The Best Of The Year - Modern Romance

“Or, alternatively, merely call my mother and tell her exactly who you are,” he suggested. “A fate you felt was worse than death and far more terrible than anything I might do a week ago.”

But tonight she only shook her head and she didn’t avert her gaze, reminding him of that moment in his mother’s closet across the world. Reminding him he’d never controlled this woman, not even when she’d agreed to let him.

“I think if you were going to do that, Giancarlo, you would have. You wouldn’t have dragged me across the planet and then presented me with wine and a four-course meal.”

He laughed, a smoky little sound against the night. It did nothing to ease the mounting tension. “Do you really want to test that theory?”

She leaned forward, holding his gaze, and his laughter dried up as if it had never been. He was aware of everything at once. The stars above them, the faint breeze that teased him with the intoxicating scent of her. The rich food before them, the dancing candlelight. The way she sat now, the wide neck of her brightly patterned tunic falling open as she leaned toward him, hinting at the soft curves beneath.

And all that fire, as bright as it had ever been, burning them both where they sat.

Her gaze was like a touch on his, and he felt it everywhere. “I have a different theory.”

“I’m all ears, of course. Every inmate is innocent, every killer was merely misunderstood, every con man an artist in his soul, et cetera. Tell me your sob story, cara.” He felt his mouth crook. “I knew you would, sooner or later.”

But Paige only smiled, and her eyes were so green tonight they rivaled his own lush fields. It moved in him like summer, an exultation of all that boundless heat that spiked the air between them.

“You don’t want revenge. Not really. You want sex.”

Her smile deepened when he only stared back at her, that mouth of hers still an utter distraction, still his undoing. Her gaze proud and unwavering and he had no defense against that, either.

“You don’t want to admit it, given what happened the last time we had sex, but look where we are.” She lifted a shoulder, somehow encompassing the whole of the estate in that simple little gesture. “You’ve made sure there couldn’t possibly be a camera here. You’ve cut us off from the rest of the world. And you’re calling it revenge because you’re furious that you still want me.”

“Or because wanting you is only part of it,” he replied, stiffer than he should have sounded, because it was that or let loose the wild thing in him that wanted nothing but her however he could have her. That didn’t give a toss about the rest of it as long as he got his hands on her one more time. Just one more time. “And not mutually exclusive with revenge, I assure you.”

Her smile seemed to pierce straight through him then, heat and fire and danger, and it sank straight to his sex.

Making him nothing at all but that wildness within.

“Call it whatever you want,” she suggested in that rough voice of hers that hinted at her own dark excitement, that called to him like a song the way it always had. That sang in him still, no matter how he tried to deny it. “Call it hate sex. I don’t care, Giancarlo.” She shrugged. “Whatever it is, whatever you need to call it to feel better about it, I want it, too.”

* * *

“I beg your pardon?” Giancarlo’s voice was a rough whisper that somehow sounded in Paige like a bellow.

It was the wine, Paige told herself as she stared back at him, her own words seeming to cavort between them on the heavily laden tabletop, making it impossible to see or hear much of anything else. Of course it was the wine—though she’d only had a few sips—and the lingering jet lag besides, though she didn’t feel anything like tired at the moment.

Nothing else could possibly have made her say such things, she was sure, much less throw down the gauntlet to a battle she very much feared might be the end of her.

She opened her mouth to take it back, to laugh and claim she’d been kidding, to break the strange, taut spell that stretched between them and wrapped them tight together, caught somewhere in that arrested expression that transformed his beautiful face. But Giancarlo lifted an aristocratic hand that stopped her as surely as if he’d placed it over her mouth, and she knew she really shouldn’t have shivered in a rush of dark delight at the very image.

“I find I’m not as trusting as I used to be,” he told her, though untrusting wasn’t how she would have described the wolfish look in his dark eyes then. “It is a personality flaw, I am sure. But I’m afraid you’ll have to offer proof.”

She was watching his mouth as if it was a show, which was only part of the reason Paige didn’t understand what he’d said. She blinked. “Proof?”

