A Baby on the Greek's Doorstep

‘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.