by Lynne Graham
‘I need your help to undo the hooks on this dress,’ Pixie admitted even more stiffly. ‘I don’t want to damage it. Being a sentimental sort, I want to keep it.’
Tor breathed in deep and slow, questioning how the hell he had once again screwed up with her when such errors and misunderstandings had never occurred with any other woman. He was all over the place inside his head: he could feel it and it unnerved him more than a little to appreciate that, with her, he lost his focus, his self-discipline and his logical cool. She had shouted at him and he had not even known she was capable of shouting because in so many ways she was his exact opposite, being gentle and caring and softer in every way. Softer but not weak, he grasped, grateful for that distinction, because her weasel-like brother’s weakness had turned his stomach.
‘I like that,’ he admitted honestly. ‘You’re not thinking of me having a successor.’
Pixie twisted her head round to survey him in shock. ‘You thought that might have been likely?’
‘It’s not uncommon in my world for a woman to use her first marriage as a stepping stone to better.’
‘You’re Alfie’s father. I couldn’t get better,’ she insisted awkwardly.
‘Even though I messed up?’
‘Everyone does that occasionally,’ Pixie pointed out, shooting him a sideways smile as he embarked on the hooks on her silk gown. ‘Sooner or later I’m going to do it too...nothing surer.’
‘You always say the right forgiving thing, don’t you?’
‘Well, it’s better than being all bitter and cynical and always expecting the worst from people, which seems to be your MO...not trying to start another argument!’ she added in haste.
‘I see the world through a different lens. I’m not bitter,’ Tor asserted.
Pixie would have begged to differ on that score, but she compressed her lips and said nothing at all. Of course, Tor was bitter that his first love had let him down so badly, but if he was determined not to recognise the fact, that was his business, not hers. It wasn’t his fault that he didn’t know enough about his own emotions to label them, was it? Because she had decided that that was what she was dealing with: a guy utterly unable to recognise his own feelings for what they were, blind as a bat to his own emotional promptings. He had concentrated on the guilt he’d experienced at his wife and daughter’s deaths, beat himself up for his mistakes rather than on the huge betrayal that had preceded and powered that tragic loss.
Tor’s usually nimble fingers began to get inexplicably clumsy as he unhooked the back of Pixie’s dress. Pale pearly shoulder blades, narrow and delicate, were revealed, and as the hooks worked down, something frilly and lacy and absolutely Tor’s favourite sort of lingerie began to appear and he snatched in a startled breath, wondering why it felt vaguely indecent to find his bride quite so sexually potent. It was a tiny corset, as tiny as she was as long as she didn’t turn round and show off the front view, which he imagined would be spectacular. He reminded himself that she was heading for a bath and that the last thing she needed now was to be mauled by a sexually voracious bridegroom, who had already infuriated her. He spread the corners of the gown back and succumbed involuntarily to temptation, pressing his lips softly against an inch of pale porcelain skin.
‘Tor...?’ Pixie prompted, but only after a helpless little quiver as that unsought kiss on her skin travelled through her.
‘Working on the hooks,’ Tor ground out thickly, watching the corset hooks appear, the pulse at his groin speeding from interested to crazed because he was realising just what he had wrecked. The fancy lingerie had been for his benefit because he had made that remark about how much he liked such adornments.
‘I find you incredibly tempting,’ he breathed with a ragged undertone as he traced the line of her shoulder to her nape with the tip of his tongue and lingered there, drinking in the fruit scent of her skin, some kind of peachy scent that absolutely did it for him. ‘I’m sorry.’
Pixie wasn’t really speaking to Tor, not in a childish way but in a grown-up-quiet way. She had been en route to a bath and a serious rethink about where she stood with him, but nobody had ever told her that she was incredibly tempting before. No man’s hand had ever trembled before against her shoulder and that she could have the power to affect Tor to that extent was a dream come true for her. Slowly, Pixie turned round and let the silk dress drop down her arms to her wrists and fall, so that the whole thing dropped round her ankles and he was gratifyingly entranced. It was written all over him, brilliant dark golden eyes locked to her like magnets, and she liked that, really, really liked that.
