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,
