The Greek Billionaire's Innocent Princess

The king had shared her fascination with the history of the Adamas Kingdom, and she treasured her memories of the evenings they had spent together researching their ancestors. Nothing was the same without her father, she thought bleakly. One day soon Sebastian would be crowned King and she would give him her full support, but she missed King Aegeus desperately.

Grief surged through her and she bit her lip, knowing that she must control it as Queen Tia managed to do when she was in public. She was tired of the party, and she stepped through the French doors leading onto the terrace. The night air was warm and heavy with the perfume of jasmine and honeysuckle, and the silence was blissful after the hubbub of voices in the ballroom, but her peace did not last long.

‘Well, well. Kitty Karedes! I didn’t realise it was you. I saw a woman slip furtively out of the ballroom, and assumed she was meeting a lover, but, unless the ice-princess has thawed considerably since we last met, that’s not likely, is it?’

‘Vasilis! I won’t lie and say it’s a pleasure to see you. But the idea of you sneaking out to spy on lovers is wholly believable,’ Kitty replied contemptuously. She glanced at Vasilis Sarondakos, felt the familiar wave of revulsion sweep over her and turned her back on him, hoping he would get the message and leave her alone. But Vasilis was not renowned for his sensitivity.

The Sarondakos family were leading members of Aristo’s aristocracy, and Vasilis’s father, Constantine, had been a close friend of the late king. At eighteen, Kitty had been painfully naïve, and had never had a boyfriend. With her father’s encouragement she had gone on a date with Vasilis, but she had been deeply traumatised when he had subjected her to a drunken assault. His taunts that her voluptuous body was designed for sex had been devastating, but she had been too ashamed to tell her family what had happened, believing Vasilis’s assertion that because she had worn a low-cut dress she had been—in his words— ‘gagging for it’.

The memory of his hot, alcohol-fuelled breath on her skin and his sweaty hands tearing her dress and touching her breasts still haunted her, and when her father had suggested a couple of years ago that he would be pleased if she married the son of his dear friend, Constantine Sarondakos, he had been taken aback by her fierce refusal.

‘So, still no sign of a husband on the horizon, then, Kitty?’ Vasilis taunted, coming to stand so close to her that she found herself trapped between him and the low stone wall that encircled the terrace. ‘You should have married me while you had the chance.’

‘I’d sooner swallow poison.’ Kitty tried to edge away from him and tension knotted her stomach when he leaned closer still and rested his hands on the wall on either side of her, effectively caging her in. Five hundred guests were packed into the ballroom less than six feet away, including her three overprotective brothers. She had nothing to fear from Vasilis but she detested his cocky smile and the way he was looking at her as if he was mentally undressing her.

‘Is that so?’ Vasilis gave a sneering laugh. ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t be so hasty, my prim little princess. I was talking to Sebastian just the other day and he confided his concern that you’ll end up on the shelf; a lonely spinster with only her books for company.’

‘I’m twenty-six, not ninety-six,’ Kitty snapped. ‘And I don’t believe for a minute that Sebastian would discuss my private affairs with you.’

‘He’d have great difficulty; you don’t have affairs.’ Vasilis laughed again, clearly proud of his wit. ‘I bet you’re still a virgin, aren’t you, Kitty? Of course, a lot of people think you’re a lesbian,’ he added conversationally. ‘Maybe that’s why Sebastian would like to see you married. With rumours that the Stefani diamond is a fake, and Sebastian delaying his coronation, the gossip is that your Calistan cousin Zakari is laying claim to the throne. The people of Aristo are already unsettled. The Karedes family don’t need another scandal.’

‘There is no scandal! Sebastian is the rightful king and he will be crowned as soon as possible,’ Kitty said fiercely. ‘Zakari Al’ Farisi is the King of Calista but he has no right to Aristo’s crown, or to be the one ruler of the Adamas Islands.’ Kitty wasn’t sure how Vasilis had heard the news the diamond was a fake, but she certainly wasn’t going to confirm the rumour. ‘The people of Aristo have nothing to worry about.

‘As for me ever marrying you—hell will freeze over first!’ Using all her strength, she pushed against Vasilis’s arm until she broke free. ‘Leave me alone, Vasilis. You sicken me. I never told my family about what happened between us out of respect for the affection my father felt for yours. But now Papa is dead and if you ever come near me again I’ll tell my brothers what kind of a man you are, and you will no longer be welcome at the palace.’

