At the Count's Bidding(26)
She knew as much about him as he did about her, after all. She knew every inch of his body. She knew his arousal when she saw it. She knew he’d be so hard he ached and that his control would be stretched to the breaking point. The chemistry between them wasn’t only his to exploit.
She stood there with her skirt at her waist, supposedly debasing herself before the only man she’d ever loved, and Paige felt better than she had in years. Powerful. Right, somehow.
“Looked your fill?” she asked sweetly when the silence stretched on, taut and nearly humming. He swallowed as if it hurt him, and she felt like a goddess as he dragged his gaze back to hers.
“Come here.” His voice was a rasp, thick and hot, and it moved in her like joy.
She 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.
Paige stopped in front of him and let out a surprised breath when he moved, reaching down to gather her wrists in his big hands and then pull them behind her, securing them in one of his at the small of her back. Her skirt fell back into place against the sensitized skin of her thighs, her back arched almost of its own accord, and Giancarlo stared down at her, a hard wildness blazing from his eyes.
Paige remembered that, too.
She didn’t know what he looked for, much less what he saw. He stared at her for a moment that dragged out to forever and she felt it like panic beneath the surface of her skin. Like an itch.
And then he jerked her close, her hands still held immobile behind her back, and slammed his mouth to hers.
It wasn’t a brush of his mouth, a tease, like before. It wasn’t an introduction.
He took her mouth as if he was already deep inside of her. As if 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.
There was too much noise in her head and too much heat inside of her and she actually moaned in disappointment when he pulled back, holding her away from him with that iron strength of his that reminded her how gentle he was with it. How truly demanding, because he knew—as he’d always known—exactly what she wanted. How far away from force all of this really was.
“You kiss like a whore,” he said, and she could see it was meant to be an insult, but it came out sounding somehow reverent, instead.
She laughed. “Have you kissed many whores, then? You, the exalted Count Alessi, who could surely have any proper woman he wished?”
“Just the one.”
She should be wounded by that, Paige thought as she studied him. She should feel slapped down, put in her place, but she didn’t. She cocked her head to one side and saw the fever in his dark gaze, and she knew that whatever power he had over her, she had it over him, too. And more, he was as aware of that as she was.