The Best Of The Year - Modern Romance. Annie West

regret. She told him all about her love and her silly, shattered hopes with every move she made, and when she stepped out of her panties she didn’t know which one of them was breathing more heavily.

      Paige only knew that he was standing, too. And that she was naked before him and she still wasn’t done.

      Naked in the Tuscan night, she danced for all those dreams she’d let carry her away as a girl. For the dream she’d destroyed with a single phone call and a cashed check ten years ago, and none of it worth the sacrifice, in the end. It was like skinny-dipping, warm and cool at once, the summer air a sensual caress against her flesh. She danced for the joy she’d only ever felt in this man’s presence, the laughter she still missed, the love she’d squandered for good reasons that seemed nothing but sad in retrospect.

      She danced and she danced, and she might have danced all night, but Giancarlo swept her into his arms instead, high against his chest, and that was like a much better dance. Hotter and more intense, and then his mouth came down on hers, claiming her and destroying her that easily.

      He came down hard on top of her and she loved it. That lean, hard body of his crushing her with his delicious weight, his narrow hips keeping her legs apart, and it took her a moment to realize that he’d moved them over to one of the sun chaises that sat around the gleaming, sleek pool that jutted out from the loggia toward the vineyards. And that he’d lost his jacket in the move.

      And he looked as gorgeously undone as she felt, and very nearly as wild.

      “Giancarlo,” she whispered, the dance still running madly in her veins, almost as addictive as he was. “Don’t stop.”

      “I give the orders, not you,” he growled, but his lips were curved when they took hers all over again.

      And then everything slowed down. Turned to honey, thick and sweet.

      Giancarlo feasted on her as if she were the gourmet meal his chefs had prepared for him, and beneath his talented mouth she felt almost that cherished, that perfect. She wanted his naked skin pressed to hers more than she could remember wanting anything else, ever, but he kept her too busy to peel his shirt back from his strong shoulders.

      He kissed her until her head spun, and then he followed the line of her neck, tasting her and muttering dark things in Italian that she told herself she was happy she didn’t understand.

      Even if they moved in her like music, dark and compelling, sex and magic and Giancarlo, at long last.

      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

      HE WAS INSIDE her again. At last.

       Finally.

      Giancarlo thought the sensation—far better than all his pale memories across these long years, far better than his own damned hand had ever been—might make him become a religious man.

      She was so damned hot, molten and sweet and slick and his, and she still held him so tightly, so snugly, it was nearly his undoing. Her hair was that deep black ink with hints of fire and it tumbled all around her in a seductive tousle, falling to those breasts of hers, still high and pert, the tips already tight again and begging for his mouth.

      Paige looked soft and stunned, exactly how he liked her best, exactly how he remembered her, and then she made everything better by reaching out to prop her hands against his chest. The shift in position made her sink down even farther on him, making them both groan.

      He let his hands travel back to cup the twin globes of her delectable bottom, and tested the depth of her, the friction. God help him, but she was perfect. She had always been perfect. The perfect fit. The perfect fire.

       Perfect for him.

      Giancarlo had somehow forgotten that, in all the long years since he’d last been inside her. He’d convinced himself he’d exaggerated this as some kind of excuse for his own idiocy—that she’d been nothing more than a pretty girl with a dancer’s body and all the rest had been a kind of madness that would make no sense if revisited.

      But this was no exaggeration. This was pure, hot, bliss. This was that same true perfection he remembered, at last.

      Paige looked down at him, her gaze unreadable. Bright and something like awed. And then she started to move.

      He had watched her dance ten years ago, and he had wanted her desperately. He’d watched her dance tonight, that astonishing performance for him alone, equal parts sensual and