“That this is not another one of your dirty little games that will end up painting the front page of every godforsaken gossip rag in existence.” He lounged back in his chair, but his eyes were hot, and she had the notion that he was coiled to strike. “You understand my reticence, I’m sure.”

“And I’d offer you my word,” she said, not sure how she kept her tone so light, as if dirty little games hadn’t pricked at her and hurt while it did, because he had no idea what kind of dirt she’d been drowning in back then, “but somehow, I’m betting that won’t be enough for you.”

“Sadly, no,” he agreed. He sounded anything but sad. “Though it pains me to cast such aspersions on your character, even if only by insinuation.”

“Oh, that’s what that look on your face is.” Her tone was arch and if she hadn’t known better, if she hadn’t known it was impossible, she might have thought she was enjoying herself here. “It looks a bit more like glee than pain from this side of the table, I should tell you.”

Giancarlo smiled, dark and intent. “I can’t imagine why.”

The night air seemed to shimmer in the space between them, in the flickering light of the candles and in the velvety dark that surrounded the table like an embrace. He settled even farther back in his chair and stretched his legs out again, like an indolent god awaiting a sacrifice, and Paige knew she should put a stop to this before it got out of control—but she didn’t. The truth was she didn’t want to stop it. She didn’t want to do anything but this.

“Strip.” It was a hoarse command, rich and dark, like the finest chocolate poured over her skin, and she should have been outraged by his arrogance. Instead, she wanted to bathe in it. In him.

Wasn’t that always what she’d wanted?

She didn’t pretend she hadn’t heard him or that she didn’t understand. “Here?”

“Right here.” His dark gaze burned, gold and onyx, daring her. “Unless there is some new reason you refuse to obey me this time?”

“You mean, besides the fact that we’re sitting outside? Where anyone could see us engaged in all manner of shocking acts? I thought you had a horror of public displays of anything.”

“How shocking could a simple strip show be?” he asked, and there was something else in his gaze then, sharp and hard. “It has slipped your mind, perhaps, that the entire world has already seen us having sex. I doubt anything we do could possibly shock them now. Unless you’ve learned new tricks since I last saw you?”

“Nothing but the same old tricks here,” she said, keeping her tone the same as it was, as if that slap of history hadn’t made her feel dizzy at all. It was too bad nothing seemed to keep her from wanting him. She was that masochistic. “I’m sorry to disappoint you. Should I keep my clothes on?”

Paige saw that flash of fury in his gaze once more, but it melted into molten heat in the space of a heartbeat, as if they were both masochists here. Somehow, that made her feel better.

“No,” he said in a low voice. “You most certainly should not.”

“Then it seems I have no choice but to obey you, as promised,” she said quietly. “Despite your poor, apparently unshockable neighbors and the things they might see.”

“The closest resident aside from my mother is over forty miles away tonight,” Giancarlo said, as if impatient. But she could see the fire in his gaze. She could practically taste his need. “Your modesty is safe enough, such as it is. What other excuses do you have?” He let out a bark of something not quite laughter. “We might as well address them all now and be done with them.”

“What happens after I strip for you?” Paige asked, almost idly, but she was already pushing her chair back with a too-loud scrape against the stones, then rising to her feet. “This is daring, indeed, to get me naked and then leave me standing here all alone. Is that the plan? It’s something of a waste, I’d think.”

“First we’ll worry about whatever cameras you might have secreted on that body of yours,” he told her, and if she hadn’t known him she might have thought him cold. Unmoved by all of this. But that wild, uninhibited lover she’d known lurked there in the sensual curve of his lips, that gleaming thing deep in his gaze. Giancarlo might hate her, but he wanted her as much as she did him. And Paige clung to that, perhaps harder than she should have. She clung to it as if it was everything and opted not to listen to the alarms that rang out in her at the thought. “Then we’ll worry about what to do with that body.”

