Helios Crowns His Mistress(21)

Helios’s hand dug into her hair, spearing it, his breaths now erratic. Still only using her fingers, she traced the long stretch of his erection, cupping him, delighting in his tortured groans, before she put him out of his misery and ran her tongue along its length, then took him into her mouth.

For an age she moved him with her hand whilst licking and sucking. His hand cradled her scalp, massaging it, but he let her set the pace. Heat bubbled deep inside her, burning her from her core outwards, enflaming her skin. Giving him pleasure gave her as much joy as when he pleasured her.

When she sensed him getting close to breaking point she pulled away, unable to give him the playful smile she would normally give. She had never felt less playful when making love to him.

Moving up to straddle him, she gazed into his eyes, thrilling to see the heady desire ringing in them. He cupped her neck and pulled her down to meet his mouth. His tongue swept into hers, his kiss full of all the dark, potent neediness flowing through her own veins.

Slowly, with their lips and tongues still entwined, she sank onto him until he was fully sheathed inside her. Breaking the kiss, she pulled back to sit atop him, needing to look at him.

As his groans became louder he placed one hand flat on her breast, whilst his other hand held tightly to her hip, steadying and supporting her. Then, with her hands resting lightly on his shoulders, she began to move. The feel of him deep inside her, the friction of their movements, it all built on the sensations already whirling inside her.

She could make love to this man every day for the rest of her life and it still wouldn’t be enough. She would always want—need—more. Even if they had all the time in the world it wouldn’t be enough time for her to look at his face, to touch him, to hear his voice, to witness his smile.

But there was only now, this moment in time when it was just them. There was no palace, no duty...

Just them. One man. One woman.

She wished she could hold on to it for ever.

She tried to hold back the climax growing within her, tried to blunt her responses, but it was all too intoxicating. With a cry that was as much dismay as it was delight, the pulsations swept through her, starting deep in the very heart of her and rippling out to embrace her every atom.

She threw herself down to bury her face in his neck and his arms immediately wrapped around her. A strangled groan escaped his mouth and he gave one last thrust upwards as his own climax tore through him with the same strength as her own. Both of them rode it for as long as they could until there was nothing left but their breaths, burning heavily into each other’s necks.

* * *

The hotel, arranged by Talia under Helios’s instructions, had a charming air to it, an ambience that carried through inside, through the cosy lobby and into the even cosier restaurant.

It was Agon’s oldest hotel and a favourite on the tourist trail. It was guaranteed to be busy, whatever the time of year. Thus, two women could meet and dine together during the lunchtime rush without attracting any attention. It was safe for Amy’s birth mother here. No one would know who she was. No one would report back to her husband. Ignorance would continue to be bliss for him.

As strange as she knew it to be, Amy would have recognised Neysa even if she hadn’t known who she was. Her heart stuttered as she was caught in the gaze of eyes that were identical to her own.

This was the woman who had carried her in her womb for nine months.

This was the woman who had abandoned her.

Neysa Soukis hesitated before asking, ‘Amy...?’

‘Neysa?’ Calling her Mum or Mother was not an option.

Grasping the outstretched hand, Amy marvelled at how it was an identical size to her own. It was like seeing a model of herself twenty years from now, although she doubted she would ever be as well groomed. Neysa was expensively dressed and immaculately coiffured.

After ordering drinks and some mezzes Neysa gave a brittle smile, opened her mouth and then closed it again.

Amy filled the silence. ‘Why didn’t you want to meet me?’

Fingers similar to her own but older, and with buffed nails, drummed on the table. ‘You are a stranger to me.’ Her English accent was heavy and unpractised.

‘You carried me. You gave birth to me.’ You abandoned me. ‘Weren’t you curious?’

‘I have a life now. Husband. A son.’

Yes... Her son. Leander. The man-child Neysa doted on.

‘What made you change your mind?’

She gave a harsh bark of laughter. ‘The threat that my husband would learn of you.’

That would be Helios’s doing. He was not a man one could say no to. Neysa was here because Helios had effectively blackmailed her, not because she wanted to meet the child she’d given up.

