The Drakon Baby Bargain(9)

Every muscle in his body stiffened. Every instinct he possessed warned him to walk away from this deal with this woman. “A baby? You’re bargaining for a baby?” But even as he processed it, he had to admire her guts.

“Yes. As far as the outside world is concerned, as far as Angelina is concerned, we’ll be a family. I’ll help you forge a connection with her. I’ll not make any demands of your time or your emotions. I’d love her as if she were my own. We will lead separate lives except when needed by our children.”

“If only the media could see you now... Mad King Theos taught you politics well. Even your brothers I’m sure could not have come up with a better strategy to bind my company to Drakon.”

She flinched and shrank back into her seat. She looked down into her lap as if to hide her stricken expression. “You think I want this? To marry a man who looks upon me as if I’m trapping him, a man whose affairs are notorious for their short shelf life, a man I have to negotiate with for a child? It will be a marriage of convenience, Gabriel. You will do it for Angelina and I for Drakon.”

Any idea that the Princess was manipulating him dissolved at the fury in her eyes.

Gabriel pushed away from the table and went to the empty, glittering bar. Silence stretched in all the spaces between them as he examined his own emotions. That anger he wanted to hold on to was fleeing fast. No one could accuse the Princess of Drakon of being without logic.

He ran a hand through his hair roughly as he heard her movements. Felt the heat from her body stroke his senses. Once she was with him and Angelina, in whatever capacity, he knew that he would have the Princess of Drakon in his bed. The attraction between them was far too consuming.

But for the first time in his life, he could not do as he wanted. He could not take the Princess to his bed and spoil the chance of Angelina having her in her life.

Would an amicable arrangement between them, masquerading as a marriage for the world, for the sake of his own daughter, be so bad? Would binding the Princess to him in the most legal means be the best for his daughter?

“Being a father... It’s a role I still haven’t settled into, with Angelina. You want me to give you another child knowing that he or she will always look at me and feel as if I’ve rejected them.”

Such ache resonated in those last words that Eleni felt her own heart twist at them. In a matter of seconds, he changed from an arrogant, ruthless businessman to a man familiar with pain. The man she’d met on a moonlit night.

She grabbed his hand with hers on impulse, forcing him to relax his fist. “But you will not be a failure. You will have me to guide you. I know what it feels like to be that child, Gabriel. I know what that kind of a father looks like. I would not expose a child of mine to such a father. You’re not that man.

“Your desire to do the right thing by Angelina is what landed us in this...situation. As much as I hate that you hold the fate of everything I love in your hands, I understand your reasons. We will just be a couple who shares children and who loves them. Successful marriages are built on less.”

“And if I say no?” He turned toward her, numerous overhead lights wreathing his hard features with a deceiving softness. “Will you walk away from Angelina? Will you let ruin come to Drakon?”

Eleni forced herself to give him a smile. Or as close to a smile as she could get. Negotiating with Gabriel was like banging glass against a rock. Nik had warned her, outright forbidden her from doing this. But what choice did she have?

Loving that little girl, loving Drakon and her brothers had never felt like a boulder around her neck.

“Yes.” Whether she’d be able to withstand it, she didn’t know. But she couldn’t let him ruin Drakon. Not when she could stop it. “Angelina will hate you for what you’re doing. Drakon and its people will suffer. And it will all be on your own head.”

Eleni didn’t wait for his answer. She’d had enough of the seesawing of her own feelings. Enough of bargaining for the one thing she wanted in her life.

If he didn’t agree to this, then he was truly a ruthless bastard, she repeated to herself. A man whose heart was so deeply buried that he might as well not have had one at all.

She’d reached the small courtyard outside the restaurant when she felt his hand on her shoulder. Heart thudding in her chest, she turned around. The black shirt and trousers he wore blended in with the darkness surrounding them, leaving only an outline of the sheer breadth of his shoulders, of his imposing height.

Of his overwhelming masculinity and what she’d boldly demanded of him.

Both his hands landed on her shoulders now and tugged her toward him. As if he too was struggling to see her in the scant moonlight.

