“She was upset when I told her I’d asked if you’d allow me this one show, but you’d refused.”
He had. The very idea was preposterous.
“Your sister should realize that it was not your decision to make,” he said. “Why bring this humiliation and shame down on you now? What did she hope to gain?”
“I doubt she thought that through,” she said. “She’s angry to have lost the chance to model and so she’s sought to make me suffer as well.”
“Suffer is putting it mildly.” He paced before the cold hearth, outraged that her sister had brought this shame down on them, furious that Demetria had yet to show her own anger at her sibling. “Your sister has insulted the future Queen of Angyra. She’s insulted the King!”
She flinched and turned a frightful shade of white. “As I said before, I am sure she never considered the repercussions.”
He was not so sure. This act had taken malice and forethought. The revelation came when he desperately needed his kingdom to see him and Demetria as responsible leaders. Not two oversexed young people who’d betrayed the favored Crown Prince.
He muttered a dark curse. “I can’t begin to imagine the trouble this will heap on us.”
Her head bent and her slender shoulders bowed. “I’m so sorry. I vowed not to follow in my mother’s footsteps,” she said. “Yet I failed.”
Seeing her looking defeated tore at his resolve to remain unmoved. He hated that she was getting to him again. But he hated it more that she was ready to shoulder this all alone.
“No! Your sister failed you.” He dropped on the sofa beside her and drew her close, cursing silently when he felt a tremor shoot through her. “The scandal surrounding your mother—I need to know the whole story.”
A weary sighed escaped her, and she collapsed a bit more against him. “Bear in mind that I only know what Father told me, for my mother died giving birth to me.”
“I didn’t know that.”
Hell, he knew very little about this woman he was to marry other than her father was a greedy man. He hadn’t even been aware that her sister was a half-sibling. Hadn’t known that she had sought a career. Hadn’t been aware she’d been her sister’s protector—the mother figure that her sister had now clearly abused.
One year ago he hadn’t even known what Demetria looked like now that she was an adult. He hadn’t been curious about her.
Which made this particular drama today all the more vexing, for if he’d known about Demetria none of this would have happened.
But all he’d known was that she was the daughter of Sandros Andreou, a man he disliked for his shady business practices, and his first wife, a Greek nobleman’s daughter who’d gotten embroiled in a scandal with a married man. Learning that she was their daughter had made it easier to think the worst of her.
Yet right now he was finding it impossible to blast her with the anger that boiled and seethed inside him. Dammit, he wanted to comfort her—for it was obvious that she was suffering over her sister’s duplicity far more than he.
“Please. Go on with your story,” he said, when the silence became too much to bear.
Again a sigh. A hesitation that told him she wasn’t comfortable disclosing all. “According to my father, Mother fell madly in love with a suave Italian she met one summer. They had an affair, and my mother was certain marriage would follow.”
“If the reporter was right, the man was already married with a family,” Kristo said. “And your mother was unfaithful as well, for she was affianced to another man.”
The irony of her daughter repeating history staggered him. But the fact that her sister had blabbed about his tryst with Demetria to the world infuriated him. It was an infraction he couldn’t let go of.
“She was crushed when she learned the truth, and went into hiding at her father’s house,” she said. “But instead of her shame and humiliation fading into history, the story turned into a scandal when her lover’s wife reported the story in retaliation. My mother’s fiancé called off the wedding, and my maternal grandfather quickly arranged my mother’s marriage to my father.”
He imagined the old Greek had been well paid to take the scandalous daughter off his hands. Andreou would do anything for money.
“So now you have, in a manner of speaking, repeated history?”
“Yes.” She stared at her clasped hands, still seeming only sorrowful instead of angry as was her due. “I was told the story faded until my mother died, nine months after that, and it was briefly in the news again when I was six.”
“Why then?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know, but it was a horrible time for me. That’s when I was nicknamed ‘scandal’s daughter’ at school. I didn’t want to go, but Father made me. He said it would make me stronger, though I certainly didn’t feel strong at the time!” She flushed and looked away. “But of course you must have known all of this.”
“No, none of it.” But hearing it now touched him deeply.
It had taken courage for her to deal with the scandal at such a tender age. Her mother’s jaded past was her Achilles’ heel.
His as well now. She was his woman. Would be his Queen.
And now they would have to deal with a scandal that could rock Angyra. It wouldn’t have been such an issue for Gregor for he was the favored son. Not so for Kristo.
“What does this mean for us?” she asked.
“It is difficult to tell at this point, but it will likely not be good.”
He pushed to his feet and crossed to the open French doors. The breeze washed over him but failed to cool his temper.
Below, the town was coming fully awake. The news of this would spread through every house like a summer storm. The question remained what damage it would leave in its wake.
“Your sister will regret causing this uproar,” he said.
“You can’t mean to seek vengeance against her.” She stepped to the rail and stood just out of arm’s reach, but he felt her gaze bore into him, felt her silently imploring him.
