The Greek Billionaire's Innocent Princess (14 page)

‘That’s not the reason,’ she snapped, stung by his scathing tone. She reached into her handbag

for the magazine that Vasilis had given her, all the anger and misery that had been building

inside her for the past few hours exploding in a torrent of emotion. ‘You’ve made a fool of me,

Nikos—not just here in Greece, but everywhere.
Glamorous
magazine has a worldwide

circulation and everyone, including most of the guests at our wedding, will have seen
these
…’

She hurled the magazine at him, open at the page of the damning photos. ‘Everyone must have

been laughing at me behind my back— fat, frumpy Kitty whose new husband spent the weeks

preceding the wedding flaunting his affair with his beautiful blonde mistress.

‘No wonder there’s widespread speculation about the real reason you married me. Most people

will have put two and two together and realised I’m pregnant. Like me, everyone who has seen

those pictures will know you never had any intention of being a faithful husband.’

Kitty took a deep, shuddering breath, shocked to realise that her whole body was trembling and

her heart was beating so hard that she could feel it slamming beneath her ribs. It couldn’t be

good for the baby. She placed a hand protectively on her stomach and her fury drained away as a

wave of nausea swept over her. She could hear a peculiar rushing noise in her ears and suddenly

strong hands were on her shoulders, forcing her to sit down on the bed, and her head was pushed

down towards her knees so that her blood rushed to her brain.

‘Take a deep breath…and another.’ Nikos’s voice sounded harsh with impatience, and silly tears

welled in Kitty’s eyes and slid down her cheeks when he continued savagely, ‘If you carry on

like this you could lose the baby.’

‘Maybe you’d be relieved if I did,’ Kitty whispered. ‘At least then we could end this façade of a

marriage.’

He swore long and hard and leaned down so that his face was level with hers. ‘Accuse me of

whatever else you like,’ he said grittily, ‘but never that. Our child was conceived by accident but

I do not regret it, even if you do.’

‘I don’t—of course I don’t,’ she denied quickly, scrubbing her wet face with the back of her

hand. ‘And I know you want the baby—just as I know it’s the only reason you married me.’

Nikos stared at her, his expression unfathomable. ‘You almost passed out. I’m going to call the

doctor.’

Kitty shook her head frantically. ‘I don’t need a doctor. I’m fine now, I was just upset—that’s

all.’

‘About the photos?’ Nikos glanced down at the copy of the magazine in his hands. ‘Where did

you get this? I’m surprised you read this sort of trash.’

‘I don’t usually. Vasilis gave it to me.’ Kitty flushed beneath Nikos’s hard stare. She felt

horribly embarrassed by her loss of temper, and wished he would go away and leave her alone,

but the determined gleam in his eyes warned her he was not going to let the matter drop. ‘I knew

you had flown to America after I’d agreed to marry you, but I would have preferred you to have

been honest about your reasons for going,’ she said stiffly. ‘Obviously you didn’t go on business,

but to see your mistress, and you didn’t even bother to be discreet about it,’ she added bitterly.

‘You’ve made me a laughing stock, Nikos, and I’ll never forgive you.’

When he made no reply she lifted her head to find him studying the magazine photos intently—

and probably comparing her to the gorgeous Shannon, she thought bleakly. He looked at her, and

his dark eyes seemed to bore into her skull, as if he could divine her thoughts.

‘It’s true that I went to the US with the express intention of seeing Shannon,’ he said steadily.

‘We had enjoyed a relationship for several months before I met you. It was a casual affair; we

both lead busy lives and we met up whenever we happened to be in the same country. But I owed

it to her to end it face to face rather than by a long-distance phone call.’

Kitty’s heart jerked at the words ‘end it’ but the photos still haunted her. ‘In those pictures you

and Shannon are rather more than
face to face
,’ she said sarcastically. ‘The two of you are

practically naked and superglued together. I don’t
care
—you understand,’ she insisted sharply. ‘I just hate the idea that our wedding guests felt sorry for me— Princess Plump who couldn’t hold

onto her man even before the trip down the aisle.’