‘It’ll be your word against mine,’ Vasilis muttered, but his bravado was short-lived. The Karedeses were a tight-knit family who he knew would close ranks around one of their own. ‘Anyway, do you really think I’d want to marry a woman who’s as sexually responsive as a lump of ice?’ he demanded spitefully. ‘You’ve got some serious hang-ups about sex, Kitty. Maybe you should see a therapist.’

‘I don’t have any hang-ups…’ Kitty ground her teeth in impotent fury as Vasilis grinned and sauntered through the French doors. She stared after him, knowing she should return to the ballroom, but simply unable to face it. Vasilis’s cruel jibes played over and over in her head, compounding her misery that she was a hopeless failure.

She was a princess and she was supposed to be beautiful and glamorous. She was supposed to sparkle at social events and impress everyone with her sophistication and wit, but instead of being the belle of the royal ball tonight she had been mistaken for a waitress. She had never been any good at the whole royal thing, she thought drearily—the pomp and ceremony and waving at crowds—and it had been easier to leave the socialising that was a necessary part of royal life to Liss, and bury herself in the library with her books.

Was that going to be her life? she wondered desperately. Was she going to end up a spinster as Vasilis had prophesied—without love or passion, clinging to the memories of the night a gorgeous, sexy Greek tycoon had almost kissed her? Tears blurred her eyes and misted her glasses, and the sound of music and laughter from the ballroom made her feel lonelier than ever.

With a choked cry she raced down the terrace steps, away from the ballroom, and flew across the lawn. Tonight, when she’d stood at the edge of the ballroom and noted how everyone else seemed to be part of a couple she had faced the fact that she was a lonely, virgin princess, stifled by the formality of royal life. Her brothers and sister seemed to be moving on, but she felt as though she were trapped in a time warp. She had been born at the palace and had always loved it, but suddenly it felt like a prison and she was desperate to be free—to escape a life of duty and find out who Kitty Karedes really was.

She ran through the formal gardens, away from the lights spilling from the ballroom. The perimeter wall of the palace grounds was ten feet tall and built of impenetrable stone, but Kitty knew of the secret gate, half overgrown with climbing roses. In the moonlight she easily found the loose brick in the wall, and the hidden key, and seconds later she fled down a narrow path that led into a small cave at the base of the cliff.

Blow Vasilis Sarondakos and his spiteful tongue! she thought as she scrubbed her eyes. She wasn’t on the shelf; she didn’t have hang-ups about sex, and so what if she was still a virgin at twenty-six? It didn’t make her less of a woman! She kicked her shoes off and wandered down to the water’s edge, soothed by the gentle lap of the waves on the shore. She knew she would not be disturbed here. This little cove was a private beach, and the only way to it was along the path from the palace—a path that few people outside the family knew about.

Moonlight dappled the sea so that it shimmered like a flat silver pool. No one could see her here. She was completely alone, and impulsively she wrenched open the buttons on the hateful black dress and tugged it down over her hips until it dropped onto the sand. She placed her glasses carefully on a rock and pulled the pins from her hair, shaking her head so that her glossy dark chestnut tresses uncoiled and fell almost to her waist.

With each item of clothing she removed she felt as though she were discarding another hurtful jibe. So what if she didn’t have a model-thin figure? Women were meant to have breasts, and she wasn’t ashamed of hers. The silver sea beckoned her; she was already relishing the coolness of it on her skin, and in a moment of defiance against the restrictions of her life she unsnapped her bra, dropped it on top of her dress and stepped out of her knickers before running naked into the water with her hair streaming behind her.

Nikos was not sorry that the royal ball was drawing to an end. He had flown to Aristo from Dubai after a week of intense negotiations, and the eighteen-hour days he’d spent in the boardroom were catching up with him. He liked and admired Prince Sebastian, but he was bored of the other guests’ endless, inane chit-chat, the gossip about who was sleeping with whom, and the unsubtle hints from a number of women that they were willing to go to bed with him.

