His Drakon Runaway Bride. Tara Pammi
Ariana licked her dry lips, swallowing away the knowledge that she’d been about to call it off. Her gut instinct had been right. “What...what are you doing here?”
“Here on this side of the pond, in Colorado, in this little wonderful town that you’ve been hiding in?” He didn’t move, nor did a muscle flicker in his face. In that deep, gravelly voice of his, he could have been inquiring after the bitter weather.
They could have been a couple of friends discussing trivialities. No anger or emotion fractured his cool expression. Only a faint thread of sarcasm bled through.
“Or here in front of this beautiful little church on this bleary afternoon where you’re waiting for the man you’re supposed to marry in a few hours? Should I answer the general or the specific?”
Ariana closed her eyes. Didn’t help one bit. His presence was a hum of power in the air, making something in her vibrate in tune. Dragging cold air deep into her lungs, she flicked her eyes open. Feeling was beginning to come back into her muscles. And along with it memories and an unholy amount of panic.
How had she forgotten that the smoother Andreas’s voice got, the hotter his rage? The deeper the fracture in his self-control, the colder and calmer his actions? It was his shut-down mode, where neither reason nor begging would filter through. Fresh wind made her eyes water. It had to be the wind. “I don’t have your magic with words, Andreas.”
He inclined his head in a regal nod. “I am to be King soon. I thought now would be a wise time to take care of the little business between us. After all, you ran out on me without a word, and who knows when you will decide you want to come back to me?”
Shivers raced down her spine. “Go back to your precious Drakon.” She couldn’t help the bitterness in her voice, even as she cautioned herself against it. “You have nothing to worry about with me. You and I—” her voice caught, and still, nothing changed in his expression “—were an episode from a different life. The media will never catch hold of our little story, neither will I claim even an acquaintance.
“Ariana Sakis, for all intents and purposes, is dead.”
She glanced up and her breath seized in her lungs.
Suddenly, he was there in front of her, blocking everything else from her vision. Blocking the entire world from her. Sandalwood, flared by his body’s heat, taunted her nostrils. Filled her with sensations and memories. Such an interestingly warm scent for a man whose blood was decidedly cold. But then his passion had been just as contrasting to the ruthless lack of his heart.
“Ariana Drakos,” he corrected with the faintest trace of warning. “Do not forget you belong to me.”
Nothing so tacky as a raised voice or a teetering temper from the House of Drakos.
“You might be King of your bloody palace, Andreas—” panic rushed reckless words to her mouth “—but not of me. Magnus will be here any minute and I won’t—”
“Your fiancé has been made aware of the situation and is not coming.”
So polite even as he stood there, playing havoc with her life. So infuriatingly calm. Her hands itched to muss up that perfectly placid expression of his. The devil in her burned to unsettle him as he did her. That urge was dangerous. Just being near Andreas was like throwing herself off a cliff—exhilarating and terrifying. And she had stopped doing that to herself a long time ago.
“What the hell did you tell Magnus?”
“That he should call it quits while his life is still under his control.”
“Is this what you have sunk to? Chasing away the man in my life? Have you become as low and manipulative as your father then, Andreas?”
His jaw tightened. “I didn’t have to chase him, Ariana. Like any sensible man, Magnus seemed uninclined toward being the other party in bigamy. In fact, he sounded angry at your deception.”
“Bigamy?” She covered the distance between them without caring. Her heart seemed to slow down in her chest, a dreadful cold filling her. “What do you mean, bigamy?”
His mouth relaxed, he stood waiting against the same tree as if he had all the time in the world. As if there was nothing that would give him more pleasure than to watch the ground being pulled away from under her. As if he’d planned and lived this moment a thousand times and he couldn’t let his enjoyment end.
She shook her grip on his coat but he didn’t budge. “What do you mean?”
A smile curved his mouth. Rendering him starkly beautiful. “My father and you missed one small detail in your plan. If I had never discovered you were alive, it wouldn’t have mattered so much.
“But I did.”
“What detail?” she was shouting now, her voice lost in the gray bleakness around her. Everything about those few days was still jumbled in her head. She’d been acting on pure animal instincts—fear the overriding one—and listening to King Theos had been the worst kind of mistake.
All she’d wanted was to escape Drakon before Andreas came back from his summit. Before she was caught in the web of her own love for him.
She’d been so naive that she had played right into Theos’s manipulative hands. But Andreas wouldn’t believe her now.
Her leaving him had been a betrayal to a man who didn’t break rules for anyone, an unforgivable mistake to a man whose word meant everything to him.
She clasped his jaw, forcing him to look at her. “What detail, Andreas?”
He still didn’t hold her. Didn’t touch her in any way. Those eyes trapped her again, until even breathing was a chore. Those eyes betrayed all his emotions—fury, shock and the cold enjoyment of her fate now. “The papers you signed for Theos, dissolving our marriage, he never presented them to me.
“Your supposed death bought him time and then... I don’t know what he and you planned. I never saw those papers until a few months ago. The motion didn’t even get filed in court.
“You are still my wife.”
SHEER TERROR FILLED her eyes as she stared at him. “Your wife?” she repeated, as if she couldn’t think past those two words.
Andreas studied her greedily, his skin prickling with that sensation only Ariana could arouse.
Her lips were dry, trembling. Her copper gold hair, her crowning glory, was tied into that messy knot she’d always put it in, complaining that it was too much. Her cheekbones were sharp and high, forever giving her that malnourished look. Her skin was still that golden shade though it looked alarmingly pale just then.
“You and I are still married, Ariana. Ten years and going strong. Except for the little problem of you wanting to marry another man.”
Her fingers became lax around his coat, her body trembling with tension. “Ariana is dead,” she kept repeating through pale lips.
Words that had haunted him for eight years.
He had imagined her death a hundred different ways, a million different times. He had hated himself for leaving her with his father. He had been through hell and back because he thought he hadn’t protected her.
He fisted his hands by his sides, fighting the urge to wrap his hands around her. Fighting the overwhelming impulse to push her against the tree and crush her mouth with his.
Because to see Ariana was to want Ariana. He didn’t remember a time he hadn’t wanted to possess her with that raw longing.
And yet lust was only a pale shadow behind the need to ensure that she was alive and not a figment of his imagination, a flimsy shadow from his feverish nightmares.
Outwardly,