Pure Princess, Bartered Bride

by Caitlin Crews

  She was startled by the flash of his teeth and the sound of his sudden laughter. That same dent in his jaw glinted for a moment—the one that had mesmerized her on their wedding day. It fascinated her anew.

  She hadn’t meant to amuse him. Had she? But she felt a warmth course through her anyway, suggesting that some part of her wanted to please him, to amuse him. Maybe more of her than she wanted to admit.

  Why should she want to please this man, when he had done nothing but scare and overwhelm her? What did that say about the kind of person she was?

  But had she ever been anyone else?

  Once again, she despaired of her own weakness.

  “I am rude, yes,” Luc agreed, closing the distance between them with sure strides. “And ruthless. And arrogant. And whatever else you need to call me. Does it make you feel better to say it out loud?”

  “Better?” Now it was Gabrielle’s turn to laugh, as if he wasn’t bearing down on her with so much barely leashed, alarming purpose. “Why would it make me feel better to find myself shackled to such a man?”

  “Shackled.” His dark eyes gleamed as he stopped before her, forcing her to crane her head back, looking up the long, solid length of his spectacular body—the one she had now felt crushed against her own, from her neck to her calves. “Now, there’s an idea.”

  Gabrielle felt her lips part as the vision he’d intended rushed at her. Her arms bound. Her naked flesh open and inviting, and Luc so dark and powerful above her. She shivered. His mouth flattened.

  “An idea you like, I think. Somehow I am not surprised.”

  “I…I don’t know what you mean.”

  But she lied. And he knew it.

  He reached down and took her hand into his bigger one. She did not resist as he pulled her to her feet—she couldn’t seem to summon the will to do anything but stare at him. She thought of her hands bound, tied against the four-poster bed in the master bedroom that she’d been sleeping in so restlessly. Their bodies writhing together. Once again she was paralyzed. Was it fear, she thought, or something else?

  Longing, something more honest whispered in the back of her mind.

  She thought he would kiss her again when he brought her in close—near enough to feel the heat of his body, to smell the scent of his skin.

  But instead he traced unknowable shapes across her cheek and down to her collarbone, tested the length of one thick strand of her hair, and then stepped back.

  “Put on your shoes,” he ordered her, curt and sure. “We’re going out.”

  “Out?” Was that her voice? So breathy and insubstantial? Why did he turn her brain to cotton and fire?

  “To dinner,” he clarified and then smirked, as if she were simple.

  “Dinner,” she repeated, and was furious with herself when his smirk sharpened. She was not usually so stupid and dull-witted—yet from the moment she’d met him, from almost their first words, she had done nothing to show him that she was anything else. What must he think? That her father had sold off his idiot daughter?

  “Surely the concept cannot alarm you?” Luc said, in that intensely sardonic tone. “I feel certain you must have had dinner before.”

  Sarcasm. How delightful.

  “Not with you,” she snapped at him. “And not in this city. But, yes, thank you—I have had dinner before. How good of you to point it out to me.” He was not the only one who could be sarcastic, she thought defiantly. But he ignored it.

  “How interesting that you would choose to run away to a place you know nothing about.”

  She couldn’t help but notice that he didn’t look interested at all. He looked furious.

  “I came here because my friend lives here,” Gabrielle said, with a helpless sort of gesture around Cassandra’s living room, ignoring the words run away. It was harder to ignore the dark look he had trained on her. “I knew I would be safe here.”

  “Safety is relative, Gabrielle,” Luc murmured, his gaze almost feral. “And transient.”

  She eased away from him, feeling the sofa at the backs of her knees. She edged her way along its length—away from him.

  She was all too aware that he had let her go.

  “Happily, there are any number of excellent restaurants in this city,” Luc told her, as if they were discussing nothing more than dinner plans. “And several that suit my purposes completely.”

  “I’m surprised you want to go out in public,” she shot at him—emboldened by the distance she’d put between them. Whole strides and a glass table. “You’ll have to behave, you know. No browbeating or threats in front of witnesses.”

  She was pleased with her own daring—so uncharacteristic—and she couldn’t regret the words once they left her mouth, despite the way Luc’s brows snapped together. But then, impossibly, he let out another laugh.

  “Look at you,” he said, that deep voice turning to silk. “So proud of yourself for standing up to me. Do you know why we’re going out, Gabrielle?”

  “Because you’re hungry, I imagine.” She sniffed, as if it was of no matter to her.

  “Because your little stunt has resulted in our being splashed across every European tabloid imaginable,” Luc corrected her, still in that almost soft tone.

  The hair rose on her arms and her neck, and she understood on a deep, physical level that he was more furious than she’d seen him. That she was in more danger from this Luc than the louder, more obviously angry Luc she’d seen before.

  “‘Luc’s Luck Runs Out.’ ‘Runaway Princess Bride.’” His hands clenched at his sides convulsively as his eyes bored into her. “You have made me the laughingstock of Europe.”

  “I…” She didn’t know what to say, or why she felt the strangest urge to go to him, to try and soothe him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “The tabloids have never paid any attention to me before. I never gave them a thought.”

