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You should have told me. I should have known. I never would have…
He’d asked, after all. He’d asked her if she was sure. Now, his body aching and still thundering with need, he started to withdraw.
‘No. Don’t.’ Mia clutched his shoulders as she wriggled into position underneath him. ‘I’m all right.’ She shifted again, her body opening beneath him, inviting him in further, and as Alessandro felt her welcoming warmth he knew he was a lost man. He s
tarted to move, and Mia gave a breathy sigh of pleasure as she started to match his rhythm.
The regret and uncertainty he’d felt fell away like a mist as they moved together, climbing higher and higher, until they both reached that dazzling apex, and Alessandro let out a shudder of sated pleasure as he pulled her even closer to him, her body wrapping around and enfolding his. He could feel her heart thudding against his own, and he knew he’d never been as close to another person as this.
Seconds ticked by and neither of them spoke or moved. Alessandro had the strange and unsettling feeling that he didn’t want to move; he didn’t want this to end. He had never, ever felt that way before after being with a woman.
Yet of course he had to, and so did Mia, and after another few soul-shaking seconds she started to pull away. Alessandro let her go, tidying himself up as Mia eased off the desk. Her head was bent, her face averted as she walked quickly to her clothes and pulled them on. Alessandro saw that her fingers trembled as she buttoned the now crumpled white blouse he’d admired earlier that day, in what felt like a lifetime ago.
Alessandro knew he should say something, but he had no idea what. Now that the haze of incredible pleasure was no longer clouding his mind, he was realising what an enormous, idiotic mistake he’d just made. Mia James was his PA, and he’d had her on his desk like a…like a…
No. He could barely believe this had happened. This never happened to him, because he never let it. He was too self-controlled, too contained, too certain of what he wanted, to let something as stupid as desire cloud his mind and guide his actions, even for a few seconds.
And yet that was precisely what had just happened. He could scarcely credit it, and yet it had. It had.
Mia had finished dressing and she stood there, her handbag clutched to her chest, her hair in tangles about her pale face, her eyes wide and dazed.
‘I should go.’ Her voice was a whisper, and guilty regret lashed him like a whip, which made him, unreasonably he knew, feel angry.
‘You should have told me you were a virgin.’
Her already wide eyes widened even further, looking huge in her face. ‘Would it have mattered?’
‘Yes. I’m not accustomed to…’ Alessandro gestured to the desk, unwilling to put it into words, furious with himself as well as with Mia. What had she been thinking? What had he?
‘Well, obviously neither am I.’ Her voice was grim, humourless. ‘Let’s just say the moment got the better of us, and move past it, shall we?’
He stared at her, surprised and a little discomfited that she was offering so pragmatic an approach, and the one he would have suggested but now oddly resented. Minutes before they’d been twined around each other like…but, no. He wasn’t going to think about that. Mia was right. They needed to move past this—immediately.
‘Yes.’ His voice was tight. ‘Yes, that is exactly what we shall do.’
Mia nodded, still looking grim, and Alessandro felt the need to gain control of the situation; somehow it had slipped entirely out of his hands, and he needed to come to grips with it. He needed to remind himself what kind of man he was, and it most certainly wasn’t one who unzipped a woman’s dress and then ended up having her over a desk in a darkened office.
Those were the actions of a man who had no self-control, no common sense, no sense of containment. They were the actions of a man who allowed lust or any other unruly emotion to control him, and that was not who he was. It couldn’t be.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked stiffly. ‘You’re not…?’ The question nearly brought a blush to his face. He’d never slept with a virgin before. ‘You’re not hurt?’
‘I’m fine,’ Mia said flatly. She reached for her coat and shoved her arms in. ‘I just need to go home.’ She made to leave and Alessandro stayed her with one hand; she flinched under his touch, which both shamed and hurt him.
‘Mia, please. Don’t leave like this.’
Her eyebrows rose. ‘How am I supposed to leave?’
Alessandro didn’t know how to answer, couldn’t even determine what he wanted. For this never to have happened, he supposed, but there was nothing he could do about that. ‘Take the limo,’ he said at last. ‘It will be safer and quicker.’ She stared at him for a moment, her face like a mask, and Alessandro realised how little he was offering. A lift. But he didn’t know what else he could give her.
‘Fine,’ she said, and then she shook off his arm and walked out through the door.
CHAPTER FIVE
MIA WOKE UP to bright, wintry sunlight streaming through the window of her bedroom, her head fuzzy and full of cotton wool from the three glasses of champagne she’d had the night before, her body aching in all sorts of unexpected places.
For a single second she simply lay there, enjoying the sunshine, and then memory slammed into her, again and again, as the events of the last evening played in her mind in an unwelcome and humiliating reel.
What had she been thinking? During the half-hour ride in Alessandro’s limo the night before, she’d been too dazed to truly consider what had happened or its potential consequences, and so she’d simply blanked her mind, stripping off her clothes and falling into bed as soon as she’d returned home, surrendering to the welcome numbness of sleep, except it hadn’t claimed her.
