Читать книгу The Mills & Boon Ultimate Christmas Collection - Мишель Смарт, Kate Hardy - Страница 80
ОглавлениеPIXIE SLUNG HER shoes across their stateroom in a gesture of frustrated fury. Apollo had acted like a total ass all evening and then somehow made a fool of her as if she were the one in the wrong? How was that fair? How was she supposed to forgive him for that? How was she supposed to cope with being married to such a maniac? So much for the business arrangement!
The door clicked open and Pixie spun. ‘I’m not sleeping in here with you tonight.’
Apollo simply depressed the lock and studied her. ‘You’re not sleeping anyplace else.’
‘You’ve got ten guest cabins. What is the matter with you?’ Pixie exclaimed furiously. ‘What do you want from me?’
Apollo surveyed her steadily, concealing his growing bewilderment at his own actions with difficulty. He had lost his head and he didn’t ever do that.
‘Are you going to answer me?’ Pixie asked impatiently, one hand planted on her hip while her foot tapped cheekily on the floor.
He just wanted her. Somehow she was like a missing puzzle piece he had to have at any price. The sex had been amazing. It was the fireworks and the sex that attracted him. She was having the weirdest effect on him. Problem solved and sorted, he told himself stubbornly.
‘Any time soon?’ Pixie prodded in frustration. ‘Like…tonight?’
Apollo unbuttoned his shirt for want of anything better to do. A knock sounded on the door and he answered it. Hector raced in, paused in horror at the sight of Apollo, gave him a very wide berth and shot trembling below the bed. Apollo locked the door again. ‘You’re my wife,’ he told her finally, and as far as he was concerned at that moment that covered everything he needed to say.
Pixie was perplexed by that response. ‘But not a real wife…’
‘We’re legally married, having sex and I’m trying to get you pregnant. How could it be any more real?’ Apollo enquired. ‘Tonight I felt married.’
Her smooth brow indented, grey eyes shimmering with indignation. ‘Well, if that’s how you behave when you’re married, I wouldn’t like to have been around when you were still single.’
‘I wasn’t expecting you to hit back,’ he admitted with startling abruptness, his beautiful wilful mouth curling with a sudden amusement that enraged her even more. ‘Clever move, koukla mou. Guaranteed to get a rise out of a guy as basic as me.’
Her breasts swelled temptingly over the top of the corset as she breathed in very, very deeply. ‘You think it was some kind of strategy to get your attention back?’ she shouted at him in disbelief.
‘It worked,’ Apollo pointed out drily. ‘So, presumably it was deliberate?’
‘No, it freakin’ well wasn’t deliberate!’ Pixie launched at him, bending to scoop up a shoe and hurl it at him in furious rebuttal of that conviction. ‘How dare you be so big-headed that you can think that?’
‘I’ll let it go this once,’ Apollo murmured silkily. ‘But if you ever let another guy touch you like that again you’ll pay for it.’
‘Threatening violence now?’ Pixie questioned, scooping the other shoe and holding it like a weapon.
‘No, you’re rather more violent than I am. You’ve already punched me once and now you’re throwing stuff at me,’ Apollo pointed out deadpan.
Pixie threw the second shoe but he was quick on his feet and she missed. Hector started to whine below the bed.
‘I can allow you to do a lot of things I haven’t allowed a woman to do before, koukla mou,’ Apollo intoned as he strode forward, ‘but I really can’t stand by and allow you to frighten that dog!’
Hauling her up into his arms, Apollo sat down on the bed. ‘Settle down,’ he instructed, pinning an arm round her to stop hers from flailing. ‘You’ve got my full attention.’
‘And now I don’t want it!’ Pixie yelled at him, so wound up with emotion she almost felt tearful over her inability to express herself.
‘I’m afraid you’re stuck with it,’ Apollo told her, dropping his arm to frame her face with big controlling hands. ‘I want you.’
‘No!’ Pixie snapped, striving to clamber off him again.
‘You want me too, you just won’t admit it,’ Apollo opined in frustration.
‘Do you ever listen to yourself? Marvel at the little megalomaniac remarks you make?’
