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