The dramatic effect was accentuated by a gold choker around her slender throat, and her dark hair was held in an elegant knot at the base of her neck. She wore large hooped earrings and her eyes were darkly defined, her lips the most ravishing of reds.
Her eyes, wide with obvious awe up until this point, narrowed. ‘Has Natalia dressed many of your dates?’
There was a definite hint of tartness in her tone. He eyed her contemplatively. Was that tartness a sign of jealousy?
Jealousy was an emotion he had no time for. He neither cared about his lovers’ past bedmates nor felt any pangs of regret when their time was over and they found someone new. If during their time together any sign of possessiveness reared its head, he would end the relationship there and then. Jealousy was dangerous—as dangerous as love itself—driving men and women to lose control of themselves with unimaginable consequences.
And yet hearing that tinge of jealousy filled his chest in a manner he didn’t even want to begin contemplating. Not when he couldn’t take his eyes from her...couldn’t stop his imagination running wild about what lay beneath that stunning dress.
His imagination had run riot since the day before, when she’d played for him semi-naked.
In his head he’d imagined she would wear practical underwear—not the matching lacy black numbers that set off the porcelain of her skin. As slender as he’d imagined, her womanly curves were soft, her breasts high and surprisingly full. What lay beneath those pretty knickers? he’d wondered, over and over. Had she taken the route so many women seemed to favour nowadays? Or had she left herself as nature intended...?
Halfway through her playing he’d smothered a groan, thinking it would be a damn sight better if she were fully naked, as his wild imaginings were utter torture. The expression in her eyes had only added to his torment.
For the first time in his life he’d come close to breaking a promise. He’d known that if he’d taken her into his arms she would have been his. But it hadn’t only been his promise that had kept him propped against the cottage wall. It had been the shyness he’d seen when she’d first stood before him wearing only her underwear—a shyness he’d not seen since his lusty teenage years. An innocence that made him certain Amalie had minimal experience with men.
That innocence had acted like an alarm. A warning. Alas, it had done nothing to diminish the ache, which hadn’t abated a touch, not in his groin or in his chest. All day, helping his brothers with the evening’s arrangements, his mind had been elsewhere—in the cottage, with her.
‘Natalia was my grandmother’s official dressmaker,’ he said softly. ‘She made her wedding dress and my mother’s wedding dress. She’s mostly retired now, but as a favour to me agreed to make your ball gown. I’ve never sent another woman to her.’
Dark colour stained her cheeks—almost as dark as the wide dilation of her eyes. Was that what her eyes would look like when she was in the throes of passion...?
The thought was broken when the first guests were led into the Banquet Room. Two footmen stood at the door, handing out the evening’s booklets—a guide for each guest that was adorned with purple ribbon. Each booklet contained a full guest list, the menu, wine list and a seating plan, along with a list of the music to be played throughout the evening by the Agon Orchestra. The orchestra’s role tonight should go some way towards mitigating any underlying resentment that a French orchestra would be playing at the official gala.
As his brothers had already given the official welcome, Talos’s job was to keep the guests entertained until everyone had arrived.
He would have preferred to be at the main entrance, shaking hands. He hadn’t been joking when he’d described the tedium of what was about to ensue. Almost two hundred guests filed into the Banquet Room, the majority of whom were, at the most, distant acquaintances but all of whom expected to be remembered personally and made to feel like the most important guest there.
Normally Theseus would take this role, and Talos would line up with Helios to do the official greeting. If there was one thing Talos couldn’t abide, it was small talk, having to feign interest in interminably dull people. Tonight, though, he wanted to keep Amalie at his side—not wanting her to have to deal with scores of strangers alone. Palace protocol meant only members of the royal family could make the first greeting.
To his surprise, she was a natural at small talk; moving easily between people with Talos by her side, taking an interest in who they were and what they did that wasn’t feigned, her smiles as warm for those from the higher echelons of society as for those much further down the social ladder.
If she was aware of all the appreciative gazes being thrown her way by men and women alike she did a good job of pretending not to be.
When the gong rang out, signalling for everyone to take their seats, Talos looked at his watch and saw over half an hour had passed since the first guests had stepped into the Banquet Room. The time had flown by.
‘You mastered the room like a pro,’ he said in an undertone as they found their seats on what had been designated the top table.
She cast puzzled eyes on him.
‘The way you handled our welcome job,’ he explained. ‘Most people would be overwhelmed when faced with one hundred and eighty people wanting to make small talk.’
She shrugged with a bemused expression. ‘My parents were always throwing parties. I think I mastered the art of small talk before I learned how to walk.’
‘You attended their parties?’
‘I was the main party piece.’
Before he could ask what she meant another gong sounded out and a courtier bade them all into silence as Helios and Theseus strode regally into the room.
No one took a seat until Helios, the highest-ranked member of the family in attendance, had taken his.
A footman pulled Amalie’s chair out for her, while Talos gathered the base of the train of her dress so she could sit down with ease. He caught a glimpse of delicate white ankle and had to resist the urge to run his fingers over it, to feel for himself the texture of her skin.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured, her eyes sparkling.
