Chapter Eight
ALESSIA’S MOUTH SHOUTED the word and wrenched away from him before her brain caught up.
Her heart thumping madly, her skin and loins practically screaming their outrage at the severing of such dazzling pleasure, she disentangled herself from his arms and scrambled backwards out of reach.
Stunned eyes followed her movements, Gabriel’s breaths coming in short, ragged bursts. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked hoarsely.
Trying hard to control her own breathing, trying even harder to control the wails of disappointment from her body, Alessia shakily shook her head. ‘I can’t do this. I’m sorry, but I can’t. It’s too soon.’
He stared at her in disbelief. ‘What are you talking about? How can you say it’s too soon when we’ve just got married?’
‘It just is!’ she cried, before her lips clamped together and she crossed her arms to hold her biceps, gripping them tightly as protection, not from him but from herself because like the rest of her furious body, her hands were howling to clasp themselves to his cheeks so her equally furious lips could attach themselves back to his mouth, and the whole of her could revel again in the heady delights of Gabriel.
Her pelvis felt like it was on fire. Her blood burned. Everything burned.
His face contorted and he cursed under his breath before his chest rose as he inhaled deeply, visibly composing himself.
‘You have to talk to me,’ he said. She could take little comfort that the smoothly controlled voice had a ragged tone to it.
‘Tell me what’s on your mind. I’m trying to make sense of what you mean about it being too soon when we already know how good we are together.
The night we made our child is proof of that. ’
‘And you walked out the next day without a word of goodbye or even a note,’ she retorted tremulously, because it was remembering that little fact that had snapped her out of the sensual haze she’d been caught in.
This time his curse was more audible, and he closed his eyes.
‘Are you not going to say anything?’ she asked in an attempt to mimic the curt tone he’d used on her earlier, but the upset in her voice was just too strong for it to be successful.
Nausea churned heavily in Gabriel’s guts. He’d apologised for not returning her call but the fact of him leaving her sleeping while he slipped out of the room had been left unsaid. He should have known this conversation would one day come.
Arousal still coursed like fire through his loins and veins, and he closed his eyes again and concentrated on tempering it. Then he locked his stare back on her. ‘I left without saying goodbye because when I woke next to you, I felt like the biggest jerk in the world.’
Her chin wobbled but she didn’t look away. ‘Why?’
‘Because your family were generous enough to give me a bed for the night when my plane was grounded and I repaid that generosity by sleeping with their daughter.’
‘I’m a twenty-three-year-old woman.’
‘But you’re not an ordinary woman. You’re a princess.’
‘I’m also a woman. A woman with feelings, not some mythical creature that can’t be hurt.’
‘I behaved terribly. I know that. When I woke up... Alessia, I was sickened with myself, not just because of who you are and the abuse of your parents’ hospitality but because I never mix business with pleasure. Never.’
Her eyes continued to search his until her neck straightened and something that almost resembled a smile played on her lips. ‘You mean I was your first? Mixing of business with pleasure, I mean?’
‘Yes.’
Her gaze searched his for a moment more before the smile widened a touch. ‘Should I be flattered?’
‘If you like.’
‘I do like.’ Then the smile faded and she stilled again. ‘I can understand why you felt bad about yourself for what happened. But, Gabriel, that doesn’t excuse or explain your behaviour towards me.’
‘It’s the truth of it all.’
‘Maybe, but it doesn’t excuse it. It doesn’t. I had the best night of my life with you and then I woke up and you were gone. Do you know how that made me feel?’
He took a long inhale.
‘Dirty. I’ve never...’ She swallowed, and drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.
‘I’ve never had a one-night stand before.
Don’t misunderstand me, I didn’t fall into your arms expecting any of this—’ she waved a hand absently ‘—to happen, but finding you gone... It hurt. To feel unworthy of even a minute of your time after what we’d shared. ’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, speaking through a throat that felt like it had razors in it. ‘It was never my intention to make you feel like that.’
‘Then what was your intention?’
‘To get out of Ceres. It felt like I’d woken from a spell and all I could do was kick myself for losing my head the way I did.’
An astuteness came into her stare. ‘You don’t like losing control of yourself, do you?’