‘Kiss me,’ she said abruptly, not thinking about it, refusing to think about it, just acting on natural instinct.
‘That’s where we started out before.’
‘Nothing wrong with a repeat,’ Pixie told him squarely. ‘But you’re far too tall to kiss standing upright, so I think we should move...er...lie down, whatever.’
‘You were going for a bath.’ Tor husked the reminder reluctantly.
‘A lady can change her mind,’ Pixie told him, drowning in the dark golden smouldering depths of his black-fringed eyes, revelling in the truth that the gorgeous guy was actually her gorgeous guy and not someone else’s.
‘Did I say sorry that well?’ Tor asked, sucking in a quick shallow breath, quite unbelievably enthralled by her change of heart and shocked by himself.
‘I’m softer than you but selfish too,’ Pixie whispered shakily. ‘I want you. I probably want you more than I ever wanted anything in my life.’
And that was the green light that Tor needed to snatch her up out of her fallen gown and carry her over to the bed, where he laid her out to admire her in all the glory of the white corset, panties and white stockings she had worn for his benefit. He couldn’t take his eyes off her tiny figure lying on display, the full mounds of her breasts cupped in lace for his delectation, the tight white vee of silk between her thighs, the slender graceful line of her thighs. He was enchanted by that view. Dimly, he registered that sex had, evidently, been rather boring before he met Pixie, something only his strong libido had driven him to do on a regular basis, and that was a fine distinction he had not recognised before. She made him burn with lust, she added another entire dimension to his concept of sexual desire.
Without warning, Pixie scrambled up and off the bed and began to help him out of his jacket. ‘You’ve got too much on,’ she mumbled, half under her breath, belatedly embarrassed by her own boldness.
Tor smiled, shed the tie, the jacket, peeled off his shirt and toed off his shoes. He was getting rid of the socks and unzipping his trousers when he saw her seated at the foot of the wide divan watching him as though he were a film. ‘What?’ he queried with a raised brow.
‘You didn’t undress the first time,’ Pixie admitted starkly.
And in that single admission, Tor knew how badly he had got it wrong the night his son had been conceived and he almost grimaced. ‘Precautions?’
Pixie winced and reddened. ‘No, neither of us thought of that, so that wasn’t entirely your fault. I was foolish too.’
His black brows drew together. ‘I was fully clothed when I woke up the next day, which is why I had no idea I had been intimate with anyone,’ he breathed in a driven undertone, because nothing that he was discovering was raising his opinion of himself when he was under the influence of alcohol and he knew it would be a cold day in hell before he got in that condition again.
Pixie dropped her curly head with a wincing motion of her slight shoulders. ‘I...er...tidied you up. I was... I was embarrassed... If I’m honest, I didn’t want you to know or remember me. I felt I had let myself down and taken advantage of you.’
‘Of...me?’ Tor cited in disbelief.
‘Well, you’d been quite clear about not wanting to be with anyone after you had rejected Saffron,’ she reminded him ruefully. ‘I should
’ve heeded that and drawn back.’
Tor set his teeth together. ‘We both got carried away and I know why. You turn me on fast and hard and neither of us was able to call a halt.’
Pixie nodded in a rush, seeing that he had grasped what had happened, the sheer explosion of hunger that had seized her. But while they had been talking, Tor had also been getting naked and her mind was wandering because she was very much enjoying the view. Stripped down to black boxers, he had the build of a Greek god garbed in living flesh instead of marble and the lean, powerful lines of muscle etching his chest and abdomen made her mouth run dry. He was amazingly perfect and beautiful. In Eloise’s parlance, it was a case of the super tanker and the tugboat comparison again. What on earth had he ever seen in her ordinary self? Or was that kind of physical attraction simply unquantifiable and impossible to explain? she wondered. The pull between them that night had been so strong, so irresistible and already she could feel the same thing happening to her again, her body warming and quickening down deep inside and her heartbeat speeding up.
