The Best Of The Year - Modern Romance. Annie West

was standing too straight, too still, on the other side of the central island that housed Violet’s extensive jewelry collection, entirely too aware that she resembled a deer stuck fast in the glare of oncoming headlights. But she couldn’t seem to move.

      Anything besides her mouth, that was. “I did try to warn you that this would get boring.”

      Giancarlo’s mouth crooked slightly and made hers water. His eyes were so dark the gold in them felt as much like a caress as a warning, and she was terribly afraid she could no longer tell the difference.

      “Show me that you know how to follow directions.” He folded his arms over that chest of his and propped a shoulder against the doorjamb, but Paige wasn’t the least bit fooled. He looked about as casual and relaxed as a predator three seconds before launching an attack. “And I’d think twice before making me wait, if I were you.”

      “It’s all the threats,” she grated at him. “They make me dizzy with fear. It’s hard to hear the instructions over all the heart palpitations.”

      “I’m certain that’s true.” That crook in his mouth deepened. She was fascinated. “But I think we both know it isn’t fear.”

      Paige couldn’t really argue with that, and she certainly didn’t want him to wander any closer and prove his point—did she? She glanced down at her outfit, the short, flirty little skirt with nothing on beneath it, and realized that she’d obeyed him without thinking about it when she’d dressed this morning. Make sure that I have access to you, should I desire it, he’d told her two nights ago, a harsh whisper in the hallway outside Violet’s office. She’d obeyed him and in so doing, she’d revealed herself completely.

      When she raised her gaze to his again, he was smiling, a fierce satisfaction in his dark gold eyes and stamped across that impossibly elegant face of his. He jerked his chin at her, wordlessly ordering her to show him, and her hands moved convulsively, as if her body wanted nothing more than to prove itself to him. To prove herself trustworthy again, to jump through any hoop he set before her—

      But that wasn’t where this was headed. This wasn’t a love story. No matter how many memories she used to torture herself into imagining otherwise.

      “Come over here and find out for yourself, if you want to know,” she heard herself say. Suicidally.

      Giancarlo only shook his head at her, as if saddened. “You seem to miss the point. Again. This is not a game that lovers play, cara. This is not some delightful entertainment en route to a blissful afternoon in bed. This is—”

      “Penance,” she finished for him, with far more bitterness than she should have allowed him to hear. “Punishment. I know.”

      “Then stop stalling. Show me.”

      Paige could see he meant it.

      She told herself it didn’t matter. That he’d seen all of her before, and in a far more intimate setting than this. That more than that, he’d had his mouth and his hands on every single inch of her skin, in ways so devastating and intense that she could still feel it ten years later. So what did it matter now? He was all the way across the room and he wanted her to balk. To hate him. That was why he was doing this, she was sure.

      So instead, she laughed, like the carefree girl she’d never been. Paige stepped out from behind the center island so there could be no accusations of hiding. She watched his hard, hard face and then, slowly, she reached down and pulled her skirt up to her hips.

      “Satisfied?” she asked when she was fully bared to his view—because she was.

      She’d been so lost in her guilt, her shame, her own anger at everything that had happened and Giancarlo too, that she’d forgotten one very important fact about this thing between them that Giancarlo had been using to such great effect.

      It ran both ways.

      He stared at her—too hard and too long—and she saw the faintest hint of color high on those gorgeous cheeks of his. And that hectic glitter in his dark eyes that she recognized. Oh yes, she recognized it. She remembered it.

      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.

      “Then how would you know?” she asked him, her voice