At the Count's Bidding(19)
“Remind me how exactly it was I lost my head over you,” he told her, all that fury and vengeance in his voice, challenging her to defy him. “Use your tongue.”
Paige didn’t know what demon it was that rose in her then, some painful mixture of long lost hopes and current regrets, not to mention that anger she tried to hide because it was unlikely to help her here, but she did as she was told. She grabbed his invading hand with both of hers and she worshipped his thumb as if it were another part of his anatomy entirely, and she didn’t break away from him while she did it.
She didn’t know how long it went on.
His eyes were darker than the night around them, and the same hectic gold lit them, even as it burned within her. She felt molten and wild, reckless and lost, and none of that mattered, because she could taste him. He might hate her, he might want nothing more than to hurt her, but Paige had never thought she’d taste him again. She’d never dreamed this could happen.
She told herself it didn’t matter, those things she felt deep inside her that she didn’t want to acknowledge. Only that this was a gift. It didn’t matter what else it was.
He pulled his thumb out then and shifted her so they were facing each other, and the space between them seemed dense. Electric.
“I’m glad to see you haven’t lost your touch,” he said, and though his tone was cruel his voice was rougher than it had been, and she told herself that meant something. It meant the same thing her breathlessness did, or that manic tightening deep in her belly, that restlessness she’d only ever felt with him and knew only he could cure.
He smiled, and it was so beautiful it made her throat feel tight, and she should have known better. Because he wasn’t finished.
“Get on your knees, Paige,” he ordered her. “And do it right.”
CHAPTER THREE
FOR A MOMENT Paige thought she really had pitched over the side of the hill, and this taut, terrible noise in her head was her own scream. But she blinked and she was still standing there before Giancarlo, he was still waiting and she didn’t want him to repeat himself.
She could see from that faintly mocking lift to his dark brows and that twist to his lips that he knew full well she’d heard him.
“Not here, surely,” she said, and her voice sounded thin and faraway.
“Where I want. How I want. Was I unclear?”
“But I—” She cleared her throat. “I mean, I don’t—”
“You appear to be confused.” His hands were still on her, and that didn’t help. The offhanded sweep of his thumbs against the tender skin of her bare shoulders made her want to scream, but she didn’t think she’d stop if she started. “I this, I that. This isn’t about you. This is about me.”
“Giancarlo.”
“I told you what to do,” he said coolly. “And what will happen if you don’t.”
She jerked back out of his grip, furious in a sudden jolt, and not only because she knew he could have held her there if he liked. But because he hated her and she hated that he did. Because he was back in her life but not really, not in the way she’d refused to admit to herself she’d wanted him to be.