“Whatever you say, Count Alessi,” she murmured, which was as close to obedient as she’d ever come. She saw a certain appreciation for that—or for her wry tone, more like—in his dark eyes, but then it was time to dance.

Because that was what this was. Paige didn’t pretend otherwise. The only music was his breath and hers, the only audience the primeval explosion of stars above them. She hadn’t danced in years. Ten years, in fact. But she could feel him in her feet, in her hips. In the glorious stretch of her arms over her head. Her pulse and her breath. She could feel him everywhere, better than any sound track with her own hopeful heartbeat like the kick of drums, and she danced.

She poured herself into each undulation of her hips, each exultant reach of her hands. She’d kicked off her shoes when she’d stood and she curled her toes down hard into the smooth stones beneath her, feeling what was left of the day’s heat against her soles and that wildfire that only arced higher between the two of them as she moved. She tried her best to catch the sensation in the movement of her hips, her legs, her torso. She took her time peeling off her trousers, managing to kick them aside with a flourish, and then she moved closer to him as she rid herself of her shirt, as if his intent expression beckoned her to him.

She took her time with her bra, offering her breasts to him when she finally dropped it at her side, and she smiled at the way he moved in his chair, his gaze a wild touch on her skin, so fierce it made her nipples pull taut. And she wasn’t done. She kept up the dance, the ecstatic dance, and she made it her apology, her regret. She told him all about her love and her silly, shattered hopes with every move she made, and when she stepped out of her panties she didn’t know which one of them was breathing more heavily.

Paige only knew that he was standing, too. And that she was naked before him and she still wasn’t done.

Naked in the Tuscan night, she danced for all those dreams she’d let carry her away as a girl. For the dream she’d destroyed with a single phone call and a cashed check ten years ago, and none of it worth the sacrifice, in the end. It was like skinny-dipping, warm and cool at once, the summer air a sensual caress against her flesh. She danced for the joy she’d only ever felt in this man’s presence, the laughter she still missed, the love she’d squandered for good reasons that seemed nothing but sad in retrospect.

She danced and she danced, and she might have danced all night, but Giancarlo swept her into his arms instead, high against his chest, and that was like a much better dance. Hotter and more intense, and then his mouth came down on hers, claiming her and destroying her that easily.

He came down hard on top of her and she loved it. That lean, hard body of his crushing her with his delicious weight, his narrow hips keeping her legs apart, and it took her a moment to realize that he’d moved them over to one of the sun chaises that sat around the gleaming, sleek pool that jutted out from the loggia toward the vineyards. And that he’d lost his jacket in the move.

And he looked as gorgeously undone as she felt, and very nearly as wild.

“Giancarlo,” she whispered, the dance still running madly in her veins, almost as addictive as he was. “Don’t stop.”

“I give the orders, not you,” he growled, but his lips were curved when they took hers all over again.

And then everything slowed down. Turned to honey, thick and sweet.

Giancarlo feasted on her as if she were the gourmet meal his chefs had prepared for him, and beneath his talented mouth she felt almost that cherished, that perfect. She wanted his naked skin pressed to hers more than she could remember wanting anything else, ever, but he kept her too busy to peel his shirt back from his strong shoulders.

He kissed her until her head spun, and then he followed the line of her neck, tasting her and muttering dark things in Italian that she told herself she was happy she didn’t understand.

Even if they moved in her like music, dark and compelling, sex and magic and Giancarlo, at long last.

He found her breasts and pulled one of the proud nipples deep into his hot mouth, and she didn’t care what he said. Or in what language. She arched into him, mindless and needy, and he punished and praised her with his lips, his tongue, the scrape of his teeth. He played with her until she begged him to stop and then he only laughed and kept going, sending a catapult of pure wildfire straight down into her core.

She thought for a panicky, wondrous second that he might throw her straight over the edge with only this—

But he stopped, as diabolical as ever, raising his dark head to take in the flushed heat on her face and all down her neck. Her sensual distress. Her driving need.

