The Greek Billionaire's Innocent Princess

He held out a bottle of champagne. ‘Here, have some. You’re shivering again. It’s a pity it isn’t brandy, but I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with vintage Bollinger.’ He stretched out so that his lean, hard body was spread temptingly before her. His white silk shirt was open at the throat revealing the tanned column of his throat and a mass of dark body hair that she’d noticed also covered his forearms. He was so male, so overwhelmingly virile, Kitty thought shakily as she sank onto her knees beside him and took the bottle.

‘It doesn’t seem right to drink champagne from the bottle,’ she murmured. ‘It’s very…decadent.’

‘Decadent?’ Nikos’s low rumble of laughter echoed around the cave. ‘What a curious mix of contradictions you are, Rina. You sound as prim as a Victorian governess, and yet you’re happy to go skinny-dipping in the moonlight. Do I need to remind you that you are naked beneath my jacket?’

He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen a woman blush, Nikos mused idly. The sexually confident women he dated were sophisticated game-players long past the first flush of virginal innocence. The thought caused him to frown as he watched Kitty take a sip of champagne. She seemed to be a curious mixture: shy one minute and eagerly responsive to him the next. When he had first kissed her he’d gained the impression that it was a new experience for her, but after her initial hesitation she had parted her mouth beneath his and kissed him back with such fiery passion that he had dismissed the idea.

He didn’t need to remind himself that she was wearing nothing, he acknowledged grimly when she handed him the champagne bottle and he took a long draught. The dinner jacket was far too big for her and fastened so low that he could see the rounded contours of her breasts. He did not know what crazy impulse had made him ask her to stay, and he was already regretting it. He never made rash decisions. Even when he gambled he carefully weighed up the odds before he threw the dice. But for some reason Rina disturbed his cool, logical brain—and disturbed other areas of his body too. He wanted to kiss her again and never stop, but instead he forced himself to relax and tried to ignore the temptation of tasting champagne from her lips.

‘So, Rina,’ he queried lightly, ‘what made you decide to become a waitress?’

Oh, Lord—how did she answer that? ‘I…um, I need to work,’ Kitty mumbled awkwardly, thinking that now might be a good time to bid him goodnight. ‘Like most people, I have to earn a living, and I’m not trained to do anything else.’ She thought of the years she’d spent studying for her degree, and her absorbing work at Aristo’s museum, and tried to imagine what life would be like if she hadn’t had the benefit of an excellent education, and really did have to work in some menial job. She had little idea of life outside her gilded cage, and although she supported various charities she couldn’t imagine what it must be like to be poor. The only experience she’d had of life in the real world was when she had worked as a volunteer at Aristo’s hospital, but, although she had found the work rewarding, her father had disapproved—citing concerns for her safety— and forbidden her from going.

‘Have you always lived on Aristo?’

That was easier to answer, and Kitty nodded. ‘I was born here, and I never want to live anywhere else. Aristo is the most beautiful place on earth.’

Nikos laughed. ‘Have you visited many other places, then—on a waitress’s pay?’

‘Well…no,’ Kitty faltered. She could hardly tell him that she had spent a year travelling around Europe and had visited Paris, Rome, cosmopolitan London, Venice and Florence, followed by six months at an exclusive finishing school in Switzerland. She had been a guest at royal palaces and country mansions, had wandered around fabulous art galleries and been taken on tours of all the famous sights, but nowhere compared to Aristo, the jewel of the Mediterranean. ‘Aristo is my home and I love it here,’ she told Nikos firmly.

Her passion for the island intrigued him, and he wondered why she felt so strongly about it. Was it the place or people that held her heart? ‘Do you have a family here?’ he asked curiously.

What would he say if she revealed that her family had ruled Aristo for generations? Kitty felt as though she were falling deeper and deeper into a mire. She wasn’t lying exactly, she told herself. She just wasn’t telling the whole truth. ‘I have a mother, sister, brothers…’ She faltered, thinking of the person who was missing from the list, and her heart contracted. ‘My father died a few months ago.’

‘I’m sorry.’

It wasn’t a throwaway remark—Kitty heard the note of compassion in Nikos’s voice, and tears, sudden and unbidden, stung her eyes. ‘I miss him so much,’ she admitted thickly. ‘Sometimes I see his face in my mind, hear his voice, and I can’t believe he isn’t here any more.’ She brushed her hand across her wet eyes, and was startled when Nikos captured her fingers in one of his strong hands and traced his thumb pad down her cheek, following the damp trail.

