The bite of his fingers against her hips tightened and she bit back a gasp. Tension thrummed in the hard angles of his face. His skin had a damp sheen, just like hers, and the corded muscles of his neck were so tight that she realized he remained still with a superhuman will.
She sent her hands up his hair-roughened forearms, up his muscled biceps, toward his shoulders. She touched him everywhere and saw the play of tension in his face.
Her heart hammered, waiting for him to push her away, waiting for the explosion she sensed building in him. She didn’t know where her boldness came from. But with his hard thickness inside of her, with him poised over her body, Eleni refused to let him go.
She followed the line of his spine down to his buttocks and gripped them. Nudged her body deeper and up toward him.
His snarl sent a spark of sensation down to her pelvis as did the involuntary, instinctual thrust of his narrow hips. “Hold on to me, Princesa.” He barely gave her time before his hands slid under her body. Rough fingers tilted her bottom up, and then he slid all the way out, and then thrust back in.
Breath hissed through her mouth as he filled her utterly. He did it again and again, in slow, deep thrusts that had Eleni jerking on the hay, heart pumping double time.
The friction he created in that angle was incredible, her body climbing up toward the peak greedily again. Every time he moved, the heat and pressure intensified until her climax burst upon her, in a shower of pleasure and sparks, stealing her very breath.
She was still clutching the white-hot sensation narrowing down in her pelvis, breathing hard when he thrust faster and deeper.
She felt the moment his own tension broke, the moment when he became as irrational as her in his want, felt his spine stiffen. His snarl of pleasure washed over as he climaxed inside of her.
Her hands ached to hold him, but Eleni kept them by her side. That same sense of vulnerability attacked now that the moment was over. Reality came flooding in the form of hard voices approaching the barn, puncturing the magic of the moment.
Pulling out of her, Gabriel dressed with a calm efficiency that made her skin cold. Or was it because the warmth of his body had deserted her?
“Get dressed, Princesa,” he said, pulling her to her feet and holding her on her jellied legs before she found her balance.
He picked up her clothes and helped her fasten the zipper on her dress. With the soreness between her legs, it took Eleni a few minutes to find her balance. For her heart to stop thumping loudly in her chest.
For her mind to grasp the fact that they hadn’t used protection.
She halted Gabriel when he’d have moved away and tried to find his features in the dark. “Gabriel? I...” Heat scoured her cheeks. “I forgot...we forgot. We didn’t use protection.”
She felt his shock like a tangible entity in the dark. His distress like a stinging slap against her cheek. “Gabriel,” she said, reaching out with her fingers, “say something.”
The clasp of his fingers around hers sent breath rushing through her lungs. Her legs tangled with his and she fell against his chest. Strong arms wound around her and held her, even as every cell in her braced for rejection. She felt his fingers slide up her nape into her hair, felt the whisper of his breath against her cheek.
It didn’t matter that they were standing in pitch dark. She still felt far too vulnerable. One careless word from him could shatter her.
“Then we will welcome the child. This is what you wanted, yes?”
Shaking from head to toe, Eleni nodded. She had been prepared to be overwhelmed by Gabriel’s masculinity, but her imagination didn’t even come close to reality.
She felt changed from within.
His mouth touched her temple and then drifted down to take her mouth in a long, deep kiss. Bent over his arm, Eleni gave herself up to the languid strokes of his tongue, to the flutterings of desire even through the soreness of her core. A groan rose from the depths of her. Her legs made a space for him voluntarily, inviting him to do more. Waiting with bated breath for more.
His laughter reverberated against her breasts, a silky, confident, utterly male sound. “I would like nothing more than to take you again, Princesa, but you would be sore.” Something in the tone of his voice set every hair on her body to alert. His grip tightened in her hair, a strange tenseness in his still frame. “Next time you meet a man in some corner of the palace,” he said, and she instantly stiffened against him, “or the next time a man drags you into some corner of the palace and kisses you, scream bloody murder. You’ll never see Spiros again. Is that clear, Eleni? You’ll not even spare him a thought in your head.”
