved him for years. He never looked at me as if I would not measure up. And now I have to say goodbye.”
Bitterness mixed with grudging respect filled him. Every atom of his being revolted against having this discussion.
He had the emotional constitution of a car, a lover had once said to him and he’d only laughed and agreed. He’d never been possessive or jealous, for all his relationships had been transient.
Now he couldn’t even name the riot of feelings inside of him.
“So you’re admitting—” he half choked on the words “—that you’re in love with this...man?”
She moved in a blur in front of him, her eyes flashing catlike in the dark. “What? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Angelina told me how much you were grieving over the loss of an old friend. That you had been unbearably sad—”
“Angelina is talking about Black Shadow, my horse of six years.”
“Your horse?”
“Yes, my horse, you...you...unfeeling ass. My horse, who I’ve just found out is terminally ill. My horse who is my closest friend and companion. You actually think I was sitting here crying over some lost lover and that I would tell Angelina about it? What the hell is wrong with you?”
She didn’t give him a chance to respond, but came at him like a flash of lightning—dazzling and beautiful in one breath. Her hands thumped him in soft blows. Gabriel put his hands up, afraid of his petite wife hurting herself rather than him. In his overcompensation, he pushed her off the pile and she took him with her.
He landed on top of her on more hay, his heart lighter than it had been in days.
She hadn’t been moping over her lover. He wanted to shout it like a teenage boy who’d found out that the girl he liked liked him back. He felt a lightness he hadn’t felt even in his younger, carefree days.
Eleni let out a soft woof as his body pressed her down. “Get off me, you...you unfeeling giant.”
He laughed and shifted just enough to ensure he didn’t crush her.
She struggled to push him off, as if that were possible, and the slide and shift of her body under his sent his lust into overdrive.
Hell, he liked having her beneath him, all soft and glaring. Another wiggle and her legs separated and straddled him until his hardness nestled against the hottest and softest part of her.
Gabriel let out a filthy oath just as her soft groan filled the air. His hips flexed and rolled in an instinct old as time, his muscles burning with desire. “And if I don’t want to move?” He gripped her wrists and pulled them above him, forcing her to look at him. The move forced her upper body to arch toward him, those lush breasts to rub against his chest in the most decadent pleasure. “You have been tormenting me for three weeks, mia cariña. Have you any idea what unspent arousal of so many days does to a man?”
It felt as if all the air from the entire world had been ripped out. Leaving only the sensual haze for Eleni to subsist on. Gray eyes watched her as if she were the most delicious dessert that he intended to feast on.
His fingers gripped her wrists in a firm clasp yet gently for a man so big. For days, she had seen h
im around the suite, in various torturous states of undress, and she knew the power in his muscled frame.
For days and quite a few nights, when he had come to bed and the huge mattress dipped beneath his weight, she had wondered about what it would feel like to be the woman he focused that power on. To be the woman trapped beneath that powerful body.
Shivers had overtaken her at the game she’d been playing every time that gray gaze had swept over her, embers of dark desire in his eyes.
Now she knew.
He didn’t quite crush her to the ground but he was a divine, languorous weight on top of her body. Eleni licked her lips, twice, a deep, delicious ache building between her legs. Muscular thighs straddled hers and yet somehow, he kept his lower body away from her, after that first sizzling contact.
Her fingers wound around his upper arms, and she felt the taut clench of his thick muscles. “You’re the most aggravating man I’ve ever met. Tell me, what would you have done if I said yes, Gabriel? If I had truly been moping over my lover?”
He bent his head and the warmth of his breath caressed her trembling lips. She should say no, tell him that she was a real woman with feelings. Not a robot he could use when he needed a mother for his girl, and then ignore.
Holding her gaze, he slanted the angle and pressed his mouth against hers—full flush.
Soft and yet hard, his lips sent a shock that jerked her body into superawareness. Again and again, he did it—moved his lips over hers in a sensual rhythm so visceral that she shivered from the onslaught of it. The world outside the dark barn, the thread of her grief inside, everything fell away under the intense and growing ache within her.
She had waited years, no aeons, it seemed, for the stamp of his body. To be possessed by him.
“I would have reminded you that you promised your body to me, Princesa.” Only then did he press his hard body into hers. The weight and heat of his erection pressed against her mound and Eleni cried out loud, her body restless in her own skin. Instantly, her thighs created a cradle for him. A satisfied gleam appeared in his gray eyes. “I would have told you that you belonged to me.”