The Best Of The Year - Modern Romance. Annie West

through him then, heat and fire and danger, and it sank straight to his sex.

      Making him nothing at all but that wildness within.

      “Call it whatever you want,” she suggested in that rough voice of hers that hinted at her own dark excitement, that called to him like a song the way it always had. That sang in him still, no matter how he tried to deny it. “Call it hate sex. I don’t care, Giancarlo.” She shrugged. “Whatever it is, whatever you need to call it to feel better about it, I want it, too.”

      * * *

      “I beg your pardon?” Giancarlo’s voice was a rough whisper that somehow sounded in Paige like a bellow.

      It was the wine, Paige told herself as she stared back at him, her own words seeming to cavort between them on the heavily laden tabletop, making it impossible to see or hear much of anything else. Of course it was the wine—though she’d only had a few sips—and the lingering jet lag besides, though she didn’t feel anything like tired at the moment.

      Nothing else could possibly have made her say such things, she was sure, much less throw down the gauntlet to a battle she very much feared might be the end of her.

      She opened her mouth to take it back, to laugh and claim she’d been kidding, to break the strange, taut spell that stretched between them and wrapped them tight together, caught somewhere in that arrested expression that transformed his beautiful face. But Giancarlo lifted an aristocratic hand that stopped her as surely as if he’d placed it over her mouth, and she knew she really shouldn’t have shivered in a rush of dark delight at the very image.

      “I find I’m not as trusting as I used to be,” he told her, though untrusting wasn’t how she would have described the wolfish look in his dark eyes then. “It is a personality flaw, I am sure. But I’m afraid you’ll have to offer proof.”

      She was watching his mouth as if it was a show, which was only part of the reason Paige didn’t understand what he’d said. She blinked. “Proof?”

      “That this is not another one of your dirty little games that will end up painting the front page of every godforsaken gossip rag in existence.” He lounged back in his chair, but his eyes were hot, and she had the notion that he was coiled to strike. “You understand my reticence, I’m sure.”

      “And I’d offer you my word,” she said, not sure how she kept her tone so light, as if dirty little games hadn’t pricked at her and hurt while it did, because he had no idea what kind of dirt she’d been drowning in back then, “but somehow, I’m betting that won’t be enough for you.”

      “Sadly, no,” he agreed. He sounded anything but sad. “Though it pains me to cast such aspersions on your character, even if only by insinuation.”

      “Oh, that’s what that look on your face is.” Her tone was arch and if she hadn’t known better, if she hadn’t known it was impossible, she might have thought she was enjoying herself here. “It looks a bit more like glee than pain from this side of the table, I should tell you.”

      Giancarlo smiled, dark and intent. “I can’t imagine why.”

      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.

      Because that was what this was. Paige didn’t pretend otherwise. The only music was his breath and hers, the only audience the primeval explosion of stars above them. She hadn’t danced in years. Ten years, in fact. But she could feel him in her feet, in her hips. In the glorious stretch of her arms over her head. Her pulse and her breath. She could feel him everywhere, better than any sound track with her own hopeful heartbeat like the kick of drums, and she danced.

      She poured herself into each undulation of her hips, each exultant reach of her hands. She’d kicked off her shoes when she’d stood and she curled her toes down hard into the smooth stones beneath her, feeling what was left of the day’s heat against her soles and that wildfire that only arced higher between the two of them as she moved. She tried her best to catch the sensation in the movement of her hips, her legs, her torso. She took her time peeling off her trousers, managing to kick them aside with a flourish, and then she moved closer to him as she rid herself of her shirt, as if his intent expression beckoned her to him.

      She took her time with her bra, offering her breasts to him when she finally dropped it at her side, and she smiled at the way he moved in his chair, his gaze a wild touch on her skin, so fierce it made her nipples