“Giancarlo...” He didn’t interrupt her but she didn’t finish anyway, and her words trailed off into the afternoon breeze. He saw her eyes fill with a wet heat and he had to hand it to her, she was still too good at this. She made it so believable.
But he would never believe her again, no matter the provocation. No matter how many tears she shed, or almost shed. No matter how convincingly she could make her lips tremble. This was Hollywood.
This time, he wouldn’t be taken by surprise. He knew it was all an act from the start.
“Your choices are diminishing by the minute,” he told her softly. It was a warning. And one of the last he’d give her. “Now you have but two. Leave now, knowing I will tell my mother exactly why you’ve left and how you’ve spent these past years deceiving her. It might break her heart, but that will be one more black mark on your soul, not mine. And I’d be very surprised if she didn’t find some way to make you pay for it herself. She didn’t become who she is by accident, you must realize. She’s a great deal tougher than she looks.”
“I know she is.” Her gaze still shimmered with that heat, but none of it spilled over—and he reminded himself that was acting talent, not force of will. “And what’s the second choice?”
He shrugged. “Stay. And do exactly as I tell you.”
“Sexually.” She threw that at him, her voice unsteady but her gaze direct. “You mean do as you tell me sexually.”
If she thought her directness would shame him into altering his course here, she was far stupider than he remembered. Giancarlo smiled.
“I mean do as I tell you, full stop.” He indulged himself then, and touched her. He traced the remarkable line of her jaw, letting the sharp delight of it charge through his bones, then held her chin there, right where he could stare her down with all the ruthlessness he carried within him. “You will work for me, Paige. On your back. On your knees. At your desk. Whatever I want, whenever I want, however I want.”
He could feel her shaking and he exulted in it.
“Why?” she whispered. “This is me, remember? Why would you want to...?”
Again, she couldn’t finish, and he took pleasure in these signs of her weakness. These cracks in her slick, pretty armor. Giancarlo leaned in close and brushed his mouth over hers, a little hint of what was to come. A little test.
It was just as he remembered it.
All that fire, arcing in him and in her, too, from the shocked sound she made. All that misery. Shame and fury and ten years of that terrible longing. He’d never quite got past it, and this was why. This thrumming, pounding excitement that had only ever happened here, with her. This unmatched hunger. This beautiful lie that would not wreck him this time. Not this time.
He needed to work it all out on that delectable body she’d wielded like a weapon, enslaving him and destroying him before she’d finally got around to killing him, too. He needed to make her pay the price for her betrayal in the most intimate way possible. He needed to work out his goddamned issues in the very place they’d started, and then, only then, would he finally be free of her. It had only been two months back then. It would have burned out on its own—he was sure of it, but they hadn’t had time. He wanted time to glut himself, because only then would he get past this.
Giancarlo had to believe that.
“I know exactly who you are,” he told her then, and he didn’t pretend he wasn’t enjoying this. That now that the shock had passed, he wasn’t thrilled she’d proved herself as deceitful as he remembered. That he wasn’t looking forward to this in a way he hoped scared her straight down into her bones—because it should. “It’s long past time you paid for what you did to me, and believe me when I tell you I have a very, very detailed memory.”