‘You’re welcome.’
Taking his own seat, he opened his booklet to peruse the menu. As Helios had directed, the four-course meal had an international flavour rather than one specifically Greek or Agonite.
White wine was poured into the appropriate glasses, the starter of dressed crab with an accompanying crab timbale, crayfish and prawns was brought out by the army of serving staff, and the banquet began.
‘Is your grandfather not attending?’ Amalie whispered before taking a sip of her wine.
‘He is unwell.’
‘Nothing serious, I hope?’ she asked with concern.
He forced a smile. ‘A touch of flu, that’s all.’
‘It must be a worry for you,’ she said, clearly seeing through his brevity.
‘My grandfather is eighty-seven and as tough as a horse,’ he deflected artfully.
She laughed. ‘My English grandfather is eighty-five and tough as a horse too. They’ll outlive the lot of us!’
How he wished that was the case, he thought, his heart turning to lead as he envisaged a life without his grandfather, a steady if often aloof presence, but someone who had always been there.
For the first time he felt the compulsion to confide, to tell the truth of his grandfather’s condition. It was there, right on the tip of his tongue. And he was the man who confided in no one. Not even his brothers.
The thought was unsettling.
Talos had learned the art of self-containment at the age of seven. The only person able to give him enough comfort to sleep when the nightmares had become too much to bear had died five years ago.
Yet for all the solace his grandmother had given him she’d never been able to give h
im peace. No one could give him that. He would sit stiffly in her arms, refusing to return the physical comfort she gave him. It had been a battle of wills with himself, something he could control and that no one could ever take away.
He’d been wise not to return the affection. How much greater would his pain have been if he had? He’d loved his mother with the whole of his heart. Her death had come close to destroying him.
The pain of his grandmother’s death had still hit him like one of the punches he received in the boxing ring, but it had been survivable. If he’d allowed himself to love her the way he’d loved his mother, he didn’t like to think how he would have reacted. Would the control he’d spent most of his lifetime perfecting have snapped? Would he have returned to those awful adolescent days when his fists had lashed out so many times he’d been on the verge of expulsion?
He was saved from having to respond by a young waiter asking if he would like his wine topped up.
If Amalie noticed his changed demeanour she gave no sign of it, craning her neck to follow their wine server’s progress out of the room. ‘Doesn’t that boy work at your gym?’
He was impressed that she’d recognised him. Workout gear was markedly different from the fitted black-and-white waiter’s uniform, with the purple ribbon stitched into the sides of the trousers.
‘And she’s from your gym too,’ Amalie whispered, nodding at a young girl in the far corner.
‘Most of the kids who work at the gym are working here tonight—it’s extra money for them and good experience.’
He had to admit to feeling an inordinate amount of pride, watching them performing their jobs so well. He’d fought the protocol battle a number of years ago, to allow ‘his’ kids to work at the palace whenever the opportunity arose.
‘Do you make a point of employing teenagers?’
‘It was one of the reasons I decided to build my own gym—I wanted to employ disaffected teenagers and make them feel a sense of worth in themselves. The kids who work there are free to spar and train whenever they’re off duty for no charge.’
‘These kids are allowed to box?’
‘You disapprove?’
‘It’s one thing for a fully grown adult to choose to get into a boxing ring and have his face battered, but quite another when it’s a developing teenager.’
‘Teenagers are full of hormones they have to navigate their way through. It’s a minefield for many of them.’
‘I agree, but...’
‘Agon is a wealthy island, but that doesn’t mean it’s problem-free,’ he said, wanting her to understand. ‘Our teenagers have the same problems as other Western teenagers. We give jobs and training to the ones living on the edge—the ones in danger of dropping out of society, the ones who, for whatever reason, have a problem controlling their anger. Boxing teaches them to control and channel that anger.’
Hadn’t he said something similar to her just the day before, in her cottage? Amalie wondered, thinking hard about the conversation they’d shared. The problem was her own hormones and fear had played such havoc that much of their conversation was blurred in her memory.
‘Is that why you got into boxing?’
His jaw clenched for the beat of a moment before relaxing. ‘I had anger issues. My way of coping with life was using my fists.’
‘Was that because of your parents?’ she asked carefully, aware she was treading on dangerous ground.
He jerked a nod. ‘Things came to a head when I was fourteen and punched my roommate at my English boarding school. I shattered his cheekbone. I would have been expelled if the Head of Sport hadn’t intervened.’
‘They wanted to expel you? But you’re a prince.’
His eyes met hers, a troubled look in them. ‘Expulsion was a rare event at my school—who wants to be the one to tell a member of a royal family or the president of a country that their child is to be permanently excluded? But it wasn’t a first offence—I’d been fighting my way through school since I was eight. The incident with my roommate was the final straw.’
He couldn’t read what was in her eyes, but thought he detected some kind of pity—or was it empathy?