  “Clearly.” He let out a derisive sound. “But now, my darling bride, you will think of nothing else. You will smile and make eyes at me, do everything in your power to convince the world that we are nothing but a couple in love—do you understand?”

  “I’m not an actress—” she began, frowning.

  “Are you not?” His words cut into her, delivered with so much irony—so much disbelief.

  What must he think of her? She blinked away the sudden heat across her face, behind her eyes. One of her hands flew to her throat, where she could feel the agitation in her pulse as well as her skin. She realized what she must look like and forced the hand back to her side.

  “I don’t see the purpose of this.” Gabrielle took another step back, trying to ward off the unexpected pain. Why should she care if he thought ill of her? It only proved how little they knew each other. And yet…

  “You do not have to see the purpose of it,” he told her. “You need only to put on your shoes—and suitable trousers. My tastes do not run to barefoot brides cavorting in vulgar displays for the world to see. You will be Queen one day. I remember this, even if you do not.”

  “We cannot pretend that this marriage is anything but a farce, bare feet or not,” Gabrielle protested, stung by his words. “Why would you want to parade it in front of cameras?”

  “Listen carefully,” he ordered her, closing the distance between them with such dizzying speed that Gabrielle gasped, faced with the unwelcome knowledge that he’d been toying with her. Letting her think she was getting the space from him she so desperately wanted.

  He reached over and took her head between his hands, forcing her to be still, to look at him. Holding her suspended in his grasp.

  It should not have made that mad heat punch into life in her belly. But it did. She felt ashamed of herself. And as if she’d been set on sweet, deadly fire.

  “This marriage is no farce,” he whispered, his mouth too close, his eyes burning with dark fury. “This marriage is real. I do not believe in divorce, even from deceivers like you. We do not have to like each other. But you have made this relationship into a ma
tter of public scorn and ridicule and I will not have it. I will not allow it.”

  “I’ve never deceived you!” Gabrielle felt her eyes swim, whether from hurt or desire she was afraid to discover. Her lungs felt constricted, contained, as if he held them between his powerful hands as well.

  “Everything about you is a lie,” Luc gritted out. But his hands were gentle—holding her, not hurting her. He bit off an oath. “Especially this,” he muttered thickly, and took her mouth with his.

  Once again that piercing pleasure, all fire and need. Once again the roar of response charged through her. Gabrielle felt her nipples harden even while she shuddered and her body readied itself for him. She forgot to breathe, to think, as his lips demanded her response and then took it, again and again.

  He set her away from him, his gaze shuttered. Gabrielle felt weak. Loose. Dangerously softened. Her hand moved to her lips, as if she could still feel the mark of him—his possession.

  “Gabrielle.” He said her name as if he hated the sound of it, but then his cruel mouth twitched into something not quite a smile. “Put on your shoes.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  LUC watched Gabrielle closely from across the small table at the famous Ivy restaurant in Beverly Hills, drumming his fingers against the white linen tabletop. He tried to keep his temper under control, but he could feel it bubbling up, threatening to erupt.

  He could not allow that. Not in a place he had chosen because it was so public, so exposed. He kept a lid on his fury.

  Barely.

  She had done as he asked. She’d smiled for the scrum of photographers who camped out in front of the Los Angeles landmark, and had even laughed with every indication of delight when Luc had kissed her in a shower of flashbulbs.

  So calculated, he thought now. Though another part of him argued that she had only done what he’d told her to do.

  Now she sat facing him, her mysterious calm smile locked across her mouth, looking as if she was having a marvelous time trying to pick out celebrities from the crowd around them on the outdoor patio.

  He found it infuriating.

  He wanted to mess up her perfection, wreck that serene countenance—see what boiled underneath all that bland politeness. Because he’d already had a taste of it, and it had sent a dark need raging through his blood.

  “It appears you are quite an actress after all,” he said, pitching his voice low enough to reach her ears but go no further. He watched her stiffen, though her smile did not falter. Just as she’d done at their wedding reception, she managed to avoid broadcasting even the slightest hint of any internal discomfort.

  “If you mean that I know how to behave in public, then, yes, I am,” she said. Her voice was smooth, though her chin rose slightly in challenge. “I always assumed that was a result of good breeding.”

  “The same good breeding that inspired you to abandon your own wedding reception?” he asked smoothly. “How proud your father was of that display.”

  He could see her response in the quiver of her lips and the tense stillness of her body—but, even so, to the untrained eye she might have been discussing the perfect California night that held them both in its soft, warm cocoon.

  “That was an aberration,” she said. Through her teeth.

  “Lucky me.”

  “Tell me,” she invited him, leaning close so he could see the storm in her sea-colored eyes, which pleased him more than it should have, “what would you have done in my position?”

  “I would have honored my promises,” he replied at once, harshly.

  “How easy for you to say.” She took a ragged breath. “How easy for you to criticize something you know nothing about.”

  “Then tell me about it,” he suggested, sitting back in his chair. “We have an entire dinner to get through, Gabrielle, and then the rest of our lives. If there is something you feel I should know, you have all the time in the world to explain it to me. Who knows?” He smiled slightly. Coolly. “I might even see your point of view.”

