Page 26 of Fateful Exposure

"Are you kidding me, Selma?" Ashton's voice sliced through the tense silence, his tone dripping with sarcasm.

I bristled, turning to face him, my nostrils flaring with uncontained fury. "Do you have a problem with my vision? Or are you just incapable of following simple instructions?"

His jaw clenched, the muscles in his neck tensing with restrained anger. "I'm perfectly capable, thank you very much. It’s your lack of direction that's the problem here."

Someone gasped. My jaw set.

The words hung between us like a challenge, a gauntlet thrown at my feet. I met his gaze head on, my eyes flashing with a fire that matched his own. "Oh, so it's my fault? How fucking typical of you to deflect blame to someone else."

He took a step forward. "And how fucking typical it is of you to refuse to admit that you're wrong."

"Fuck you."

He leaned in so close to me that I could smell his breath, reducing his voice to a whisper. "How many times do I have to tell you that I already did that, and it was basic?"

That one stung. The atmosphere grew increasingly hostile, and everyone shrunk back to escape the tension surrounding us.

But even as we hurled insults like daggers, beneath the anger lay a simmering undercurrent of something else—something raw, primal, and undeniably electric. It crackled between us, binding us together in a tangled web of desire and loathing.

Ashton’s gaze dropped to my lips, and my skin tingled, reminding me of how I'd pathetically succumbed to his touch a few days ago. My pussy throbbed almost painfully, and it was with all the strength I had in me that I mustered up to step back and walk away from him and out of the studio.

He might know how to make my body sing like a nightingale, but I hated him and always would.

eleven

Ashton

I prided myself on being a remarkably reasonable person. Really. I was an impressive son of a bitch. Very few could boast of my level of articulateness or skill. Let's not even talk about my restraint. I'd had years of enduring ill-treatment as a result of moving from one family to the next, and one public school to another, to practice and sharpen my self-control. Not many things could successfully rile me up.

That was until Selma fucking Volkov stormed her way into my life like a bull.

Now I was overthinking and psychoanalyzing everything, and my nights were haunted by the sultry image of her wearing nothing but that damned lacy bra that refused to leave my mind.

But there was one thing she didn't know about: my sheer resilience toward getting whatever I wanted.

"Where should we put the paintings, Mr. McCall?" a mover asked.

"Down the hall to the left. Just against the wall." I gestured toward the direction I'd described, watching as the movers transferred my belongings into my newly acquired apartment.

I smiled victoriously, crossing my arms over my chest. If she thought she was getting rid of me after this gig, she had another thing coming. Not when she was carrying my child.

It hadn’t been easy to secure an apartment in this building. Especially the one right next to her. It was situated on the Upper East Side, Madison Avenue. Fucking expensive too, given that I'd had to grease the palms of a few people to clarify the urgency of my venture. Thankfully, I made more money than I knew what to do with, so the cost was less than a small dent in my bank account.

This would ensure, in the long run, that Selma wouldn't be able to hide anything from me. I knew she didn't want me involved in the baby's life, but she should have thought of that before she agreed to have unprotected sex with me.

I was here to stay, and nothing would change that.

Scenes from yesterday in the studio flashed across my mind's eye more often than I would have liked. The tension between ushad been so palpable one could have cut it with a knife. She'd fit perfectly in my arms, her lithe body pressed against my built form like she had been made solely for me.

I'd wanted to kiss her—to lean forward, capture her lips in an earth-shattering kiss, and just stay there until forever came. But that would have been an unwise decision given our audience. By the next morning, the blogs would have had a field day, and Selma would be trending once more for all the wrong reasons.

Denying my attraction to her would be pointless, and who could blame me anyway? Selma was all woman.

Just the thought of her lips sent my cock into overdrive, and when I was close to her, my brain shut down completely. To sum it up, I had zero self-control when it came to Selma. Somehow, she'd compelled my entire being into acting like a stag in rut whenever she was close.

I needed her again. To sink into her wet heat and drive us both into blissful oblivion. To hold her close to me as she moaned and whimpered in the kind of pleasure only I could give her. I needed to draw my fingers around her body as a map of all the heights I'd take her to.

The only conclusion I had come to was that I was fucking insane. Out of my damned mind. It just didn't make sense. How could I dislike someone so much and yet would gladly give one of my arms just to have her writhing under me in ecstasy?

---