strong. He survived just like us. I suppose what I really wanted to ask is…how will you cope with his women?’
Pixie reddened and her pretty pearlised nails dug into the fabric of her wedding gown.
‘Don’t go falling for him, Pixie,’ Holly warned her anxiously. ‘He dumps women the instant they get clingy or needy and he seems to have the sexual attention span of a firefly.’
‘Oh, I don’t think I’m in any danger of making that particular mistake,’ Pixie responded in a more relaxed tone of quiet confidence.
She lusted after Apollo and that was all and, as he himself had commented, that was a positive in their situation. The truth that he could make a single kiss that irresistible had been very persuasive. For the first time ever Pixie wasn’t in fear at the prospect of having sex. Until he had opened his big mouth and referred to having sex in the limousine Apollo had made sex seem warm and intimate rather than sleazy, potentially painful and scary. He had also made it incredibly exciting.
Pixie’s thoughts drifted much the way her dreams had throughout the week leading up to her wedding day, dreams filled with humiliating X-rated images that disturbed her sleep and woke her up hot and breathless and feeling quite unlike her usual sensible self.
Manfred arrived to tell them that the limo had arrived. Her foster mother, Sylvia Ware, was meeting them at the hotel where the civil ceremony would be staged because Holly had arranged transportation for the older woman. But Holly, Vito and Sylvia, as well as Pixie’s brother and his partner, would be the only guests because it was to be a very small, quiet wedding, appropriate for a male who not only abhorred publicity but had also recently buried his father. Apollo had initially said no to her brother’s attendance but had surprised her by giving way after she had argued that she had to somehow explain why she was leaving the UK. She had agreed not to tell Patrick the truth though.
Before she went into the private function room where the celebrant was staging the ceremony, Pixie paused to twitch her hair straight in a convenient mirror and breathed in very deep. On every level the step she was about to take daunted her because every aspect of living with Apollo Metraxis would be frighteningly new to her and Pixie only ever felt safe with what was familiar and harmless. Sadly, Apollo didn’t fit into either category. But, true to her nature, Pixie lifted her head high, straightened her spine and her eyes glittered with determination as Holly opened the door for her to enter the function room. Whatever she felt on the inside, however, Pixie would conceal. Showing nerves and insecurities in Apollo’s radius would be like bleeding in the water near a killer shark.
* * *
Apollo’s rampant impatience lifted when the door opened. She was five minutes late and for all of those five minutes he had wondered if she had got cold feet. Now with the opening of that door his natural cynicism reasserted its hold on him. Pixie was being very well rewarded for marrying him and when had he ever known a woman to turn her back on an opportunity to enrich herself? In his experience, money talked much louder than anything else. And then Pixie came into view.
And all such thoughts vanished at amazing speed from Apollo’s mind. She was wearing bright pink, not white, and a short dress rather than a full-length one. And she looked exactly like a tiny, very elaborate porcelain doll in dainty heels. He stopped breathing, shimmering green eyes locked to her delicate face beneath the feathery, distinctly un-bridal fascinator crowning her golden head. For all her lack of height she looked ridiculously regal with her hair swept up, her skin glowing, silvery eyes wide and bright, bee-stung lips as pink as the gown. And in only a few more minutes she would be his woman, he reflected with a sudden deep satisfaction that was new to him. His in a way no other woman ever had been or would be in the future because there would be no more marriages ahead of him. He had learned from his father’s mistakes that there was no perfect wife out there waiting if only you could find her, at least not if you were a Metraxis and richer than sin. But still Apollo could not look away from the vision his bride presented.
Pixie collided with emerald-green eyes that glittered like jewels below the thick black lashes longer than her own. Riveting. Powerful. Hungry. And she suffered a heady instant of disbelief that she could have that effect on Apollo, the notorious womaniser accustomed to females more beautiful than she could ever hope to be. She had tried so hard not to think of that aspect for comparisons of that nature were fruitless and would merely feed her anxieties in bed and out of bed with him. Colour ran riot up over her face because she had quite deliberately avoided reflecting on the end result of marrying Apollo…the wedding night. Would it be good or would her inexperience and his emotional detachment make it a disaster?
She reached his side and was dismayed to register that she was trembling. She had travelled in the space of seconds from telling herself that she was calm and composed to a jangling state of nerves that appalled her. As the celebrant began to read the wedding service, she forced herself to look up and encountered a searching look from Vito, who was smiling. Unnerved, she looked down again, her heart thumping very fast while Apollo threaded a ring onto her finger, his hand as warm and steady as hers was cold and shaky. Lighten up, it’s a business arrangement, she reminded herself when the man and wife bit was pronounced and it was over and she believed she could relax again. At least she believed that for as long as it took Apollo to swing her round, his other arm sliding below her hips to lift her in what could only have been described as a caveman kiss.
He hauled her up to his level and his mouth crashed down on hers with passionate force. There was no warning, verbal or physical, simply that positively primeval public claiming that shocked Pixie anew. She had sensed the volatile nature pent up beneath the surface when Apollo had kissed her in his limousine but this kiss was a whole different experience. Before he had asked, this time he literally took, disdaining any preliminaries, both strong arms enclosed round her to keep her off the ground and raise her to his level. It took her breath away, it sent her heart thumping like a road drill, it stripped away every illusion that she had any form of control over him or herself. She could taste his sexual hunger and it speared through her like a heat-seeking missile, awakening every skin cell to raw new sensation.
It was wild and erotic and exciting but it was also ultimately terrifying for Pixie to feel unmanageable and wanton. For a frightening second, as he began lowering her back to the ground on legs that didn’t feel they could possibly support her, she wanted to cling to his wide shoulders and stay exactly where she was. Instead she slid slowly down his big muscular body and not even his suit jacket could conceal the reality that he was as aroused as she was.
Shaken, she found her feet again, and Apollo closed a supportive arm round her lithe body. His, body and soul, whether she liked it or not. And he knew, he knew she wouldn’t like it at all, and Apollo smiled with sudden blinding brilliance, raising a brow a little at his friend Vito’s questioning appraisal and Holly’s state of apparent incredulity. Pixie was his wife now and what happened between them was entirely his business and nothing to do with anyone else, he reflected with satisfaction.
Pixie glimpsed that smile and the colour already mantling her cheeks rocketed even higher, a pulse jumping at her collarbone because angry discomfiture was not far behind. With that kiss he had blown her cover story with Holly and she could see that even Vito was taken aback by Apollo’s enthusiasm. In fact the only people not staring were Patrick, Maria and Sylvia, none of whom saw anything amiss with a passionate wedding kiss between the newly-weds. Pixie pulled away from Apollo to greet her foster mother, Sylvia, and thank her for her attendance, noting as she did that her brother was looking unusually stiff and troubled in comparison to his more usual carefree self.
Patrick kissed her cheek. ‘What’s wrong?’ she whispered.
Holly tugged her away with an insistent hand on her arm. ‘What haven’t you told me?’ she pressed in an undertone.
‘Better
