her and she melted the way she always did, ready to welcome him no matter his mood or hers, no matter the strange energy that crackled from him tonight, no matter the darkness that seemed wrapped around him even as he wound himself around her.
There were other words for what she was with this man, she knew, words she hadn’t heard in a long time but still remembered all too well. Words she’d dismissed as the unhealthy rantings of the worst person she’d ever known, the person who had taken everything she’d wanted from her—but it turned out dismissing them wasn’t the same thing as erasing them.
Even so, the hollow, gnawing thing that had sat inside her all day and made her feel so panicked was gone, because he was here. She filled it with his scent, his touch, his bold possession.
Him. Giancarlo.
The only man she’d ever touched. The only man she’d ever loved.
And this was the only way she could tell him any of that. With her body. Paige shifted so he was flush against her entrance and hooked her legs over his hips, letting him in. Loving him in the only way she knew. In the only way he’d let her.
“Maybe that didn’t always work out when you were a child,” she whispered, hoping he couldn’t read too much emotion in her eyes, across her face. “But my relationship with Violet is much easier. She pays, I agree, the end.”
Giancarlo bent his head to press hot, open kisses along the ridge of her collarbone. Paige moved restlessly, hungrily against him, tilting her head back to give him greater access. To give him anything—everything—he wanted.
Because this won’t last forever, that harsh voice that was too much an echo of her mother’s reminded her. That was what today had taught her. There were no fairy tales. This situation had an expiration date, and every moment she had with him was one moment closer to the end.
“In a way,” Giancarlo said, still too dark, still too rough, his mouth against her skin so Paige could feel the rumble of his words inside of her as he spoke, “that is every relationship that Violet has.”
She heard that same tense grief that had been in him in the castello that morning and this time, no one was watching. She could soothe him, or try. She ran her fingers through his thick hair and smiled when he pressed into her touch, like a very large cat.
“I don’t think it can be easy to be a great figure,” Paige said after a moment, concentrating on the feel of his scalp beneath her fingertips, the drag of his thick hair as she moved her hands through it, the exquisite sensation of stroking him. “Too many expectations. Too much responsibility to something far bigger than oneself. The constant worry that it will be taken away. But it must be harder still to be that person’s child.”
He shifted away from her, propping himself up on his elbows, though he kept himself cradled there between her thighs, his arousal a delicious weight against her softness. A promise. The silence stretched out and his face was in shadow, so all she could see was the glitter of his dark gold eyes, and the echo of it deep inside her.
“It’s not hard,” he said, and she’d never heard that tone before, had she? Clipped and resigned at once. And yet somehow, that pit in her belly yawned open again as he spoke. “As long as you remember that she is always playing a role. The grande dame as benevolent mother. The living legend as compassionate parent. The great star whose favorite role of all is mom. When she was younger there were different roles threaded into the mix, but the same principle applied. You learn this as a child in a thousand painful ways and you vow, if you are at all wise, never to inflict it on another. To let it end with you.”
Paige tried to imagine Giancarlo as a small boy, all stubborn chin and fathomless eyes, and ached for him, though that didn’t explain her nervousness. It was something in the way he held himself apart from her, a certain danger rippling down the length of his body, as hard and as steel-hewn as he was. It was the way he watched her, too still, too focused.
“I’m sorry,” she said, though she wanted to say so much more. She didn’t dare. Just like before, when she’d stood outside and wanted him and had known better than to go and find him, she was too uncertain. “That can’t have been easy.”
“Is that sympathy for me, cara? Don’t bother.”
He wasn’t quite scoffing at her. Not quite, though his face went fierce in the darkness, edging toward cruel the way he’d been in the beginning, and she found she was bracing herself—unable to open her mouth and stop him. Unable to defend herself at all. Whatever he’s about to say, that hard voice reminded her, like another slap, you deserve.
“Here is what I learned from my mother, the great actress,” Giancarlo said. “That she is a mystery, unknowable even to herself. That she prefers it that way. That intimacy is anathema to her because it cannot be controlled, it cannot be directed, it cannot cut to print when she is satisfied with her performance. It is one long take with no rehearsal and no do-overs, and she goes to great lengths indeed to avoid it.”
Paige wasn’t sure why she felt so stricken then, so stripped raw when he wasn’t talking about her—but then he moved again, dropping his weight against her to whisper in her ear, hot and close and dark. So very dark.
You deserve this, she told herself. Whatever it is.
“I want a woman I can trust, Paige,” he said with a ruthless inevitability. And it didn’t even hurt. It was like a deep slice of a sharp blade. She knew he’d cut her and now there was only the wait for blood. For the pain that would surely follow. And he wasn’t finished. “A woman I can know inside and out. A woman who carries no secrets, who does not hide herself away from me or from the world, who never plays a role. A woman who wants a partner, not an audience.”
“Giancarlo.” She felt torn apart even though he was holding her close. Wrecked as surely as if he’d thrown her from the roof of the towering castello. “Please.”
But the worst part was, he knew what he was doing. She’d seen it in the cast of his sensual mouth. She’d felt it in the way he’d very nearly trembled as he’d held himself above her.
He knew he was hurting her. And he kept going.
“I want a woman I can believe when she tells me she loves me,” he said, raw and fierce and she knew she deserved that, she knew she did, even though it felt a little bit like dying. And then he lifted his head to look her straight in the eyes, making it that much worse. “And that can never be you, can it? It never was. It never will be.”
Later, she thought she might take that apart and live awhile in the misery he’d packed into those last two sentences. Later, she thought she might cry for days and check herself for scars, the way she’d done ten years ago. But that was later.
Tonight Paige thought the pain in him was far greater than the hurt he’d caused—that she deserved, that voice kept telling her, and she agreed no matter how it cut her up—and she couldn’t bear it.
She didn’t care if he still hated her, even now, after another week in his bed when he’d tasted every part of her and had to have recognized the sheer honesty in her response to him. She told herself she didn’t care about that at all and some part of her believed it.
Or wanted to believe it.
But worrying about that was for later, too. Later, when she could put herself together again. Later, when she could think about something other than the