‘I’m sorry.’ She didn’t want to cry in front of him. Her grief was a private matter that she shared with no one, not even her family. She had been especially close to the king, and he had called her his gentle dove, but she had been taught never to display her emotions. One of the golden rules of the royal family was to exert self-control at all times. Embarrassed by her weakness, she tried to draw away from Nikos but he curled his arm around her shoulders and tugged her towards him.

‘Don’t be sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘I know how devastating it is to lose a parent. My mother died many years ago, but I will never forget her. You won’t forget your father, Rina, but the memories will become easier, and eventually you will think of him without the sadness you feel now.’

He smoothed her hair back from her face, and Kitty closed her eyes, soothed by the rhythmic stroking of his fingers. She felt his warm breath on her face and when she lifted her lashes she drowned in the depths of his midnight-dark gaze. He was so strong, so alive, and she wanted to absorb some of his strength because she felt weak and lost and achingly lonely inside.

Tentatively she rested her hand on his chest and felt the steady thud of his heart beneath her fingertips. It was utterly silent in the cave, as if they were cut off from the outside world and were the only two people in the universe. She could hear the sound of Nikos breathing—no longer steady but quicker, like his heartbeat; and she lifted her eyes to his face and stared at him, mesmerised by his masculine beauty.

Nikos knew he should move and break the spell that had been cast on him in the witching hour, but his muscles were locked. In the lamplight the tears that spiked Rina’s lashes glittered like tiny diamonds and the shadow of pain in her eyes moved him. It was more than fifteen years since his mother had died. He had been sixteen, a boy suddenly forced to be a man, but he still remembered the pain in his gut, the feeling that his insides had been ripped out, and the dull acceptance that the only person who had ever loved him had gone.

Rina’s loss was clearly still raw, the unspoken plea in her eyes asked for comfort, and that was all Nikos intended to give when he lowered his head and brushed his mouth softly over hers. For a moment she did not respond, but neither did she pull away and he tasted her again, delicately, offering her the warmth of his body and silently letting her know that he understood the agony of grief. Even when she parted her mouth beneath his and tilted her head back a fraction for him to deepen the kiss he was sure he was in control. But her lips were so beguilingly soft and the temptation to dip his tongue between them and drink the lingering nectar of champagne became overwhelming.

Slowly he tightened his arm around her and slid his hand into her hair. It felt like silk against his skin and his heart began to pound with a thudding drumbeat of desire as he tangled his fingers in the chestnut strands and drew her closer still so that her breasts pushed against the wall of his chest.

Kitty couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment when Nikos’s kiss changed from a gentle caress that soothed her fragile emotions to one of hungry passion that stirred her soul and sent molten heat flooding through her veins. All she knew was that the pressure of his mouth increased and slid over hers with increasing urgency, and his tongue no longer traced the shape of her lips but thrust between them with a fierce demand that made her tremble.

The voice in her head warned her that she was heading into dangerous waters and she should pull back now, before she was swept away. But she did not want to move out of his arms and feel cold and alone again. She wanted him to hold her even closer so that she could absorb the warmth of his body, and she curled her hands around his neck and pressed herself against him, making no protest when he drew her down so that they were stretched out on the sand.

Now they were lying hip to hip, and the unmistakable evidence of Nikos’s arousal jutting against her thighs caused her muscles to tense. This was wrong, very wrong, and it had to stop—now. But when he found her mouth once more in a slow, drugging kiss, she could not help but respond. Just a few more minutes in his arms, and then she would draw away from him, she promised herself. Surely it wasn’t too much to ask—a few passionate kisses with the sexiest man she had ever met before she returned to her lonely life. But now she no longer felt relaxed, she was aware of a restless ache deep in her pelvis, and when he lifted his mouth from hers she gave a little murmur of protest.

‘Theos, Rina!’ Nikos’s ragged voice echoed harshly in the cloistered quiet of the cave. ‘This is insanity. You should leave while I still have some measure of control.’ He stared down at her, his blood thundering in his veins when he saw the dazed passion in her eyes, and said slowly, ‘Because if you do not, I can’t guarantee that I will be able to stop.’

CHAPTER FOUR

NIKOS’S words were an unwelcome intrusion, slicing through the fog that clouded Kitty’s brain. She didn’t want to think, she wanted to feel and touch and lose herself in the world of sensory pleasure that his kisses evoked. She felt as though she were standing on the threshold of some new and wonderful place and Nikos was giving her the choice of stepping through the door, or closing it and turning back. Her mind flew to the royal ball and the loneliness she’d felt as she’d watched the couples on the dance floor. Everyone seemed to have a partner except her. All her friends were getting married and starting families but she had never even had a proper boyfriend. She recalled Vasilis Sarondakos’s cruel taunts that she would end up a virgin spinster, and despair tugged her heart. She didn’t want to be alone any more, and the flames of desire in Nikos’s eyes told her that tonight she didn’t have to be.

