The Greek Billionaire's Innocent Princess

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.

She moistened her suddenly dry lips with the tip of her tongue—and, watching her, Nikos felt his stomach muscles clench. This had been building since she had stood up to him earlier in the evening. He hadn’t felt such a searing sexual attraction to a woman for a long time, and he dipped his head slowly, savouring the anticipation, and exploring the shape of her lips with his tongue before he claimed her mouth with a hunger he could no longer control.

Until the split second before Nikos slanted his mouth over hers, Kitty hadn’t really believed he would kiss her, but her little gasp of shock was smothered beneath the pressure of his lips firmly coaxing hers apart. He was totally in control and he let her know it with the determined sweep of his tongue as he probed between her lips, demanding access to the moistness within. And she was powerless to stop him; lost from the moment he’d first touched her and caught up in a maelstrom of emotions as she felt the piercing sweetness of intense sexual desire for the first time in her life.

Nikos slid his hand round to Kitty’s nape, tangled his fingers in her hair and tugged gently, angling her head so that he could deepen the kiss. Her response was instant and had a devastating affect on his libido so that he closed his other arm around her waist and dragged her hard up against the solid length of his arousal straining urgently beneath his trousers.

Rina was small and soft, and through his jacket he could feel the outline of her ripe curves that had proved such an unbearable temptation when she had stripped in the moonlight. She smelled of the sea; tasted of it too, he noted when he moved his mouth to her throat and stroked his tongue along her collarbone. He was used to women who wore designer clothes and drenched their skin in expensive perfumes, but there was something earthy, almost pagan, about this woman that struck a chord deep inside him. She was naturally sensual and totally in tune with her femininity, and instinct told him she would be a generous and adventurous lover.

His eyes were drawn to the deep valley of her cleavage and with a tortured groan he claimed her mouth once more, crushing her soft lips beneath his while he slid his hand into the front of his jacket and stroked his fingers lightly over one of her full, firm breasts.

He must have startled her because her whole body jerked with reaction, and, sensing her hesitation, he withdrew his hand, feeling a sharp tug of regret that he was denied the pleasure of caressing the erect point of her nipple. Theos, she was a sorceress; a sea-witch enticing him to forget everything but his desperation to sink his swollen shaft deep within her and possess her, but he could feel the sudden tension that gripped her, and calling on all his will power, he tore his mouth from hers and stared down at her, fighting for breath. ‘This is madness,’ he grated harshly. ‘If either of us had any sense we should return to the palace. But my sanity seems to have deserted me, Rina, so the choice is yours. Will you end this now and go back? Or stay and drink champagne with me in the moonlight?’

It felt like a defining moment in her life, but Nikos had only asked her to drink champagne with him, Kitty reassured herself as she snatched oxygen into her lungs and tried to control the frantic thudding of her heart. He was watching her intently, waiting for her answer, and she gave a little shiver. No man had ever asked her to drink champagne on a beach in the moonlight; no man had ever kissed her the way Nikos had, or stirred the passion that had been locked deep inside her for so long.

After a life spent adhering to duty and protocol Nikos Angelaki was like a breath of fresh air. He was dark and sexy and dangerous to know, but he made her feel daring—and the heat in his eyes made her feel desirable for the first time in her life.

She swallowed and forced herself to meet his gaze, feeling as though she were about to cast herself over the edge of a precipice. ‘I love champagne,’ she whispered shyly, shocked by her temerity.

He made no reply, and for a few agonising seconds she thought he had changed his mind and was going to send her away. But then he relaxed, and his slow smile stole her breath.

‘Come, then,’ he said, holding out his hand. His fingers closed around hers and even that tiny gesture was wonderfully new. She was twenty-six and she had never walked along a beach hand in hand with a lover, she thought despairingly. She didn’t know where the years had gone, but it seemed as though one minute she had been a child and suddenly she was a grown woman who had been so absorbed with her studies and her work for the museum that romance and boyfriends had bypassed her.

She had taken on her share of royal commitments uncomplainingly because that was how she had been brought up: dutiful, obedient, always conscious of her position and grateful for the privileges that came with being a member of the royal family. But Nikos did not know she was a princess; he thought she was a waitress called Rina, and for a few hours she could be normal— just a woman who had met a man and was free to respond to the chemistry that smouldered between them.

The cave was illuminated by a lamp that he must have brought from the garden. The pale beam of light that spilled from it highlighted the sculpted beauty of his face, and Kitty felt a fluttering sensation in her chest as her eyes focused on the sensual curve of his mouth. She hovered uncertainly while he dropped down onto the dry sand, the common sense for which she was famed telling her to go—now—before she did something she would later regret. But her feet seemed to be melded to the floor of the cave, and when he patted the sand next to him she walked slowly forwards.