She tilted her head, elongating the swan of her neck. ‘How did your Head of Sport get them to change their mind?’
‘Mr Sherman said he would personally take me under his wing and asked for three months to prove he could tame my nature.’
‘He did that through boxing?’ Now she thought about it, Amalie could see the sense in it. Hadn’t the kickboxing workouts Talos had forced her into doing created a new equilibrium within her? Already she knew that when she returned to Paris she would join a gym that gave the same classes and carry on with it.
‘At my school you had to be sixteen to join the boxing team, but he persuaded them—with the consent of my grandparents—to allow me to join.’ He laughed, his face relaxing as he did so. ‘Apart from my brothers, I was the biggest boy in the school. There was a lot of power behind my punches, which was what had got me into so much trouble in the first place. Mr Sherman taught me everything we now teach the kids who use our gym—the most important being how to channel and control my anger.’
‘Did it work?’
‘I haven’t thrown a punch in anger since.’
‘That is really something.’
Self-awareness nagged at her—an acknowledgement that while Talos had handled his rage through using his fists, she’d retreated from her own fears and buried them. But while he’d confronted and tamed his demons she’d continued hiding away, building a faux life for herself that was nothing like her early childhood dreams—those early days when she’d wanted to be a virtuoso on the violin, just like her father.
She’d been five years old when she’d watched old footage of him at Carnegie Hall—the same night he’d played on stage with Talos’s grandmother—and she’d said, with all the authority of a small child, ‘When I’m growed up I’ll play there with you, Papa.’
She’d let those dreams die.
CHAPTER NINE
IT TOOK A FEW beats for Amalie to regain her composure. ‘Did you get to take part in proper boxing matches?’
‘I was school champion for four years in a row—a record that has never been broken.’ He placed a finger to the scar on his eyebrow. ‘That was my most serious injury.’
She winced. ‘Did you want to take it up professionally?’
‘I’m a prince, so it was never an option—royal protocol.’ He gave a rueful shake of his head, then flashed another grin that didn’t quite meet his eyes. ‘I did win every amateur heavyweight boxing award going, though, including an international heavyweight title.’
‘No!’ she gasped. ‘Really?’
‘It was six years ago.’
‘That is incredible.’
‘It was the best day of my life,’ he admitted. ‘Receiving the winner’s belt with the Agon National Anthem playing... Yes, the best day of my life.’
She shook her head in awe, a thrill running through her as she saw a vision of Talos, standing in the centre of a boxing ring, perspiration dripping from his magnificent body, the epitome of masculinity...
‘Truly, that’s incredible. Do you still compete?’
‘I haven’t boxed in a competitive match since. I knew if I couldn’t fight professionally I wanted to retire on a high.’
‘You must miss it, though.’
She tried to imagine having to stop playing her violin and felt nothing but coldness. Her earliest concrete memory was receiving her first violin at the age of four. Yes, it had partly been forced on her, but she’d loved it, had adored making the same kind of music as her papa, revelled in her parents’ excitement when she’d taken to it with such an affinity that they couldn’t resist showing her off to the world. She’d loved pleasing her parents but b
efore she’d reached double digits the resulting attention from the outside world had turned into her personal horror story. She might have inherited her parents’ musicality, but their showmanship had skipped a generation.
He shrugged. ‘I still spar regularly, but in truth I knew it was time to focus my attention on the business my brothers and I founded. Theseus had gone off on his sabbatical, so Helios was running it almost single-handedly along with dealing with his royal duties. It wasn’t fair on him.’
‘I don’t understand why you all put so much into the business when you have so much wealth.’
He eyed her meditatively. ‘How much do you think it costs to run a palace this size? The running costs, the maintenance, the staff?’
‘A lot?’
‘Yes. A lot. And that’s just for one palace. Factor in the rest of our estates—my villa, for example—travelling costs, security...’
‘I can imagine,’ she cut in, feeling slightly dizzy now he was explaining it.
‘My family has always had personal wealth,’ Talos explained, ‘but a considerable portion of our income came from taxes.’
‘Came?’
He nodded. ‘My brothers and I were determined to make our family self-sufficient, and three years ago we succeeded. Our islanders no longer pay a cent towards our upkeep. I might not compete any more, but I get all the intellectual stimulation I need.’
Amalie swallowed, guilt replacing the dizziness. She’d been so dismissive of his wealth.
Talos Kalliakis might be unscrupulous at getting his own way but he had a flip side—a side that was loyal, decent and thoughtful. He clearly loved his island and his people.
‘What about the physical stimulation you got from competitive boxing?’ she asked. ‘Have you found a replacement for that?’
His eyes glistened, a lazy smile tugging at his lips. ‘There is a physical pastime I partake in regularly that I find very stimulating...’
The breath in her lungs rushed out in a whoosh.
When he looked at her like that and spoke in that meaningful tone all her senses seemed to collide, making her tongue-tied, unable to come up with any riposte—witty or otherwise.
Talos Claims His Virgin Page 10