His beautiful stubborn mouth claimed hers in a scorching kiss and her temperature rose like a rocket. She felt hot, she felt faint, she spread her hands against his shoulders and, meeting shirt fabric, slid her fingers beneath the parted edges to find warm brown skin. His tongue dipped and plunged and one of her hands delved into his luxuriant black hair. As she knelt over him, he pushed up her skirt and ground her hips down on him. Suddenly she was achingly aware of the long hard thrust of him behind his zip. Liquid warmth surged between her thighs and she gasped, her nipples swelling and tightening. Yanking down the zip on her top, Apollo cast it aside and bent her slender body back over one arm to suck at a pretty pouting nipple, a manoeuvre that dragged an agonised moan from low in her throat.
‘I’m not speaking to you!’ Pixie exclaimed in consternation.
‘Since when was speech required?’ Apollo groaned, reaching with difficulty below her skirt to rip at the fragile lace of her panties and then touch her with frighteningly knowing fingers in the exact spot she could least resist.
‘Apollo!’ Pixie muttered furiously, helpless in the grip of the sensations flooding her and blaming him for the fact.
He met her shaken eyes and he smiled with sudden brilliance. ‘I want you much more than I’ve ever wanted any other woman,’ he breathed in a raw and shaken undertone.
Oh, the combination of that smile and those tantalising words, it left Pixie dizzy and without her conscious volition her arms slid round his neck and she leant against him, momentarily hiding her face, her thoughts in a messy whirl. What’s wrong with me? Why do I still want him? What happened to the anger?
Lifting her head, she clashed with black-lashed gorgeous green and her heart gave a hop, skip and a jump as though he had hit a switch. And she told herself she couldn’t possibly be falling for him. No, she was too sensible and not at all the type who would build herself up knowing she would only be broken down by the end of the relationship. It was lust, wild, wicked lust, and it was merely hitting her harder because she was a late developer.
Apollo stroked her, teased her tingling core, reducing her defences to forgotten rubble until all she wanted, all she craved, was for the ravaging, greedy hunger to be sated. He tipped her back, removed the tight skirt to the accompaniment of a ripping sound that implied damage, unzipped and came down on her without even undressing. ‘Can’t wait,’ he growled. ‘Have to have you now.’
He pushed into her with scant ceremony but that hard, driving fullness was absolutely what her body needed and desired just then. A cry of compliance left her lips, followed by an ecstatic sigh of gratification when he moved. He changed position to hit her at another angle and she jerked and moaned with pleasure, hearing herself, inwardly cringing for herself but wanting him and that feeling so powerfully she couldn’t fight her own hunger. The waves of pleasure rolled faster and faster, the sensual power of him overwhelming. Her climax engulfed her like an avalanche driving all before it, emptying her of thought, breaking her down into a blissful bundle of pure satisfaction. In the aftermath she was weighted to the bed by Apollo and she decided she might never want to move again.
He scooped her up and slotted her into bed, kneeling over her to almost frantically wrench himself out of what remained of his clothing. That achieved, he crushed her mouth under his again. ‘Hope you’re not tired,’ he breathed in a driven undertone. ‘I think I could go all night…’
They were at peace again. Apollo told himself that that had been his ultimate goal but he already knew that what he craved most was the joy of sinking into her honeyed depths again. There was simply something about her, something that acted on him like an aphrodisiac. He wasn’t going to think about it. Why should he? What was the point? Fabulous sex didn’t need to be dissected: it simply was. Gritting his teeth, he slowly edged an arm round her and she didn’t need much of an invitation after that. In fact she scooted across the divide between them and clamped to the side of him like a landmine, doing all the work for him, he conceded in relief.
‘Women like hugs,’ Vito had told him as if it were some great secret known only to the precious few. Apollo didn’t like hugging women but he believed he could learn to pretend that he did…particularly if it encouraged sex, he reflected with a sudden wolfish grin. Be nice, Holly had told him without much apparent hope that he could possibly deliver on that suggestion.
But when it came to strategy, Apollo was very much on a level with Vito in business. He had misjudged his audience when he’d waited for Pixie to throw a jealous scene at the club, had actually felt pretty offended when she’d failed to deliver on that front but he wouldn’t make that mistake again. No, he would listen and observe and learn until their marriage became much more civilised and both of them got what they wanted out of the arrangement. That was the rational approach and designed to provide the most desirable result, he reasoned with satisfaction.
