Buch lesen: «The Drakon Baby Bargain»

CHAPTER ONE

ONE KISS...

Eleni Drakos stood at the outer fringes of the black-and-white-tiled ballroom and peered through her elaborate mask.

One kiss from any man who’d look at her with warmth and desire, a man who could make her forget that a chasm of cutting loneliness was all that stretched ahead in her life.

One kiss because it was her thirtieth birthday and she was quite sick of her stagnant life, of pretending that the sight of her sister-in-law with her swollen belly didn’t send a shaft of ache through her, or that she didn’t crave a family of her own.

She’d lived her entire life within the rules her father, King Theos, had set, ensuring that her brothers, Andreas and Nikandros, had everything they had ever needed.

What she hadn’t foreseen was that in the end, she would be alone. Just as she had been all these years.

She walked aimlessly at the fringes of the vast oval-shaped ballroom, the cut-crystal chandeliers making the resplendently dressed men and women glitter. She wasn’t the only one hiding her identity behind the mask. The masquerade ball was an annual tradition of the House of Drakos and yet, with her father Theos’s dementia becoming worse, it had not been held in four years.

But because the conservative traditionalists were balking at Andreas’s continued absence after their father’s death, and they feared that Nikandros and Gabriel Marquez’s partnership was a risk to Drakon’s economy, Eleni had suggested that they hold the ball again as a way of pacifying them.

And then she’d put the ball together in three weeks.

Scanning the stunningly dressed women and tuxedoed men who were dancing to a slow waltz, satisfaction filled her veins. Her fingers tingled to look through her fabled to-do list and check it off.

The black-and-white mask she’d bought on her trip to Paris last week went particularly well with the dark red lipstick. Piled high in a chignon, wispy tendrils of her usually unruly hair kissed her jaw.

Strapless and snug around her chest, her black-and-red silk ball gown accentuated an hourglass figure no amount of careful dieting could reduce, dipping at her waist and flaring into a full flounce.

The four-inch stilettos she had pushed her feet into boosted her five-two height, flashing her toned leg through the thigh-high slit. She’d been stunned when she’d looked at her reflection in the gold-filigree full-length mirror.

She’d always be plain compared to her half brothers, the Princes of Drakon; the media frequently reminded her by calling her the Plain Princess, but in that moment, she’d thought she had almost looked beautiful.

Good enough for the House of Drakos, her father would have said.

She continued wandering across the ballroom, marveling at the magnificence of the hotel.

It had been a crumbling Victorian-style mansion with out-of-date plumbing and bad interiors, but in three months Marquez Holdings Inc. had renovated it into a world-class destination for the nouveau rich that were pouring into Drakon, thanks to Gabriel Marquez’s interest.

The ruthless real estate mogul was a guest of the palace of Drakon, and had been in Drakon for three months to oversee his company’s investment in Drakon.

Casinos, luxury resorts that rivaled the King’s Palace in style and ambience, mountain escapes, a world-class racing circuit—the map of Drakon was changing under Mr. Marquez’s and her brother Nik’s deft guidance.

A modern-day Midas, as the media called him, Eleni wouldn’t have believed the transformation of the building Gabriel Marquez had wrought if she hadn’t visited it herself almost a year ago.

Taking a sip of her chilled champagne, she looked down over the lush gardens. The scent of roses was thick in the air; a clock struck midnight at the old church in the city’s main square.

She took a longer sip than was wise, felt the bubbly kiss her throat cold and sighed. It was a sound that seemed to come from the depths of her lonely soul.

The night stretched empty in front of her again.

“Why the long sigh, querida?”

The deep, slumberous voice sent a shiver down Eleni’s spine that rivaled the tingles in her throat. Heart beating faster, she turned, bracing her hand on the balcony balustrade. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your—”

“Stay.”

With the one command, he made her spine lock. Even her father, who had been a bossy, hard-to-please man, had never ordered her around like that. “Excuse me?”

“Stay and keep me company,” the man repeated, not even a little taken aback by her stiff tone.

With his back to the wall, the man was huge. Like a bouncer at a nightclub, he was tall and powerfully built.

A veneer of power clung to his frame. Unlike the other men at the ball, no mask covered his face. Only shadows.

His blue-black hair framed his face in thick, unruly waves. The fine white dress shirt, unbuttoned at the throat, clung to lean muscle. The breadth of his frame sent tremors through Eleni.

She couldn’t stop her gaze from traveling down his length. One foot crossed over the other and stretched the fabric of his trousers, revealing the hard musculature of his thighs.

Eleni swallowed the strange anticipation that seemed to rise in her throat. He pushed off from the wall.

