Page 13 of Boss With Benefits

‘She has her own dress design business called Trouble Maker.’

‘Is it, or was the trip in any way related to the Courtney Collection?’

‘No.’

‘The jet is a company asset. You should not be making personal use of it.’

‘Crunch the numbers and tell me what I owe.’

The look she gave him suggested she didn’t think much of that idea. ‘And what about Helberg Holdings?’

No, that was too much. Explaining London was one thing, but he couldn’t go into Helberg now. He didn’t think he’d be able to stand having to deal with the memories that dredged up on top of everything else. Not with his composure so badly frayed. ‘Quit while you’re ahead, Ella.’

‘I have no intention of quitting anything.’

He stifled a growl of frustration. ‘You’re driving me insane.’

‘All I’m trying to do is my job, and I’m not going to apologise for being tenacious. I’ve had to work exceptionally hard to get where I am. I’ve faced obstacles virtually every step of the way. A decrepit trailer for a home in a park rife with danger. Dead-beat parents. Lousy high school. At one point I was working three jobs to earn the money I needed to study. Only once have I screwed up so badly my career nearly went down the drain. But I won’t do it again. And I won’t let you mess this up for me. So youwillanswer my questions. This auditwillfinish on Friday and Iwillget that promotion, even if it kills me.’

For a moment, Adam’s head spun. The information she’d just hurled at him was too much to process. Obstacles? A trailer? When had she screwed up? What promotion was she talking about? ‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘Then what did you mean?’ she demanded, her cheeks flushed, the pulse at the base of her neck fluttering wildly.

‘You’ve been causing me trouble since the minute you showed up on Monday,’ he said, thinking that if scaring her off had worked in the lift yesterday, it would work again today. ‘You’re in my head all the damn time. You threaten my control and make me want to cross lines that I have sworn not to cross. I still want you badly, Ella, and I’m used to taking what I want. There’s only so much pressure I can withstand, and my patience is about to snap. You have no idea how close you came to being ravished in the lift last night. Right now, I am seconds away from losing it completely and kissing you until neither of us can think straight. So if you have any sense at all, you’ll go home this minute. Because if you don’t, if you stay for even a second longer, I will pull you into my apartment and you will not leave until Monday morning. Somyquestion toyou, Ella, is do you want that? Do you want to spend the weekend in my bed?’

He stopped, his head nothing more than rushing white noise, his blood roaring in his ears. The silence thundered. Ella just stared at him, evidently rendered speechless by his words. Her eyes were wide and dark. Her breathing was shallow and ragged. The seconds ticked by like hours. Then, just when he thought she finally understood the danger she was in, she breathed a shuddery, ‘God,yes,’ and launched herself at him.

There was no time for shock. No time to wonder whether she had completely lost her mind. Or whether he had. The minute she was pressed up against him—her arms around his neck, her hands in his hair, her mouth on his like fire—pure instinct took over. He drew her into a crushing embrace, one hand clamped to the back of her head, the other on the small of her back. She moaned, immediately melting into him so that all he could feel was softness and warmth, and he took command, angling her head and deepening the kiss.

She tasted of heaven and he couldn’t get enough. His exhaustion was history. Adrenaline was surging through him, zapping his nerve endings until they were on fire. He was on the point of doing as he’d promised, pulling her into his apartment and kicking the door shut when just as suddenly as the kiss had started, it stopped. Ella froze in his arms and jerked back. Her gorgeous brown eyes were glazed. Her hair was mussed and her cheeks flushed.

But right in front of him, the dazed passion on her face turned to distress. She clapped a hand to her mouth and shook her head, her eyes filling with horror and regret. And while he fought for breath, grappled to contain the rampaging need he had for her, tried and failed to make sense of what was going on, she wrenched herself out of his arms, spun on her heel and fled.

CHAPTER SIX

ELLABURSTOUTof Adam’s building into the warm evening air, her breathing choppy, her heart banging frantically in her chest, while the only thought whipping round her head was, what had she done? What had shedone?

How could she have lost control like that? What had she been thinking? She’d turned up at his door all professional guns blazing, on a mission from which she’d sworn she would not deviate. She’d ignored the flicker of concern she’d felt at how tired and drawn he’d looked. She’d noted that he hadn’t seemed quite as in control of himself as usual but had immediately quashed the curiosity. With superhuman effort, she’d even managed to contain the surge of desire that had nearly taken out her knees. She’d kept to the plan and stuck determinedly to the script—until he’d told her that she drove him insane and all hell had let loose.

It was one thing giving him a potted version of her background to justify the persistence that annoyed him so much, she thought, hailing a cab with a hand that was still trembling, her head still whirling as if she were on a Waltzer. But she should never have told him that she’d once made a mistake that had messed up her career. She should never have revealed that she was dependent on this audit for a promotion when she’d already provided her upcoming leave as a perfectly valid reason for her desire to get things wrapped up on time. And she should nevereverhave kissed him.

Yet, once again, his nearness had destroyed her brain. With all that dark powerful energy swirling around them, all she’d been able to think with the one brain cell that hadn’t beenparalysed with shock was that despite his outward composure, he wanted her. As much as she wanted him. Her struggles with the electrifying attraction were also his. Contrary to what she’d thought, he wasn’t unaffected by her at all.

That mind-blowing realisation, along with the heat that had burned in his gaze, had crushed what few defences she had against him to dust. The wave of need that had thundered through her had driven out all rational thought. She’d never craved a kiss so much. For days, she’d secretly wondered how it would be. Well, now she knew. He felt like strength and security and he tasted like fire and whisky.

But she’d crossed a line. For all the promises she’d made to herself not to mix business with pleasure, she just had. Even though her conscience had woken up in time to stop things going any further, she’d created a conflict of interest that was very much not negligible. As if she simply could not resist the lure of self-sabotage, she’d put everything she’d worked for into jeopardy. Again. She’d let herself down. Again.

This was so bad, she thought, breaking out in a cold sweat as a cab pulled up and she climbed into it. So very,verybad. Maybe even terminal. Once more she’d indulged the chemistry that raged whenever they were close, but this time they were no longer two strangers in a bar with nothing to lose. They were colleagues. And she was halfway through a career-defining assignment witheverythingto lose.

But she was not going to go down without a fight. She wasn’t going to go down at all if she could help it. She had the entire weekend to think of a way to fix the situation and reset the status quo, and that was precisely what she would do.

Adam did not have a good weekend. So much for the opportunity to recover from his knackering dash across the Atlantic. Despite working his way through the bottle of whisky in the aftermath of Ella’s flight from his apartment, sleep eluded him. Every time he closed his eyes, the memory of the kiss crashed into his head. Such heat. Such eagerness. Then such distress and regret, no doubt caused by the fact that with his confession, he’d shifted their relationship from the professional to the personal.

This was why he fought so hard for control, he thought as he tossed and turned in the early hours of Saturday morning. Because without it he was wild and unpredictable, no better than his father, and he knew the devastation such conduct could cause. He’d behaved impulsively. Selfishly. He’d provoked Ella into doing something she’d never have done otherwise.

Extreme exhaustion, bitter resentment that she’d encountered him in such a febrile state and severe sexual frustration blackened his mood over the course of the day, and it did not go unnoticed.

‘For God’s sake, smile,’ Annabel muttered to him at one point during the white-tie charity gala he’d escorted her to. ‘No one’s going to believe we’re madly in love if you insist on looking like thunder.’

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