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For a long moment, they did nothing but stare at each other. The longer she gazed at his reflection, the more the deep reds and shadows of the room reflected in the angles of his handsome face and the black clothes he wore, giving him a vampiric quality that sent a thrill rushing through her veins and dissolved the lingering humour that had bound them together in a way she had never expected.
She wanted him so badly...
Oh, why was she still resisting? Gabriel was her husband and she was his wife and that meant something.
Because you’re still frightened.
Gabriel’s confiding in her about his childhood and his parents’ divorce had helped Alessia understand him better but it hadn’t changed the deep-rooted instinct to protect herself. If anything it had made it stronger because sympathy and empathy had softened her even more towards him.
He took a step towards her.
A pulse throbbed deep in her pelvis.
The battle between her head, her heart and her body, between the princess and the woman, had been an impossible war to manage since they’d agreed to marry.
With each hour that passed, her longing for him grew stronger. When the lights went out, her weakness for him almost gobbled her up, and she would lay enveloped in his arms, breathing in his glorious scent, desire filling her from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes, torturing herself; torturing them both because she could feel Gabriel’s suppressed desire as deeply as she felt her own, which only made things worse.
She was torturing them both.
He took another step closer.
Blood roared in her head.
One more step.
She blinked and there he was, right behind her, towering over her just like a vampire from the films.
The beats of her heart tripled in an instant.
Not an inch of his body touched hers but he stood close enough for her skin to tingle with sensation.
‘I don’t know about you,’ he murmured, ‘but I think we should knock through the adjoining room. Create another dressing room and double the size of the bathroom.’
It was only when Alessia snatched a breath to answer that she realised she’d been holding it. ‘That... Sorry, what did you say?’
His lips twitched but those amazing kaleidoscopic eyes didn’t leave hers. He placed his mouth to the back of her ear. ‘That we should double the size of our bathroom.’
His mouth didn’t make contact but his breath did. It danced through her hair and over her lobe, and then entered her skin like a pulse of electricity that almost knocked her off her feet.
His eyes glimmered. ‘Let’s see what delights the ground floor has for us.’ And then he turned and strolled out of the dressing room as if nothing had just passed between them.
It took a few beats for Alessia to pull her weak legs together.
Where she had to hold the banister to support her wobbly frame, Gabriel sauntered down the stairs with such nonchalance that she wondered if she’d just imagined the hooded pulse in his eyes and the sensuality in his voice.
And then he reached the bottom of the stairs and turned his gaze back to her, and she saw it again. His unashamed hunger for her.
CHAPTER TEN
LATERTHATEVENING, having showered and changed for dinner, Alessia found Gabriel in the dining room. The table had been set for their meal but he was sat at the other end surrounded by sheets of paper.
He looked up as she entered the room. His gaze flickered over her and she caught again that flash of desire as another smile that creased his eyes lit his handsome face.
The longing that had caught her in her grandmother’s dressing room flooded her limbs again, weakening them, and it took a beat before she could close the door and cross the room to stand beside him.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked, glad that her voice, at least, still sounded normal. The rest of her had felt decidedly abnormal since her grandmother’s dressing room, like electricity had replaced the blood in her veins. She’d been aware of every movement and every sensation her body made, from the lace knickers she’d pulled up her legs and over her thighs, to the lipstick she’d held between her fingers and applied to lips that tingled, to the perfume she’d dabbed to the pulses on her neck and wrists. Every whisper of sound she heard outside the bedroom had made her heart leap.
It was pounding now, as hard as she’d ever known it.
