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
