Helios Crowns His Mistress

Luckily for her, he’d agreed with Pedro that she was the perfect candidate. He’d told her some months later, when they’d been lying replete in each other’s arms, that it had been her passion and enthusiasm that had convinced him. He’d known she would give the job the dedication it deserved.

Meeting Helios... He’d been nothing as she’d imagined: as far from the stuffy, pompous, ‘entitled’ Prince she’d expected him to be as was possible.

Her attraction to him had been immediate, a chemical reaction over which she’d had no control. It had taken her completely off guard. Yet she hadn’t thought anything of it. He was a prince, after all, both powerful and dangerously handsome. Never in her wildest dreams had she thought the attraction would be reciprocated. But it had been.

He’d been much more involved with the exhibition than she’d anticipated, and she’d often found herself working alone with him, her longing for him an ever-growing fire inside her that she didn’t have a clue how to handle.

Affairs in the workplace were a fact of life, even in the studious world of antiquities, but they were not something she’d ever been tempted by. She loved her work so much it took her entire focus. Her work gave her purpose. It grounded her. And working with the ancient objects of her own people, seeing first-hand how techniques and social mores had evolved over the years, was a form of proof that the past didn’t have to be the future. Her birth mother’s actions didn’t have to define her, even if she did feel the taint of her behaviour like an invisible stain.

Relationships of any real meaning had always been out of the question for her. How could she commit to someone if she didn’t know who she truly was? So to find herself feeling such an attraction, and to the man who was effectively her boss, who just happened to be a prince... It was no wonder her emotions had been all over the place.

Helios had had no such inhibitions.

Long before he’d laid so much as a finger on her he’d undressed her with his dark liquid eyes, time and again. Until one late afternoon, when she’d been talking to him in the smaller of the exhibition rooms, she on one side, he on the other, and he’d gone from complete stillness to fluid motion in the beat of a heart. He’d walked to her with long strides and pulled her into his arms.

And that had been it. She’d been his for the taking. And he’d been hers.

Their three months together had been a dream. Theirs had been a physically intense but surprisingly easy relationship. There had been no expectations. No inhibitions. Just passion.

Walking away should have been easy.

The eyes that had undressed her a thousand times now flickered to Pedro, giving silent permission for him to move the discussion on to general museum topics. There might be a special exhibition being organised, but the museum itself still needed to be run to its usual high standards.

Clearly unnerved—Helios’s mood, usually so congenial, was unsettling all the staff—Pedro raced through the rest of the agenda in double-quick time, finally mentioning the need for someone to cover for one of their tour guides that Thursday. Amy was happy to volunteer. Thursday was her only reasonably quiet day that week, and she enjoyed taking on the tours whenever the opportunity arose.

One of the things she loved so much about the museum was the collaborative way it was run, with everyone helping each other when needed. It was a philosophy that came from the very top, from Helios himself, even if today there was no sign of his usual amiability.

Only at the very end of the meeting did Pedro say, ‘Before we leave, can I remind everyone that menus for next Wednesday need to be handed in by Friday?’

As a thank-you for all the museum staff’s hard work in organising the exhibition, Helios had arranged a night out for everyone before the summer rush hit, all expenses paid. It was a typically generous gesture from him, and a social event Amy had been very much looking forward to. Now, though, the thought of a night out with Helios in attendance made her stomach twist.

There was a palpable air of relief when the meeting finished. Today there was none of the usual lingering. Everyone scrambled to their feet and rushed for the door.

‘Amy, a word please.’ Helios’s rich voice rose over the clatter of hurrying feet.

She paused, inches from the door, inches from escape. Arranging her face into a neutral expression, she turned around.

‘Shut the door behind you.’

She did as she was told, her heart sinking to her feet, then sat back in her original place opposite him but also the greatest distance possible away.

It wasn’t far enough.

The man oozed testosterone.

He also oozed menace.

Her heart kicked against her ribs. She clamped her lips together and folded her arms across her chest.

Yet she couldn’t stop her eyes moving to his, couldn’t stop herself gazing at him.

His silver chain glinted against the base of his throat. That chain had often brushed against her lips when he’d made love to her.

And as she stared at him, wondering when he was going to speak, his eyes studied her with the same intensity, making her mouth run dry and her hammering pulse race into a gallop.

His fingers drummed on the table. ‘Did you have a nice time at Greta’s?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ she replied stiffly, before she realised what he’d said. ‘How did you know I was there?’

‘Through the GPS on your phone.’

‘What? You’ve been spying on me?’

‘You are the lover of the heir to the throne of Agon. Our relationship is an open secret. I do not endanger what is mine.’

‘I’m not yours. Not any more,’ she spat at him, running from fear to fury in seconds. ‘Whatever tracking device you’ve put in my phone, you can take it out. Now.’

She yanked her bag onto the table, pulled out her phone and threw it at him.

His hand opened to catch it like a Venus flytrap catching its prey. He laughed. But unlike on Saturday, when he’d thought he’d been indulging her, the sound contained no humour.

He slid the phone back to her. ‘There’s no tracking device in it. It’s all done through your number.’

‘Well, you can damn well untrack it. Take it off your system, or whatever it’s on.’

He studied her contemplatively. His stillness unnerved her. Helios was never still. He had enough energy to power the whole palace.

‘Why did you leave?’

‘To get away from you.’

‘You didn’t think I would be worried?’

‘I thought you’d be too busy cherry-picking your bride to notice I’d gone.’

Finally a smile played on his lips. ‘Ah, so you were punishing me.’

‘No, I was not,’ she refuted hotly. ‘I was giving myself space away from you because I knew you’d still expect to sleep with me after an evening of wooing prospective brides.’

‘And you didn’t think you’d be able to resist me?’

Her cheeks coloured and Helios felt a flare of satisfaction that his thoughts had been correct.

His beautiful, passionate lover had been jealous.

Slender, feminine to her core, with a tumbling mane of thick dark blonde hair, Amy was possibly the most beautiful woman he’d ever met. A sculptor wouldn’t hesitate to cast her as Aphrodite. She made his blood thicken just to look at her, even dressed as she was now in an A-line navy skirt and a pretty yet demure lilac top.

But today there was something unkempt about her appearance that wasn’t usually there: dark hollows beneath her taupe eyes, her rosebud lips dry, her usual glowing complexion paler than was normal.