Every inch of her tingled at his lazily possessive perusal. At the banked fire gleaming to life in his gray gaze. Every muscle in her tightened consciously against the onslaught of heat he created with that one long look.
Her sandals fell from her fingers with a quiet thud that resonated with the fierce drumming of her heart. She’d been so consumed with shock over Spiros that she’d even forgotten what tonight meant.
Did he mean to consummate their wedding tonight?
Shock and something more sinuous slowly floated down into her consciousness, setting off tremors in her entire body.
Did she want to refuse him?
No, came her body’s resounding answer. Not when she’d been through nervousness, excitement and every other emotion anticipating this one night. Not when it felt like she’d waited for this, for him, her entire life. Would he be gentle or would that hardness she’d sensed in him spill over to their personal intimacies?
But seeing Spiros had sent her on a strange spiral, as if the rug had been pulled from under her feet just when she was finding safe ground. Thoughts and questions about the past filled her to the brim so that her present, this man in front of her, felt like a stinging slap. As if she had brought a shadow into this fresh, new life of theirs.
He took a swig of his drink while she watched and wiped his mouth roughly. “Do you plan to undress right there in the corridor, querida?”
Silky as it sounded, Eleni didn’t miss the vein of steel beneath his question. “No.” When he didn’t move, she tried to take stock of her situation. “I... I’m sorry I didn’t realize you’d be here tonight.” She sounded so lame to her own ears that she cringed.
“Where would a bridegroom be on his wedding night? Or is it not time for me to hold up my side of the bargain yet?”
Eleni gripped her elbows with her hands as if she could ward off the humiliating hurt that pinged through her.
One man had deserted her years ago without a word and one was bent on punishing her for something she hadn’t done. Tears made her voice unbearably soft, almost fragile.
“Is my desire for a child so cheap in your eyes, Gabriel? Or is it that you can’t force yourself to perform in the bounds of a marriage?”
“I’m not the one who decided to disappear without a word. Imagine my surprise, however, when neither Angelina nor your brother nor I could locate you for well over two hours. Your phone was off, Eleni,” he bit out, “and even I know that that thing is almost surgically attached to you.”
“I must have left it somewhere in all the rush.”
“Even your aide could not locate you.”
Her head jerked up as she realized the truth of his hard mouth, the granite jaw. The deceivingly slumbering stare and the poisonous barbs.
He was angry with her. Blazingly furious. Not even on the night of the masquerade ball had he been like this. A shiver wrapped its fist around her spine. “Gabriel, are you angry with me?”
The question seemed to take him back. As if he hadn’t quite realized it himself. “I’m merely confused, Princesa. You disappeared from the reception for two hours, and then you appear outside your apartments, close to midnight, your hair unraveled, your dress almost falling apart at the seams and I have to confess to wondering what the mystery is.”
Eleni tugged the torn sleeve of her dress against her neck hastily and then realized the futility of the action. He’d drawn his conclusions already.
She pushed her hair from her brow, searching for some suitable story. She couldn’t just admit the humiliating truth. Couldn’t bear to see the cynicism in his eyes when she told him of how Spiros had disappeared from her life and how she had hung on for years before finally giving up.
The scorn in his eyes at her supposed naïveté.
A stillness claimed him as he correctly read her guilty silence. “I’m waiting for an explanation, Princesa.”
“I saw an old friend,” she said, wanting to stick to the truth as much as possible. “We started catching up and completely lost track of time. I—”
“Is this friend a man?”
Drawing her arms around her neck, she shook her head. “No.” The moment the word left her mouth, she wanted to snatch it back. “She... I hadn’t seen her in a long time and it was a shock to see her today, that’s all.”
“You didn’t invite...this friend to the wedding?”
“Her sister used to work here at the palace and she decided to surprise me.” Lie after lie fell from her mouth and she could not stop them. But what else could she say?
