Helios Crowns His Mistress(20)
Such raucous cheers broke out at the news that they drowned out the rest of his speech. The crowd was still whooping when Helios bowed to them all and left the stage, with a grin on his handsome face that looked to Amy’s eyes more like a grimace.
Looking around the crowd, blinking to clear the cold fog enveloping her mind, Amy saw that the happiest faces were those of the Agonites who’d been lucky enough to get tickets for this event.
So now it was official.
Helios and the Princess were betrothed. There could be no backing out of the marriage now; not when the pride of two nations was at stake.
And the tiny spark of hope she hadn’t even realised she carried in her extinguished into nothing.
* * *
Helios shook the hand of yet another post-Gala party guest and silently cursed Talos for disappearing with the violinist, who’d overcome her stage fright and wowed everyone that evening. His grandfather had retired to bed, exhausted after such a full day, leaving Helios and Theseus to welcome all the people on the three-hundred-strong guest list.
Thank goodness protocol dictated that his fiancée acted in no official capacity until their nuptials had been exchanged. He still couldn’t imagine her by his side. Or in his bed.
For the first time he accepted that Amy leaving Agon when he married would be a good thing. The best thing. For all of them.
All he knew was that he wouldn’t be able to commit himself to Catalina as a husband if Amy resided under the palace roof and worked in the palace museum.
He’d thought when she had come back to him that everything would be all right and they could return to the way they’d been. But everything was not all right. Everything was worse.
His feelings for her...
There was a trapdoor looming in front of him and every step he made took him closer to falling through it. But he couldn’t see in which direction the trapdoor lay. He just knew it was there, readying itself to swallow him whole.
As was normal at a Kalliakis party, none of the guests was in a hurry to leave. But, as was not normal, Helios was in no mood to party with them.
He did his duty and danced with the Princess. Again he felt nothing. His body didn’t produce the slightest twinge. Nothing.
When Catalina finally left to catch her flight back to Monte Cleure with her father and brother Helios sought out Theseus, who was still going through the motions with the last of the straggling guests, and bore him away to his apartment.
From the look on his brother’s face he needed a drink as much as Helios did.
For someone with a newly discovered son he adored, and a wedding to the boy’s mother on the horizon, Theseus was acting like someone who’d been told he was to spend the rest of his life locked in the palace dungeons.
Much as Helios himself felt.
He’d never thought of alcohol as a tool for making problems better—on the contrary, he knew it tended to make matters worse. But he wasn’t trying to make himself feel better. That wouldn’t be possible. All he wanted was a healthy dose of numbness, even if only for a short time.
Was Amy waiting up for him?
They hadn’t made their usual arrangement. It had been on the tip of his tongue to say his customary ‘I’ll come to you when I’m done’ that morning, but this time something had stopped him. A sense of impropriety. Indecency. To parade the news of his fiancée to the world, then expect to slip between the covers with his mistress...
An image flashed into his mind of Amy standing in the cathedral in a wedding dress, of his mother’s sapphire ring sliding onto her finger... It was an image he’d been fighting not to see for weeks.
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply.
This was madness.
He took another swig of neat gin and said without thinking, ‘Those people watching the Gala. They have no idea of our sacrifices.’
‘What?’ Theseus slurred, staring at him with bloodshot eyes Helios knew mirrored his own.
‘Nothing.’
Even if he’d wanted to confide in his brother, Theseus was clearly in no state to listen. He knew he should ask him what was wrong, but the truth was he was in no state of mind to listen either.
Moody silence followed, both brothers locked in their own thoughts. The anticipated numbness failed to materialise. All the gin had brought on was the monster of all headaches.
Helios slammed his glass on the table. ‘It’s time for you to crawl to your own apartment—I’m going to bed.’
Theseus downed his drink without a murmur of protest and got to his unsteady feet. At least his brother was drunk enough to pass out without any problems, he mused darkly.
As Theseus staggered out Helios promised himself that he would leave Amy to sleep. It was long past midnight. Soon the sun would rise. To wake her would be cruel. To go to her at all, tonight of all nights, would be the height of crassness.
