He found her breasts and pulled one of the proud nipples deep into his hot mouth, and she didn’t care what he said. Or in what language. She arched into him, mindless and needy, and he punished and praised her with his lips, his tongue, the scrape of his teeth. He played with her until she begged him to stop and then he only laughed and kept going, sending a catapult of pure wildfire straight down into her core.
She thought for a panicky, wondrous second that he might throw her straight over the edge with only this—
But he stopped, as diabolical as ever, raising his dark head to take in the flushed heat on her face and all down her neck. Her sensual distress. Her driving need.
“This punishment appears to be far more effective than you imagined it would be, cara,” he murmured, his voice another sensual shiver against her sensitive skin, with its echoes of the playfully wicked lover she’d met so long ago. “It’s almost as if you forgot what I can do to you.”
“Thank you for the harsh lesson, Count Alessi,” she whispered, not trying too hard to keep her tone anything approaching respectful when she was this close to the edge. “May I have another?”
He laughed, and she did too, and she didn’t know if she’d been kidding or if she’d meant it when he returned his attention to her body, shifting to crawl down farther. If these were harsh lessons indeed, or gifts. He left a shimmering trail of fire from her breasts to her belly, and when he paused there, his breath fanning out over the hungriest part of her, Paige realized she was breathing as heavily as if she was running a race. The marathon he’d mentioned earlier, God help her.
“You’d better hold on,” he warned her, dark and stirring and right there against her sex. “I’m going to stop when I’m done, not when you are.”
And then he simply bent his head and licked his way into her.
Paige ignited.
She went from the mere sensation of burning straight into open flame. She couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She arched against the exquisite torment of his wickedly clever mouth, or she tried to escape it, and either way, it didn’t matter. He gripped her hips in his strong hands and he tasted her molten heat as if it was his own greatest pleasure, and before she knew it she was bucking against him, her hands buried deep in his thick, dark hair.
Calling out his name like a prayer into the night.
And he was as good as his word. He didn’t stop. He didn’t wait for her to come back down, to come back to herself. He simply kept on tasting her, settling in and taking his time, laughing against her tender flesh when she begged him to stop, laughing more when she begged him to keep on going.
The fire poured back into her, hotter and higher than before, and then he plunged two fingers deep inside of her and threw her over the side of the world. Again.
This time, when she shuddered her way back to earth, Giancarlo had moved off her to stand beside her, his hard hands impatient as he pulled her to her feet. It took her a moment to realize he’d finally stripped but she had no time to appreciate it, because he was lying back on the chaise and pulling her down to sit astride him.
“I want to watch,” he told her, his voice dark and nearly grim with need, and it lit that flame inside of her all over again.
And then he simply curled his strong hands around her hips the way he had a thousand times before, the way she’d never dreamed he would again, and thrust home.
CHAPTER SIX