The Drakon Baby Bargain(11)

“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 beige 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.”