At the Count's Bidding(45)
The night air seemed to shimmer in the space between them, in the flickering light of the candles and in the velvety dark that surrounded the table like an embrace. He settled even farther back in his chair and stretched his legs out again, like an indolent god awaiting a sacrifice, and Paige knew she should put a stop to this before it got out of control—but she didn’t. The truth was she didn’t want to stop it. She didn’t want to do anything but this.
“Strip.” It was a hoarse command, rich and dark, like the finest chocolate poured over her skin, and she should have been outraged by his arrogance. Instead, she wanted to bathe in it. In him.
Wasn’t that always what she’d wanted?
She didn’t pretend she hadn’t heard him or that she didn’t understand. “Here?”
“Right here.” His dark gaze burned, gold and onyx, daring her. “Unless there is some new reason you refuse to obey me this time?”
“You mean, besides the fact that we’re sitting outside? Where anyone could see us engaged in all manner of shocking acts? I thought you had a horror of public displays of anything.”
“How shocking could a simple strip show be?” he asked, and there was something else in his gaze then, sharp and hard. “It has slipped your mind, perhaps, that the entire world has already seen us having sex. I doubt anything we do could possibly shock them now. Unless you’ve learned new tricks since I last saw you?”
“Nothing but the same old tricks here,” she said, keeping her tone the same as it was, as if that slap of history hadn’t made her feel dizzy at all. It was too bad nothing seemed to keep her from wanting him. She was that masochistic. “I’m sorry to disappoint you. Should I keep my clothes on?”
Paige saw that flash of fury in his gaze once more, but it melted into molten heat in the space of a heartbeat, as if they were both masochists here. Somehow, that made her feel better.
“No,” he said in a low voice. “You most certainly should not.”
“Then it seems I have no choice but to obey you, as promised,” she said quietly. “Despite your poor, apparently unshockable neighbors and the things they might see.”
“The closest resident aside from my mother is over forty miles away tonight,” Giancarlo said, as if impatient. But she could see the fire in his gaze. She could practically taste his need. “Your modesty is safe enough, such as it is. What other excuses do you have?” He let out a bark of something not quite laughter. “We might as well address them all now and be done with them.”
“What happens after I strip for you?” Paige asked, almost idly, but she was already pushing her chair back with a too-loud scrape against the stones, then rising to her feet. “This is daring, indeed, to get me naked and then leave me standing here all alone. Is that the plan? It’s something of a waste, I’d think.”
“First we’ll worry about whatever cameras you might have secreted on that body of yours,” he told her, and if she hadn’t known him she might have thought him cold. Unmoved by all of this. But that wild, uninhibited lover she’d known lurked there in the sensual curve of his lips, that gleaming thing deep in his gaze. Giancarlo might hate her, but he wanted her as much as she did him. And Paige clung to that, perhaps harder than she should have. She clung to it as if it was everything and opted not to listen to the alarms that rang out in her at the thought. “Then we’ll worry about what to do with that body.”
“Whatever you say, Count Alessi,” she murmured, which was as close to obedient as she’d ever come. She saw a certain appreciation for that—or for her wry tone, more like—in his dark eyes, but then it was time to dance.