He refused to look at her. But the very ends of her long dark hair lifted and moved with the wind, as if alive and dancing down her slender back, as if trying to get his attention. Her exotic jasmine scent ribboned around him like ethereal scarves and beckoned him closer.
Not that he needed any urging.
It was his own personal challenge to resist her—holding himself back, not giving her the benefit of knowing he was wildly attracted to her even though her sister’s interference could cause him untold grief. Even though he was furious with her sibling.
“Kristo?” she said, laying a tentative hand on his arm. “Please. You can’t mean to seek revenge on my sister.”
He jolted as if hit with lightning, when it was only that damned bolt of lust that he’d yet to overcome. But he would find a way to tamp it down. To control it instead of it controlling him.
“That is exactly what I intend to do,” he said, his voice as dark as his mood.
“I can’t let you hurt my sister,” she said.
“I don’t intend to hurt her,” he said. “It is your father’s responsibility to see that she atones for this fiasco she’s brought upon us. I assure you that when Sandros Andreou realizes that his benefits as the father of my Queen could be jeopardized he will seek retribution himself.”
Her hand slipped from his arm, and a cool distance yawned between them. Good! He couldn’t think straight when she was hanging on him. Never mind that she’d barely pressed a hand to his. It had felt as if she was clinging.
“Please,” she implored again, stubbornly defending her sister. “Don’t you see? She’s young and troubled. She does these things just to gain attention.”
He whirled on her then, and grabbed her upper arms, dragging her so close he could see the flicker of uncertainty dance in her eyes. “I am not sure if you suffer from blind devotion to your family, or if you are so used to catering to her whims that you automatically rush to her defense even whe
n it isn’t warranted.”
“I was the only one she could turn to when she was little,” she said.
“But she’s no longer a child. She has chosen a malicious way to strike back at you.”
She looked up at him with pleading eyes. “Please. Just wait a bit before you contact my father. Let me talk to her.”
He ground his teeth, furious with her. Demetria was blind to her sister’s machinations. Her loyalty rested with someone who didn’t deserve her concern. A woman she still saw as a child she needed to protect.
It was clear to him that her sister had exploited that nurturing trait in Demetria. That her sibling was as conniving as Andreou—a man who fed on greed.
But how the hell could he make Demetria see her sister for what she was? What did he have to do to make her open her eyes to the truth?
“Enough talk. I will handle this my way.”
He strode to the door. He would not tolerate this slur on Demetria, for any insult to her was to him as well. And to Angyra!
But he’d barely made it halfway across the room before she launched herself after him.
“No,” she said, slamming her back against the closed door. “Kristo, give this more thought.”
Was she mad? “There is nothing more to think about. Now, move,” he said, in no mood to haggle with her any longer.
“No! I am not letting you walk out of here when you are in this black mood.”
Did she actually think that she could stop him? “You have no idea just how dark my mood could become if we continue to stand here arguing about your sister’s interference in our lives when the answer is perfectly clear to me.”
But instead of being sane and getting out of his way she raised her chin in defiance. “I can’t let you do this.”
That was not the thing to say to him. “You can’t stop me.”
He yanked her flush against his chest in a move that was meant to intimidate. To put her in her place. To put an end to this ridiculous standoff.
Except the moment they touched, a different fury exploded within him, with all the raw force of a summer storm. He certainly wasn’t a stranger to the pull of desire, but he hadn’t experienced anything this powerful since that day with her on the beach.
And that was another sore spot, for since then he had yet to meet another woman who moved him so, who was gripped with the same passions as he. She popped into his thoughts at the oddest times, and haunted his dreams.
She was never to be trusted, yet the thought of her in his brother’s arms had enraged him. Except now she was in his arms. Now she was his.
There was no reason to keep her at arm’s length any longer. He wanted her. He’d have her.
He ripped out a rough growl and tightened his hold on her. The throb of her own desire pulsed through him.
“No,” she breathed, eyes huge, shadowed with a clear understanding of just what erotically dangerous emotion she’d awakened by baiting him.
“Yes,” he rasped, on fire for her.
A heartbeat later his mouth claimed hers in a kiss that was long and lusty and sizzling with all the emotions he’d held in check.
Always he held back with women.
Except with her.
She drew the best and worst out in him. God help them, for they would surely drown together in a maelstrom of passion.
He pulled back once to drag air into his starving lungs. For a charged moment the haze of passion cleared and sanity flickered before him.
Her fists pressed against the wall of his chest but her resistance had ebbed. The wide eyes that had pleaded with him were now clouded with a mixture of passion and confusion.
He should leave now, while he could. He shouldn’t take her when his emotions were this wild and troubled.
And perhaps he would have left if that tiny sound of need hadn’t escaped her parted lips. If her fingers hadn’t uncurled from those tight fists and splayed on his chest.
One strap had slid down her arm, baring skin that was as smooth as cream. At that moment she looked like a Grecian goddess come to life. Diana, perhaps. Or Persephone.
Or Venus?
Reason went up in flames.
