Chapter Ten
FIREWORKS BURST IN Ashley’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 even heart, 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’ve messed with your emotions?’ 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 absolute ass the 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. I won’t—’ she began, only to have him cut across her warningly,
‘Don’t try fainting again.’
Ashley dropped her hand as she stared at him incredulously.
She wished she had the strength to laugh, but she was far closer to crying.
‘Try fainting? What do you think that was this morning, some sort of tactic?’ she asked.
This time she did manage a laugh, a sorry huff of despair.
‘If so,’ she told him, ‘It obviously failed. Miserably.’
‘You’ve been trying such tactics with me since I first walked in on you with your blouse unbuttoned,’ he drawled coldly, folding his arms across his chest. ‘Too bad you can’t stick to one act.
You have to be either the fainting lily or the hard-nosed businesswoman or the beguiling temptress, not all three in turns.
’ He bared his teeth in a steely smile. ‘Otherwise they play against each other, and it doesn’t work. ’
He seemed to be speaking in riddles he thought she should understand. Ashley shook her head, weary now. In that moment, she didn’t think she had the strength to fight for anything—not herself, not her employees, not Infinite Innovations.
‘I really don’t understand you,’ she told him wearily. ‘And I don’t think I ever will. What I do know is that you mess with my head and my body way too much for me to keep going back for another round. I think… I think I need to walk away from this. From you. From…everything.’
She nodded slowly, her insides leaden, as the realisation spread heavily through her.
She couldn’t fight for Infinite Innovations any more, not against this man.
Not for the sake of her own sanity, her own self.
She’d have to find some other way to help the people she’d hired that did not involve Nico Galletti.
‘You can have the company,’ she told him, flinging her hands up.
‘I mean, obviously, since you already do. Dismantle it, destroy it, do whatever you want.’ She shrugged her shoulders dispiritedly, unable to meet his eyes, hating the thought of seeing triumph gleaming in their silvery depths.
‘I can start over,’ she stated, clinging to that one fact.
‘I did it once already, and I’ll do it again.
’ Even if she couldn’t imagine having the strength to do so right now.
One day she would; she’d make sure of it.
Nico Galletti might have taken everything she’d worked hard for, but he could not take her sense of self. He could not rob her of her future. ‘This ends here,’ she stated, and was glad that she finally sounded strong.
Lifting her chin to give him one last look, his own expression utterly inscrutable, she turned for the door. Walking out on Nico Galletti would be her last act of defiance. As her legs wobbled and her ankle gave a punishing twang, she just hoped she could make it to the door.
Each step felt endless, although it was only half a dozen yards. Nico didn’t speak, and Ashley felt a prickling between her shoulder blades, sensing his iron-hard glare directed right at her as she forced herself to put one foot in front of another. One step, two steps, three…
Finally, she made it. A pent-up breath of relief escaped her in a soft rush. Then, as Ashley’s fingers curled around the door handle, Nico finally spoke.
‘Why,’ he asked quietly, ‘Did you wear that dress?’
The rage had left him, like a tidal wave that had surged up suddenly and obliterated everything before receding, leaving only devastation in its wake.
For a few minutes, he had not been able to think or respond clearly to anything.
To Ashley. And from within the embers of that rage had come the most inconvenient, overwhelming desire…
It was unsettling, to feel so much in relation to this woman, and not to be able to control it, because he’d always prized himself on his steely sense of self-control.
Yet Ashley Woodward had been able to obliterate it with one calculated move.
Except, judging from her response in these last few heightened minutes, it hadn’t been calculated. Yet how could it not have been? To wear that dress and the jewels, even style her hair the same… Surely that had to have been intentional?
It was, Nico determined, time finally to get some answers. Answers that weren’t clouded by Ashley’s obfuscation or his own painful memories of just how treacherous the Woodwards could be.
For several seconds, she remained standing with her back to him, her hand on the door, her head slightly bowed so a single golden curl rested against the nape of her neck and trailed onto one smooth shoulder.
Nico had the most inconvenient urge to lift that curl, kiss that sensitive skin…
He forced himself to banish the thought.
Slowly Ashley turned round. She looked exhausted, defeated, her slender shoulders slumped and shadows like bruises beneath her jade-green eyes.
‘The dress?’ she repeated. ‘Why are you asking about my dress?’