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Amelia slammed the door shut on a memory she should have buried so deep she could never find it again. The only way she’d survived the last six weeks was knowing that they’d never speak of what had happened in Hong Kong. Keeping it tucked away behind a pane of impenetrable glass was the only thing that had kept her sane.
‘Shall we?’ she asked, assuming the emotionally indifferent tone she had worn for two years, as if she didn’t feel torn apart by the weight of desire and the need for a vengeance that had begun to taste bitter in the last few months.
Amelia’s breezy tone ate at Alessandro. There he was feeling as if his life had been upended by this innocuous English girl, and she was utterly unaffected by the most sensuous night of his life. Perhaps somewhere in the recent years of his‘Monkdom’, he had developed perversions. The thought horrified him so much that for a shocking moment, he stilled, causing a flash of concern to pass across Amelia’s features.
‘Are you—?’
He turned on his heel and stalked back towards the lifts. He should never have stopped on her floor. Once again he wrestled with that sense of frustrated desire and shame. Resisting the urge to pull at his collar, he reminded himself that he had taken advantage of a junior member of staff and he deserved every ounce of inner turmoil that he was currently struggling with.
Crossing the floor, he recognised that it had been rude to cut her off mid-sentence but had he not, he might have—God forbid—actually answered her question and admitted that no, he wasn’t okay in the slightest and was, in fact, being driven out of his mind with a need for her that felt unnatural.
‘Maybe I should take the stairs,’ he said as they reached the lift, realising that he probably shouldn’t be taking the lift with her.
A slight frown across her brow appeared to question the sense in walking downsixty-fourflights of stairs. And now he couldn’t ignore the fact that he’d just volunteered to do precisely that in order to avoid spending the minute and a half journey with her in the lift.
She blinked at him, shutters over an unfathomable gaze, and turned to face the elevator doors. ‘If you like,’ she said.
Her response had him grinding his teeth and he was about to leave when the lift arrived, the doors sliding open, and now there was no escape. Leaving would be the height of stupidity, showing the exact extent of how much her presence affected himbeyondwhat he had already revealed.
He gestured for her to enter before him and he caught her glancing at his hand before she stepped into the lift. As she turned to look out into the centre of the building he saw the delicate blush at the pulse point behind her ear, his gaze snagging on the way her shirt had come open beneath the pull of the strap of her bag on her shoulder.
Heat crawled across his shoulders, making Alessandro want to yank at the collar of his shirt. She wasn’t as unaffected as she appeared and just the thought of that enflamedeverything. This time, instead of staying in the lift he should damn well get out. Alessandro closed his eyes but instead of blessed darkness he saw her straddled across his lap, taking him deep within her, riding a sensuous wave that consumed them both. The doors closed behind him and the lurch in his gut had nothing to do with the gentle descent.
‘Congratulations,’ he forced out through numb lips.
For a moment, he thought he saw guilt flash in the golden green depths of eyes that he had once, inconceivably, thought unnoteworthy. But he must have been projecting, because the guilt was his burden to bear.
‘Thank you,’ Amelia said before biting her lip and turning her attention back to the floors flying past the glass windows.
‘Are you celebrating?’ he asked.
Minchione!Clearly, she didn’t want to speak to him and no wonder. The burning shame of self-loathing now heated his internal body temperature rather than arousal and he was unusually thankful for it.
‘No, my sister is...’
Amelia swallowed her words, wishing she could have bitten off her own tongue. ‘Away,’ she concluded, aware that Alessandro was waiting for her to finish her sentence. Oh, God, this was her punishment. To be stuck in a small enclosed space with the man she’d just ruined—the man that, in spite of everything, she still wanted with a desperation that left her breathless.
Enemy, enemy, enemy!
‘What was that?’ Alessandro asked, bending slightly as if to listen more closely.
Instinctively she jerked away from him and instantly regretted it. From the tic in his jaw, Alessandro hadn’t missed it. His hands fisted by his thighs and oh, God, what was wrong with her? Why was that so sexy?
She had become a stranger to herself in the last six weeks. Ever since she had secured the deal in Hong Kong, something had changed. Because how could she recognise the woman who would sleep with the man that destroyed her family? How could she have betrayed everything she and her sister had worked towards? How could she have weighed one night of pleasure with a childhood of misery and chosenhim?
Once again a wetness pressed against the backs of her eyes. Not here. And not now! She just needed to get out of this lift and away from Alessandro Rossi. She could have her breakdown when she was home.
Count to ten, darling, and it will be fine.
But the words she’d whispered to her sister through their teenage years didn’t work this time. It wouldn’t be fine. Issy was off in the Caribbean somewhere, having kidnapped Gianni Rossi, and she was lusting after a man who was the Devil incarnate.
She hadn’t expected it to feel like this. Wasn’t she supposed to feel victorious? Wasn’t it supposed to be amazing, this feeling? Vengeance almost guaranteed, it should have been the crowning achievement of all she’d ever wanted. But she didn’t. Instead she felt...guilty. She felt sick. And shivery. And no, she hadn’t come down with a cold. But...something waswrong.
‘If this is...’ he said, and trailed off, awkwardness looking strange on Alessandro’s handsome features. She’d never seen him like this. In the boardroom he was powerful, determined...confidence didn’t even factor, it was something beyond that. A supreme self-belief. And the night they’d shared in Hong Kong? A shiver ran the length of her spine. He’d unlocked fantasies that night she’d never even known she’d had. ‘If you want to speak to HR... I think we should speak to HR.’
Her head snapped up out of the desire-dazed fog. She almost laughed. Shewantedto, absurdly. In three days’ time, their one night in Hong Kong would be the least of his problems. She would be gone and Alessandro Rossi would never see her again, no matter how hard he might look.
‘I don’t know what you think we would need to speak to HR about,’ she said, purposefully keeping her face blank.