‘Tonight will be different from that first night,’ Tor swore with an edge of raw anticipation and masculine resolve that sent butterflies cascading through her stomach while a hot, tight feeling clenched her pelvis.
CHAPTER NINE
‘IT WASN’T A bad experience...er...you and me,’ Pixie reassured him with hot cheeks. ‘Physically it worked for me.’
‘I can do better than that,’ Tor husked, staring down at her, at the high plump mounds peaking from the lace edge of the corset. ‘I love this lingerie, hara mou.’
‘You’re acting like it’s something special to you...me wearing this stuff,’ Pixie muttered tensely. ‘When we both know it’s not special because you’ve had many women in your life and a great deal of experience.’
‘After Katerina I never stayed with anyone for more than a few days, so I was never around long enough for anyone to make the effort to dress up for me,’ he countered bluntly as he gazed down at her with heavily lashed, half-hooded, dark brooding eyes. ‘We’re married now. This is a whole different relationship.’
Yes, very different from the one he must once have had with the woman he loved, Pixie’s brain sniped, and she stifled that thought, knowing that such thoughts, such pointless, tasteless comparisons, would drive her mad if she let them in. Katerina was his past and she was his present and she had to be sensible and view their marriage in that positive light, not give way to envy. Envy? That was what she was discovering inside herself, a sense of envy relating to his late wife, who had had it all with him and simply thrown it away. Why was she envious? Why was she feeling more than she should about an old relationship that was none of her business?
But that knotty question fled her mind as Tor brought her down on the bed and crushed her mouth under his. If there was one thing she had learned the first time Tor kissed her, it was that Tor knew how to kiss, indeed, Tor knew so well how to kiss that he made her head spin and sent a ripple of craving shooting through her with every dancing plunge of his tongue. Her fingers laced into the thick silk of his hair and held him to her, smoothing down over his wide, strong shoulders, exploring over the satin skin of his back because that first night she hadn’t been able to touch him while he was still clothed.
Tor came up on an elbow, a long forefinger skimming back an edge of lace to bare a rounded breast crowned by a straining pink nipple. ‘You excite the hell out of me,’ he admitted gruffly, hungrily closing a mouth to that tempting peak, using the tip of his tongue, the tug of his teeth and his warm sensual mouth to pleasure her.
The motion of his mouth on her breasts tightened her, as if there were a chain leading to the hot, liquid centre of her body, and her hips shifted upwards, all of her awash with more craving. He sat her up with easy confidence and began to unhook the corset. Her cheeks flushed and she looked away from him, wanting so much to own that confidence of his. It had been dim that first night, never mind his lack of awareness: he had not been looking for flaws.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked her, disconcerting her by noticing her anxiety.
‘It was sort of darkish that night and now I feel like I’m under floodlights.’ With one hand she made an awkward motion towards the fancy lights above, the mirrors on the units adding their myriad reflections to the brightness.
Tor shifted up and hit a switch above the bed and the illumination dimmed. ‘Better?’
‘It’s really stupid being shy when we’ve already got a kid,’ Pixie muttered guiltily, wishing she could get a grip on her self-consciousness before it wrecked the atmosphere.
‘No, it’s not.’ Tor tugged her back down to him, moulding his big hands to her full breasts. ‘But you do stress a lot, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she admitted ruefully.
‘So, it’s up to me to ensure you have more to think about, latria mou...’ Tor skated a fingertip across the taut triangle of her panties and she gasped, the pulse of arousal between her slender thighs kicking on to an intense high.
In that moment everything else melted away along with her insecurities. Suddenly, she was twisting round to find that wicked mouth of his, so sensually full and yet hard and soft at the same time, that so enthralled her. He was peeling off her panties and she quivered at the prospect of him touching her again, for the merest instant mortified by her own eagerness, but then she was already maddeningly conscious of the swollen, slick readiness of her own body.
Even the lightest brush of his fingertips aroused her, and she was knocked off balance when he slid down the bed and began to use his mouth on that most tender area. Of course, she knew about that, knew the specifics of everything sexual, but she hadn’t ever imagined that anything could feel as good as what he made her feel then. Every nerve ending in her body seemed to be centred there and before very long she was quivering with little reflexive tremors running through her and breathless little sounds she couldn’t silence falling from her parted lips as her head thrashed back and forth on the pillow.