‘Leander could tell your husband.’

‘Leander would never tell.’

Neysa’s confidence in this statement didn’t surprise her. Helios had done some more digging into the mother-son relationship and discovered that Leander’s father had all but given up on him. Neysa was the one to lavish him with love and the all-important money. He was dependent on her. If she withdrew her funds he would, heaven forbid, have to get a job and keep it.

If her husband was to learn that Neysa had been keeping such a monumental secret from him throughout their twenty-five-year marriage who knew how he would react? Both Neysa and Leander might be thrown off the gravy train they worshipped so much.

A waiter appeared with a tray of drinks.

‘Did you ever think of me?’ Amy asked when they were alone again.

A flicker of something she couldn’t decipher crossed Neysa’s face. ‘Many times.’

She was lying. Amy didn’t know how she could be certain of this, but certain she was. Neysa had forged a new life for herself, with a rich husband two decades her senior. Amy was a dirty little secret she couldn’t afford to let anyone find out about. She had no interest in her child. Her only interest was in protecting her secret.

‘I knew your father would take good care of you,’ Neysa explained earnestly. Too earnestly.

She had known nothing of the sort, and neither had she tried to find out. For all she knew Amy might have been dumped in an orphanage. She’d had no way of knowing that Elaine—the woman who had taken Neysa into her home and trusted her with her young son, the woman Neysa had betrayed in such a heinous way without one word of remorse—had raised Amy as her own.

Amy had spent seventeen years hoping that it had been shame which had kept Neysa away. That she’d acknowledged that what she’d done to the Green family had been so great a sin that she couldn’t bring herself to face Elaine and say sorry.

She couldn’t have been more wrong.

At least her father had been genuinely remorseful. Her mum had promised her that. He’d acknowledged the terrible deed he’d done and had spent twenty-seven years trying to make amends for it. One mad weekend alone, without his wife and with a hot young woman parading herself around the house before him... He’d been too weak not to take advantage and he’d paid the price every day of his life since.

Looking at her birth mother now, Amy couldn’t believe her mum had been able to love her the way she did. Amy was the image of Neysa. Every time her mum had looked at Amy’s face she must have seen the image of the woman who had betrayed her and the living proof of her husband’s infidelity.

How could Amy even be in the same room as this woman? Neysa hadn’t cared that she’d almost destroyed Amy’s mum—her real mum...the woman who had loved her every day of her life from the age of two weeks.

And she’d been scared that her mum secretly wanted to get rid of her? Never. Not her loving, generous mum.

The waiter returned to the table with their food.

Amy waited until he’d laid everything out before getting to her feet and hooking the strap of her handbag over her shoulder.

‘You have nothing to fear from me,’ she said slowly. ‘I want no part of your life. I wanted to see you. And now I have.’

‘You are going?’

‘I shouldn’t have come. Goodbye, Neysa.’

Leaving her birth mother open-mouthed in shock, Amy made her way out of the hotel and into the warm spring street brimming with tourists.

She stood for a moment, breathing in the sweet scent. She hadn’t found a single place in Agon where the air didn’t smell good. And yet an acrid odour lingered around her from her encounter.

Breathing heavily, Amy raised her eyes to the sky and thanked whatever benevolent being that was up there for allowing Neysa to abandon her.

Who would she be if she’d been raised on Agon under Neysa’s narcissistic hand? If she’d grown up with Leander? If she’d lived without Danny and Neil’s fierce protection, her mum’s loving guidance and her dad’s silent but constant presence?

And she thanked Helios too. His interference had allowed her to put to bed one of the biggest questions in her life: who had made her?

That ‘who’ was someone she had no wish to see again. But at least she knew that now. Thanks to Helios she could move on and stop wondering what if...?

As she thought his name her phone buzzed. It was a brief message from him, checking that everything was okay. Her darling Helios was on a state visit to America and had still found the time to think of her and send her a message.

But how could she be okay? she thought as she replied, saying that she was fine and that she would explain everything to him later, when he called. Which he would. He called her every night when he travelled abroad.