She barely swallowed the soft gasp that rose to her lips.

Roughly chiseled masculine planes, a wide, sensuously cruel mouth and a nose bent in the middle—it was Gabriel Marquez, the very man she’d been mooning over for months. The man who reminded her she was a woman every minute she spent in his company. The desire and need that she’d thought had disappeared with Spiros still burned bright in her.

The ruthlessness that had made Gabriel a legend in boardrooms across Europe screamed from every inch of him.

Her heart pumped faster as she waited for him to recognize her.

His dark slate-gray eyes studied her. He’d never so much as rested his gaze on her in three months of long meetings and numerous requests she’d dealt with. Not once had he shown any awareness that she was a woman.

No, then she was Princess Eleni Drakos, the facilitator for his firm, the grease between his company and the palace. But now she was a masked stranger, and something flared in those depths. Something that made her aware of how thin the silk of her dress was, of how tightly her skin seemed to be stretched.

“Such a wealth of regret and—” he paused while his gaze seared her “—need from a beautiful woman’s lips...it feels like a challenge to any man.”

“It wasn’t...need,” she retorted instantly, somehow negating what she had meant to say.

“Come, querida, isn’t the idea of the masquerade to be open about our innermost desires while we hide our outward selves?” He traced the lower edge of her mask with a finger. Sensation zoomed from the spot. “You’re safe behind that mask.”

When his finger continued its journey back down and reached the indent over her upper lip, Eleni grabbed his wrist. If he touched her mouth... “Why aren’t you wearing one?” she asked, wishing she didn’t sound so breathless.

“Because I don’t have to hide myself to express what I want. Nor do I need to validate myself by hiding from the world who I am.”

Arrogance dripped from his every word. But why not? There wasn’t one single woman in the palace who hadn’t lost her breath over the sight of him.

“You sound far too sure of your appeal.”

He shrugged. “I am Gabriel Marquez, Ms....?”

Eleni racked her brains for a name that had no association with her or the House of Drakos. She’d taken every precaution not to betray her identity at this ball tonight, including arranging it so that she was thought to be still in Paris by her staff and even by her brother Nikandros. Only Mia knew she was here. And the last thing she wanted was for this man to figure out who she was, especially now that he was staring at her with such male interest that she felt heady and drunk.

“You didn’t think of a fake name before you decided to come to the ball tonight?”

A taunt in his question brought her gaze to his. Humor lurked in his eyes and Eleni felt something in her loosen at the sight of it. The twitching curve of his bold mouth unraveled a hidden streak she didn’t even know she had. “A name was not required for the goal I had in mind.”

His gray gaze gleamed with pure delight. “Now you make me more curious. Still, I would like a name to call you as I figure out what specific goals you had in mind for tonight. And how I can help you succeed in achieving them.”

Awareness flooded every inch of her body and Eleni stood shaking in its wake. His bold eyes swept over her face, stilling for a second more on her mouth. His nostrils flared and a wave of heat seemed to emanate from him.

He was attracted to her, she realized with a sudden leap of her heart. The man who had never given her a second glance was attracted to her.

“Cinderella,” Eleni whispered, after a moment’s thought.

His eyes crinkled at the corners and warmth filled his eyes. It was such an unfamiliar, unusual expression on his usually serious face that Eleni stared hungrily. The man was gorgeous, but his smile made him breathtaking. “And is it the cruel stepsisters and stepmother that you’re hoping to hide from tonight, Cinderella?”

A smile came to her easily. As easily as the giddy response. She felt like a teenager, bantering and flirting with the boy she’d been sneaking glances at for a few months. Wild and beautiful and wanted, as if she were any one of those women who were even now skillfully laughing and flirting with available men, women who knew the cues and their own worth, women who would spend the night in a lover’s arms.

Women who hadn’t been waiting their entire life for a man who’d promised the world. Women who had the guts to go after what they wanted instead of mourning a man who was long gone from her life.

She hadn’t thought Gabriel Marquez would be the one who’d seek her out, but in her wildest dreams, wasn’t this what she wanted? So why not take what she’d come for? Why not live for the moment?

Why not believe in the fantasy that she was beautiful and desirable and confident, and that the fire she saw in his eyes was all for her?

“You were right on the first guess,” she said, jumping into the moment with both feet.

A vertical line formed between his brows, his arms coming to the balcony to cage her. “You sound familiar, Cinderella.”

Shoulders rigid with tension, Eleni fought to keep her face straight. Was it the way she had said his name? Or was her disguise not enough to hide who she was?