Tentatively she touched his face, and traced her finger across his mouth. She could hardly believe she was lying in the dark cave with the sexiest man she had ever met, and that sense of unreality numbed her to everything but her longing for him to kiss her again. Her innate shyness trapped her tongue, but the silent message in her eyes was enough for Nikos, and his chest heaved as he drew a harsh breath. The flare of feral hunger in his dark gaze sent a frisson of trepidation through Kitty, but then she forgot everything but the feel and touch and taste of him as he kissed her with an unrestrained hunger that warned her she had opened Pandora’s box and had better be prepared for the consequences.

The feel of Nikos’s hands brushing lightly against her skin as he unfastened the buttons on his jacket caused Kitty’s heart to jerk frantically beneath her ribs, and doubt flooded through her. The memory of Vasilis roughly pawing her breasts filled her mind, and she tensed, her breath coming in sharp little gasps of panic. But Nikos was not rough, and the glitter of male appreciation in his eyes as he slowly pushed the edges of the jacket apart and revealed the pouting fullness of her breasts sent a shiver of another kind through Kitty. Her panic gradually receded as he gently cupped each breast in his palms and felt their weight and softness.

He muttered something indistinct beneath his breath and colour flared briefly along his cheekbones. ‘Beautiful,’ he said thickly, and stroked his fingertip across one nipple in a feather-light caress. The sensation was so exquisite that Kitty gasped and then closed her eyes and felt the pleasure build when he brushed his thumb pad lightly over the crest of her other breast.

Nikos guided her hands to the front of his shirt and aided her in freeing the buttons. Hands shaking, Kitty pushed the material aside to reveal his broad, muscular chest; olive-gold satin covered with whorls of dark hair that arrowed down over his taut abdomen. He drew her to him and she caught her breath at that very first contact of a hard male chest pressed against the softness of her breasts. It felt so good, so right, and so very seductive that she burrowed closer still, loving the strength of his arms around her as he found her mouth once more and kissed her until she was breathless.

Nikos had convinced himself that he was in control and that he would only allow things to go so far before he called a halt. He had occasionally had one-night stands: brief, mutually satisfying encounters with sexually confident women who, like him, wanted to answer a basic need without the complication of emotions. But those occasions had always been on his terms and, although the sex had invariably been enjoyable, he had never been driven by uncontrollable desire. For reasons he did not understand Rina was different. The raging need he felt to make love to her had never happened before and he was shocked to realise that he couldn’t fight it.

Perhaps it was because she was so amazingly responsive and so unguarded in her pleasure when he caressed her? Frustrated by his inability to resist her, he gave her a hard, almost angry kiss, but she responded with such sweet passion that he gave up battling with himself and eased the pressure of his lips until the kiss evolved into a sensual tasting that became increasingly erotic. When she was utterly pliant in his arms he trailed his mouth lower, following the path of his hands to her breasts and drew lazy circles with his tongue around one nipple until it hardened to a taut peak.

The sensation of Nikos’s mouth on her breast was indescribable, and when he drew her nipple fully into his mouth Kitty instinctively arched her back. She curled her fingers into his hair and gave a soft cry, shifting her hips restlessly beneath him as the tugging sensation on her breast became unbearably exquisite.

‘Nikos…’ His name left her lips as a whimpered plea and she tossed her head from side to side when he transferred his mouth to her other swollen crest and metered the same delicious torture.

He growled something she did not catch, but his intention became clear when he unfastened the last button of his jacket and spread the material to reveal the faint curve of her stomach and the triangle of dark curls clustered at the junction between her thighs. He moved so that he was kneeling above her, and Kitty blushed when he trailed his eyes deliberately down her body. The knowledge that he had watched her undress earlier was no help. She had been unaware of his presence, and even beneath the bright moon she must have been partly in shadow. Now she was completely exposed to him. No man had ever seen her body before, and desperate shyness, combined with her insecurities about her figure, caused her to try and shield herself with her hands.

It was time to end this craziness, Nikos acknowledged, trying to ignore the stomach-dipping sense of disappointment that clawed at his insides. He couldn’t quite comprehend how they had got to this point. He’d had no intention of actually having sex with the waitress he’d met only hours before, but she was so sexy she would tempt a saint, let alone a mortal man who was burning up with sexual frustration.

