At the Count's Bidding(24)
“And here I thought we were right on target to get arrested for public indecency,” she whispered, her voice still sharp but something raw in her chameleon gaze. “They could throw me in jail and charge me for solicitation and it would be like all your dreams come true in one evening.”
“This is my dream,” he growled at her, his hand wrapped tight around her arm and that fever in his blood. His revenge, he thought. At last. “It’s not the act itself that matters, cara. That’s a privilege you haven’t earned. It’s the surrender. It’s all about the surrender.” He laughed then, a dark sound he felt in every part of him, as if it was a part of the night and as dangerous, and then he let her go. It was harder than it should have been. “You’ll learn.”
* * *
It became clear to Paige in the week that followed that it wasn’t Giancarlo’s intention to actually make her have sex with him whenever and wherever he chose, no matter what provocative things he might say to the contrary. That would have been easy, in its way. He was far more diabolical than that.
He wanted her in a constant state of panic, with no idea what he might do next. He wanted her to think of nothing at all but him and the little things he made her do to prove her obedience that were slowly driving her insane.
It’s all about the surrender, he’d said. Her surrender. And she was learning what he’d meant.
One day—after nearly a week filled with anticipation and the faintest of touches, always in passing and always unexpected, all of which still felt like a metal collar around her neck that he tightened at will—he found her in Violet’s expansive closet, putting together a selection of outfits with appropriate accessories for Violet to choose between for the event the star was scheduled to attend that evening.
“Pull up your skirt, take off your panties—if you are foolish enough to be wearing any—and hand them to me,” Giancarlo said without preamble, making Paige jump and shiver into a bright red awareness of him, especially because her mind had been a long way away.
Ten years ago away, in fact, and treating her to a play-by-play, Technicolor and surround-sound replay of one of their more adventurous evenings in the Malibu house down on the beach she had no idea if he still owned.
“What?” she stammered out, but her body wasn’t in any doubt about his instructions. Her breasts bloomed into an aching heaviness, making her bra feel too tight and too scratchy against her skin. Her stomach flipped over, and below, that shimmering heat became scalding.
And that was only at the sound of his voice. What would happen if he touched her this time?
“Is this your strategy, cara? To feign ignorance every time I speak to you?” He loomed in the doorway, looking untamed and edgy, furious and male. He’d forgone the exquisite suits and running apparel today and looked more like the Giancarlo she remembered in casual trousers and a top that was more like a devotional poem extolling the perfection of his torso than anything so prosaic as a T-shirt. “It’s already tiresome.”
She was standing too straight, too still, on the other side of the central island that housed Violet’s extensive jewelry collection, entirely too aware that she resembled a deer stuck fast in the glare of oncoming headlights. But she couldn’t seem to move.
Anything besides her mouth, that was. “I did try to warn you that this would get boring.”
Giancarlo’s mouth crooked slightly and made hers water. His eyes were so dark the gold in them felt as much like a caress as a warning, and she was terribly afraid she could no longer tell the difference.