While Apollo was deliberating with what he believed to be perfect rationality, Pixie was feeling as irrational as a bunch of dandelion seeds left to blow hither and thither in the wind. She had no guidance, no foundation stone for the strong feelings that assailed her when Apollo, apparently quite naturally, wrapped both arms tightly around her. He made her feel safe. He made her feel as if he cared. He made her feel as if she was indeed special. And even though the common sense in her hind brain was already sneering that she was nothing in comparison with the leggy, glamorous underwear models of the type he favoured, she was happy for the first time in a long time, happy instead of just getting through the day…
She decided she wasn’t going to waste energy worrying or picking herself apart with self-loathing criticisms. He was right on one thing: she wanted him. And if their marriage was to work on any level they had to have that chemistry and use it accordingly. A lean hand smoothed down her spine and she quivered and stopped thinking altogether.
* * *
Apollo had already laid the trail and Hector was becoming an old hand at following treat trails.
The scruffy little animal crept out from his roofed hidey hole of a basket and snuffled up the treats, inching half under Apollo’s desk while Apollo pretended to ignore his progress. Every week the little terrier dared to move a little closer to the male who terrified him—not that Apollo took that personally. Hector was uniformly terrified of every man that came into his vicinity and considerably more trusting of the female sex. He had first bonded with Pixie in the vet surgery where his injuries had been tended. Pixie had worked next door and, being friendly with the veterinary nurse, had often visited the homeless dogs in their cages. Although Pixie had worked and did not have a garden, the vet had deemed her a good prospective owner because Hector had taken to her immediately.
At least, though, Hector was rather more predictable than Pixie, Apollo conceded with a frown.
He could see that Pixie didn’t really trust anything he said. It was as if she was fully convinced that he could never be anything other than a womaniser, as if she believed he carried some genetic flaw that made him unsuitable for any other purpose, and it was quietly driving him crazy. He had never met a woman so resistant to his attempts to change her mind about him. In bed, she was his perfect match, the only woman he had ever met as highly sexed as he was, but beyond that bedroom door she was blind to his best efforts. He tossed a squeaky toy across the desk in Hector’s direction. He was expecting the dog to run away from it but Hector took him by surprise and pounced with apparent glee on the toy and pummelled it with his paws, seemingly pleased by the frantic squeaking that resulted.
* * *
Pixie stretched a daring toe out of the bed and slowly sat up, checking her newly unreliable body for the roiling wave of sickness that had attacked her on several occasions throughout the week. Even though she stood up equally slowly, that was still when the nausea hit and with a groan she raced for the bathroom. After a shower she got dressed, her stomach restored to normality again. Was she pregnant? If she was, she could only be at a very early stage and she doubted that she could already be suffering from nausea. Her hopes, after all, had been dashed after the first couple of weeks of their marriage passed and her cycle kicked in as normal. It had seemed incredible to her even then that all that sex hadn’t led straight to conception. This time, however, her period was a little late but not late enough to risk raising false hopes, so she had said nothing to Apollo as yet.
A false alarm would be embarrassing but what was really bothering her was the disturbing suspicion that even if she had conceived she still wouldn’t want to rush into telling him. And why would that be?
Pixie coloured as she pulled on shorts and a tee and then dried her hair. No, she still wasn’t using the on-board beauty salon for that because she had always liked doing her own hair. She was using it for other services though, she conceded, glancing at her perfectly manicured nails and equally well-groomed brows. Apollo’s wealthy lifestyle was slowly but surely overtaking the former ordinary informality of hers. It scared her to accept that she was becoming accustomed to wearing designer clothes and expensive jewellery. Apollo called it ‘looking the part’ and she had to agree that nobody would take their marriage seriously if she went around dressed like a beggar or a bag lady. But even so, sometimes she felt as though she was losing an essential part of herself and that would have to be her independence.
Of course, everything would change if she was pregnant, she told herself unhappily. Apollo would reclaim his previous life and return happily to acting like the biggest man whore in Europe. After all, once a pregnancy was achieved there would be no reason for him to stay with Pixie or settle for having only one woman in his life. There wouldn’t even be a reason for him to share a bed with her any longer…it would be the effective end of their supposed marriage.
