The Ruthless Greek's Virgin Princess

Why fight it? It was all for appearances, after all. Soon they could go back to being enemies. Soon this momentary respite in their battle would be over. But at least for now there was a kind of truce, where time and resentment were suspended in the magic of the music and the dance. And the thought came from nowhere that if it felt this good to dance with this man when he hated you and you hated him, how much better must it feel if they actually loved each other?

She jerked her head away from his shoulder, snapping her eyes open and her thoughts back from the brink. She had no right to ask such questions. No right to wonder anything except when this interminable ordeal of being in Yannis’s arms would be over. What she needed was a distraction from her thoughts, and conversation was the only tool she had to hand.

‘I take it you’ve never married.’

She felt his intake of breath rather than heard it, felt it in the brief falter in his step and the slight jerk of his head above hers. ‘Not yet.’

‘No need to sound defensive,’ she responded with a nerve she didn’t know she possessed. ‘I’m sure there’s hope for you yet.’ Couples began drifting onto the dance floor around them, men and women with smiling faces in dusted-off suits and brightly coloured Sunday-best dresses. ‘So why is it proving so difficult?’ she persisted. ‘What is it you’re looking for in the woman of your dreams that’s proving so elusive?’

‘I don’t see a ring on your finger.’

‘I’ve been busy.’

‘And I haven’t?’

‘Touchе. Rafe told me you were driven to succeed. Tell me, when will you have amassed enough millions that you can settle back and relax?’

She felt his fingers tense around hers.

‘I thought you had a headache.’

‘It didn’t get me out of dancing. Why should it preclude me from conversation?’

He spun her around a couple who cut across their path, the sudden motion leaving her momentarily breathless and giddy, her fingers biting into him for support. ‘Frankly, I’m surprised you haven’t,’ she managed once they’d settled into a steadier rhythm again and thinking that if she kept talking, he might not notice how desperately she’d just grabbed for him. ‘I know people have always liked to label you and Rafe as playboys, but of the two of you, somehow I always picked you for a family man. I would have expected you to have been married long before now.’

‘Maybe I should have been!’ His voice was gruff as his feet ground to a sudden halt. He looked around at the couples filling the dance floor, as if assessing whether they’d done enough to satisfy their duty, before releasing her suddenly as if deciding they had. ‘Now you can go.’

CHAPTER TWO

WOMEN and headaches. Women with headaches. Who needed them?

Yannis tugged at his tie, then removed his gold and onyx striped cufflinks and let them clatter to the bedside table as he kicked off his shoes, taking in the empty suite and the king-sized four-poster bed with more than a touch of regret.

He could have brought Susannah. He hadn’t had to terminate their arrangement when he had, even if it had made so much sense at the time. Apart from her own tendency to play the headache card, it was always a risk, he knew, taking any woman to a wedding and expecting her to come away without thoughts of wedding gowns and honeymoons planted in her head.

But if he had brought her, at least he’d have someone here now. Someone to rub his shoulders and massage his temples and soothe this other throbbing part of him… Kolasi. Why the hell he felt like sex when he’d had to endure the worst night of his life was beyond him.

No, not the worst night of his life. That black night and the explosion of events it had detonated belonged to a time thirteen years ago. Tonight might have been uncomfortable, unpleasant at times, but nothing could surpass that poisoned night.

Still, surely he deserved some kind of compensation after having to face Marietta again? He reefed off his shirt and slung it to the floor before launching himself onto the bed, gazing unseeingly at the canopy above his head.

She’d taken offence to his comment that she’d changed, but there was no denying it. She’d grown into her body in the intervening years, her breasts fuller than he remembered, with hips that balanced their weight and rendered her shape more womanly than before.

He closed his eyes, but the pictures were still vivid of Marietta lying naked in his bed, her blonde hair like a halo around her head, the dip of her slim waist and the spring of blonde curls at the apex of her thighs, and the unmistakable mark on her breast where his teeth had bruised her perfect skin…

And yet it was the look in her eyes that had burned deeper than any memory. Wounded and hurt as he’d banished her from his bed and from his life.

He punched his pillow into submission before settling back down. She’d changed all right. Not that it mattered to him one way or another how she looked.

He sighed and folded his arms behind his head, restless and dissatisfied, wanting to put all thoughts of her out of his head and failing as another snippet from tonight’s encounter wormed its way into his mind. She’d said she’d thought him a family man. Maybe long ago he had been. But that was before he’d learned what families expected of their own.