As the pressure in her pelvis rose and tightened, her hips began to writhe to a spontaneous rhythm and the great gathering whoosh of sensation surged and she cried out and then lay there, discovering her fingers were knotted in his hair and slowly withdrawing them, a great lassitude sweeping her.
‘No, you don’t get to sleep now, moraki mou,’ Tor told her with a slashing grin that banished every shred of dark, forbidding tension from his lean, darkly handsome features. He kissed her with devouring hunger as he stretched up over her with the lean, powerful, predatory grace of a stalking panther. She tasted herself on his lips and still moaned beneath that sensual assault as he hooked up her knees and settled her back, pushing his hot, sleek shaft against the still-tingling entrance to her body and plunging in hard enough to make her gasp in delight.
He angled down his hips and sank so deep into her that she didn’t know where he began and she ended and that was only the beginning, the wildly arousing beginning while she was still in control. But the excitement of his fluid, driving thrusts into her sensitised body smashed her control, smashed it and broke it into tiny pieces until she was rising against him with her heart pounding and her body arching, craving his every move. She could barely breathe, she could certainly not speak, but had she had her voice she would only have urged him not to stop. The burning rise to orgasm began all over again, forcing her higher and higher, stimulated almost beyond bearing and seething with a physical sensual energy she had not known she possessed. And then at the zenith of sensation she shattered, electrified by the blazing excitement that convulsed her every limb, and she was utterly captivated by the drenching slow, sweet pleasure that flooded her in the aftermath.
Tor froze as Pixie cuddled into him, her little hand spreading across the centre of his damp heaving chest, and for an instant he almost lost control and pushed her away from him in a knee-jerk reaction. For five years, he had been pushing women
away the instant they tried to be affectionate because, rather than pleasing him, it chilled him. It had always reminded him of Katerina’s superficial affection, which had, in the end, proved to be so false, not only towards him, but towards her daughter as well, he acknowledged grimly. But he would not make vile comparisons that Pixie did not deserve, and he would make a really big effort to pretend that this was his first marriage before he learned to question almost everything a woman said and did.
That sounded bitter, he conceded in surprise as he extended an arm round Pixie’s slight, pliant body and pulled her close. But he wasn’t bitter—was he? Thee mou, his bride was as good as a witch when it came to slotting odd ideas into his mind! Only, she didn’t need a book to cast a spell, only her body, her response, her warmth, all of which she offered so freely. If he wasn’t very careful he would hurt her again, because she was much more fragile than the women he was accustomed to dealing with and he wasn’t of a sensitive persuasion.
‘Is it always that amazing?’ Pixie whispered.
‘No, it’s not,’ Tor answered truthfully, and he was almost but not quite tempted to tell her that it had never been that good for him before, but she didn’t need to know that, did she? Theirs was a marriage of convenience and practicality and that was all he wanted it to be. He didn’t want the legendary highs or the fabled lows, he would be content with his son and a marriage on an even keel.
Pixie felt blissfully relaxed, relieved that the silly newspaper story had been dealt with and set aside without causing more trouble. Being in a relationship, being one half of a whole, was very new to her and she was beginning to see that there were no hard and fast rules and that she had to learn to compromise and smooth over the rough spots where she could. Even now, though, she was aware that even if Tor didn’t see it, he was still damaged by what Katerina had done to him.
Pixie had felt him freeze when she’d snuggled up to him and she had held her breath, waiting to see what he would do, and she had only relaxed when he’d pulled her the rest of the way into his arms. But that didn’t mean that she wasn’t aware that she had married a wary, bitter, suspicious man with a tendency to expect everything to blow up in his face when he least expected it. Hopefully, time and experience would teach him differently when it came to having her and Alfie as a family. Should how he felt matter to her as much as it did? Well, she knew what her problem was: she was halfway to falling madly in love with Tor, possibly even further than halfway, she conceded ruefully.