The Mills & Boon Ultimate Christmas Collection - Kate Hardy Mills & Boon e-Book Collections

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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…

       CHAPTER SEVEN

      WHAT WERE THE ODDS? Apollo asked himself as he sat on deck swigging from a bottle of Russian vodka, his black hair blowing back from his lean darkly attractive features, his green eyes very bright. What were the odds that he would end up with a woman who had also been abused? Whose attitude to sex had been inexorably twisted and spoiled by experiences that had happened when she was too young to handle them?

      Not only had he hurt her physically, he had also shouted at her. Half a bottle further on, Apollo padded barefoot over to the rail. His wife was a virgin and he had acted like an idiot. Why? He was an arrogant jerk proud of his sexual skill and finesse…why not just admit that? He had been so determined to give her the fantasy and it had gone pear-shaped because she hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him the truth. And how could he hold that against her when throughout his whole thirty years of life he had never told anyone but his father what had happened to him? He knew about that kind of secret; he knew about the shame and the self-doubt and the whole blame game. And even though he had seen slivers of low self-esteem and insecurity and anxiety in Pixie it had not once occurred to him that she too could be something of a victim, just like him.

      She had deserved better, much better than he had given her. He had treated her like one of the good-time girls he normally enjoyed, confident and experienced women who wanted fun and thrills in and out of bed and as much luxury and cash as they could wheedle out of him. That had suited him because it left him in complete control at all times. But he wasn’t in control with Pixie and that seriously disturbed him. He was clever, he was normally cool and logical and yet instead of being delighted that his wife had never been with another man he had shouted at her.

      And paradoxically he was delighted because something about Pixie brought out a possessive vibe in him and that vibe of possessiveness had lit up and burned like a naked flame the instant he’d married her. Furthermore, since she had had the courage to tell him something as personal as what she had spilled out in her distress in the bathroom, he really did owe her, didn’t he?

      Apollo wove his path rather drunkenly back to his stateroom where he tripped over the clothes Pixie had gathered up and left in a heap directly in line with the door. The racket he made hitting the floor and his yell of surprise yanked her out of her miserable thoughts with a vengeance.

      Fumbling for the bedside light, Pixie switched it on and stared in wonderment at Apollo sprawled in a heap on the floor. ‘What happened to you?’

      ‘I got drunk, ‘Apollo informed her with very deliberate diction.

      ‘After a…a crummy night that makes sense.’

      ‘Don’t be all English and polite and nice,’ Apollo groaned, raking a hand through his tousled black hair. ‘I wasn’t.’

      ‘But then you’re not English,’ Pixie parried, marvelling at the vision of her very controlled new husband in such a condition. His green eyes had a reckless glitter that unnerved her a little. Sober, he was a lot to handle. Drunk, he could well be more than she could manage.

      ‘Never been with a virgin before,’ he confided. ‘I wanted it to be perfect and then it went wrong and I was furious. My ego, my pride, nothing to do with you. I was a…’ He uttered a four-letter swear word.

      ‘Pretty much,’ she agreed more cheerfully after hearing that he had wanted their wedding night to be perfect, which was a hearteningly unexpected admission when deep down in advance of the bed business she had feared that he would not care a jot. She relaxed her stiff shoulders into the pillows while she studied him and decided that even drunk he was heartbreakingly gorgeous.

      ‘My second stepmother beat me with a belt and left me covered with blood,’ Apollo announced out of the blue.

      Her jaw dropped. ‘How old were you?’

      ‘Six.

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