“This punishment appears to be far more effective than you imagined it would be, cara,” he murmured, his voice another sensual shiver against her sensitive skin, with its echoes of the playfully wicked lover she’d met so long ago. “It’s almost as if you forgot what I can do to you.”

“Thank you for the harsh lesson, Count Alessi,” she whispered, not trying too hard to keep her tone anything approaching respectful when she was this close to the edge. “May I have another?”

He laughed, and she did too, and she didn’t know if she’d been kidding or if she’d meant it when he returned his attention to her body, shifting to crawl down farther. If these were harsh lessons indeed, or gifts. He left a shimmering trail of fire from her breasts to her belly, and when he paused there, his breath fanning out over the hungriest part of her, Paige realized she was breathing as heavily as if she was running a race. The marathon he’d mentioned earlier, God help her.

“You’d better hold on,” he warned her, dark and stirring and right there against her sex. “I’m going to stop when I’m done, not when you are.”

And then he simply bent his head and licked his way into her.

Paige ignited.

She went from the mere sensation of burning straight into open flame. She couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She arched against the exquisite torment of his wickedly clever mouth, or she tried to escape it, and either way, it didn’t matter. He gripped her hips in his strong hands and he tasted her molten heat as if it was his own greatest pleasure, and before she knew it she was bucking against him, her hands buried deep in his thick, dark hair.

Calling out his name like a prayer into the night.

And he was as good as his word. He didn’t stop. He didn’t wait for her to come back down, to come back to herself. He simply kept on tasting her, settling in and taking his time, laughing against her tender flesh when she begged him to stop, laughing more when she begged him to keep on going.

The fire poured back into her, hotter and higher than before, and then he plunged two fingers deep inside of her and threw her over the side of the world. Again.

This time, when she shuddered her way back to earth, Giancarlo had moved off her to stand beside her, his hard hands impatient as he pulled her to her feet. It took her a moment to realize he’d finally stripped but she had no time to appreciate it, because he was lying back on the chaise and pulling her down to sit astride him.

“I want to watch,” he told her, his voice dark and nearly grim with need, and it lit that flame inside of her all over again.

And then he simply curled his strong hands around her hips the way he had a thousand times before, the way she’d never dreamed he would again, and thrust home.

CHAPTER SIX

HE WAS INSIDE her again. At last.

Finally.

Giancarlo thought the sensation—far better than all his pale memories across these long years, far better than his own damned hand had ever been—might make him become a religious man.

She was so damned hot, molten and sweet and slick and his, and she still held him so tightly, so snugly, it was nearly his undoing. Her hair was that deep black ink with hints of fire and it tumbled all around her in a seductive tousle, falling to those breasts of hers, still high and pert, the tips already tight again and begging for his mouth.

Paige looked soft and stunned, exactly how he liked her best, exactly how he remembered her, and then she made everything better by reaching out to prop her hands against his chest. The shift in position made her sink down even farther on him, making them both groan.

He let his hands travel back to cup the twin globes of her delectable bottom, and tested the depth of her, the friction. God help him, but she was perfect. She had always been perfect. The perfect fit. The perfect fire.

Perfect for him.

Giancarlo had somehow forgotten that, in all the long years since he’d last been inside her. He’d convinced himself he’d exaggerated this as some kind of excuse for his own idiocy—that she’d been nothing more than a pretty girl with a dancer’s body and all the rest had been a kind of madness that would make no sense if revisited.

But this was no exaggeration. This was pure, hot, bliss. This was that same true perfection he remembered, at last.

Paige looked down at him, her gaze unreadable. Bright and something like awed. And then she started to move.

He had watched her dance ten years ago, and he had wanted her desperately. He’d watched her dance tonight, that astonishing performance for him alone, equal parts sensual and inviting, and he’d thought he might die if he didn’t find a way inside her. But nothing compared to this dance. Nothing came close.

She braced herself against him, her hands splayed wide over his pectoral muscles, while her hips set a lazy, shattering, insistent rhythm against his. And Giancarlo was lost.

