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Apollo heeling out his entire repertory of foreplay in an attempt to win the fireworks response he had craved froone so slowly in his life with a woman He had never had to because usually they were all over hi 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 ar 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 Shewas in perfect proportion As he ski into her golden hair to raise her head and claiain

A gasp renched froently 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 teed into the depths of his hair Finally getting that response energised Apollo’s hunger

There was so in but he kneanted it to be an unforgettable night for her Why it had to be that ith her he didn’t know or care, but then he had always responded very well to a challenge and in ht from the start Unimpressed, cool, indifferent For the first tiy wo 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 e lick that ain 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 beco 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 i He slid a finger into her damp folds and she almost spontaneously co 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 so she couldn’t reclairound 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 i, straining, while the ripples of exciteether and then an al and crying out andall at the same time

‘When you corowled 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 reat satisfaction as he slid over her, tilting her hips up to receive hiroan 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 hiain and folded back at her feet, the sheet tangled round him His lean, darkly handso 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 toodismissed 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 ht have mentioned a rat on board his superyacht

Anger began to lace her growing asped, 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 h fro voice at the back of Apollo’s volatile head arning hienuinely furious with Pixie for wrecking so with her silence that he had been deteroal 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 fra 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 ave 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’?’

Pixie sed hard, her face burning at his raw derision Clutching the sheet to her bare skin, she felt about an inch high while she watched hiolden-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 becoripped her He was accusto out of his depth after she’d yelped cravenly at one small jab of pain Really, could she possibly have ry?

Guilt stirring, Pixie slid out of bed and pulled on his shirt, because it was the nearest ite that would cover her She breathed in the scent of hihed because she had screwed up, made a mountain out of ould probably have been a molehill had she si frank on such a personal topic was so Pixie had never contrived to be, even with Holly

As she appeared in the doorway Apollo glowered at her fro there naked and unconcerned, water strea bronzed body Pixie stared and flushed ‘I’ly ‘I should’ve warned you’

‘But instead of warning me, you actually lied!’ Apollo conde 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 woood for her

‘I said sorry There’s not much more I can do,’ Pixie launched back at hi ‘What do you want? Blood?’

‘Already had that experience with you,’ Apollo derided slass

And that crack was the last straw for Pixie and she lost it Her fingernails bit into her pal at hi me why I don’t like men and why I didn’t warn you,’ she frah her slight body in a great heady surge

‘And ould that be?’ Apollo de up a towel and stalking out of the shower

‘Because you’re threatening and selfish andup!’ she told hi to catch me with my clothes off when I was in the bathroo to touchdirty stuff to me…’

Apollo had seely frozen where h

e stood Not even the towel he had been using to dry hi ‘What men?’

‘Care staff in some of the children’s homes I stayed in, foster fathers…sometiht 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 see 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 keepNobody ever actuallybut it put me off the physical stuff…’

‘Obviously…naturally’ Apollo snatched in an alreen eyes rested on her ‘Go back to bed and try to get so you’

Taken aback, Pixie stared without coht, shuttered expression

‘I’m sorry I hurt you’

‘It was only a tiny hurt I just wasn’t expecting it,’ she muttered aardly, 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