And there it was. The sad truth that lay at the heart of her anxieties. She was hopelessly in love with a husband who wasn’t a real husband. She had learned so much about Apollo over the past six weeks and he was not at all like the playboy he was depicted as in the tabloids and on the gossip sites on the Internet. She had always wondered why he and Vito, who was rather serious in nature, were such close friends when at first glance as men they were so very unalike. And in temperament, family background and outlook they were very different but not anything like as different as Pixie had originally assumed.
Apollo supported loads of charities and the main one, she had discovered, was a charity for abused children. But the charitable cause possibly closest to his heart was an abandoned pets’ sanctuary he had set up in Athens. On the Metraxis island of Nexos he had also established a therapy centre where the more damaged animals were rehabilitated and she couldn’t wait to visit it and possibly pick up a few tips from the professionals there on how best to handle Hector’s fear. It was hard facts of that nature that had begun to eradicate Pixie’s former hostile distrust of Apollo.
Ever since that evening at the nightclub when they had both lost their tempers, the mood had changed between them. They had not been apart for even a night since then. Pixie’s mouth quirked. She wasn’t sure Apollo could get by one night without sex. Or that she could. Indeed the stormy fizzing passion they shared in bed thrilled her almost as much as it could still unnerve her. Naturally they still fought on occasion but in every way their relationship seemed so normal that it was a continual battle for Pixie to remember that their marriage wasn’t really a marriage at all, but a business arrangement with the ultimate goal of conception and a very firm end date.
Her brother, Patrick, however, wasn’t aware of those facts and brother and sister talked regularly on the phone. Since the wedding her brother had become more honest, finally admitting that he did have a problem with gambling. Patrick was now seeing an addiction counsellor and attending Gamblers Anonymous on a regular basis. Although Pixie had been furious when she’d realised that Apollo had confronted her brother about his issues without consulting her, she had changed her mind on that score, deciding that even though she hadn’t liked Apollo’s methods his approach had been the right one. After all, but for Apollo’s intervention she wouldn’t even have known that her sibling was still gambling. Furthermore, given advice and support, Patrick now had a much better chance of overcoming his gambling dependency and living a happier and much safer life.
It probably wasn’t even slightly surprising that she had fallen so hard for Apollo, Pixie reflected ruefully. He was her first lover, her first everything and like any legendary stud he had buckets of charisma when he tried to impress. And that was what she couldn’t afford to forget, Pixie reminded herself doggedly: Apollo was faking it for her benefit and his. Did he think that she was so stupid that she didn’t know that?
Obviously every seemingly concerned or pleasant thing he had done around her was a giant fake!
After all, the stress and strain of a bad relationship could prevent her from getting pregnant while simple strife would keep her out of his bed. So, when she had dived off the top deck of Circe to surprise him because she was a very proficient swimmer and diver and Apollo had gone ballistic at the supposed dangerous risk he had deemed her to have taken, his evident concern for what might have happened to her couldn’t possibly have been genuine. If she killed herself diving it would be inconvenient for him but with his resources and attraction he would quickly replace her, Pixie thought, miserably melodramatic in the mood she was in.
In the same way, the many trips they had shared, stopping off to swim and picnic in secluded coves and explore enchanting little villages on various Greek islands were not to be taken too seriously. Apollo enjoyed showing off the beauties of his homeland and was a great deal better educated than she had initially appreciated. She had discovered that he could give her chapter and verse on every ancient Greek or Roman site they came on. Her fingers fiddled restively with the little gold and diamond tiger pendant she wore. He had given her that a week after that nightclub scene, telling her that she was much more than a kitten with claws. Since she had scored his back in the heat of passion with her nails the night before he had given it to her she had laughed in appreciation. And that had annoyed Apollo, something she seemed to do sometimes without even meaning to, she acknowledged with regret.
But then, undeniably, Apollo was mercurial and volatile, passionate and outspoken and still in many ways a mystery and a contradiction to Pixie. He was a billionaire with every luxury at his command and yet he could picnic on a beach quite happily with a rough bottle of the village vino, home-baked bread and a salad scattered with the salty local cheese. He clearly loved dogs and could have owned a select pack of pedigreed animals without any need of therapy, but he had not owned a dog since childhood and seemed to prefer to spend his time trying to win Hector’s trust. And Hector was the most ordinary of ordinary little terriers with the scrappy stubborn nature of his breed and he was extremely reluctant to change his defensive habits.
