Giancarlo didn’t laugh. He shifted his body so he was hard against her and she melted the way she always did, ready to welcome him no matter his mood or hers, no matter the strange energy that crackled from him tonight, no matter the darkness that seemed wrapped around him even as he wound himself around her.
There were other words for what she was with this man, she knew, words she hadn’t heard in a long time but still remembered all too well. Words she’d dismissed as the unhealthy rantings of the worst person she’d ever known, the person who had taken everything she’d wanted from her—but it turned out dismissing them wasn’t the same thing as erasing them.
Even so, the hollow, gnawing thing that had sat inside her all day and made her feel so panicked was gone, because he was here. She filled it with his scent, his touch, his bold possession.
Him. Giancarlo.
The only man she’d ever touched. The only man she’d ever loved.
And this was the only way she could tell him any of that. With her body. Paige shifted so he was flush against her entrance and hooked her legs over his hips, letting him in. Loving him in the only way she knew. In the only way he’d let her.
“Maybe that didn’t always work out when you were a child,” she whispered, hoping he couldn’t read too much emotion in her eyes, across her face. “But my relationship with Violet is much easier. She pays, I agree, the end.”
Giancarlo bent his head to press hot, open kisses along the ridge of her collarbone. Paige moved restlessly, hungrily against him, tilting her head back to give him greater access. To give him anything—everything—he wanted.
Because this won’t last forever, that harsh voice that was too much an echo of her mother’s reminded her. That was what today had taught her. There were no fairy tales. This situation had an expiration date, and every moment she had with him was one moment closer to the end.
“In a way,” Giancarlo said, still too dark, still too rough, his mouth against her skin so Paige could feel the rumble of his words inside of her as he spoke, “that is every relationship that Violet has.”
She heard that same tense grief that had been in him in the castello that morning and this time, no one was watching. She could soothe him, or try. She ran her fingers through his thick hair and smiled when he pressed into her touch, like a very large cat.
“I don’t think it can be easy to be a great figure,” Paige said after a moment, concentrating on the feel of his scalp beneath her fingertips, the drag of his thick hair as she moved her hands through it, the exquisite sensation of stroking him. “Too many expectations. Too much responsibility to something far bigger than oneself. The constant worry that it will be taken away. But it must be harder still to be that person’s child.”
He shifted away from her, propping himself up on his elbows, though he kept himself cradled there between her thighs, his arousal a delicious weight against her softness. A promise. The silence stretched out and his face was in shadow, so all she could see was the glitter of his dark gold eyes, and the echo of it deep inside her.
“It’s not hard,” he said, and she’d never heard that tone before, had she? Clipped and resigned at once. And yet somehow, that pit in her belly yawned open again as he spoke. “As long as you remember that she is always playing a role. The grande dame as benevolent mother. The living legend as compassionate parent. The great star whose favorite role of all is mom. When she was younger there were different roles threaded into the mix, but the same principle applied. You learn this as a child in a thousand painful ways and you vow, if you are at all wise, never to inflict it on another. To let it end with you.”