‘Do you think I’m a fool?’ he asked, his tone turning quietly, lethally polite as he turned around to face her. ‘Is that what you think? Or maybe you actually believe you have all the power, all the cards, in this twisted little game of yours? I am well aware that a Woodward’s arrogance knows no bounds. Maybe you’re hoping you can navigate me into a corner with this little power play of yours, get me to give you something just for old times’ sake. Is that it?’
He gestured contemptuously to her dress while she stared at him in what looked and felt like complete confusion. Her forehead was furrowed, her eyes crinkled as she shook her head slowly.
‘Nico…’ she began unsteadily. ‘I really have no idea what you’re talking about.’ One hand fluttered at her throat, and she looked so pale that Nico wondered cynically if she might faint again. How many times had she pulled the damsel in distress routine in the last thirty-six hours? Fainting, spraining her ankle, the episode in her apartment… That trick was getting decidedly old. He would not fall for it a fourth time. Three had been bad enough.
She took a step towards him, her green eyes huge in her face and swimming with tears as her lips trembled. ‘I just want to save my employees…’ she whispered.
‘Oh, come off it,’ Nico sneered. How had he ever been convinced by her, even in the slightest? ‘I’ve had enough of the Saint Ashley act, behaving as if all you care about is other people, when I know for afactyou only care about yourself.’
She shook her head slowly as he started towards her, closing the space between them. He felt like grabbing her, shaking her, forcing her to admit why she was lying to him. Why she thought looking so breathless and confused would actually convince him of anything.
‘Why don’t you just tell me why you’re so angry?’ she asked in a tremulous whisper. ‘And then…then we can talk about it.’
‘How very reasonable of you,’ he drawled coldly. He stood before her, eyeing her up and down, unable to keep from noticing the way the dress shaped to her high, firm breasts, her chest rising and falling in unsteady gasps. Her skin was pearly and luminescent, her face tilted to his just as it had once been before, her lips parted as if inviting his kiss…
It was the night of the ball over again, the attraction between them like a force field neither of them could resist. He remembered it from before, how he’d felt powerless to keep from kissing her, no matter what the cost. How she’d invited him to, with her eyes, her breath, her parted lips…just as she did now.
But this time the moment, once so full of wonder, was tainted with all that had gone before. Tainted by the knowledge of who she really was and what he’d suffered…and she hadn’t cared.
And yet even as that knowledge reverberated through him Nico felt a stirring, and then a surge, of desire. And he knew, from the way Ashley’s pupils dilated and her breath hissed out, that she felt it too. This magnetic pull was too forceful for either of them to resist. No matter that he was angry and she was afraid; the connection between them was real, and even now threatened to overwhelm both of their warring emotions.
Nico put his hands on her bare shoulders, his palms smoothing over her silky skin as he drew her to him. Ashley looked up at him, her emerald eyes glassy and huge in her pale face, her lips parted in invitation.
‘Nico…’ she whispered, and it sounded like a plea. He bent his head. She swayed towards him.
And then he kissed her.
Chapter Ten
FIREWORKS BURST INAshley’s heart and sparks raced through her veins as Nico captured her mouth with his own. It made absolutely no sense to welcome his kiss now, she thought dazedly, before she stopped thinking at all as Nico ravaged her mouth, his hands sliding from her shoulders to cup her breasts, squeezing and kneading as his thumbs ran over her peaked nipples, playing her body like an instrument, coaxing a sound from her lips she’d never made before—a mewling plea for more.
In the space of a single second, it felt as if the very air around them had ignited. Fear and fury were both obliterated in light of this—an attraction too strong to deny or resist. Together they stumbled back against the window, and then Nico hoisted her up onto the sill with her back pressed against the smooth glass as he raked her dress up high over her thighs so he could stand between them, his body hard and unyielding against her own softness.
Ashley drove her hands through his hair as she anchored him to her in a kiss that was both savage and sweet, demanding and giving, so one felt like the other. His hand slid along her bare thigh, and then his fingers brushed against her underwear and she moaned again, unable to keep from arching into his questing hand, his fingers knowing just where to go, how to move, how to make her utterly abandon every thought, every principle she’d ever had… .
She was shameless, utterly shameless, Ashley thought, and she didn’t care. She’d never felt like this before, never had someone have so much control over her body, her response…
Control…The word screeched through her dazed senses. She was letting Nico control her, both body and mind, maybe evenheart, and in a far more devastating way than ever before. In a single, split second, the mood completely changed. Ashley put her hands flat on Nico’s chest and shoved him away as hard as she could. Her feeble effort didn’t even cause him to sway, but his hand stilled and he broke off the kiss, staring down at her, his face flushed, his breathing ragged.
‘No,’ Ashley said, trying to sound strong, but it came out like a whimper. ‘No, please. I… I don’t want this.’
He gazed at her for a taut moment, his expression inscrutable, before he jerked his head in a nod. ‘Fine.’ He stepped away, instantly in control, his expression turning cold. The colour was already fading from his face, while she felt like a puddle of contrary emotions, her legs rubbery, her whole body still trembling with shock and desire.
As Nico watched her dispassionately, Ashley forced herself to stand up straight, pulling her dress back down, which was all the way about her hips. They stared at each other for several long moments, the only sound the draw and tear of their still-ragged breathing. Or maybe that was just hers, Ashley thought miserably, because Nico looked frighteningly indifferent as he adjusted his dinner jacket, flicking an invisible speck of lint off one well-tailored sleeve.
‘I don’t understand you,’ Ashley made herself say, trying to keep her voice from trembling. ‘And at this point I don’t think I want to. Frankly, you’ve messed with my emotions enough—’
Nico let out a sharp bark of laughter, the sound reminding Ashley of the crack of a gunshot echoing through the empty room, as he raked her with a single, sceptical glance. ‘I’vemessed withyouremotions?’ he repeated disbelievingly.
He spoke as if she was the one who had been unreasonable, Ashley thought numbly, when he had half-dragged her in here, berated her and then kissed her senseless… It was the cycle of flattery and abuse all over again, she realised with a lightning-fast jolt, just like with her father, except this felt far worse.
A few moments ago, if he’d asked her, she would have given herself to this man, in a way she never had before. The thought was intensely humbling as well as painfully shaming and, with another lightning streak of realisation, Ashley knew she could not let herself surrender to Nico Galletti in any fashion—not physically and not emotionally. Not by cringing beneath his condemning stare—or responding to his passionate kisses.
‘Yes, you,’ she asserted as she straightened her spine. ‘What do you call being incredibly thoughtful one moment and an absoluteassthe next?’ As strong as she was trying to seem, her voice still rose to a high, trembling note. ‘Destroying my company and then telling me you might save it. Demanding I do exactly as you say and then being tender and making me tea…’
She passed one hand over her forehead as a wave of dizziness overwhelmed her. Nico Galletti had been turning her into a basket case since the second he’d stepped foot in her office. ‘I can’t take it any more. Iwon’t—’ she began, only to have him cut across her warningly,
‘Don’ttry fainting again.’
