by Tara Pammi
Anger filled Gabriel and his arms tightened around her.
“The moment I saw Black Shadow—his coat gleaming, refusing to trust anyone, but needing a tender touch—I fell in love. I think it was mutual,” she said with a smile. “He developed a tumor—” her voice caught “—in his belly, and has been deteriorating for a while now. I went to check on him around dawn. I couldn’t sleep at all. It was as if he’d been waiting to say goodbye to me.”
He felt the sob build through her small frame. Vining her arms around him, she cried as if her heart was breaking.
Ice that he didn’t even know had built in his chest thawed. Gabriel ran his hands over her back, up and down, anxious to soothe her, to assuage her grief. Desperate to give her the world if she needed it.
“Shh, querida, he must have known how much you love him.”
She wiped her face on his shirt and mumbled an apology into his chest. His heart thundered under those questing fingers. Tonight, his mind was reeling, his emotions whirling.
“Eleni, why did you stay in Drakon all these years? Why not leave? Did you love the mad king so much?”
He felt steel return to her spine and smiled to himself. “Please don’t refer to him like that. His dementia was real and had far too many consequences.”
“What about your mother?” He asked the one question that had always bothered him.
“I don’t like to talk about her.”
He heard the defensiveness that she couldn’t quite hide.
He shrugged, keeping his tone casual, as unfamiliar as he was with painful emotions, even he could see that Eleni hid the pain beneath her acceptance of her position in the Royal household. “As Angelina grows up and asks me about her mother, should I lie and keep the memory she has intact? Or should I tell her the truth?”
A long sigh left her and she tentatively laid her head on his shoulder. He knew she understood what he meant. She understood that Angelina already believed, on some level, that her mother had never told Gabriel about her existence.
Painful or not, the little girl had to live with that fact for the rest of her life.
He didn’t know why he pushed Eleni, but he wanted her to share it with him. He wanted to know everything about his wife. He wanted to prove to himself that Eleni was better off with him and Angelina. That she had everything she’d ever need.
“My mother was Andreas’s nanny. The Queen apparently had been sick for a long time and she had an affair with Father for years. Things I learned in whispers and rumors from the palace staff. And when she had me, she signed over all rights over me to my father and walked away with a lump of cash. My father might have been controlling, maybe even mad, but he gave me a home. Andreas loved me, in his own way, when he could have hated me for what my mother did to his. Nikandros always told me I was the good one among us. My brothers and my father...they made me feel wanted.”
Gabriel searched her face, startled at how innocent she sounded. “How?”
“They needed me. They were always at odds with each other, all three of them, thanks to Father’s manipulations. And I was the buffer,” she said, as if she hadn’t made herself indispensable. As if she hadn’t sewn herself into the fabric of their lives.
Did it make her feel useful? Needed? Was that why she’d been so ready to marry him—because she could help with Angelina on one hand and Drakon on the other? The perfect solution for Eleni because her heart already belonged to another?
“In the end, it turned out only I could manage Father. I owe them so much. How could I just walk away? You asked me that night why I wanted to escape who I was.
“Drakon is in my blood as much as it is in Andreas’s and Nik’s. Even if Andreas found some poor man to marry me—and can you imagine who he would choose?—he wouldn’t have understood my attachment to Drakon. He would only marry me as a favor to one of my brothers, or as a business transaction. Even with his cruel taunts, I think my father did a good job of binding me to Drakon, as well as he did my brothers.”
“What about love, Princesa?”
She looked up at him, her eyes bright with the sheen of tears shed. “What about it?”
“Is it not something every woman wants?”
Lashes flicking down, she hid her expression. “Not me. I...between Spiros and Father and my mother abandoning me, I lost the taste for it, Gabriel.” Her voice wavered, a faint tension in her shoulders.
His own breath halted in his throat as Gabriel waited. With every word she said, Andreas’s words made more and more sense.
Eleni had never been given the choice to be anything other than what she was, had never had the chance to love herself or anyone else.
“I don’t think I even know what love is anymore. If not for Nik’s mother and Andreas and Nikandros, I wouldn’t even have known what kindness was.”
He should have let it go then. Raking up the past would get them nowhere. He was her present. He was her future. For Angelina’s sake, he needed to be selfish.
But then who would put her first? Clearly, no one ever had. He was beginning to understand that Andreas and Nik tried to, was beginning to see what had led Andreas to play God from behind the curtain.
So he spoke, his own motives unclear, only the need to see into her soul propelling him ahead. “How could a paid employee like your mother, a woman at that, have had any bargaining power with King Theos when he found out that she was pregnant with his child? The whole world knows of his obsession with his progeny, his obsession with the succession of House Drakos. Legitimate or not, you were still his blood and I bet he gave her no choice.”
“I would have never given up on a child of mine, under any kind of pressure,” Eleni protested. But there was no conviction in her own words.
“He was a ruthless, cruel bastard, Princesa.” Remembering what Andreas had said, rage shook his voice. “If he gave you a home, Eleni, he did it to stroke his own ego, to cast himself in a better light. Nothing more.”
“So I’ll never know what she might have wanted,” Eleni said through a throat filled with glass. Gabriel’s arms tightened around her while her mind whirled.
