The Greek's Christmas Bride(16)

A gasp was wrenched from Pixie as he nuzzled her lips with his, brushed them gently apart and then went in for the kill with his tongue and it was as if the top of her head blew off. When Apollo kissed her she literally saw stars and heavenly galaxies. With every caressing, darting plunge of his tongue her temperature rocketed and her still hands finally rose and plunged into the depths of his hair. Finally getting that response energised Apollo’s hunger.

There was so much he wanted to do that he didn’t know where to begin but he knew he wanted it to be an unforgettable night for her. Why it had to be that way with her he didn’t know or care, but then he had always responded very well to a challenge and in many ways Pixie had challenged him right from the start. Unimpressed, cool, indifferent. For the first time in his life Apollo wanted a needy, clingy woman and he didn’t understand the desire or where it was coming from.

He spread her legs and shifted down the bed. Pixie froze as if he’d suddenly put the lights back on. He wanted to do that?

‘I don’t think I want that,’ she told him hastily.

‘You’ll be surprised,’ Apollo husked, ready to rise to yet another challenge and embarking on the venture with a long daring lick that made her squirm and gasp again. Satisfied, he settled in to drive her crazy. He would be the very best she had ever had in bed or he would die trying. Lack of interest would become craving. Coolness would become heat. Unimpressed would become awed.

Apollo touched her with expert delicacy that she knew she couldn’t object to although she couldn’t imagine that he could possibly want to do what he was doing. He slid a finger into her damp folds and she almost spontaneously combusted in shock and excitement and that was nothing compared to the intense feel of his mouth on the tiny bundle of nerves at the apex of her. All of a sudden control was something she couldn’t reclaim because her body had a will of its own. Her hips ground into the mattress below her, her heartbeat thundered and she was breathing so loud she could hear it while the growing tightness deep down inside her was impossible to ignore. She could feel herself, reaching, straining, while the ripples of excitement grew closer and closer together and then an almost terrifying wave of ecstasy gripped her and she was flying and crying out and moaning all at the same time.

‘When you come the next time, I want you to say my name,’ Apollo growled in her ear while her body still trembled in shock from the sheer immensity of what he had made her experience.

‘Never felt like that before,’ Pixie mumbled unevenly.

‘It will always feel like that with me,’ Apollo assured her with great satisfaction as he slid over her, tilting her hips up to receive him, and drove down into her with an uninhibited groan of all-male need.

Pixie jerked back in shock from the sharp pain that assailed her and yelped in dismay.

But Apollo had already stopped. He raised himself higher on his arms to instantly withdraw from her again and folded back at her feet, the sheet tangled round him. His lean, darkly handsome face was a mask of disbelief. ‘You’re kidding me?’

Pixie sat up with a wince because she was sore and way more conscious of that private part of her than she wanted to be. She was still in too much shock to think because she had long dismissed as an old wives’ tale the concept of a first sexual experience hurting and had been entirely unprepared to discover otherwise.

‘A...virgin?’ Apollo gritted in much the same tone of disdain as he might have mentioned a rat on board his superyacht.

Anger began to lace her growing mortification. ‘Why did you have to stop?’ she gasped, stricken. ‘Couldn’t you just have got it over with?’

‘Like you know so much about it?’ Apollo virtually snarled at her as he vaulted off the bed with the air of a man who couldn’t get away quickly enough from the scene of a disaster. A little warning voice at the back of Apollo’s volatile head was warning him to tone it down but he was genuinely furious with Pixie for wrecking something with her silence that he had been determined to make special. Special...really? Where had that goal come from inside him? Why? He didn’t know but he was still furious about the bombshell she had dealt him when he’d least expected it.

‘Maybe I should have warned you,’ Pixie framed tightly, recognising that he was sincerely annoyed with her.

‘There’s no maybe about it!’ Apollo thundered back at her. ‘I hurt you and how do you think that makes me feel? I gave you every opportunity to tell me and you didn’t.’

‘I thought you’d laugh at me.’

Apollo shot her a narrowed green glance. ‘Do I look like I’m laughing?’