Even after everything they had just shared, it was clear he still didn’t trust her.
CHAPTER NINE
WITH GABRIEL IN Barcelona for a fortnight’s trip and Angelina busy with her tutor, Eleni spent the afternoons with Black Shadow.
She was avoiding facing the reality that was waiting for her in the form of a pregnancy test. Her breath sped up just at the thought, and Black Shadow whinnied, sensing her anxiety.
Keeping her hands on his thick coat, she soothed him with a whisper. If only she could soothe herself so easily too.
She’d longed for a baby of her own for so long yet the possibility of it now left her with panic.
She wanted this baby, of course, with all her heart. A hundred possibilities, happy ones, crowded her every time she thought of holding a baby in her arms. Her and Gabriel’s baby. A younger brother or sister for Angelina.
But with their relationship so fragile, so tenuous, she was scared that it would change him, change the way he saw them.
He’d admitted to them being a real family. But she’d no idea if he’d said that in the heat of the moment or if he’d meant it.
After that evening in the barn, he’d walked her back to her suite and bid her good-night with a lingering kiss. Had told her he had work to catch up on.
When she’d gone to look for him the next morning, he’d already left the palace. Only a text message informed her that he was already en route to the airport heading to Barcelona on company business.
She’d known as surely as the soreness between her legs that morning, the faint fingerprints on her hips from when he’d held her tightly that he was avoiding her.
She’d been glad for the reprieve too. For she’d have never been able to act normal with him the next morning. If her life depended on it, she couldn’t have pretended that their encounter in the barn hadn’t changed her.
Until she’d learned that at the same time she was mooning over him, Gabriel was in Barcelona with his ever-present lawyer friend, attending parties and generally making merry.
Of course, the media had reported it.
Has the real estate tycoon already lost interest in his new bride?
It was a wake-up call from the fairy tale she’d begun to weave around them. Whether Gabriel had already gone back to his old habits or not, Eleni needed to face reality. Needed to remember that this was a convenient arrangement.
It was another thing she’d learned about herself.
Making love with Gabriel could never be simple for her. It would mean more, and she’d desperately need for it to mean more to him. For him to never want another woman.
And therein was the problem.
Until she had a handle on her own emotions, she couldn’t tell him what she suspected. What she knew to be true in her bones. What she was terrified was in her heart.
* * *
Gabriel returned from his trip to Barcelona and went straight to his office to finish signing some documents for his secretary.
Every inch of him was bone tired after dealing with his sister’s worries about their mother. Nothing was short of a drama with Isabella. Nothing short of life or death seriousness.
And yet, he was also aware of a mad pulse of excitement inside him. A new awareness of everything around him.
All week, he’d thought of Eleni. Of her crestfallen expression when he’d told her to get dressed in that dismissive tone. Of the way she’d scrunched into herself when he’d warned her that he wanted no lies between them again.
Of the way she’d walked away from him. As if she couldn’t bear to be touched even by his shadow.
Setting up the new rules for their relationship, warning her not to give him a reason to doubt her again—he’d needed to do that to wrest control of the situation. Once she understood his rules for their marriage, she would be fine.
Anticipation tightening every muscle, he walked through the maze-like corridors between the wing that housed his office and the residential apartments at the back of the palace. The famed courtyard glittered with its numerous stones in the moonlight, a cool breeze fluttering in from the ocean.
Never had his heart thumped so hard at the prospect of seeing a woman.
* * *
Standing under the hot stream of jets in her bathroom, Eleni breathed deeply, trying to rid the anxiety that seemed to swirl in her belly.
It had started the moment Angelina had smilingly whispered that “Papa had returned” this afternoon.
Every cell in her had wanted to leap across the walls of the palace toward him. Every minute of the day that had passed without seeing him had built up the tension inside of her.
Suddenly, the idea of settling herself in Gabriel’s bedroom felt like the most naive, most stupid idea she’d ever had. In retrospect, this whole marriage seemed like one, but she couldn’t just back out of it.