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‘I’ up the bathroom so I can’t see properly is also treasonous,’ he said with a playful shake of his head, striding lithely to the extractor fan and switching it on

As with everything in his fabulous palace apart the enormous bathroom of steam

He crouched beside the bath and placed his gorgeous face close to hers ‘Any more treasonous behaviour, matakia mou, and I will be forced to punish you’

His breath, hot and laced with a faint trace of their earlier shared pot of coffee, danced against her skin

‘And what foriveback up inside her, her breaths shortening

Those liquid eyes flashed and a smirk played on the bowed lips that had kissed her everywhere It was a mouth a woman could happily kiss for ever

‘A punishether for effect and growled, before throwing her a look full of pro her in the reflection, Helios dipped his shaving brush into the pot and began covering his black beard with a rich, foamy lather

A man in a medieval film fascinated her It also scared her The blade he used was sharp enough to slice through flesh One twitch of the hand

All the sa her eyes away as he scraped the cut-throat razor down his cheek In its oay it had an eroticisone time when men had been men And Helios was all man

If he wanted he could snap his fingers and an army of courtiers would be there to do the job for him But that wasn’t his style The Kalliakis family were direct descendants of Ares Patakis, the warrior whose uprising had freed Agon froon princes were taught hoield weapons with the saht the art of royal protocol To her lover, a cut-throat razor was but one of many weapons he’d mastered

She waited until he’d wiped the blade on a towel to clean it before speaking again ‘Do I take it that despite all ht?’

Her ‘little hints’ had taken the for at every available opportunity how much she would love to attend the Royal Ball that was the talk of the entire island, but she hadn’t seriously expected to get an invitation She was but a mere employee of the palace museum, and a temporary employee at that

And it wasn’t as if they would be together for ever, she thought with a strange stab of wistfulness Their relationship had never been a secret, but it hadn’t been flaunted either She was his lover, not his girlfriend, so she had known from the very start She had no official place in his life and never would