‘To what? Seduce men into doing what I want?’ She laughed, bitterly hurt by his unfounded accusations and assumptions.
She’d never used her looks—quite the opposite. She’d fought to be taken seriously—not to be tainted by preconceived opinions based on the shape of her body and the actions of her mother. And he was the worst of all—accusing her of hurting Eleni in some way.
But it was the blistering betrayal of her own body right now that appalled her. Scornful tears stung her eyes. ‘Newsflash, Your Highness—here’s some truth for you,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t like to be touched.’
She stilled at the look of shocked disbelief on his face, then shook her head, backing up as he stepped near her again. ‘And that wasn’t a challenge.’
But she’d read his frown of intent and the awful thing was that it wasn’t honesty she wanted now, but his touch. That hidden part of her—dormant all her damn life—had been roused. But instead of being pleased about it, it terrified her.
‘Not a challenge?’ he questioned, and then he muttered grimly, ‘Not the truth.’
She lashed out, trying the only way she could to push him away. ‘I am nobody’s precious thing. Certainly not to the half-brother I barely know. You will hurt no one but yourself. You’ll get no revenge here. Only a stain on your soul. Sorry to disappoint you.’
‘A stain on my soul?’ Giorgos laughed equally bitterly.
Did she think he’d kissed her out of some medieval quest for vengeance on her family? Have mercy! It had taken only one second for him to lose his head completely when he’d got his hands on her heaven-sent curves.
‘When you take advantage,’ she clarified. ‘When you exercise power over another just to make yourself feel good.’
Her bitterness made his skin shrivel with shame. Because for a moment there that was exactly what he’d wanted to do. Slake his anger and his frustration by satisfying himself with her beautiful body beneath his. Even now raw, desperate lust racked him in a shiver he could hardly contain—and he was furious with himself.
‘Eleni is pregnant,’ he gritted, goaded by guilt into revealing the terrible truth to her.
‘What?’ She paled. ‘And you think Damon has taken her?’
He watched her. ‘I don’t believe she left willingly.’
But even as he said it, his sister’s words echoed in his mind. ‘I’m not coming back... Not till I’ve sorted it out.’
‘What does he want to do?’
‘Apparently he’s prepared to marry her.’
Relief bloomed in her face.
It only sharpened his anger. ‘You think this is a good thing?’
‘Maybe she cares about him. Maybe they’re actually in love.’
‘Maybe this is a fairy tale,’ he growled derisively. ‘Eleni is naive. If she does think she’s in love with him it’s because he’s seduced her. He’s conned her into believing it.’
‘You’re not going to give her any credit, are you?’ Kassiani said, almost sadly. ‘In your world she’s just too innocent and too sweet and too stupid to make a decision on her own.’ She suddenly flared up at him. ‘Could you be any more insulting? No wonder she ran away. Either way, you’re not going to believe her. Either he kidnapped her against her will or she went willingly because he bamboozled her. Because you think she’s a brainless idiot. I bet you totally bully her.’
Giorgos blinked at her sudden snap. He didn’t bully Eleni—she’d been happy with the arrangements he’d made...hadn’t she? His stomach bottomed out. If she was happy, why wasn’t she safe at home here in the palace? Was this woman right? Had he underestimated Eleni’s ability to make her own decisions? He needed to talk to her. But how could he?
He hadn’t had a proper conversation with her in years.
The truth whispered, tormenting him. Guilt at his ineptitude curled, squeezing the air from his lungs. He’d thought he was doing the right thing. Maybe he’d been wrong all along. Again.
‘My sister is in trouble,’ he said starkly. ‘All I want to do is help her. Help me help her.’
He heard her raggedly drawn in breath and saw the trembling of her mouth as she finally realised how desperate he was feeling.
‘There’s nothing I can say,’ she said dully. ‘Truthfully, I only met Damon a few years ago. He offered to help me.’
‘Why?’
She hesitated before answering. ‘He’s a more genuine man than our father is. He’s more caring. He’ll want to do what he thinks is right.’ She looked at him. ‘He will want to protect both her and his unborn child.’ A sad, twisted little smile curved her lush mouth. ‘In a way, I feel sorry for the Princess. Between the two of you she’s going to have quite a tough time.’
Giorgos stilled. Damon Gale was protective? He was not going to repeat the mistakes of his father? Kassiani was an illegitimate love-child. The abandoned daughter of an abandoned lover. Damon wasn’t going to do that to his own child.
Perhaps his meeting with Eleni hadn’t been contrived. Certainly on paper it seemed Damon Gale didn’t need money or fame. In fact he actively sought privacy, as did his half-sister. So if his seduction of Eleni was by fate rather than some Machiavellian manipulation then Damon was only doing what he felt he had to. And if Giorgos was in the same position he had to admit he’d have done the same thing. Hell, a decade before he’d tried to.
He breathed out a long sigh, accepting that he was going to have to break the news to Eleni’s fiancé that the planned wedding was off. He was going to have to back his sister. He was going to have to trust her.
He glanced up and saw Kassiani looking at him directly. Such sweet torment, standing only an arm’s length away, watching him with a concerned look in her eyes. A concern that he hadn’t earned.
