Pure Princess, Bartered Bride

ALONE at last in the sumptuous chamber that served as her dressing room, with the reception carrying on below her, Gabrielle stared at herself in the mirror and told herself she was being ridiculous. First, no man could possibly be as intense or overwhelming as Luc Garnier seemed to be. She was letting her imagination run away with her, her emotions heightened by the events of the day. Second, she was forgetting that the tight corset of her dress was probably responsible for her breathless, dizzy reaction to him. He was no magician—able to command her body like some kind of snake charmer. Her gown was simply too uncomfortable—she’d been in it all day.

She had convinced herself, more or less, and started to remove her heavy diamond and pearl earrings when the door opened behind her and he stepped into the room.

Gabrielle froze.

The cathedral and the ballroom had not prepared her—both were so large, so vast. The dressing room was tiny in comparison and Luc seemed to fill it, pushing all the air out the room as he closed the door behind him.

Gabrielle was still unable to move. She stared at him through the mirror as his dark eyes flicked along her spine, then met hers. She felt his gaze like fire, licking into her bones, searing her skin.

“I…” She didn’t know what she meant to say, only that she was pleading with him. She put her earrings down on the vanity table in front of her, and twisted around to face him. He had not moved—he still filled the doorway with his rangy, muscled frame—and yet she felt his closeness as if he held her. “I cannot…”

She couldn’t say it.

Sex seemed to crowd into the room then, like a thick fog. It was that hot, hard light in his eyes. It was the way he looked at her—as if he owned her, body and soul. It was the parade of images in her head. All of them decadent and disturbing. All of them involving that unyielding mouth of his and those cool, assessing, knowing eyes.

She couldn’t bear it.

“Surely you don’t…?”

She thought she might burst into tears, but he moved then, and once again she could do nothing but gape at him. He stalked toward her like something wild, untamed. Something fierce and uncompromising came and went across his face, and she knew in a flash that he wanted her—and that she could not survive it.

She could not survive him.

“What are you doing?” she asked him, her voice barely a thread of sound, weak to her own ears. He continued toward her, towering above her, forcing her to tilt her head back so she could stare up at him across the great expanse of his rock-hard torso, showed to perfection in his crisp white dress shirt.

Her mind raced. He had said he was traditional—how traditional? Surely he couldn’t expect that she would fall into bed with a man she had only met hours before? So what if it was the marital bed?

Could he?

He did not speak. His eyes were shuttered as he gazed down at her, and then he moved, his big hands catching her around the waist and lifting her to her feet.

He was incredibly, panic-inducingly strong. Gabrielle’s world tilted and whirled, and then she was in his arms again—but this time they were not on a dance floor, surrounded by witnesses. This time they were all alone, and he pulled her much too close, until she sprawled against him, her breasts flattened against the wall of his chest. They ached. Gabrielle moaned—whether in protest or terror, she did not know.

“I will not attempt to claim any marital rights tonight, if that’s what you’re afraid of,” he said then, his breath fanning over her face.

“I…Thank you…” Gabrielle said formally, and was then furious with herself. As if it was his decision to make! As if she did not exist!

“We will grow into each other, you and I,” he told her. His mouth was so close, and it both tempted and terrified her in equal measure. She remembered the feel of his mouth against hers in the cathedral. Brutal. Territorial. She didn’t know why it made her knees tremble and her core melt.

“But our wedding night should be commemorated, should it not?” he asked.

“I don’t—”

But he wasn’t really asking.

His mouth came down on hers, as uncompromising and hard as she remembered—as he had been since she’d met him so few hours before. This time he tasted her lips only briefly, before moving across her jaw, her temple, learning the shape of her. His mouth was hot. Gabrielle felt her own fall open in shock—in response. She felt feverish. Outside herself.

Something in her thrilled to it—to him—even as the rest of her balked at such a naked display of ownership. Her hands flew to his shoulders, though it was like pushing against stone.

Then, as suddenly, he set her away from him, a very masculine triumph written across his face.

“You are mine,” he said. Claiming her. He reached over and smoothed an errant strand of her hair back into place, the tenderness of the gesture at odds with the harshness of his words, his expression. “Change into your traveling clothes and meet me outside the ballroom, Gabrielle. We will stay on the other side of the island tonight.” He paused. “Wife.”

She stood frozen in place for a long time after he left. The air rushed back into the room with his departure. Her heartbeat slowly returned to normal. Her hands eventually stopped shaking.

But inside her a new resolve hardened, and turned into steel.

She could not survive him, she had thought in a moment of panic. But she was not panicked now, and she knew that it was true. It was not simply that Luc Garnier was another man like her single-minded father—though she knew that he was. It was not even that he clearly wanted things entirely his own way—what man in his position, having bartered for a royal wife and his own eventual kingdom, would not? It was that she was so detestably weak.

Weakness had led her here, to this sham of a wedding night. She was married to a man who terrified her on a fundamental level and she had walked calmly to her own slaughter. Her father had not had to coerce her—he had only announced his intentions and Gabrielle had acquiesced, as she always did, because she’d thought that somehow her doing so would impress him. Instead, it had only made him less inclined to consider her feelings at all.

What a thing to realize now—far too late.

Gabrielle blew out a shaky breath and knew, on some level, that acquiescing to Luc Garnier would be far more damaging and permanent. She would not survive it intact—not as the Gabrielle she was now. She could not handle his heat or his darkness—and she would not be recognizable to herself if she tried. She would go mad—lose her mind.

She thought of his fierce gaze, his resolute expression, and felt as if she already had.

She had never stood up for herself. She had let her father order her around her entire life. Now her husband would do the same. Worse. He would demand even more from her. Suddenly Gabrielle could see her life stretch out before her—one decision made by her husband after another until she ceased to exist. Until she was completely absorbed into him, lost in him. A man like Luc Garnier would accept nothing less than her complete surrender.

She took a deep breath, then released it. She looked around the chamber as if she’d never seen it before. Perhaps she had simply never realized until now that it was a prison cell.

And it was past time to escape.

Luc’s body shouted at him to turn around, return to the dressing room and finish what he’d started.

He was hard, ready. His blood was pumping and it had nearly killed him to take his hands off of her soft skin.

Her taste was addictive. Sweet, with an underlying kick.

He paused in the long corridor outside her door. He wanted to bury himself in her—in his wife—and make them both delirious with need and release. Again and again until they were exhausted from it. It was a complication he hadn’t foreseen—and he had been so sure he’d covered all the angles.

Tonight he could allow himself some amusement on that score. It was not very often that Luc Garnier was taken by surprise. He had expected to desire her—she was a beautiful woman and he had long had a taste for classic beauty. Who did not? But the need raking through him and tempting him to charge back through the door and claim what was his—that was unexpected.

Perhaps it was not a complication. Perhaps it was merely a side benefit—confirmation that he’d made the correct choice. The fact that he knew very few men in his position who lusted after their wives meant nothing. When had Luc been at all like other men?

He forced himself to walk away from her door, to leave her in peace. For tonight, at least.

They had their whole lives to explore this combustible chemistry. He could allow her one night to come to terms with it.

His mouth curved at the idea of behaving benevolently—for any reason. It was a new sensation, and not entirely pleasant. He was not a man who denied his appetites.

But it was only for tonight.

In the morning he would continue her education. He would touch her until she welcomed it, until she begged him for more.

And then all bets were off.

It had been so easy, Gabrielle marveled almost a week later, looking out over the endless sea of lights below her. Los Angeles gleamed and beckoned, sprawled out before her, seeming seductive and immense from Gabrielle’s spot high in the Hollywood Hills.