The door opened and Pixie scrambled up as her dog trailed after Apollo into the room. Hector wouldn’t go to Apollo but he was quite happy to follow him at a safe distance. Clad in tailored chino pants and an open-necked black shirt, Apollo slanted her a reproving grin. ‘What’s with all this sleeping in every morning? You didn’t join me for breakfast again,’ he complained.
‘Maybe you’re wearing me out,’ Pixie quipped.
His green eyes gleamed like jewels fringed by lush black lashes in his lean, strong face. ‘Am I too demanding?’ he suddenly asked with a frown.
And Pixie went pink, dismay assailing her because she had been teasing. ‘No more than I am,’ she muttered, her eyes veiling as she remembered wakening him up at some time of the night and taking thorough advantage of his lean, hard body to satisfy the need that never entirely receded in his radius.
Apollo wrapped a careless arm round her shoulders. ‘I do like an honest woman,’ he confessed with husky sensual recollection.
‘No, what you like is being my only object of desire,’ Pixie corrected, her body sliding into the lean, hard embrace of his as if it were programmed to do so.
He bent his dark head and claimed her bee-stung mouth with a hungry thoroughness that tightened her nipples and ran like fire to the heart of her and she trembled against his hard, muscular frame, suddenly weak again in a way she hated. She denied herself the desire to put her arms round him. She didn’t want Apollo to know how she felt about him because that would inevitably make their relationship uncomfortable. Hadn’t she promised him that she wouldn’t turn clingy or needy? And that she had no intention of falling for him? Even worse, she thought painfully, she had truly believed she could deliver on those pledges of faith in his undesirability.
Her incredibly tender breasts ached with a mixture of oversensitivity and swelling desire when he crushed her to him with sudden force and for a split second she knew he could have done anything he wanted with her because she had no resistance and no longer any defences to fall back on to support her.
It was disconcerting when Apollo set her back from him in an uncharacteristic move of restraint. ‘No,’ he breathed in a fractured undertone. ‘I came down to bring you up on deck. I want you to see the island for the first time as we come into harbour.’
And Pixie understood why he had backed off even though it did make her feel a little like an overdose of sugar being rejected by someone who had decided to go on a diet. In truth she had always accepted, she thought ruefully, that Apollo could resist her if he chose to do so and naturally that hurt her pride and her heart, but it was also a fact of life she had better learn to live with. After all, if she had already conceived she suspected their actual future as a couple could be measured in days rather than months.
Furthermore, the island of Nexos, the home of the Metraxis family for several generations, was hugely important to Apollo and probably one of the main reasons he had married her. Without a wife and a child he could not securely claim his heritage.
Pixie stood out on deck with the bright blue sky above her and the sun beating down while Circe powered more slowly than usual towards the island spread before them. Apollo slid his arms round her from behind and she leant back against him to be more comfortable, her keen and curious gaze scanning the pine trees edging the sandy beach at one end of the island and the rocky cliffs towering at the other. In the middle there was greenery and silvery olive groves and a fair-sized village climbing the hill behind the harbour—little white cube houses stretching in all directions while a little domed stone church presided over the flat land at the water’s edge.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she murmured dreamily.
‘I didn’t properly appreciate Nexos as my home until I thought about losing it,’ Apollo intoned grimly. ‘If I’d confided more in my father he would not have left that will as his final testament to me.’
‘It doesn’t matter now, not really,’ Pixie reasoned, hopelessly eager to provide comfort when she recognised the emotional undertow of regret in his dark deep drawl. ‘Maybe your father simply knew what bait to put on the hook.’
Apollo burst out laughing without the smallest warning and gazed down at the top of her golden head. ‘I doubt if he appreciated you would be less than five foot tall and a hairdresser. A talented one though, I must admit, koukla mou,’ he added, clearly worried that he had hurt her feelings and that she had interpreted that reminder of her more humble beginnings as a put-down. ‘As bait you have proved as efficient as a torpedo under the water line.’
Destructive? Was that how he saw her? Was that because he had confided in her about his evil stepmothers? Or because he had shown her that he was as vulnerable as any other human being in childhood? And as amazingly loveable, she conceded wretchedly, worry dragging her down again along with the fear of the separation she saw waiting on the horizon.
