At the Count's Bidding(20)
God, in those first months, those first years, she’d expected him to appear, hadn’t she? She’d expected him to seek her out once his initial anger passed, once the last of the scandal had died down. To continue that conversation they’d had outside her apartment the morning the pictures had run, so swift and terrible. Because they might have been together only a short time, but he’d known her better than anyone else ever had. Or ever would. Maybe not the details of her life, because she’d never wanted anyone to know those, but the truth of her heart. She’d been so sure that somehow, he’d understand that there had to have been extenuating circumstances....
But he’d never come.
So perhaps it was a very old grief that added to the fury and made her forget herself completely.
“Is this really what you want?” she demanded, forgetting to hold her tongue, the taste of his skin still a rich sort of wine in her mouth, making her feel something like drunk. “Is this what a decade did to you, Giancarlo?”
“This is what you did to me.” He didn’t use that name then, but she was sure they could both hear it, Nicola hanging in the air and weaving in and out of the scent of the night-blooming jasmine and rosemary all around them. “And this is exactly what I want.”
“To force me. To make me do things I don’t want to do. To—” She found she couldn’t say it. Not to the man who was the reason she knew that love could be beautiful instead of dark and twisted and sick. Not to the man who had made her feel so alive, so powerful, so perfect beneath his touch. “There are words, you know. Terrible words.”
“None of which apply.” He thrust his hands in the pockets of that suit, and she wondered if he found it hard to keep them to himself. Was she as sick as he was if that made her feel better instead of worse? How could she tell anymore—what was the barometer? “You don’t have to do anything. I have no desire to force you. Quite the opposite.”
“You told me I had to do this—to—to—”
“Don’t stutter like the vestal virgin we both know you are not,” he said silkily, and she wondered if he’d forgotten that she’d been exactly that when she’d come to him ten years ago. If he thought that was another lie. “I told you that you had to obey me. In and out of bed.”
“That I had to have sex with you at your command or leave,” she gritted out.
He didn’t quite shrug, or smile. “Yes.”
“So then I do, in fact, have to do something. You are perfectly happy to use force.”
“Not at all.” He shrugged as if he didn’t care what happened next, but there was a tension to those muscled shoulders, around his eyes, that told her otherwise. And it wasn’t in the least bit comforting. “You’re welcome to leave. To say no at any time and go about your life, such as it is, using whatever name appeals to you. I won’t stop you.”
It was as if her heart was in her mouth and she felt dizzy again, but she couldn’t look away from that terrible face of his, so sensual and impassive and cruel.
“But if I do that, you’ll tell Violet who I am. You’ll tell her I...what? Stalked you? Deliberately hunted her down and befriended her to get to you?”
“I will.” His face hardened and his voice did, too. “It has the added benefit of being the truth.”
But Paige knew better, however little she could seem to express it to him. She knew what had grown between her and Violet in these past years, and how deeply it would wound the other woman to learn that Paige was yet one more leech. One more user, trying to suck Violet dry for her own purposes. It made her feel sick to imagine it.