‘
Theos
, Kitty, why do you have such a low opinion of yourself?’ Nikos growled impatiently.

‘You have a fantastic body and you know damn well I can’t keep my hands off you. If I’d had a

better hold on my self-control the night we met, we might not be in this mess now,’ he added

tersely. ‘These pictures are
old
.’ He waved the magazine at her. ‘They were taken several months ago, soon after Shannon and I had met, and at the height of our affair. When I visited her three

weeks ago to tell her I was getting married, we met in New York. We were nowhere near the

Caribbean beach shown in the photos.’

‘But the article gives the impression that the pictures were taken recently,’ Kitty said faintly, her head reeling.

Nikos shrugged. ‘Of course. Publications like this print rubbish all the time, and unfortunately

there’s nothing to stop them from digging out archive photos. The written piece is careful not to

suggest that it is actually referring to the pictures above it. I’ll contact my lawyers and see if we can get an apology from the magazine, but to be honest I’ve learned to ignore the paparazzi and I

suggest you do the same.’

That was easy for him to say—he hadn’t been made to feel an idiot. But it seemed pointless to

say so, and Kitty suddenly felt so drained that she could barely think straight. She could not

bring herself to look at Nikos, and she gave a little start of surprise when he hunkered down

beside her and slid his hand beneath her chin to tilt her face to his.

‘I married you today with every intention of being a faithful husband,’ he said with a quiet

intensity that shook her. ‘I admit I did not live the life of a monk before I met you, but now there is the baby to consider, and I will do my duty towards you and our child. Shannon is in my past,’

he continued as Kitty tried to ignore the dull feeling inside her at his emphasis on the word

‘duty’. ‘You are my future, Kitty.’

His hand lay on her thigh, and seemed to burn her flesh through her silk skirt. He looked

devastatingly sexy with his dark hair falling over his brow, and she was seriously tempted to

place her hand on his bare chest and run her fingers through the dark hairs that arrowed down his

flat abdomen and disappeared beneath the waistband of his trousers.

She knew he wanted to take her to bed, could see the feral hunger in his eyes and hear the

sudden quickening of his breath. But did he want to make love to her because he desired her, or

because he believed it was his right to have sex with his wife whom he had only married out

of
duty
?

‘But we’re not like most newly married couples,’ Kitty said carefully. ‘We married because I’m

pregnant, and I feel that we should wait a while before we—’ she could feel her face burning

beneath his sardonic stare ‘—before we have relations.’

‘Can I take it that by “have relations” you mean, have sex?’

‘We barely know each other,’ Kitty snapped, stung by the mockery in his tone. In her agitation

she jumped up from the bed, and he straightened up so that he towered over her.

‘Agreed, but we will get to know each other a lot quicker if we share a bed,’ Nikos said tersely.

‘That isn’t the “getting to know” I mean.’ Kitty bit her lip, aware from his grim expression that

Nikos’s desire was rapidly turning to anger. ‘In a few months from now we will be parents.

Surely we should spend some time before the baby comes learning about each other’s thoughts

and feelings? There has to be more to our relationship than just sex.’

The flame that had warmed his eyes died, and now they were dark and icy cold. ‘Actually there

doesn’t,’ he told her harshly. ‘Sexual awareness drew us together in the first place, and the child

that was created as a result of our passion is the only other link between us.’

He saw the flash of hurt in her eyes, and for a fleeting second something tugged at his heart, but

he instantly dismissed it. Kitty’s suggestion of sharing their thoughts and feelings was his idea of hell. His thoughts were his own; he’d learned long ago, when he was growing up on the streets,

to keep his own counsel and trust no one—and that lesson had been brutally reinforced by his ex-

wife.

‘We know we are sexually compatible,’ he continued in a coldly clinical tone, ‘and I believe that

is as good a basis for marriage as any. The chemistry between us burns as fiercely now as it did

on the night of the ball,’ he insisted when she shook her head. ‘But perhaps this will convince

you.’