That the man she’d once desperately loved had returned after ten years of being gone on her wedding day? Or that he had held her as if his heart was breaking? Or that he’d promised her in an almost-hysterical whisper that he would never again leave her?
“Why is your dress torn?”
She lifted her chin defiantly, a slow burn of anger washing away the guilt. “What is it that you think I have done, Gabriel?”
“No groom wants to be disenchanted with his bride on their wedding night, does he?” Silken mockery dripped from his every word, making a lie of everything the day had represented.
“I told you before. I’m neither a saint nor as dull as they make me out to be,” she snarled back, frustration and guilt coiling into a rope within her.
He shrugged and the movement bared one dark nipple. “Angelina said to say good-night. She insisted on waiting for you, but I finally was able to persuade her to go to bed.”
The knot in her stomach twisted some more. She felt like she was on a swing of emotions, going high and low on guilt and regret and anger. All because the one man she’d desperately needed was ten years late, and the man she had promised herself to in his place now stared at her as if she had betrayed him on the very eve of their wedding.
For the rigid set of his mouth and the hard look in his eyes said what he wouldn’t voice. “I’m sorry. I completely—”
“Lost track of everything, you said. Despite the fact that Angelina worries unnecessarily when people disappear all of a sudden. You know, after her mother’s accident and all.”
A mewl of regret fell from her mouth. She knew what Angelina suffered having seen the panic in her eyes when her dog had been missing one afternoon. “You’re beating a dog that’s already down,” she whispered. “I already said I’m sorry. Nothing is more important to me than the fact that Angelina feels safe and loved.”
Gaze intent on her face, he nodded. “And the worry you put me through, querida?”
Her gaze jerked to his. He had to be joking.
“You worried about me?”
“Yes. Until now you were just the Princess of Drakon, mostly ignored, working behind the scenes, blending into the palace walls, but now—”
“That’s not true,” she protested, slow anger burning in her chest.
He pushed off from the wall, dropped his glass onto a side table and neared her. “Now you are Gabriel Marquez’s wife. There will be unwanted attention. There will be media curiosity. Whatever you do, there will be someone with a phone or a camera around.”
The scent of him filled her nostrils. One long finger reached out and traced the seam of her torn sleeve, drawing a line of fire against her bare shoulder. He radiated such warmth that Eleni thought she would go up in flames. “One chance, Princesa. You have one chance to tell me where you were.”
Her cheeks flushed with heat but Eleni gazed back at him steadily. “Nothing has happened that warrants this kind of questioning from you.”
His head tilted. His disbelief stood between them like the wall of a fortress, crumbling the tenuous connection they had made with each other the past few weeks. He was again that ruthless stranger who didn’t trust her at all.
“Now, should I tell you something I have been wanting to say all day to you?”
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Not trusting the dangerous glint in his eyes. Not trusting the sharp craving of her own body.
Spine stiff against the wall, she licked her dry lips. His gray gaze zoomed in on the movement. Hands on the wall over her head, he leaned forward until their bodies grazed. Such honed power filled him, such heat emanated from him that she was drawn toward him with every breath, against her own will.
With a flick of his finger, he pushed the torn sleeve aside. Traced the intimate fold of her arm, the rising curve of her pushed-up breast.
Then while he held her gaze with his, he bent and pressed his mouth to the bared flesh.
Eleni gasped low in her throat.
The flick of his tongue sent a molten spark to the flesh between her legs. An ache throbbed into life there and she clenched her thighs tight to hold it off, to stop from falling into the sexual miasma of his presence.
“I have wanted to rip that gown off you from the moment you walked toward me. But since you gave that pleasure to—”
“A suit of old armor did it, Gabriel,” she said huskily, desperate for the coldness in his eyes to abate.
“To someone else, I will settle for having you in my bed tonight. I will have to settle with knowing that it will be me moving inside you, Princesa.”
“I—”
And before she could respond to that sultry statement, he closed his mouth over the flesh he had licked. And sucked it between his teeth.