‘No,’ he agreed.
‘Why is that?’
‘It’s just the way I am.’
She gave a grimacing smile and rubbed her chin against her knees.
‘I think we can both agree that what we shared was...madness. A child was created through it and here we are. But I’m sorry, Gabriel, I can’t forget how I felt when I realised you’d gone.
I kept hoping you sneaked out because you were worried about making love with a princess and my family’s reaction if they found out—I guess I was partially right there—so I decided to be a modern woman and call you.
I hoped you’d see my message and realise I was just a woman like any other and that there was nothing to stop us seeing each other again, but you blanked me there too, and I can’t forget that.
I can’t forget how cheap you made me feel.
I want to put it behind me—I’ve married you so we’re stuck together now—but I’ve got nothing to replace those feelings with because you’re still a stranger to me, and until you start opening up about who you really are, you’ll continue to be a stranger. ’
Alessia’s heart was beating hard. Her body was still furious with her for severing the passionate connection with Gabriel and, though she knew she’d done the right thing in not letting things go any further, the ache deep inside was a taunt that she was being a prideful fool.
She didn’t think she’d ever been so honest about her feelings before.
‘Never complain and never explain’ was a creed many royal families lived by and it was a creed she’d taken to heart at a very young age.
The only person she’d ever felt able to open up to was her brother Marcelo, and even then she’d often held back because he’d suffered for being who he was born to be far more than she ever had.
Alessia had never yearned to be someone else like him.
In many ways, laying her cards on the table was liberating, and she experienced a little jolt to realise that there was something in Gabriel that put her at ease enough to say what was on her mind and in her heart without sanitising or editing.
There was another jolt to realise that when she was with him, she didn’t have to be a princess.
And it wasn’t just about him bringing out the woman beneath the princess mask—for Gabriel, the mask dropped itself of its own accord.
And then she remembered, again, keeping her virginity from him and another spasm of guilt cut through her.
It shouldn’t matter, she knew that. Her sexual history—or lack of it—was no one’s business but her own. It shouldn’t matter, but she suspected that for Gabriel it would.
After the longest passage of silence had passed, hands more than twice the size of hers wrapped around her fingers.
‘I can see I have much to do to make amends,’ he said, his expression as serious as his tone, ‘and I will do my best to do that. There is much to learn about each other, but I should warn you, I’m not one for baring my soul. I have always been a private person.’
‘Would you believe it, but I’m not one for baring my soul either?’ She gave a rueful shrug. ‘Not usually, in any case.’ And then she shook her head as if disbelieving. ‘And yet I cried in your arms and told you everything I was feeling that night because on some level I must have trusted you.’
It was the first time Alessia had considered that.
Though there had been no forethought behind it, she’d trusted Gabriel with her feelings as well as with her body that night.
She’d unbuttoned herself to him like she’d never done with anyone else on this earth, and then he’d left her life as if he’d never been in it.
Was it any wonder she was so scared of getting close to him again?
The look on Gabriel’s face as another long stretch of time passed told her he was thinking the same thoughts.
‘Yes,’ he finally said. ‘I think I do believe that, and I will do whatever it takes to rebuild your trust in me.’ Then he released her hands and lifted the bedsheet for her. In a softer tone, he said, ‘It is late. We should get some sleep.’
She hesitated. Should she sleep in the guest room? Insist he sleep in it?
But the expression in his gaze was steady. Reassuring. And it made her mind up for her.
Her heart in her throat, Alessia slipped back under the sheets while Gabriel leaned over to turn out the lights, then her heart almost shot out of her ribs when he reached for her.
‘I’m just going to hold you,’ he murmured, and pulled her rigid body to him. Then, having manoeuvred her as easily as if he were manipulating play dough so that her cheek was pressed into his chest and their arms wrapped around each other, he dropped a kiss into her hair. ‘Goodnight, wife.’
‘Goodnight, husband,’ she whispered.
The moment Alessia awoke, her eyes pinged open. There was an arm draped over her waist, the attached hand loose against her belly. A knee rested in the back of her calf.
The duskiness of the room told her the sun had already risen.
From Gabriel’s steady, rhythmic breathing, he was in deep sleep.