Maybe he was simply tired of blondes, he mused as he stepped out onto the terrace, a half-full bottle of champagne in one hand and his dinner jacket looped over his shoulder. All evening he had been frustrated by his inability to dismiss the waitress, Rina, from his mind. He hadn’t seen her again after their confrontation in the banqueting hall but he knew he hadn’t imagined the chemistry between them. She intrigued him more than any woman had done for a long time, and he had found himself scanning the ballroom for her, irritated by his disappointment that she seemed to have disappeared.

He strolled through the shadowy gardens. The palace was as amazing as his mother had led him to believe many years ago when she had recounted tales of the time she had worked here before he had been born. As a child he had listened in awe to her description of the huge rooms and opulent décor, and as he’d looked around the cramped, run-down apartment block where they had lived it had seemed impossible that such a grand place existed.

He walked to the far end of the garden and was about to turn back when he recalled a distant memory his mother had told him of a gate in the wall, and a path that led from the palace to the beach. With a faint, self-derisive smile on his lips at his curiosity Nikos took one of the Chinese lanterns that illuminated the path and held it aloft as he walked back to the wall. The gate was tucked into a corner, and well disguised by the rose bushes that grew around it. He pushed it, expecting it to be locked, but when it opened he was sufficiently intrigued to follow the path that led from it.

The ground sloped steeply down until it disappeared between an opening in the rocks. Nikos had to duck his head as he entered the cave. It was dry inside, he noted, when he swung the lantern from side to side. Obviously the tide never came up this far. The air smelled faintly of seaweed and through the cave he could see the sea shimmering silver in the moonlight, but as he emerged onto the beach he stopped abruptly, and his heart kicked in his chest. For a moment he wondered if his mind was playing tricks on him, but the woman standing a few feet away from him was undoubtedly real, and her hourglass figure was instantly recognisable—even without her clothes.

Kitty swam right across the bay and back again with clean, strong strokes and then flipped onto her back and stared up at the moon, and the crystal stars that studded the midnight sky. She felt bold and empowered—as unashamedly naked as Eve had been in the Garden of Eden. There was something wickedly sensuous about the silken slide of the water over her bare limbs. She loved swimming and in the water she felt as light and graceful as a water nymph—at peace with her body instead of hating it for not conforming to the model slender form she had tried, through numerous diets and exercise regimes, to acquire.

Vasilis wouldn’t be so ready to taunt her about her supposed sexual hang-ups if he could see her now, she thought as she turned onto her front and allowed the waves to carry her back to the shore. The beach was shadowed and mysterious in the moonlight. The huge boulders that stood guard at either end of the cove loomed like faceless giants, but despite the darkness and her short-sightedness Kitty could distinctly make out the figure of a man, and her heart almost leapt from her chest.

Dear God! Had Vasilis followed her? Fear uncoiled in the pit of her stomach, a wave caught her unawares and dragged her under, and she bobbed back to the surface gagging from the salt water she’d swallowed but desperate not to cough and attract the attention of the intruder. It had to be Vasilis. Few of the other guests at the ball were aware of the path leading from the palace to the beach, but Vasilis knew about it and had come here several times with her brothers.

The prospect of meeting her tormentor on the secluded beach sent a shiver of trepidation down Kitty’s spine. She had seen the way he’d looked at her on the terrace, his lecherous grin that had changed to anger when she’d made it clear that she wanted nothing to do with him. Vasilis would not have dared lay a finger on her outside the ballroom, but here there was no one to help her— or hear her scream.

Clouds drifted across the moon, blotting out its brilliant gleam and plunging the beach into pitch blackness, and, seizing her chance, Kitty tore up the sand and crouched behind a rock. Her breath came in shallow gasps and her heart was pounding when the figure strolled down towards the water’s edge.

‘Hello, Rina,’ he drawled. ‘This is the second time tonight I’ve caught you playing hooky. Shouldn’t you be busy at work at the ball?’

For a few seconds shock rendered Kitty speechless. ‘You!’ she spluttered at last as the clouds above them parted and moonlight danced across Nikos Angelaki’s sculpted features. Attack seemed the best form of defence and although her nakedness forced her to remain behind the rock her voice was sharp when she snapped, ‘Do you know you’re trespassing? This is a private beach.’