But Rina had tensed, he could sense her uncertainty, and it would be unfair of him to try and persuade her to take their passion to its ultimate conclusion—even though he was certain that with patience and restraint he could arouse her to a level where she would willingly make love with him. Another moment and he would refasten the jacket and bring them both back down to reality, he told himself. He took a deep breath, nostrils flaring as he fought for control, but he could not resist stroking his hand lightly over her stomach, and then lower.

Her thighs were silky smooth, and he caught her faint gasp when he brushed his fingers through her silky curls. ‘Why do you want to hide yourself from me?’ he murmured huskily. ‘You have a beautiful body, Rina. I’m sure you can be in no doubt that I’m massively turned on by you,’ he added self-derisively, knowing that she could hardly miss the throbbing hardness of his erection pressed against her thigh.

‘Are you?’ her breathy little voice whispered in the silent cave and Nikos stiffened, thinking that she was taunting him. But there was no hint of teasing in the big brown eyes that were focused on him. She reminded him of a timid deer that was poised for flight, and yet, with gentle handling, might stay and allow him closer.

‘What do you think?’ he said quietly as he took her hand and laid it over the bulge beneath his trousers. He watched her eyes widen, her pupils hugely dilated, and could not resist lowering his head and kissing her softly swollen mouth. The feel of her lips parting beneath his threatened to shatter his self-control, and, tempted beyond bearing, he slid his hand between her legs and delicately probed the tightly closed edge of her femininity. Her whole body jerked with reaction, and he thought for a moment that she would reject him, but then she slowly relaxed, and his blood thundered in his veins when he gently parted her and discovered the unmistakable evidence of her arousal.

Kitty’s heart was beating so fast that she was sure it would burst through her chest as she felt Nikos part her, and she caught her breath when he slowly inserted a finger between her silken folds. She could feel the betraying dampness between her legs and was embarrassed that he would know she was aroused, but he gave a low growl of satisfaction and eased deeper inside her while his thumb pad found the tight little nub of her clitoris and tenderly stroked across it with devastating effect.

‘Oh…’ The shock of experiencing her first intimate male caress caused Kitty to cry out. The feel of Nikos’s finger moving inside her was bliss, rapture beyond anything she had ever imagined, and she trembled as intense sensations rippled through her. To her untutored body it seemed impossible that there could be more, that she wasn’t already at the peak, but the ache deep inside her was growing ever more demanding, and following an instinct as old as time she tried clumsily to pull him down on top of her.

‘Wait, agape.’ His voice was hoarse, as if he too was no longer in control of himself and was driven by a deeply ingrained, basic need that could no longer be denied. Kitty did not know how he divested himself of his clothes without her being aware of it, but suddenly he was naked and he spread the edges of his jacket that she was still wearing wide open and came down on her, the rough hairs that covered his thighs and abdomen feeling slightly abrasive against her skin. She felt the jutting length of his penis press into her belly—so shockingly rigid and alien to her that her eyes flew open and she stared up at him as he loomed over her, and swallowed at the hard gleam in his eyes.

What on earth was she doing? Was she really going to allow Nikos—a man she had never met until tonight—to make love to her? A tremor ran through her. She shouldn’t be here, should never have allowed the fiery attraction between them to burst into flame. Nikos was a notorious playboy and she was a princess from the royal house of Karedes—yet even knowing that it was wrong, she acknowledged with searing honesty that she didn’t want Nikos to stop.

‘I bet you’re still a virgin.’ Vasilis’s sneering voice echoed in her head, and rebellion flared in her heart. She was twenty-six, and it was time she became a woman, but out of fairness to Nikos she knew she must confess her inexperience.

‘Nikos,’ she whispered faintly, ‘I think I should tell you…’ But the rest of her words were lost beneath his mouth as he claimed her lips in a searing, soul-shattering kiss that dismantled the last of her doubts and fears.

‘Tell me what?’ he muttered. ‘You’re not on the Pill—is that it? Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.’ The sensual smokiness of his voice wrapped around Kitty like a cocoon, and she was only dimly conscious of him reaching into his jacket pocket and donning protection with a swift efficiency that spoke of plenty of practice. Then he came down on her once more, settled his hard, muscular body between her thighs, and she could feel the pulsing thickness of his shaft press impatiently against her opening.

This was it, the moment she had wondered about all of her adult life, and she still couldn’t quite believe that it was going to happen. Her heart was galloping, her breath coming in short, shallow pants, and suddenly her nerve deserted her and she tried to bring her legs together. But she was too late, Nikos was already surging forwards, and he gently but firmly pushed her thighs apart and entered her with one deep, powerful thrust that brought a shocked cry from Kitty’s lips.