Dammit. He’d just become officially engaged. Couldn’t he show some decorum for one night?
But the memory of Amy’s ashen face during the exhibition tour refused to leave him and he knew he had to go to her. He had to see for himself that she was all right.
He walked down the passageway, promising himself that he would leave if there was no answer. When he reached her bedroom door, he rapped on it lightly.
Within seconds he heard the telltale turning of the lock.
When she’d opened the door Amy gazed up at him with an expression he couldn’t distinguish. One that combined anguish, desire and need in one big melting pot.
And as he stepped into her welcoming arms he realised that, for all his talk of sacrifice, he didn’t yet know how great his biggest sacrifice would be.
* * *
With the early-morning sunlight peeking through the curtains, Amy gazed at Helios’s sleeping form.
Hours after the post-Gala party had finished he’d come to her. And for the first time since they’d started their relationship all those months ago, nothing physical had happened between them.
Until he’d quietly knocked on her door she’d been trying to sleep, without any luck. She hadn’t wanted to stay awake for him. She’d been scared that he wouldn’t come to her and equally scared that he would.
Images had tortured her: thoughts of Helios and the Princess dancing together, becoming an official couple, discussing their wedding plans, showing the world how perfect they were for each other. Her stomach had ached so much it had been as if she’d swallowed a jug of battery acid.
With the hours ticking down until morning, she’d assumed the worst. She’d seen the helicopters and limousines taking their honoured guests away from the palace and had been unable to stop herself from wondering which of them carried the Princess.
Then, just as any hope that he would appear had gone, Helios had arrived at her door with bloodshot eyes, exhaustion etched on his face. He’d stripped off his clothes, climbed into her bed, pulled her into his arms and promptly fallen asleep.
How many more nights would he do this? How many more nights would they have together?
The official announcement had set off an alarm clock in her battery-acid-filled stomach and its persistent tick was excruciating.
Careful not to wake him, she sat up, doing nothing but drink him in.
How many more nights could she do this? Simply look at him?
Later that day he would be flying to the US for the start of an official state visit.
In her heart she knew that now, this moment, truly was the beginning of the end for them.
She reached out a hand and gently palmed his cheek. He nuzzled sleepily into her hand and kissed it. Lightly, she began to trace her fingers over the handsome face she loved so much, from his forehead—over which locks of hair had fallen—to his cheekbones, then over the bump on his nose, the bow of his lips, the jawline where thick stubble had broken out, and down his neck. She took his silver chain between her fingers and then touched the mandarin garnet necklace around her own neck.
It had been a birthday present from him, one he’d given her shortly after they’d started sleeping together. Of all the gifts he’d bestowed upon her, it was the one to which she felt the closest. The meaning behind it, the fact Helios had gone out of his way to find an item of jewellery made with her birthstone, meant that she’d swallowed her guilt and taken it out of the padded envelope where the rest of the jewellery he’d given her remained.
Whatever lay in the future, she knew she would never take it off again.
Slowly she explored his naked body, trailing her fingers over his collarbone and shoulder, down his right arm, lacing them through the fine black hair covering his forearm. When she reached his hand and took each finger in turn, gently pressing into them, he gave a light squeeze in response but otherwise remained still.
After repeating her exploration down his left arm, she moved to his chest. Helios’s breathing had changed. It no longer had the deep, rhythmic sound of sleep. A heavier, more ragged sound was coming from him.
Over his pecs she traced her hands, encircling his dark brown nipples, catching the dark hair that was spread finely across his chest, pressing her palm down where the beat of his heart was strongest, then moving them across his ribcage and down to his abdomen...
His erection stopped her in her tracks.
Sucking in a breath, she ignored it, outlining the smooth skin on either side and drawing her fingers over his narrow hips. Gently spreading his muscular thighs, she knelt between them and carried her exploration down his left leg, tracing the silvery scar on his calf—the result of being thrown from a horse at the age of nine—and down to his feet. Then she moved to his right leg, this time starting from his toes and making her way up...all the way to the line where his thigh met his groin.