The levity disappeared from his eyes, leaving them stone cold. “Did you come to the ball looking for me, Cinderella?”

That set her back up like nothing else could have. Lifting her chin, she met his gaze square. “You think a lot of yourself, do you not?”

“Women seek favors of me all the time,” he said, the taunt back in his tone. “One does become a little jaded.”

“It must be nice to believe the world revolves around oneself.”

He threw his head back and laughed, sending trails of pleasure whispering over every inch of her skin. The broad shoulders shook with his laughter, which was a deep, masculine sound. Sleek grooves appeared in his rugged face, rendering that hard face a little beautiful.

“The more I listen to you, the more I like you. Tell me truly, have we met before?”

“In passing maybe,” she offered, skating the line between truth and lies. “But I’m too much beneath your notice even if you’d seen me.”

“I doubt I would forget you.” The cage of his hands shrank around her, teasing her nostrils with the scent of him. Sandalwood and musk and something so essentially masculine it made her want to throw caution to the winds and burrow into his skin. “So if it’s not a beastly family, who are you hiding from tonight, Ella?”

She flinched at the way he shortened her name and wished fervently that the shadows had hid it from him. Her brother Nik had always called her Ellie and so did Mia. To hear it fall from Gabriel’s lips—it was thrilling and dangerous like nothing else.

“A clingy, dumbstruck lover?” Something hard entered his eyes. “Or a disgruntled husband?”

“No, no husband—” she half choked on the word “—and no lover either.

“I’m hiding from myself,” she said, giving voice to the sentiment that had been gnawing at her for a while. “For one night, I wanted to be someone else, something else. I wanted to be daring and beautiful and a woman who lived in the moment. I wanted to be anyone but me.” She caught the wistfulness in her voice and colored. “I’m sure you could not understand even if you tried.”

He smiled and the grooves in his cheeks made his square jaw even more masculine. Straight white teeth gleamed in the silvery light, the lower lip jutting out in its fullness.

Having grown up surrounded by arrogant, unbending men like her father, King Theos, and half brother Andreas should have made her impervious to the aura of power that surrounded Gabriel, should have made her wary of that ruthless quality that pretty much had ruled her life when her father had been alive.

But it didn’t.

For some unknown reason, she had always found herself drawn to Gabriel. To his confidence and arrogance.

“What makes you say that?” he ventured softly, as if he really wanted her opinion of him.

“You are Gabriel Marquez. Your reach and power...you own every space you enter, isn’t that what they say?”

He shrugged, as if it were all matter of fact. “I have strived all my life to become what I am, to own everything I do today. And, no, I have never wished to wear another’s skin.”

Gray eyes searched her face. The perusal sent heat rushing to her cheeks. Long fingers drifted lazily onto her hips and every nerve in her body pulsed and stretched taut. As if it were possible to become smaller or less curvy by willing one’s body to shrink.

If he noticed her instinctive reaction to his touch, he didn’t heed it. Back and forth, his fingers traced the curve of her full hips, like butterfly kisses.

But it was rapt attention that went to her head, as if she had drunk something to make her euphoric. No man had ever looked at Eleni without the consequences of what and who she was.

Either she was an asset or a liability.

Either she was too low because she was illegitimate and held no real position of power in Drakos, or she was too much of a hassle to get involved with because she was close with her powerful brothers, the Princes of Drakon.

She belonged neither with the palace staff, nor on the wall of the East Hall that was graced by centuries of members of the distinguished, blue-blooded House of Drakos.

“Then my disguise, and my attempt at grabbing this moment under it, must seem like a joke to you. Pathetic even.”

“You’re wrong, querida. Even I need escape sometimes. Even I have to face the fact that I cannot control everything. That I cannot control fate and all the games it plays with us.”

A thread of something in his tone tugged at her. As if there was something this powerful man needed that she could provide.

“I came...because tonight I cannot escape what tomorrow brings for me. Because tomorrow I face something I dread.”

“Gabriel Marquez, afraid of something?”

Those grooves of his winked at her as he smiled again. “Shh...querida. You will spill my secrets and ruin my reputation. Now, tell me, what is it that you want tonight?”

The answer to a question had never come so easily before. “A kiss. I want a kiss.” She swallowed at the flames of desire that licked at his gray eyes. “From a man who wants me. Not a pity kiss, Gabriel.”

Hands on her hips, he swiveled her with masculine ease. Too shocked by the sudden contact, Eleni turned willingly.

A glass pane stood in front of them, reflecting their image. Even though she was wearing four-inch heels, he still easily overpowered her in height. She barely came to his shoulder. And his breadth—he was so overpoweringly male.