  “You will never see my point of view,” she snapped back at him, surprising him. “You have no interest in why I left—you only care that it injured your pride. Your image! What explanation could possibly soothe the wounded pride of a powerful man?”

  Luc definitely did not care for the sarcastic tone she used. But he watched her until she glanced away, one hand moving to her throat.

  “You will never know unless you try,” he said. Daring her.

  “My father has had very specific expectations of me ever since I was a girl,” she told him after a moment. Reluctantly. “He was—is—a hard man to please, but I tried. I got only top marks at university. I bowed to his wishes and became active on the charity circuit, supporting the causes he thought best instead of using my degree to help him run our country. He did not want his Crown Princess involved in matters of state unless it was to plan events or throw parties. Whatever he wished, I did.”

  “Go on,” he urged when she paused again. He tried to picture a young, motherless Gabrielle, growing up in the shadow of her grim, humorless father, and found he did not like the image he conjured up. He wasn’t sure he believed it, either. Surely the obedient child she described would not have run off the way she had?

  “It’s not such an interesting story, really,” she said, refolding the napkin on her lap. “I tried my best to please my father up until the day he married me off to a man I’d never met without so much as asking me my opinion on the match.” Her shoulders squared. She looked at him, bravely, and then away. “I felt as if the world was closing in on me. Trapping me. I didn’t mean to leave you like that—but I had to go or be swallowed whole.”

  “And you couldn’t speak to me about it.” He tried to keep his voice light, but she glanced at him nervously and he knew he’d failed. “You couldn’t ask for my help.”

  “Ask for your help?” She looked mystified by the very idea. She actually let out a startled laugh. “I wouldn’t…” She shook her head. “You were a stranger,” she said, frowning. “How could I explain this to you when it wasn’t personal at all, and yet involved you all the same?”

  Part of him wanted to rage at her—to demand that she acknowledge that she should have run to him, not from him—but he clamped down on it. Why was he so quick to believe this story? Poor little lost princess, desperate to please her autocratic father. It was the story of every rich, entitled noble he’d ever met in one form or another, and yet somehow Gabrielle had found a way to splash them both across a thousand glossy tabloids—something no other woman had managed in a very long time. She claimed it had been unconsciously done on her part—he thought it far more likely a deliberate act. Her first chance for a full-scale rebellion, for all the world to see. Maybe the perfect princess had indeed chafed against her role—but not in the way she claimed tonight. Perhaps the tabloids had been the best weapon she could come up with, and he the best victim.

  “I am your husband,” he said, as mildly as he could, his gaze trained on her face. “It is my duty to protect you.”

  “Even from yourself?” she asked wryly.

  He did not respond—he only watched her reach for her wineglass, tracking the slight tremor in her hand. She pressed the glass to her lips. Luc wondered how he could find such a simple gesture so erotic when he wasn’t sure a single word she spoke was the truth. She was a liar—she had deceived him and made a mockery of him in front of the world—and still he wanted her.

  He wanted her—needed her—with a fury he could neither explain nor deny. It had started as he’d watched her smile her way through a week in Nice, had simmered as she’d walked toward him down the aisle in Miravakia, and had only been stoked to an inferno in her absence. Now that he had tracked her down she was so close to him—just across the tiny table—and he burned.

  “I am no threat to you,” he told her, though he knew he made himself a liar as he said it. He didn’t care.

  Her eyes met his, large and knowing across the table.

>   “You’ll forgive me, I think,” she said, with that same wry twist of her mouth, turning his own words back on him, “if somehow I cannot quite believe you.”

  The dinner passed in a strange, tense bubble. Gabrielle was aware of far too much—the scrape of her blouse against her overheated skin, the swell of her breasts against the silky material of her bra, the rush of warm, fragrant air into her lungs, and always Luc’s inflexible, brooding presence that she was convinced she could feel. He was too big for the table—he overwhelmed it, his long legs brushing up against hers at odd, shocking intervals, his body seeming to block out the night. She could see, taste, only Luc. She barely touched her plate of grilled shrimp, and was startled when the waiter brought them both coffee.

  “You don’t care for coffee?” Luc asked, in that smooth voice that sounded so polite and yet set off every alarm in her body.

  She kept herself from squirming in her seat only with the most iron control.

  “What makes you say that?” she asked, stalling. She picked up her cup and blew on the hot liquid, wishing she could cool herself as easily.

  “You made a face,” he said. “Or I should say you almost made a face? You are, of course, too well trained to make one in public.”

  “I don’t think I did anything of the kind,” she said stiffly, aware that he was toying with her, yet unable to do anything but respond as he intended. It made her feel annoyed at herself. As if she was a mouse too close to the claws of a cat.

  “I am beginning to understand the intricacies of your public face,” he told her, eyeing her over his own coffee. His gaze was neither kind nor cutting, but it made Gabrielle shiver slightly. She decided to blame the slight breeze. “Soon enough I will be able to read you, and what will you do then?”

  “If you could read me,” she replied lightly, “you would not have to wonder if I was lying to you.”

  “There is that.”

  “Then I hope you’re a quick study,” she threw at him, riding the wave of emotion that flashed through her.