The small hurts that had amassed over the years, that she had told herself didn’t really matter became a wound Eleni couldn’t ignore now.
She knew what kind of a man her father had been. How had she never wondered what her mother’s situation had been? How had she never questioned his constant condescension toward her?
I gave you a home when she didn’t want you, he would say again and again to her until it was all Eleni had heard growing up.
Until her childish mind had been twisted inside out, until pleasing her impossible father had become her life’s goal.
A cold sweat drenched her as she thought of the number of times he had reminded her that she should be grateful to him. That she owed it to him, and then to her brothers.
All the times she had internalized that only by becoming indispensable to her father and her brothers did she deserve a place in the palace.
The time he had flown into a rage because she had said she wanted to marry Spiros. Only Andreas’s hand had stayed his rage. Andreas, who had stood between her and what would have been marriage to a man thrice her age.
Andreas had tried, she knew, especially in the past few years. He had, again and again, told her to make a life for herself. Told her that she owed neither him nor Nikandros anything. That she had paid for her father’s abusive kindness to her a thousand times over.
But the feeling that she alone would never be enough, that she had to earn a place with her brothers, that she had to prove that she belonged with them couldn’t be shaken. She dealt with all her relationships the same way.
Numbness filled her very veins as she saw herself clearly for the first time.
The only reason she’d boldly offered to marry Gabriel had been because she could be a mother to Angelina. Oh, she’d demanded so many things of him and yet hid her own self-worth behind her affection for the little girl.
It was the same fear that clamped over her heart every time she wanted to tell Gabriel that they were going to have a child—that stole the words from her mouth when she wanted to demand that he love her like she did him. It was that feeling of not being enough that ran through her when she saw the strides Angelina and Gabriel had made toward each other.
Fear that whispered in her ear that soon, very soon, he would not need her anymore. That there would be nothing of value she would be bringing to their relationship.
She hid her face in his chest and waited for the panic to pass. For the knot in her belly to relent. The scent of Gabriel’s skin filled her pores and she never wanted to leave his arms again.
But instead of telling him that, Eleni tilted her head back and said, “Gabriel, will you make love to me?”
She saw the fragment of hesitation in his eyes before he pressed a kiss to her temple. “Princess, there’s something we have to talk about.”
Eleni straightened in his lap and her hands stole under the opening of his shirt. Warm skin and hard muscles met her palms. The beat of his heart an anchor in her world. His scent sank through her muscles, instantly filling her with a sense of rightness, of goodness.
Gabriel had somehow become the center of her world.
She bent and pressed her mouth to his collarbone. Salt and man—he tasted of heaven. The hitch of his breath, the shift and clench of his muscles, right now, it was all she wanted. Desperately needed. “No, Gabriel,” she whispered against his skin. Pulling his shirt open, she trailed her mouth down his chest to his abdomen, until she was on her knees in front of his chair. His thighs were so hard under her hands.
She traced the outline of his erection through his trousers with her knuckles, desire a wild thing inside of her. Looking up, she saw the darkening of those steel-gray eyes, the granite-tight clasp of his jaw, the rigid clamp of his fists against the armrest.
He wanted her. Gabriel Marquez—powerful real estate mogul, gorgeous man, who cloaked his love for his daughter under duty, a man who with harsh words made Eleni see what she could be—this man wanted her.
Slowly she tugged his zipper and began to pull his trousers down.
His fingers on her wrists stayed her, his voice when he spoke, guttural and deep. “Princesa, let me love you. You’re upset and emotional. You don’t have to do this.”
Pushing her hair away from her face, Eleni smiled. “No, I don’t have to do it, Gabriel. But I want to do it.”
In all her life, she had tried to be an exceptional daughter, a good sister, a blameless princess, a friend, a doyenne of charities. All roles she had thought would bring her happiness, would finally earn her a place to belong.
Even when she had married Gabriel, she had done it for Angelina, for Drakon.
But this, this she wanted to do for herself.
The hiss of his breath was a balm to her soul as she took his erection in hand and stroked it. Warmth pooled between her thighs as she licked the soft top, and then the underside.
Hands sank into her hair, guiding her mouth over his hardness. The taste of him was wild, his groans and filthy curses sending shock pulses to her own core. In this moment, in the darkness of this night, in the privacy of their bedroom, she owned this man.
She continued to lave and lick his length, shivering with her own desire.
Rough hands pulled her away from him. When his mouth met hers, it was like a tempest had swirled into the room. As if he wanted to brand her just as she wanted to brand him. As if he wanted to possess her.
His lips nipped and claimed hers in a mad dance, his tongue dipping in and out in an age-old rhythm. Legs falling away to make a place for him, Eleni cried when his erection rubbed against her belly.
Gabriel wanted her. For now that had to be enough. Later, she would make a plan to keep him. With nothing else to offer him, but just her love. Just herself.
Eleni Drakos Marquez, Princess of Drakon.
“You’re mine, Princesa,” he bit out in such a possessive voice that she drowned in it. He pulled the sleeves of her dress down, filling his hands with her breasts. Pinched the taut nipples until Eleni was arching into his body, a slave to his will. “Say it.”