She felt like a doll, a fragile doll, compared to him. Not at all a practical, matter-of-fact woman, but a flimsy, fantastic creature of the night.

Even in the moonlight, it was clear that she was turned on. Her eyes glowed with gold flecks; her mouth, painted vivid red, was wide and vulnerable. She looked stunning, a mix of innocence and desire.

“Do you still think I would kiss you out of pity, querida?”

“No,” she said loudly, the whisper of his touch filling her with a sense of feminine power.

Swiveling in his arms, she vined her arms around his neck.

When his cool lips slid over hers, Eleni jerked at the contact. For a huge man known for his arrogance, Gabriel kissed with a tenderness she couldn’t believe. He tasted of whiskey and dark passion, and Eleni pressed into him shamelessly.

As if on cue, his kiss deepened. She gasped and his tongue flicked into her mouth. Stroked over the warm crevices with wicked intent. Tangled with her tongue in an erotic play that had her moaning.

Hard. Hungry. Hot. He kissed her like he wanted to sink into her. Like she offered him that escape he desperately craved.

His kiss rained sensation upon her, set every nerve on fire. Eleni sank into him gratefully while his hands moved over her hips, up to her shoulders, and then clasped her cheeks.

Long thumbs traced the lines of her face, desire painted on his stunning features. He dipped his head again and took her in another stinging kiss.

Her senses in a haze, she barely paid attention to his words. How could she when he nipped at her lower lip as if he meant to devour her?

When he kissed her as though he needed her more than air?

Low and rough, his words sent shivers through her spine.

Cool air hit her eyes and only then did Eleni realize that her mask had loosened.

The warm, male embrace immediately turned into a cold frost. Heat dissipated from her and she had to blink to see.

Her delicate mask dangled from his fingers, and a scowl etched his brow. He stared at the mask in his hands and then at her. Again and again, back and forth, as if he couldn’t believe the sight in front of his eyes.

Her lips burned with his kiss, but this was not the same man. He looked at her as if—she searched his expression—as if she had somehow betrayed him.

“What is the meaning of this, Ms. Drakos?” The mask fell at her feet with a whisper. “What the hell kind of a joke is this?”

She stepped back, the steel in his tone cutting through any foolish delusions she might still be clinging to. “It’s not a joke. It’s nothing,” she whispered and turned away.

Barely had she gone two steps before a vise-like grip had clamped over her upper arm and turned her. “Why are you here tonight? What do you want from me?”

The nerve of the man! “You approached me. You...you ordered me to stay and keep you company. You... I only spoke the truth.”

“So I’m supposed to believe the Plain Princess of Drakon—” he bit out her moniker with such sarcasm that Eleni flinched “—walks around masquerade balls, accosting men for kisses? That this is your nightly routine?”

“I did not accost you at all. And yes... I wanted a kiss. I wanted to feel less lonely for one night. I wanted...” Her voice caught, but she didn’t back down. “Which scenario threatens your masculine ego—that a woman could want to kiss a man, or that in your arrogance you think I came here looking to somehow trap you into kissing me?”

“You lied to me, Princesa. I asked you straight and you said you didn’t know me. Maybe you even got a little power trip from the fact that you knew who I was and I didn’t know who you were. Maybe it’s a little game you play every night with powerful men.”

“You’re crossing the line!”

“I’m sick of deceit and lies. If it is a kiss you want, here it is!”

If Eleni had had any sense, she would have slapped his arrogant jaw, hard. But no, when he touched his lips to hers again, she melted. She had no will or control over her body.

When he licked the seam of her lips, she gasped open for him, like a sunflower.

When he plunged his tongue into the cavern of her mouth, she shamelessly pressed against him.

His hands moved to her bottom and he pressed her against him, until she felt the evidence of his arousal. Until the hard planes of his body were stamped onto her soft curves. Until she was moaning, spreading her legs to feel more of him.

The kiss was over before it had begun, and yet it seemed to spin her senses. And the man who had delivered it looked at her as if she had agreed to sell her soul for pennies. “If you’re that desperate for a man, maybe ask one of your powerful brothers to set you up with one, Princesa,” he said mockingly. “The next man you play your little game with might not be as forgiving as me for your duplicity.”

Eleni stared at him, shaking from head to toe, burning with the unspent desire that he had aroused in her. Desire, she now realized, he had aroused with the sole intention of punishing her.

“I would not kiss you again if you were the last man on earth, Mr. Marquez,” she shouted but he’d already gone.

Try as she might to fight the temptation, she couldn’t help but run her fingers over her stinging mouth. Couldn’t stop tasting him on her lips.