And even though he’d never married Elena in the end—not after that night—the relief had been short-lived, the ensuing financial fallout consuming all his attention. It had taken years of working alongside Rafe to recover the family fortune, years when he’d pushed himself mentally in order to come up with the kind of deals that would garner millions, years in which he’d pushed himself physically, spending hours in the gym, honing muscles that would keep his body as exercised as his mind. And all those years there had been no time for women in his life, unless they came with a warm body, a cold heart and a definite use by date.

No, marriage and family had no place on his list of priorities.

None whatsoever.

He was already taking breakfast when she came down. Marietta hesitated before stepping out onto the vine-covered terrace, needing a moment to gather her thoughts while she took in the picture of Yannis sitting at the table with his back to her, sipping his coffee and reading the papers.

She considered turning around and withdrawing—she could always get something delivered to her room—had half convinced herself to do so, when he seemed somehow to sense her presence and look over his shoulder. Only for a second, but he’d seen her. The cold acknowledgment in his eyes had been enough to tell her that. And she knew that if she disappeared now, it would look as if she was running away. He’d already accused her once of being afraid. She would not give him the satisfaction of thinking so again.

So instead she steeled her shoulders and pushed herself from her vantage point, the kitten heels of her sandals clicking rhythmically as she crossed the tiled terrace. In a world suddenly shrunken to this one shaded terrace and the man occupying it, the noise seemed bold. Therapeutic. Necessary.

For why should she shrink away and make a quiet approach? She had nothing to be ashamed of. She’d made an embarrassing mistake when she was just a teenager, she’d accepted it and got on with her life. She’d dealt with it. He was clearly the one with the problem.

‘Buongiorno,’ she called, determined to be upbeat and not show him how much she wished she could avoid another encounter with him and so soon. ‘What a perfect day for a wedding.’

And it was. Above them the sky was an endless blue, while the sun cast jewels upon the azure sea beneath, with only the shard of rock known as Iseo’s Pyramid, the remnants of an ancient caldera, slicing through the perfect water.

She turned her back from the view and sat down opposite him, her bravado not extending to trusting herself to meet his eyes. And yet something, whether it be curiosity, mere impulse, or a compulsion she had no way of fighting, made her lift her gaze to his face.

She should have known he would be looking at her.

For a moment their eyes connected, almost fused, before she managed to tear her eyes away and instruct the maid who had just appeared to fill her coffee cup, grateful for the diversion.

‘Sleep well?’ she asked, some inner minx determined to provoke him, anything not to let him see how much he rattled her. She hadn’t, and it had taken her some time this morning to repair the damage of a broken sleep. And if the tightness around his eyes was any indication…

He folded the newspaper he’d been reading and sat back in his chair, planting his hands behind his head. Lazy movements, every one of them, and yet every one of them compulsive viewing. ‘I slept fine.’

‘Excellent,’ she said, smiling too enthusiastically. If she’d needed a reminder of the width of his chest or the muscled firmness of his torso, he’d just given it to her. Along with a glimpse of olive skin with just a dusting of dark hair in the vee at his open-necked shirt. ‘I’m so pleased.’ She pounced on the yoghurt, drizzling on some island honey and declining an offer of pastries and bread. ‘I’m meeting Sienna at ten,’ she offered by way of an explanation that wasn’t needed other than to give her mind something neutral to focus on. ‘I don’t have long.’

‘Wouldn’t you be better having a decent breakfast?’

‘There’s something indecent about yoghurt and honey? I never realised.’

She lifted the spoon to her mouth, aware that he was watching her every move, and a flash of annoyance was replaced by another, more sinful, urge.

Let him watch.

She paused, her lips slightly parted, her eyes half closed in anticipation, before she fully opened her mouth and swept the thick creamy yoghurt from the spoon.

There was definitely something indecent about hermouth. As he watched, a speck of honey clung to one lip, a tiny dew drop that caught the sun and glistened gold, and he had to fight every part of himself to remain in his chair and not lean over and remove it himself. If only he could work out how to do it without her knowing. He was still watching, mesmerised, when the tip of her pink tongue emerged and licked it from lips that settled back into a smile.

She might well have licked him. Electricity sizzled its way south as he remembered a time when she had. Virgin that she was, tentative though it had been, she’d touched him with her tongue. Tasted him.

And it hadn’t been enough.

‘It’s good,’ she said, scooping her spoon into her bowl once again? ‘Maybe you should indulge in something indecent yourself.’