‘Nikos…’ He moved before she had time to react, and her cry of protest was lost when he

snaked his arm around her waist and lowered his head to claim her mouth in a searing kiss. His

lips were firm, moving over hers with fierce urgency, while his tongue probed the stubborn line

of her mouth with an implacable determination to force her response.

And it was growing harder and harder to resist him. Crushed against his chest, Kitty could feel

the heat that emanated from him, and smell his clean, male scent—a mixture of soap and

aftershave and another, more subtle scent of male pheromones— that inflamed her senses. When

he had kissed her in the church she had wanted him to never stop, and now she felt that same

sense of being swept away to a place where nothing but Nikos and the mastery of his touch

mattered. Her mind and body were locked in a battle where caution waged against the sensations

he was arousing in her and she could feel her resolve slipping away.

He slid his hand beneath her hair and cupped her nape, angling her head so that he could deepen

the kiss to something so flagrantly erotic that Kitty’s will crumbled and she sagged against him,

parting her mouth beneath his. She was barely aware of him unfastening her jacket and sliding it

over her shoulders. And then somehow they were on the bed and he had removed her bra, and

she gasped when he cupped her breasts in his palms and stroked his fingers lightly across her

nipples, so that they swelled to tight, tingling peaks.

He was her husband; they were tied together because of the child they had created during a brief

passionate encounter, and maybe he was right, maybe sex would be a start to them building a

relationship. She was so confused by what she wanted, but the solid ridge of his arousal nudging

her thigh drove the uncertainty from her mind and replaced it with piercing desire that caused

molten heat to flood between her legs. She gave up trying to fight him and the dictates of her

treacherous body, and curled her arms around his neck, but instead of responding to the tentative

foray of her tongue into his mouth, Nikos lifted his head and stared down at her, his dark eyes

glittering.

‘Yes, the chemistry is still there, isn’t it,
agape
?’ he drawled, his mouth curving into a mocking smile when she blinked at him dazedly. To her shocked disbelief he rolled off her and sauntered

out of the room, leaving her lying half naked on the bed. He returned almost instantly with what

looked like a pile of laundry in his hands.

‘Sheets,’ he told her. ‘You’ll need them if you’re going to make up a bed on the sofa in your

dressing room.’ He paused and his eyes trailed an insolent path over her flushed cheeks and bare

breasts where her nipples were still jutting provocatively. ‘Unless you’ve changed your mind

about wanting to sleep alone, of course?’

‘I…’ Kitty’s tongue seemed to have cleaved to the roof of her mouth, and she felt sick with

humiliation that she had succumbed so easily to his potent charm.

‘Still not sure, I see.’ Nikos laughed softly as he walked over to the bed, dropped the sheets into

her lap and scooped her up into his arms, blithely ignoring her sharp cry of protest as her battered pride finally woke up. ‘We both know that I could make love to you for the rest of the night, and

you would be willing and responsive in my arms,’ he told her with breathtaking arrogance that

made her want to hit him, ‘but I don’t want a reluctant bride. I have never taken a woman against

her will in my life, and I don’t intend to start with you,
agape
.’

He strode though the connecting doors into her dressing room and dumped her unceremoniously

on the sofa. ‘You know where to find me when you’ve admitted the truth to yourself.’

‘The truth being that I find you irresistible, I suppose?’ Kitty said grittily as she clutched the

sheets to her breasts. She hated him, and hated herself more for her pathetic inability to resist

him. ‘You’ll be waiting a long time.’

In reply he dropped a brief, stinging kiss on her lips that left her aching for more. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said confidently. ‘The sofa pulls out to a bed, by the way, and it’s extremely comfortable.

Sleep well, Kitty—’ he turned back in the doorway and gave her another mocking smile as he

murmured ‘—if you can.’

THEsofa bed was as comfortable as Nikos had promised, but Kitty tossed and turned beneath

the sheets for most of the night as she fought the urge to bury her face in the pillows and cry.