moment without you.’
Her sigh of pleasure was all the answer he needed to continue.
Later, in the equally tiny shower cubicle, he pulled her wet hair to one side and washed her back. Although there was more kissing than washing. Not that Ana was complaining.
‘Marry me,’ he muttered against her shoulder.
Ana froze. ‘No. You can’t want to marry me.’
His head snapped up, his eyes narrowing. ‘Credit me with knowing my own mind, mon coeur. I love you. I wish to spend the rest of my life with you. Marriage is the next natural step. Ana, I would be proud to have you by my side every day for the rest of my life. You’ve forged your way successfully through life and I’m proud of everything you’ve achieved. I would be even prouder to call you my wife.’ A touch of vulnerable pain clouded his eyes. ‘Why did you leave me, Ana?’
‘I thought you didn’t love me. After everything we’d been through, I thought if you loved me you’d have told me. When you didn’t...’
His eyes turned smoky. ‘I will tell you every day how much I adore you. And if that doesn’t work I have a few aces up my sleeve.’
‘Oh, really?’ Her smile felt as if it would split her face as she moved into his arms.
‘Really.’ He grinned, then sobered. ‘I met your father an hour ago. He grilled me thoroughly before he showed me where your trailer was. I think I passed his potential son-in-law test. But if that doesn’t work... Remember the tower room the night I got back?’
Intrigued, she nodded. ‘One of the crew members had left a camera on. It recorded our conversation, but more importantly it recorded you melting into my arms, kissing me like I owned your soul.’
‘You do. But blackmail, Bastien? Seriously?’
He grinned. ‘Not as powerful as a sex tape, but I’ll use whatever ammunition I have so you’ll never leave me again.’ He sobered. ‘You’ve believed in yourself, thrived despite all the setbacks you’ve received. Take this last step, mon amour. Marry me.’
‘I can’t. Not yet. I’ve signed up with my father’s programme. I need to stay in Colombia for two years.’
He merely shrugged. ‘Then I’ll stay with you. I can work from anywhere in the world.’
‘But—’
‘Marry me,’ he repeated, his purposeful tone making her heart soar. ‘Let me stay here with you. You can teach me Spanish as we pick through the bones and I’ll teach you whatever you need to learn. Of course that means I will resume tutoring you. Adam will have to go.’
Tears filled her eyes. ‘I love you, mi corazón. Of course I’ll be your wife.’
His kiss was long and deep. When he lifted his head the emotion in his eyes moved her soul. ‘I don’t deserve you, Ana.’
‘But you’ve got me all the same. You’re mine and I’m yours. Siempre.’
‘For ever.’
* * * * *
“Come here.” Giancarlo’s voice was a rasp, thick and hot, and it moved through her like joy.
Paige obeyed him, and this time she was happy to do it. She walked toward him, reveling in the way her blood pounded through her and her skin seemed to shrink a size, too tight across her bones. Because he could call this revenge. He could talk about hatred and penance. But it was still the same thick madness that felt like a rope around her neck. It was still the same inexorable pull.
It was still them.
He took her mouth like he was already deep inside her. Like he was thrusting hard and driving them both toward that glimmering edge. It was more than wild, more than carnal. He bent her back over her own arms, pressing her breasts into the flat planes of his chest, and he simply possessed her with a ruthless sort of fury that set every part of her aflame.
She thrilled to his boldness, his shocking mastery. The glorious taste of him she’d pined for all these years. The sheer rightness.
Paige kissed him back desperately, deeply, forgetting about the games they played. Forgetting about penance, about trust. Forgetting her betrayal and his fury. She didn’t care what he wanted from her, or how he planned to hurt her, or anything at all but this.
This.
USA TODAY bestselling author and RITA®-Award-nominated CAITLIN CREWS loves writing romance. She teaches her favourite romance novels in creative writing classes at places like UCLA Extension’s prestigious Writers’ Programme, where she can finally utilise the MA and PhD in English Literature she received from the University of York in England. She currently lives in California, with her very own hero and too many pets. Visit her at www.caitlincrews.com
“I MUST BE HALLUCINATING. And may God have mercy on you if I am not.”
Paige Fielding hadn’t heard that voice in ten years. It wrapped around her even as it sliced through her, making the breezy Southern California afternoon fade away. Making the email she’d been writing disappear from her mind in full. Making her forget what year it was, what day it was. Rocketing her right back into the murky, painful past.
That voice. His voice.
Uncompromisingly male. As imperious as it was incredulous. The faint hint of sex and Italy in his voice even with all that temper besides, and it rolled over Paige like a flattening heat. It pressed into her from behind, making her want to squirm in her seat. Or simply melt where she sat. Or come apart—easily and instantly—the way she always had at the sound of it.
She swiveled around in her chair in instant, unconscious obedience, knowing exactly who she’d see in the archway that led into the sprawling Bel Air mansion high in the Hollywood Hills called La Bellissima in honor of its famous owner, the screen legend Violet Sutherlin. She knew who it was, and still, something like a premonition washed over her and made her skin prickle in the scant seconds before her gaze found him there in the arched, open door, scowling at her with what looked like a healthy mix of contempt and pure, electric hatred.
Giancarlo Alessi. The only man she’d ever loved with every inch of her doomed and naive heart, however little good that had done either one of them. The only man who’d made her scream and sob and beg for more, until she was hoarse and mute with longing. The only man who still haunted her, and who she suspected always would, despite everything.
Because he was also the only man she’d ever betrayed. Thoroughly. Indisputably. Her stomach twisted hard, reminding her of what she’d done with a sick lurch. As if she’d forgotten. As if she ever could.
She hadn’t thought she’d had a choice.