His gut tightened as desire rose again.
No, neither concern nor pity was what he wanted from this woman. And that was wrong too.
‘I want to go home,’ she said softly.
Giorgos instinctively shook his head, instantly rejecting the idea of her departure. ‘You can’t. You know too much.’
‘I won’t breathe a word to anyone. Not to protect you but for your sister, who is kind and intelligent and funny and perfectly capable of making her own decisions.’ She paused, her pout becoming pronounced. ‘How you two can be related is beyond me.’
‘You’re not going home tonight,’ he muttered as need speared through his body.
He wanted her to remain locked in the palace with him—to have her within his control. The remnants of his desire to punish her had now morphed into the fantasy of pleasuring her. Of seeing her aroused and begging for release. He could do it—he could please her. And in doing so please himself.
It had definitely been too long. And she... She didn’t like to be touched...
He gritted his teeth, holding back a growl. Maybe he was no better than some twelfth-century warlord, taking a pretty captive to suit his pleasure—every bit the bastard she’d painted him. But right now he didn’t care. He just wanted to forget everything in hedonistic pleasure.
He knew he could. He knew she’d liked his kiss. She’d wanted more. It would take little to make her want more again. Her molten chocolate eyes were now almost entirely black and he was losing himself in their bottomless depths.
‘I’m not staying here,’ she uttered in the faintest whisper.
Because she knew it too—knew that acting on this electricity arcing between them was inevitable. That was why she wanted to run away.
‘You say you don’t like to be touched,’ he challenged her. ‘But you enjoyed my touch. Not at first, sure. I took you by surprise, and I apologise for that, but don’t lie about what happened then.’
The thought that he might have disgusted her was appalling. That he might have subjected her to something she had felt repulsive. Her reaction initially had been stiff,
but he’d dismissed it as surprise because suddenly the floodgates had opened and she’d been ardent in her response.
And as he watched her closely now, as he listened to her, he saw other signs—the brightness of her eyes, the frantic beat of the pulse at her neck, the way she kept licking those lips that were obviously dry and bothering her. He remembered the way she’d softened and opened up for him. That hadn’t been a moment he’d forced—that had been a moment of her surrender. Not to his will, but to the emotion flooding her. The desire for deeper touch.
She’d been attracted to him. She still was. But she didn’t want to be. And perhaps he could understand why.
‘Someone hurt you,’ he said. His anger lit again, but this time in a different way.
She frowned at him searchingly, then rolled her eyes. ‘Not in the way you’re thinking.’
‘No one has touched you when you didn’t want them to?’ He didn’t believe her.
‘They have. But I stopped them.’
He lifted his brows.
‘It wasn’t about control or anything worse.’ Her colour rose. ‘I just mean a kiss at the end of a date...’
‘How did you stop him?’
‘Men don’t like a lover who doesn’t respond. No matter the attributes she might have.’
He shook his head. She knew her ‘attributes’ were like catnip to any red-blooded man. But he knew there’d be some men out there who wouldn’t care about whether she responded to them or not. Those men would just take—in which case she’d been lucky. But her lack of response was...interesting.
‘You didn’t respond to them?’ He felt very still inside.
‘As I said, I don’t like to be touched.’ She folded her arms, looking like a spiky ball of defensiveness.
Did she mean she didn’t feel anything at all? Or she just hadn’t met a guy who could actually push her buttons? ‘Are you saying you’re frigid?’
That flush covered her skin and he watched her as she refused to answer. He realised now it was the truth—or at least she thought it was.
‘You don’t feel things that way?’ He framed the question more gently.
For a second he didn’t know whether to believe her or whether this was another game. But then, she hadn’t been playing any game at all, had she? She hadn’t known a thing about Eleni and Damon.
He thought about the doctor who’d asked her for a date this evening. Her refusal had been polite and firm and practised. That nurse had teased her, but she’d stepped in and helped her deflect the guy’s attention as if she’d known it made Kassie uncomfortable. And there’d been a stiffness within her when she’d first met him. Now her lips were still clamped shut, but he could see the trembling of her body.
‘It’s not a challenge.’
Her voice was low and husky and he could feel the mortification emanating from her. She clearly wished like hell she’d not said anything.
‘I don’t take it as one,’ he reassured her. But then he smiled. ‘I don’t need to prove something I already know.’
She looked confused.
‘You felt “that way” when I kissed you.’
She shifted and her skin flooded again with deepened colour. Her gaze dropped from his. ‘Please don’t embarrass yourself.’
His laughter was husky and amused. ‘Kassie...’ He’d heard the nurse call her that—he liked it.
‘Please.’ She closed her eyes. ‘I don’t see why it’s all that amusing.’
‘It’s not that it’s funny. I’m relieved.’ He leaned close. ‘I didn’t want to think I’d hurt you that way. Contrary to your earlier assumption, I don’t get off on forcing my attentions on unwilling women.’
‘I know that. I’m sure they’re all very, very willing.’
She still wouldn’t look at him. But he couldn’t look away from her. ‘Right now I’m only interested in you. And I think you’re willing.’
‘No,’ she denied.
