His Drakon Runaway Bride. Tara Pammi

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       CHAPTER TWO

      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, she hadn’t changed at all.

      Thin, angular body built with lean muscle. Wide, brown-ringed eyes too big for her gamine face. Sharp, bladelike nose followed by a mouth so lushly pillowy, so poutingly full, that no man could see it and not think dirty, lustful thoughts.

      It was as if all the austerity that had been executed in her face had to be made up for in that mouth.

      She looked just as common and nondescript as Theos had called her back then.

      Only her eyes had changed.

      That twinkle that had made them glow, as if she held the glorious flicker of life itself inside her, it was gone. Wariness filled them now. He wanted to shove her away from him, stop her from touching him like she used to do.

      But the damage to his system was already done.

      His body roared to life at the soft imprint she left with hers. Long, toned legs tangled with his, her body trembling faintly against his. The scent of her—just her skin and the lavender soap she apparently still used—invaded his bloodstream. Like Pavlov’s dog, every cell inside him stood to attention. Memories and sensations of pleasure and something else, a sense of being utterly alive, poured into his skin, making him heated.

      “This is your petty revenge on me,” she finally whispered, her mouth only inches apart from his. A loud thrum began under his skin. “Your way of playing with my life while you announce your own marriage to the world. You will let me dangle at your fingertips, holding this ridiculous threat over my head.

      “Because I had the temerity to walk away from the controlling, arrogant, ruthless man you are, Andreas.”

      He scowled. “You think it was my pride that was dented by your betrayal, by your lies?”

      “Yes,” she said defiantly. “For you’re not capable of feeling anything else.”

      Andreas flinched, her words landing like barbed fists on his flesh. Thee mou, it seemed even now, when she was utterly in the wrong, she dared to challenge him, dared to call him out for her mistakes.

      “You could have done this through your lawyers. You could have sent me the divorce papers through one of your lackeys. But no...you had to do it personally because you couldn’t forego the pleasure of ruining my life before you go back to rule your bloody kingdom.”

      “You’re mistaken again, Ariana. I did not come simply to ruin your engagement.”

      “Then СКАЧАТЬ