ball was the annual fundraiser and, while he knew huge amounts were raised, it was also the chance for hospital staff to be celebrated.
‘I...do some stuff there.’ Her lashes lowered.
Wasn’t she just Ms Mysterious? ‘So why aren’t you with your friends?’
‘I don’t know them all that well.’
Perhaps she was a new recruit who’d won an invitation for this ball in the ballot they held for the hospital staff. Perhaps that was why she didn’t have any friends with her. It wouldn’t take long for her to find a few. Some surgeon would snap her up if he had any sense. Then it wouldn’t be long before she lost that arousing ability to blush.
A spear of possessiveness shafted through him at the thought of some other guy pulling her close. Surprising him into taking another step nearer to her. Too near.
‘Do you want to dance?’ He gave up on subtlety altogether.
She glanced beyond him. ‘No one is dancing yet.’
‘We could start the trend.’
She quickly shook her head, leaning back into the shadows so his body hid her from those in the ballroom. Damon guessed she didn’t want to stand out. Too late, to him she already did.
‘Don’t be intimidated by any of that lot.’ He jerked his head towards the crowds. ‘They might have the wealth but they don’t always have the manners. Or the kindness.’
‘You’re saying you don’t fit in either?’ The scepticism in her gaze as she looked him over was unmissable.
He resisted the urge to preen in front of her like some damn peacock. Instead he offered a platitude. ‘Does anyone truly fit in?’
Her gaze flashed up to his and held it a long moment. Her irises were such a vibrant blue he knew they had to be covered with contacts. The pretence of polite small talk fell away. The desire to reach for her—to strip her—almost overwhelmed him. Now that was inappropriate. He tensed, pushing back the base instinct. Damn, he wanted to touch her. Wanted her to touch him. That look in her eyes? Pure invitation. Except he had the feeling she was too inexperienced to even be aware of it.
But he couldn’t stop the question spilling roughly from his lips. ‘Are you going to do it?’
* * *
Eleni Nicolaides didn’t know what or how to answer him. This man wasn’t like anyone she’d met before.
Direct. Devastating. Dangerous.
‘Are you going to do it, Blue?’
‘Do what?’ she whispered vaguely, distracted by the play of dark and light in his watchful expression. He was appallingly handsome in that tall, dark, sex-on-a-stick sort of way. The kind of obviously experienced playboy who’d never been allowed near her.
But at the same time there was more than that to him—something that struck a chord within her. A new—seductive—note that wasn’t purely because of the physical magnetism of the man.
He captivated every one of her senses and all her interest. A lick of something new burned—yearning. She wanted him closer. She wanted to reach out and touch him. Her pulse throbbed, beating need about her body—to her dry, sensitive lips, to her tight, full breasts, to other parts too secret to speak of...
His jaw tightened. Eleni blinked at the fierce intensity that flashed in his eyes. Had he read her mind? Did he know just what she wanted to do right now?
‘Join in,’ he answered between gritted teeth.
She swallowed. Now her pulse thundered as she realised how close she’d come to making an almighty fool of herself. ‘I shouldn’t...’
‘Why not?’
So many reasons flooded her head in a cacophony of panic.
Her disguise, her deceit, her duty.
‘Blue?’ he prompted. His smile was gentle enough but the expression in his eyes was too hot.
Men had looked at her with lust before, but those times the lust hadn’t been for her but for her wealth, her title, her virtue. She’d never been on a date. She was totally untouched. And everyone knew. She’d read the crude conjecture and the jokes in the lowest of the online guttersnipes: THE VIRGIN PRINCESS!!!
All caps. Multiple exclamation marks.
That her ‘purity’ was so interesting and so important angered her. It wasn’t as if it had been deliberate. It wasn’t as if she’d saved herself for whichever prince would be chosen for her to marry. She’d simply been so sequestered there’d been zero chance to find even a friend, let alone a boyfriend.
And now it transpired that her Prince was to be Xander of the small European state of Santa Chiara. He certainly hadn’t saved himself for her and she knew his fidelity after their marriage was not to be expected. Discretion was, but not that sort of intimate loyalty. Or love.
‘Do you ever stop asking questions?’ she asked, trying for cool and sophisticated for these last few moments of escape.
Wishing she could be as accepting as so many others who didn’t doubt their arranged marriages. Because this was it. Tomorrow her engagement would be formally announced. A man she’d barely met and most certainly didn’t like would become her fiancé. She felt frigid at the thought. But those archaic royal rules remained unchallenged and offered certainty. The Princess of Palisades could never marry a commoner. This disguise tonight was a lame leap for five minutes of total freedom. The only five minutes she’d have.
‘Not if I’m curious about something.’
‘And you’re curious about—’
‘You. Unbearably. Yes.’
Heat slammed into every cell. She couldn’t hold his gaze but she couldn’t look away either. His eyes were truly blue—not enhanced by contacts the way hers were—and hot. He seemed to see right through her mask, her carefully applied powder, her whole disguise. He saw the need she’d tried to hide from everyone.
She was out of place and yet this was her home—where she’d been born and raised and where her future was destined, dictated by duty.
‘You have the chance to experience this...’ he waved at the ballroom full of beautiful people ‘...yet you’re hanging back in the shadows.’
He voiced her fantasy—reminding her of her stupid, crazy plan. She’d arranged for a large selection of costumes to be delivered to the nurses’ quarters at the hospital for tonight’s masquerade. No one would know that one dress, one wig, and one mask were missing from that order. All done so she, cloistered, protected, precious Princess Eleni, could steal one night as an anonymous girl able to talk to people not as a princess, but as a nobody.
She could be no one.
And yet, when it had come to it, she’d swiftly realised her error. She’d watched those guests arrive. Clustered together, laughing squads of friends—the kind she’d never had. How could she walk into that room