‘Indeed it is. It belongs to the royal family, and I have express permission from Prince Sebastian to be here,’ Nikos replied coolly. ‘The only trespasser is you—unless the prince has suddenly opened up the beach for use by the palace staff. Do you have permission to be here, Rina?’

Kitty stared at him wordlessly, not knowing how to answer without revealing her true identity. She was agonisingly aware that she was naked, and she wished a hole would appear at her feet and swallow her up. ‘The party hasn’t finished yet. What are you doing here?’ she mumbled in a voice thick with embarrassment.

In the pearly light cast by the moon she saw Nikos shrug. ‘It was hot in the ballroom, and I decided to walk down to the beach for some fresh air. I could hardly believe my eyes when I came through the cave and caught sight of you.’

‘You should have said something. I believed I was alone,’ Kitty said miserably, burning up with mortification when she recalled how she had stripped out of her clothes. She prayed Nikos had arrived after she had run into the sea, but he swiftly shattered her tenuous hope.

‘I was afraid I’d startle you,’ he drawled. His voice dipped and the amusement in his tone was mixed with something else. ‘Besides, what red-blooded male would have spoken out and risked spoiling the show? I was so careful not to make a sound that I barely drew breath.’ He paused for a heartbeat and then said quietly, ‘Watching you slowly reveal your body was the most erotic experience I’ve ever had.’

In a corner of her mind Kitty registered that the teasing note had disappeared from his voice, and the undisguised sensuality in his deep tone sent a quiver of reaction down her spine. But the idea that she had unwittingly revealed her curvy figure, which she so despised, to him, made her want to weep with shame. ‘You are disgusting!’ she choked. ‘I can just about swallow the line that you didn’t want to scare me, but if you were a gentleman you’d have shut your eyes.’

Nikos’s rich laughter swirled around the empty beach. ‘Ah, but I have never professed to be a gentleman, Rina. I am a pirate, an opportunist who answers to no one, and I do what I please.’ His voice lowered to a sexy growl, ‘And I promise you, agape, you pleased me very much.’

Kitty did not know how to react to that startling statement, and she hugged her arms around herself and peeped warily over the top of the rock.

She was as tempting as a siren from Greek mythology, Nikos owned as he stared at bare shoulders and her mass of dark hair that fell in damp tendrils down her back. But he was not about to admit that he’d been so turned on when he had watched her remove her clothes that he’d almost embarrassed himself.

When he had first seen her, he had assumed that she must have come down to the beach for an assignation with a lover. But no one else had appeared, and if he was honest he’d been so stunned by the sight of her stepping out of her dress and running down to the sea that he had been struck dumb.

Before his eyes Rina had emerged from her cocoon of drab clothes, and he had been riveted by her beauty. Pale fingers of moonlight had illuminated every dip and curve of her body, and tinted her satiny skin with silver brushstrokes. He had held his breath when she’d released her hair and it had tumbled down her back like a river of pure silk, and exhaled sharply when she had unfastened her bra and bared the creamy mounds of her full breasts to his hungry gaze.

His arousal had been instant and uncomfortably hard and his urgency to pillow himself between her soft thighs was still so acute that he was glad of the all concealing dark. It didn’t seem to matter how much he tried to rationalise his reaction to her or remind himself that he liked slim, graceful blondes—and preferably the comfort of a large bed when he made love.

Rina had intrigued him in the banqueting hall earlier, when he had recognised the sizzling chemistry between them. Now, he desired her with a stark, primitive hunger that sent his blood thundering through his veins. He wanted to make love to her here on the sand, beneath the stars, and with a passion that was as wild and elemental as the untamed beach.

CHAPTER THREE

DESPITE the warmth of the night air Kitty was shivering—as much from the shock of Nikos’s sudden appearance on the beach as from her swim. Her hair was hanging in wet coils and her skin was covered in goose-bumps but she reassured herself that her nipples had hardened into tight, tingling peaks because she was cold, not because of her overwhelming awareness of the sexiest man she had ever met.

She gritted her teeth to prevent them from chattering, and wished he would go back to the palace. Her dress was somewhere on the other side of the beach, but she would rather stay behind her rock all night and risk hypothermia than parade naked in front of him. She had already done so once, she acknowledged, blushing furiously again at the memory, but she had been unaware of his presence in the cave. No way was she going to make an exhibition of herself again.