He hissed out a breath of raw need. He’d sooner stop breathing than leave her now, when all he could think about was running his fingers down the slender slope of her neck, down to the heaving rise of her bosom, across the nipples that had pebbled against the delicate cloth of her dress.
Dammit, he needed her. He’d have her now!
He wanted his mouth to adore her body again. To kiss every inch of her smooth skin. To savor her taste and texture until she screamed his name. Until she begged him to take her.
He dipped his head and captured her mouth, unleashing a side of him that he’d kept reined in. The moment his lips molded to hers the heat of her passion sent his last coherent thought up in flames.
A shiver ripped through her. Her fingers dug into his shoulders, clinging almost desperately.
Her lips moved against his with the same desperate hunger, on and on, until they were both lightheaded and gasping for breath.
They broke apart slightly to draw in air, foreheads pressed together and breaths sawing hard and fast. Her fingers wadded his shirt, the nails grazing his skin to stoke the fire deep in him, her breath hot on his neck.
If he’d set out to put her in her place, to show her who was the ruler in this, he’d surely failed—for it was clear to him at this moment that her place was right here in his arms. He didn’t want to dominate her now. Just to make love with her.
“This would be the ideal time to stop, before this goes too far,” he said, surprised his voice remained steady, with his blood roaring in his ears and his skin so tight and hot he thought he’d split in two.
“It would,” she said, nipping his lower lip. “But why should we?”
CHAPTER SIX
HE RAN the pad of his thumb over her lips and a sensual energy uncurled within her, leaving her trembling and leaning into his touch. She stared into his dark eyes and felt as if she were drowning in passion so intense that it sapped the strength from her limbs.
Since the day they’d met on the beach he’d invaded her thoughts as surely as his ancestors had invaded this island and claimed it for themselves.
There was certainly nothing to gain by saving themselves for their wedding night. In fact it would be wiser to sate their passions now, for then she wouldn’t have that expectation later. She wouldn’t be tempted to think how that special night should be between newlyweds.
His scent, his kiss, was already branded on her memory—the yardstick by which she’d unconsciously judged other men. Men who should have counted, who should have captured her heart—instead of this dark prince she’d fallen madly, passionately in love with.
Not his brother, the man she’d been destined to marry. But Kristo. Always Kristo invaded her dreams.
It was time to face her future. Face the truth she’d ignored for a year.
Kristo Stanrakis was an addiction she couldn’t shake. He had captured her interest long ago. Now he held her fate in his oh-so-strong hands.
All she was to him was an arranged wife with the correct lineage. The means to an end.
Yet that still didn’t stop the yearning that plagued her. It didn’t lessen the desire that coursed through her—desire he set ablaze with one heated look.
“You are mine,” he said, sliding his palms down her sides and setting off a seismic tremor inside her.
His arrogance should disgust her. Instead she heard herself saying, “That goes both ways, Kristo!”
“Vixen,” he said, before his lips captured hers.
Her resistance popped like a soap bubble as the flames of desire licked over her. She clung to him, desperate to know what it felt like to dance this close to the sun again.
She wanted to see if the reality of finally making love with this man came close to the teasing memory of hot kisses and intimate caresses that had haunted her for a year. S
he wanted to fill this awful emptiness inside her.
Their lips met in a collision of scorching need. The flames of desire danced around her and her skin pebbled, burning for him.
His hands were all over her, pushing up her shirt. He was tearing himself from her while he whipped it over her head. He pulled her up against him a breath later, and the crush of bared breasts to hot muscular chest surely set off sparks in the room. Her nipples budded and burned, and heat arrowed straight to her heart to explode in a burst of color.
No, this was far more intense than that day on the beach. This was cataclysmic. Primitive. Greedy.
His mouth fused on hers in a deep hot lick of desire that made her toes curl and her heart thrum with need. She dragged her nails down his sides to find the fastenings on his trousers.
She’d never been bold with a man, but he brought that out in her as well. Slowly she undid his trousers, her knuckles riding along the hot length of his sex.
A low growling sound came from him, the vibration singing along her nerves. She felt power flow into her limbs, felt the rightness of being with him pulse in her veins.
Still it wasn’t enough. She glided her hands down his hot muscular body, her open mouth following the lazy path, tasting salt and spice and finding it a powerful aphrodisiac.
He muttered a torrent of Greek, his voice no more than a rumble of sound. The heat and length of his sex branded her belly when she longed to have him in her.
She heard the button at her waistband pop. Shivered as the pad of his thumb rode the zipper down her side. Then her skirt and her panties were gone.
It went wild after that. As primitive as that day on the beach. Only this time nothing was holding them back. Nothing stopped them from taking this to the limit and beyond.
Their hands were all over each other, tossing embers on a fire that was already burning out of control. They strained against each other in a fluid rhythm that was timeless, mouths feasting on each other in wild abandon, tongues dueling in hot promise of what was to come.
She was dimly aware of him sweeping her up in his arms, of feeling a tremor streak through him. Of feeling the evidence of his desire against her hip.
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