He expected her to do as she was told. It took a moment or two for him to realize that she hadn’t moved. That she appeared to have frozen solid where she sat and was staring at him with a stricken sort of expression on her face.
Giancarlo lifted a brow. “Was I unclear?”
“I appreciate all the tension and drama,” Paige said after a moment. “I don’t think I realized how very much you take after your mother until now. That’s a compliment,” she added in a hurry when he frowned at her. “But I’ll pass.”
“That is not an option you have.” He shrugged. “You persist in thinking what you want comes into play here. It doesn’t.”
“What will you do?” she asked softly, so softly it took a moment for him to hear the challenge beneath the words, and then to see it there in her chameleon eyes. “Make me scream for people who won’t hear me? Make me walk for days in search of a road that’s still hours from anywhere? Force me to stay in that gorgeous little cottage down the hill like a bird in a cage?”
“Or, alternatively, merely call my mother and tell her exactly who you are,” he suggested. “A fate you felt was worse than death and far more terrible than anything I might do a week ago.”
But tonight she only shook her head and she didn’t avert her gaze, reminding him of that moment in his mother’s closet across the world. Reminding him he’d never controlled this woman, not even when she’d agreed to let him.
“I think if you were going to do that, Giancarlo, you would have. You wouldn’t have dragged me across the planet and then presented me with wine and a four-course meal.”
He laughed, a smoky little sound against the night. It did nothing to ease the mounting tension. “Do you really want to test that theory?”
She leaned forward, holding his gaze, and his laughter dried up as if it had never been. He was aware of everything at once. The stars above them, the faint breeze that teased him with the intoxicating scent of her. The rich food before them, the dancing candlelight. The way she sat now, the wide neck of her brightly patterned tunic falling open as she leaned toward him, hinting at the soft curves beneath.
And all that fire, as bright as it had ever been, burning them both where they sat.
Her gaze was like a touch on his, and he felt it everywhere. “I have a different theory.”
“I’m all ears, of course. Every inmate is innocent, every killer was merely misunderstood, every con man an artist in his soul, et cetera. Tell me your sob story, cara.” He felt his mouth crook. “I knew you would, sooner or later.”
But Paige only smiled, and her eyes were so green tonight they rivaled his own lush fields. It moved in him like summer, an exultation of all that boundless heat that spiked the air between them.
“You don’t want revenge. Not really. You want sex.”
Her smile deepened when he only stared back at her, that mouth of hers still an utter distraction, still his undoing. Her gaze proud and unwavering and he had no defense against that, either.
“You don’t want to admit it, given what happened the last time we had sex, but look where we are.” She lifted a shoulder, somehow encompassing the whole of the estate in that simple little gesture. “You’ve made sure there couldn’t possibly be a camera here. You’ve cut us off from the rest of the world. And you’re calling it revenge because you’re furious that you still want me.”