“I’m yours, Gabriel,” she whispered against his mouth. And he tasted her in another lingering kiss.
When he pushed her onto the bed and rucked up her dress, when he entered her from behind without that tenderness that had marked all the times they had made love, Eleni exulted in the glorious sensations of being possessed by him. Reveled that she could break his control, bring him to this desperate need.
They moved in perfect rhythm, woman and man, made for this dance, made for each other. When climax burst on them in tandem, Eleni didn’t know where she ended and where he began.
When he collapsed on top of her and kissed her temple, she smiled back at him, uncaring of what he saw in her eyes.
Words piled onto her tongue, words she wanted to scream to the world, to him, words she wanted returned. Instead, she poured it all into her kiss.
For now, there was hope and she would grab it with both hands.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“ELLIE, ELLIE...WHERE are you?”
Eleni turned away from the mirror, where she’d been examining the faint swell of her belly and pulled down the loose tunic she was wearing.
She had to tell Gabriel soon. But between Andreas returning, the preparations that were in full swing for the coronation, Mia’s last weeks of pregnancy and Gabriel traveling more and more, she just hadn’t found the right moment.
Or more precisely, she was pooling her courage. And in the process, was overly complicating everything.
Not that the escalating tension between her husband and Andreas helped. Every time Gabriel was back home, and Eleni insisted that they all dine together, a battle of some sort emerged between them.
Neither did it help that she sometimes felt a niggle that Gabriel was slowly pulling away from her. He still laughed with her, teased her about her devotion to all things Drakon, spent his free time with her and Angelina. Made love to her with such possessive passion, drawing it out for so long that she was cursing him, and sometimes with such heartbreaking tenderness that Eleni fell in love with him all over again.
And yet, when they were in bed after he thoroughly exhausted her, when they watched Angelina perform in the local equestrian competition, or when he was away and he called every day to check on Angelina, some sort of tension filled the air.
A distance, an infinitesimal retreat, as if his mind was faraway. Or on something else.
She reminded herself that Gabriel’s business consumed his attention, that it was a hard taskmaster. And she was okay with it too, for her hands were full with her own duties. But, still she felt the distance.
Which only made her postpone the truth for a bit longer.
She sighed and turned just as Angelina walked into her bedroom. Her bony arms thrown around Eleni, she hugged her hard. Eleni swallowed and patted her head, her heart full. Soon, she would be holding another baby in her hands.
“You stink of the stables, Angelina,” she said with a laugh.
Eyes much like her father’s, Angelina smiled back. Her obsession with horses only made Eleni’s comment a compliment. “I spoke to Papa this morning. And he’s returning this afternoon.
Instantly, her heart raced in her chest. “When?”
“He has a surprise for you. He said I could tell you ahead of time.” The girl couldn’t stay still for her excitement. “Oh, Ellie, you’re going to love it so much.” She threw her chest out, her chin lifted. “He asked me for help, you know. So we picked it together.”
By now, even Eleni’s excitement was boundless. In the last few weeks, Gabriel had been showering her with gifts. Jewelry, couture dresses, a ski lodge in the mountains that they had weekended at once with Angelina, a mansion he was designing himself a few kilometers from the palace—if Eleni ever wanted to leave the palace and live away from her obnoxious brothers, he’d said when she’d laughed and asked what she’d do with a mansion...
The presents were endless, expensive.
“If I didn’t know better, I would say you were trying to buy me, Gabriel,” she had said with a teasing wink.
But instead of laughing, as he always did when they talked about their relationship, a strange tightness had emerged around his mouth. “Just ensuring that you have everything you could want, Princesa.”
It had been the perfect moment to tell him that all Eleni could ever want was him. That he’d given her the world and its joys in the form of Angelina and the baby in her womb. That he had given her a sense of herself.
Coward that she was, she had just taken his hand in hers and kissed his palm.
“Ellie, you’ve got to see it.”
“But doesn’t he want to give it to me?” she said, playing along with Angelina. Not that she had to fake her excitement.
Angelina laughed, a bubbly, cheerful sound that made Ellie sigh with quiet joy. “This is not something he could give you like that, Ellie. And I bet he won’t mind so much if you see it beforehand.”
“Okay, fine, you have got me hooked now. Where is it?”
“In the stables. Can I go with you, Ellie, Please?”
Eleni shook her head, knowing how much Angelina was like her father in trying to get her way. “Your math tutor is here, Angelina. How about you and I and your papa can go see it again, once he is back?” When Angelina nodded, she pressed a quick kiss to her cheek. “Please, shower before you see Mr. Stephanapolis,” she said, scrunching her nose.
Her heart beat a rapid tattoo as she straightened her hair and pushed her feet into pumps. Angelina would probably have shown more composure in the same situation than her, but somehow she didn’t give a damn about propriety right then.
Every time he went away on one of his trips, Eleni felt as if she was losing a limb.
She wanted to ask him to take her and Angelina along. She desperately wanted to tell him that the time he was gone felt like an eternity. She also wanted to tell him that she loved him with all her heart, even when he was his grumpiest and uncommunicative as he’d been the past few weeks.
-->