even blocked her attempt to get a little tipsy. She was way more sober than she had planned to be, having assumed that the alcohol would make her less nervous. As it was she only felt the very slightest buzz from the wine she had imbibed before he made sobriety sound like her bounden duty.
Apollo was both disconcerted and enthralled by her sudden silence and submissive attitude for it was not at all what he had dimly expected from her. ‘I’m not remotely kinky in bed if that’s what you’re worrying about,’ he told her with amusement.
Pixie gulped. ‘I’m not the slightest bit worried,’ she assured him.
‘Then why can’t you relax and trust me?’ Apollo enquired lazily, his dark deep drawl having already dropped in pitch and the vowel sounds roughened.
In mortification, Pixie closed her eyes. ‘I’d really prefer the lights out…’
‘Not my preference but if that’s what it takes, koukla mou.’ Apollo reached up to stab a button above the headboard and the stateroom was plunged into darkness although soft light emanated from the lights still illuminating the private deck beyond the windows.
His wicked mouth descended on the slope of her neck and she shivered, a different kind of tension entering her now that he no longer had an alarmingly bright view of her physical deficiencies. She quivered as long fingers expertly teased her straining nipples.
‘I’m very small there,’ she pointed out, unable to resist a ridiculous urge to draw his attention to the obvious.
‘I like it,’ Apollo growled next to her ear, nipping at her ear lobe, sending another shot of uncontrolled response darting through her.
‘Men always want more, not less.’
Apollo arched his hips and ground his pelvis against her thigh. ‘Does that feel like I’m low on sexual interest?’ he asked silkily. ‘Now, be quiet.’
And Pixie shut her mouth because she was embarrassed by the inappropriate comments spilling from her lips. He rested her against the soft pillows and employed his mouth on her breasts, sending increasingly powerful streams of sensation down into her pelvis. Her hips rocked of their own volition and that shocked her. She could feel herself getting hot and damp there and that shocked her almost as much as her sudden desire to join in and explore him. Of course, she didn’t have the nerve. She lay there like a felled statue, settling for being hugely grateful not to be on the edge of a panic attack.
Apollo was wheeling out his entire repertory of foreplay in an attempt to win the fireworks response he had craved from their first kiss. He had never gone so slowly in his life with a woman. He had never had to because usually they were all over him, egging him on to the final act as if afraid he would lose interest if it took too long to get there. He kissed a line down a slender arm and smiled. There was just nothing of her and he would have to be very careful not to crush her. He caressed a tiny foot, flexed the toes, revelling in the novelty of that fragile daintiness. She might be small but everything was in perfect proportion. As he skimmed down her panties he reached up, fingers closing into her golden hair to raise her head and claim her lips again.
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.