Pixie swallowed hard, her face burning at his raw derision. Clutching the sheet to her bare skin, she felt about an inch high while she watched him striding into the bathroom, over six feet of lean golden-skinned enraged male.

What did he have to be so annoyed about? She hadn’t thought of her body as his business until they got into bed but then suddenly, she registered, it had become his business. Discomfiture gripped her. He was accustomed to experienced women and probably feeling out of his depth after she’d yelped cravenly at one small jab of pain. Really, could she possibly have made more of a fuss? Was it any wonder that he was angry?

Guilt stirring, Pixie slid out of bed and pulled on his shirt, because it was the nearest item of clothing that would cover her. She breathed in the scent of him almost unconsciously and sighed because she had screwed up, made a mountain out of what would probably have been a molehill had she simply been a little more frank in advance. But being frank on such a personal topic was something Pixie had never contrived to be, even with Holly.

As she appeared in the doorway Apollo glowered at her from the shower, standing there naked and unconcerned, water streaming from several jets down the length of his big bronzed body. Pixie stared and flushed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said grudgingly. ‘I should’ve warned you.’

‘But instead of warning me, you actually lied!’ Apollo condemned emphatically, still struggling to work out why he was so angry when he very rarely got angry about anything. A virgin—very unexpected but scarcely a hanging offence. That she had lied to him annoyed him more because, most ironically, she was the first woman he had ever believed to be more honest than was good for her.

‘I said sorry. There’s not much more I can do,’ Pixie launched back at him a little louder, her temper rising. ‘What do you want? Blood?’

‘Already had that experience with you,’ Apollo derided smooth as polished glass.

And that crack was the last straw for Pixie and she lost it. Her fingernails bit into her palms as her hands fisted and she shot a look of loathing at him that startled him. ‘You’re just reminding me why I don’t like men and why I didn’t warn you,’ she framed jerkily, formerly suppressed emotion surging up through her slight body in a great heady surge.

‘And why would that be?’ Apollo demanded, switching off the water, grabbing up a towel and stalking out of the shower.

‘Because you’re threatening and selfish and mean! I put up with far too much of that growing up!’ she told him in a screaming surge. ‘Men trying to catch me with my clothes off when I was in the bathroom or the bedroom...men trying to touch me places they shouldn’t...men saying dirty stuff to me...’

Apollo had seemingly frozen where he stood. Not even the towel he had been using to dry himself was moving. ‘What men?’

‘Care staff in some of the children’s homes I stayed in, foster fathers...sometimes the older boys in the homes,’ she related shakily, caught up in the frightening memories of what she had endured over the years before she’d reached Sylvia’s safe house and then eventually moved towards complete independence. ‘So, don’t be surprised I was still a virgin! Sex always seemed sleazy to me and I’m not apologising for it. Not everyone’s obsessed with sex like you are!’

Listening, Apollo had lost all his natural colour and much of his cavalier attitude. His bone structure was very stark beneath his golden tan. ‘You were abused,’ he almost whispered the words.

‘Not in the strictest sense of the word,’ Pixie argued defensively. ‘I learned to keep myself safe. I learned that what they were doing was wrong. Nobody ever actually managed to do anything but it put me off the physical stuff...’

‘Obviously...naturally.’ Apollo snatched in an almost ragged breath and veiled green eyes rested on her. ‘Go back to bed and try to get some sleep. I won’t be disturbing you.’

Taken aback, Pixie stared without comprehension at his tight, shuttered expression.

‘I’m sorry I hurt you.’

‘It was only a tiny hurt. I just wasn’t expecting it,’ she muttered awkwardly, but she could see that even that little hurt and the surprise of it had been a complete passion killer as far as he was concerned.

Apollo strode back into the bedroom and she heard him rummaging through the drawers in the dressing room. Moments later he stepped back into view sheathed in tight faded denim jeans and a white linen shirt and, without even pausing to button the shirt, he strode out of the stateroom. So much for their wedding night, Pixie thought wretchedly. Getting into bed he had definitely wanted her, lusted after her, and what had preceded the final act had been fantastic. He had given her an ecstasy she had not known she was capable of feeling. But all too quickly she had blown it...