He forgot about revenge. He forgot about their past. Her deceit, his foolish belief in her. All the terrible lies. The damned pictures themselves, grainy and humiliating. He lost his plans in the slide of her body against his, the sleek thrill that built in him with every rocking motion she made. Every life-altering stroke of the hardest part of him so deep, so very deep, in all of her soft heat.

“Make me come,” he ordered her, in a stranger’s deep growl. He saw her skin prickle at the sound of it, saw the way she pulled her lower lip between her teeth as if she was fighting back the same wave of sensation he was. “Make it good.”

Not that it could be anything but good. Not that it ever had been. This was a magical thing, this wild, hot fire that was only theirs. He could feel it every time he sank within her. He knew it every time he pulled back. He felt it in the sure pace she set with her hips, the tight hold of her flesh against his. He wanted it to go on forever, the way he’d thought it would when he’d met her that first time.

The way it should have, that little voice that was still in love with her, that had never been anything but in love with her, whispered deep inside him.

But she was following his orders and this was no time for regrets. She moved against him, lush and lovely, her hips a sinuous dance, a well-cast spell of longing and lust and too many other things he refused to name. He’d thought he’d lost her forever and yet she was here, moving above him, her lovely body on display because he’d wanted it, holding him so deep inside her he couldn’t tell where he ended and she began. He didn’t want to know.

“Your wish is my command, my count,” she teased him, her voice a husky little dream, and then she did something complicated with her hips and the world turned to flames all around them.

When he finally exploded, a bright rush of fire turned some kind of comet, rocketing over the edge of the night, he heard her call out his name.

And then follow him into bliss.

* * *

Giancarlo did not welcome reality when it reasserted itself.

Paige lay slumped over him, her face buried in his neck, while he was still deep inside of her. He opted not to think about how easy it was to hold her, or how she still seemed to have been crafted especially to fit in his arms, exactly this way. It took him much longer than it should have to get his breathing under control again. He held her the way a lover might, the way he always had before, and stared out over the top of her head at the faint lights on distant hills and the smear of starlight above.

He wished he didn’t care about the past. More than that, he wished he could trust her the way he had once. He wished so many things, and yet all of the stars were fixed tonight, staring down at him from their cold positions, and he knew better.

Paige was an accident waiting to happen. He’d been caught up in that accident once—he wouldn’t subject himself to it again. Even he wasn’t foolish enough to walk into the same trap twice. No matter that it felt like glory made flesh to touch her again, like coming home after too long away.

He would learn to live without that, too. He had before.

She shifted against him, and he felt the brush of her lips over his skin and told himself it was calculated. That everything about her was calculated. There was no use remembering the afternoons they’d spent curled around each other in his huge bed surrounded by the Malibu sea. When she’d tasted him everywhere with her eyes closed, as if she couldn’t help herself, as if her affection was as elemental as the ocean beyond his windows or the sky above and she had no choice but to sink into it with all of her senses.

That had been an act. This was an act. He needed to remember it.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy the show.

“You’ve obviously been practicing,” he said, to be horrible. To remind them both that this was here and now, not ten years back. “Quite a lot, I’d say, were I to hazard a guess.”

He felt her tense against him, but almost thought he’d imagined it when she sat up a moment later, displaying her typical offhanded grace. And then she smiled slightly as she looked down at him.

“I was about to compliment you on the same thing,” she said, a brittle sort of mischief and something else lighting up her gaze. “You must have slept with a thousand women to do that so well! My congratulations. Especially as I would have said there weren’t ten women you could sleep with in a hundred miles, much less a thousand. The privileges of wealth, I presume?”

“You’re hilarious.” But he couldn’t help the crook of his mouth. “I have them flown in from Rome, of course.”

“Of course.” She wrinkled her nose at him, and it was as dangerous as it had been earlier. It made him want things he knew he couldn’t have. He couldn’t have them, and more to the point, she couldn’t give them. Hadn’t he learned anything? “You realize, Giancarlo, that people might get the wrong idea. They might begin to think you’re a playboy whore.”