The Greek Billionaire's Innocent Princess (4 page)

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.

DESPITEthe 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