Which should be a good thing. Most women were tedious about their need to be held, or to talk, or to plan the next date, even when he couldn’t have made it any clearer that none of the above was on offer.
Only for some reason Nola’s departure felt premature.
Incomprehensible.
Maybe he was just overthinking it.
But why did her leaving seem to matter so much?
Probably because, although superficially she might have seemed different, he’d assumed in the end that she would behave like every other woman he knew. Only nothing about last night had turned out as he’d imagined it would.
He’d thought he was seducing her, but he’d never lost control like that.
He certainly hadn’t planned to have sex with her here, on the sofa in his office. But could he really be blamed for what had happened?
The tension between had been building from the moment they’d first met. In the restaurant it had been so intense, so powerful, he was surprised the other diners hadn’t been sucked in by its gravitational pull.
She’d been as shaken by it as him—he was sure of it—and in the lift she had responded to his kiss so fiercely, and with such lack of inhibition, that he’d never got as far as inviting her back to his apartment.
Remembering that beat before they’d kissed, he felt his heart trip, heat and hunger
tangling inside him. Watching that to-hell-with-you expression on her face grow fiercer, then soften as she melted into him, he’d wanted her so badly that he would have taken there and then in the lift if the doors hadn’t opened.
Glancing round his office, his eyes homed in on his discarded shirt and he felt suddenly breathless, winded by the memory of how he’d sped her through the building with no real awareness of what he was doing, no conscious thought at all, just a need to have her in the most primitive way possible.
Reaching down, he picked his shirt up from the floor and slid his arms carelessly into the sleeves.
He hadn’t hurt her. He would never do that. But he hadn’t recognised himself. Hadn’t recognised that fire, that urgency, that need—
The word snagged inside his head. No, not need.
It had been a long time since he had let himself need anyone. Not since he’d been a child, fighting misery and loneliness in a school on the other side of the world from his mother. Needing people, being needed, was something he’d avoided all his adult life, and whatever he might have felt for Nola he knew it couldn’t have been that.
No, what he’d felt for Nola had been lust. And, like hunger and thirst, once it had been satisfied it would be forgotten. She would be forgotten.
And that was what mattered. After months of feeling distracted and on edge, he could finally get back to focusing on his work.
After all, that was the real reason he’d wanted to sleep with her. To soothe the burn of frustration that had not only tested his self-control but made it impossible for him to focus on the biggest product launch of his career.
Now, though, just as he had with every other female he’d bedded, he could draw a line under her and get on with the rest of his life.
Straightening his cuffs, he stood up and walked briskly towards the door.
* * *
Ten hours later he was wrapping up the last meeting of the day.
‘Right, if there’s nothing else then I think we’ll finish up here.’
It was five o’clock.
Ram glanced casually around the boardroom, saw his heads of department were already collecting their laptops and paperwork. His loathing of meetings was legendary among his staff, as was his near fanatical insistence that they start and end on time.
Pulling his laptop in front of him, he flipped it open as they began to leave the room.
The day had passed with grinding slowness.
Nothing had seemed to hold his attention, or maybe he simply hadn’t been able to concentrate. But, either way, his thoughts had kept drifting off from whatever spreadsheet or proposal he was supposed to be discussing, and his head had filled with memories of the night before.