‘Be honest,’ he dared her softly. ‘Sometimes you can’t help who you’re attracted to. Even if you don’t like the person, chemistry can be just chemistry.’
‘But you can choose whether to act on that attraction or not,’ she said crisply.
‘So you admit there’s attraction?’ He smiled. She was thawing fractionally. ‘You’re used to choosing not to act. Maybe you’re used to choosing to avoid. Not because you can’t feel, but because you’re afraid to.’
She shook her head vehemently. ‘You’re wrong.’
‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you in the least bit curious?’
She rolled her eyes again, but it lost the desired effect because he could see how her fingers were trembling.
‘It’s not something I need,’ she said.
Didn’t everyone need touch sometimes? Even he did—in the strictly controlled liaisons he occasionally permitted himself. But if she was being honest then Kassiani Marron’s confession had just eliminated her from contention for one of those brief, discreet dalliances.
‘The conversation is only academic,’ he assured her quietly. ‘The last thing I would do is touch you now. Or hurt you.’
‘If you don’t want to hurt me, then let me leave.’
For another fleeting second he questioned whether she was truly as innocent as those wide eyes would lead him to believe. He’d been lied to by a beautiful woman before.
But then he remembered the shocked stillness of her body when he’d been foolish enough to touch her when he shouldn’t have. The frankly inexpert answer of her kiss. And her reaction afterwards—the rapid rise and fall of her breasts as she’d worked to recover her breath, the trembling of her limbs. She’d been more than aroused. She’d been stunned. And she was being honest.
The realisation forced him to shut down all the burning want within his body. He was extremely cautious when selecting a lover and would never have an affair with a woman who was clearly fragile—no matter how beautiful she might be. Kassiani Marron was a risk he was unprepared to subject himself to. Duty forbade it. The past forbade it. And the past had already come back to haunt him.
His sister was now in a position he’d hoped to avoid for her. His interest in Kassie would have to be ignored. This night was nothing more than a moment that she would soon forget.
* * *
Kassie watched as his expression changed from intensely speculative to serious and then to blank. She felt his withdrawal of interest almost as a physical chill—and for once she felt regret at successfully putting a guy off.
‘I’ll ensure you get home safely,’ he said as he stepped away from her.
‘I’m sure your assistant will be very efficient.’ She couldn’t keep the coldness from her own tone.
He turned, catching her gaze with his. ‘You know I’m escorting you myself.’
‘You’re just trying to find out more information.’
His sudden chuckle caught her by surprise.
‘So suspicious,’ he mocked. ‘Are you this wary with everyone?’
‘You’re every bit as defensive as I am.’
‘I think you already know you set me on edge, Ms Marron.’
And he didn’t like it. That eased her own issues with his effect on her. ‘It seems we’re even.’
His laugh encircled her with a warm glow. The tension lifted for the briefest of moments and she couldn’t hold back her answering smile. When he was like this he was the most incredibly attractive man. And now that she could relax a fraction she realised it was a good thing—to find a guy attractive? Go her.
Something flickered in his eyes before he mastered control of himself and became the serious monarch again. ‘It really is time for you to leave.’
‘Freedom. At last,’ she muttered mock-demurely. ‘Thank you, Your Highness.’
She heard a sharp intake of breath but he sai
d nothing. He stalked ahead of her along the long dimly lit corridors, their gold detailing providing a muted gleam in the vast shadows. He was fascinating.
That unsettling feeling deep in her belly stirred again, spreading that strange ache. Once more she replayed that kiss—the shocking heat that had flooded her body surged again. Desire.
She almost stumbled as the need to feel his body against hers again made her stupid muscles weaken.
‘Truly, you don’t need to accompany me.’ She tried to deflect him as they emerged into the night. She might as well have tried pushing a marble slab up an icy slope.
‘It’s my duty to ensure you get home safely.’
‘You don’t trust your own security people?’
‘It’s my responsibility.’
That rebellious feeling flared again. ‘I’m not your responsibility.’
‘Right now, your welfare is.’
The guy had an overblown hero complex, thinking himself responsible for anyone he thought was weaker or less able. He was determined to be the protector.
‘The way your sister is your responsibility?’
He checked his stride, then kept walking. ‘No. Not like that at all.’
He made a small gesture with his hand and the waiting security team by the car melted into the shadows. He held open the rear door and she got into the car. She watched as he walked around the vehicle to get in the other side, next to her.
The driver moved the car forward the moment he’d closed the door. The palace gates slid open and they swiftly glided through the dark, quiet streets. She stared ahead blindly, hyper-aware of his gaze on her.
The silence in the car thickened. The emotions swirling within her were too strong to contain—they leaked out, heating the atmosphere between her and the silent presence beside her. He was lethally powerful, yet she sensed that extreme protectiveness actually masked vulnerability. As arrogant and as privileged as he was, he was exposed because he loved his sister. He wanted what was best for her.
Kassie couldn’t help but respect him for that. Because part of her wished she’d had someone who’d cared like that in her life. Someone who loved her and watched out for her. King Giorgos might be arrogant, but she understood that he wanted what was best for the ones he loved.
The King's Captive Virgin Page 5