‘Here, put this on while I go and find your clothes.’ Nikos stepped closer and dropped his jacket over the rock, and Kitty seized it gratefully and slipped it on. It was immense on her; the arms were several inches too long and to her relief the hem of the jacket reached to her mid-thighs. The silk lining felt deliciously sensuous against her skin; still warm from the heat of Nikos’s body and carrying the faint musk of his aftershave. She burrowed deeper into the folds and inhaled deeply. She had been short-sighted for most of her life, but, as if to compensate for her poor vision, her other senses were particularly acute and she could detect his clean, male scent.

Molten heat stole through her veins as she imagined him wrapping his arms around her rather than his jacket. She remembered the fantasy she’d had earlier of him making love to her on the banqueting table, and pictured with shocking clarity him stripping out of his own clothes and tumbling her down on the sand. What was the matter with her? Scarlet-cheeked, she lifted her eyes to his, and caught her breath at the flash of fire she glimpsed before his lashes fell and hid his expression. But she had seen the desire in his gaze, and despite her inexperience she had recognised his need and found that it evoked an answering ache inside her.

She shivered again, and this time her whole body trembled—with reaction to Nikos rather than cold. She saw him tense, saw his eyes narrow, and knew that the wildfire awareness between them was terrifyingly real. Incredible though it seemed, Nikos Angelaki—playboy and serial womaniser—found her attractive. For the first time ever in her twenty-six years she felt as though she was a desirable woman, and she wanted to savour the moment—certain that any second now he would blink and realise that she was too short, too plump and too plain to hold his attention for long.

‘You had better wait in the cave, you’ll be warmer there,’ he said, suddenly breaking the silence. His voice sounded so harsh that Kitty wondered what had angered him. He turned and strode away, and Kitty hesitated, her heart hammering, before she stepped from behind her rock and hurried up the beach. Almost instantly he reappeared at her side and caught hold of her arm to swing her round to him. ‘I assume you need these,’ he murmured as he unfolded her glasses and placed them on her nose.

‘Thank you.’ Kitty stared transfixed at his features, which were now sharply defined rather than blurred. Moonbeams highlighted the angles and planes of his incredible bone-structure, and she could not tear her eyes from the firm line of his mouth.

She heard him draw a sharp breath, and she gasped when he slid his hand beneath her chin and tilted her face to his. ‘Hasn’t anyone ever told you it’s dangerous to swim in the sea alone?’ he demanded impatiently. ‘You could have got into trouble in the current, and no one would have known.’ His eyes dropped to her small frame enveloped by his jacket, and he tried unsuccessfully to dismiss the image of her running naked across the sand. ‘Tell me, do you often swim naked in the moonlight?’

‘No, of course not,’ Kitty replied quickly, squirming. It was not entirely the truth, she acknowledged silently. She loathed the sight of her body in a bikini and often came to swim alone in the dark when no one would see her. ‘I know this is a private beach, and I thought I would be undisturbed here,’ she said pointedly. ‘Like you, I came down for some fresh air, but the sea looked so inviting that I was overcome with a mad impulse to…strip off and dive in.’

‘Is that so?’ Nikos’s voice was no longer harsh, but velvet soft, stroking over Kitty’s skin so that each tiny hair on her body stood on end. The chemistry that had been simmering between them since he had appeared on the beach was at combustion point, and her head spun with a dizzying mixture of trepidation and breathless excitement.

‘What are you doing?’ she mumbled when he removed her glasses and put them back in his jacket pocket.

‘Following my own mad impulse,’ he growled, ignoring her shocked gasp when he suddenly jerked her up against his chest. ‘The same impulse we both felt in the banqueting hall. Don’t deny it, Rina,’ he warned silkily when she frantically shook her head from side to side. ‘I saw what was in your mind.’

Recalling her shamefully erotic fantasy, which had involved him sliding his hand beneath her skirt, and touching her where no man had ever touched her before, Kitty prayed he hadn’t. But Nikos was lowering his head towards her, and it seemed to her shell-shocked brain as if everything were happening in slow motion. She tensed, torn between wanting to pull out of his arms and race back to the palace, and another, shocking need to stay and allow him to fulfil the determined intent in his dark gaze.