His fingers bit into her flesh. “An arrangement then, Princesa? No demands, no expectations?”

“Yes,” she said, licking her lips. Longing twisted through her when her legs tangled with his. Her hands landed somewhere on his chest, where his heart boldly thudded underneath one palm. Hard muscle and slumbering heat—there was so much of him that Eleni felt suddenly fragile, feminine. “No demands and no expectations.”

“No fidelity required?”

“Not after you give me a baby.” She tried to sound matter-of-fact but goodness, he was too much man. Her voice sounded husky, uneven instead. “Really, Gabriel. It would not be a bad idea for you to curb your...activities in that area in the short term anyway. Let Angelina see you make her a priority. Not your business, not your love life. But her. Let her see that we love her, and we’re in this together, for her. In the meantime, you could...we could...”

His white teeth gleamed, giving her a hint of his feral smile. The sound of his mocking laughter lashed against her senses. She felt utterly drowned in the scents and sounds and feel of him. “So I’m allowed to sleep with my wife until then but no longer?”

“Precisely.” Embarrassment burned her and Eleni suddenly thanked the cloak of the night. The devil gleamed in his smile, winked from the glitter of his eyes. Taunted her with the sound of his mockery. “I suspect that by that time whatever novelty I hold for you will have worn off. As long as you’re discreet with your affairs, it will not affect the children or me.”

He cupped her nape with such possessive intent that Eleni shivered. Rough fingers crawled up into her hair, tilting her head up. “You’ve got all the little details figured out, haven’t you? Princess Eleni Drakos to the rescue, huh?”

She’d no idea whether he was still teasing her or if he was angry. All she could do was feel. Feel the imprint of his fingers on her scalp. Feel the hard contours of his hips against her belly. Feel the hot beat of his breath against her face.

“And you, Princesa?” Suddenly, his lips grazed hers, and she jerked at the streak of heat that raced through her. She whimpered when he did it again, never settling his mouth against hers. But teasing and taunting, delighting and declaring the fact that she could have him sign a hundred contracts and check a hundred conditions, but when it came to this fire between them, when it came to the slide of his lips over hers, she bent to his will. “Will you seek out lovers when you want a man in your bed in some later years too?”

She raised a drugged gaze to his, and fierce masculine satisfaction filled Gabriel’s every vein. Her finger pads pressed into his chest and he wanted to feel them all over him. He wanted her beneath him, all lush, glorious curves bare, the polite mask she wore unraveled. He wanted that woman from the masquerade ball in his bed. “What?”

The thought of a lover hadn’t even entered his mind for months now. How could it, when he was obsessed with the little warrior in front of him? But the thought of her with another man...no, she would not need another man, he promised himself.

If the Princess wanted an amiable arrangement, he would give it to her. But only after he had spoiled her for any other man. “Will you look for a lover, Eleni? When this marriage becomes an arrangement again, when you do not need me?”

“I would never do anything that would harm my kids or damage the reputation of the House of Drakos.”

“Right answer, Princesa,” he whispered, before dipping his mouth to hers.

Shivers passed through her slender frame before she stiffened in his arms. Blood rushing south, he bit that lower lip that always tortured him and with a husky groan, she opened her mouth.

He dipped his tongue inside it, holding her head for his onslaught. She tasted of heat and innocence, her tongue tentatively coming to tangle with his.

If he had had any reservations about her counterproposal, Gabriel forgot them, lost in the hunger raging through his body.

The Princess in his bed, and a bridge between his daughter and him—maybe this marriage wasn’t such a bad idea for the near future.





CHAPTER FOUR

PLAIN PRINCESS SNARES REAL ESTATE TYCOON!

Love match or convenient arrangement fixed by her powerful brothers?

ELENI TRIED TO ignore the bald headline she’d seen on a popular social media site that morning as she walked toward Gabriel’s apartments in the palace’s west wing.

At six foot three and with a muscular frame, he was sexuality incarnate. Add the reach of his name, the sheer confidence that seemed to exude from his very pores, his talent as one of the foremost architects of their time and his real estate empire—Gabriel was every woman’s dream man.