At the Count's Bidding. Caitlin Crews

name, no matter how many ways they’d torn each other up and turned each other inside out, no matter how deeply he’d fallen for her or how enthusiastically he’d upended his life for her in those two months they’d spent almost entirely in his bed—were Violet’s fame and a paycheck to match.

      It wasn’t only his heart she’d broken. She’d ground his pride, his belief that he could read anyone’s intentions at a glance and keep himself safe from the kind of grasping predators who teemed over this city like ants, under her heel. She’d completely altered the way he’d seen himself, who he was, as surely as if she’d severed one of his limbs.

      Yet she still held herself well, which irritated him. She still had that dancer’s easy grace and the supple muscle tone to match. He took in her small, high breasts beneath that sleeveless white shirt with the draped neck, then the efficient pencil skirt that clung to the swell of her hips, and his hands remembered the lush feel of both. The slick perfection of her curves beneath his palms, always such a marvel of femininity in such a lean frame. The exquisite way she fit in his hands and tasted against his tongue. She’d left her legs bare, toned and pretty, and all he could think about was the way she’d wrapped them around his hips or draped them over his shoulders while he’d thrust hard and deep inside of her.

      Stop, a voice inside him ordered, or you will shame yourself anew.

      Her disguise—if that was what it was—did nothing to hide her particular, unusual beauty. She’d never looked like all the other girls who’d flocked around him back then. It was that fire in her that had called to him from that first, stunning clash of glances across the set of the music video where they’d met. She’d been a backup dancer in formfitting tights and a sport bra. He’d been the high-and-mighty pseudo director who shouldn’t have noticed her with a band full of pop stars hanging on his every word. And yet that single look had singed him alive.

      He could still feel the same bright flames, even though she’d darkened her hair and wore sensible, professional clothes today that covered her mouthwatering midriff and failed to outline every last line of her thighs. Like the efficient secretary to his mother that he knew she’d proved herself to be over these past years, for some reason—and Giancarlo refused to let himself think about that. About her motives and intentions. Why she’d spent so long playing this game and why she’d bothered to excel in her position here while doing it. Why he couldn’t look at her without wanting her, even with all of this time between them. Even knowing exactly what she’d done.

      “Is this where you tell me your sob story?” he asked coldly, taking a grim pleasure in the way she reacted to his voice. That little jump, as if she couldn’t control this crazy thing between them any more than he could. “There’s always one in these situations, is there not? So many reasons. So many excuses.”

      “I’m not sobbing.” He couldn’t read that lovely oval of a face, with cheekbones made for a man to cradle between his palms and that wide mouth that begged to be tasted. Plundered. “And I don’t think I’ve made any excuses. I only apologized. It’s not the same thing.”

      “No.” He let his gaze move over her mouth. That damned mouth. He could still feel the slide of it against his, or wrapped hot and warm around his hardness, trailing fire and oblivion wherever she used it. And nothing but lies when she spoke. “I’ll have to see what I can do about that.”

      She actually sighed, as if he tried her patience, and he didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh or throttle her. He remembered that, too. From before. When she’d broken over his life like a hurricane and hadn’t stopped tearing up the trees and rearranging the earth until she was gone the same way she’d come, leaving nothing but scandal and the debris of her lies in her wake.

      And yet she was still so pretty. He found that made him angrier than the rest of it.

      “Glaring ferociously at me isn’t going to make me cry,” she said, and he wanted to see things in those chameleon eyes of hers. He wanted something, anything, to get to her—but he knew better, didn’t he? She hadn’t simply destroyed him, this time. She’d targeted his mother and she’d done it right under his nose. How could he imagine she was anything but evil? “It only makes the moment that much more uncomfortable.” She inclined her head slightly. “But if it makes you feel better, Giancarlo, you should go right ahead and try.”

      He did laugh then. A short, humorless little sound.

      “I am marveling at the sight of you,” he said, sounding cruel to his own ears, but she didn’t so much as blink. “You deserve to look like the person you really are, not the person you pretended you were.” He felt his mouth thin. “But I suppose this is Hollywood magic in action, no? The nastiest, most narcissistic things wrapped up tight in the prettiest packages. Of course you look as good as you did then.” He laughed softly, wanting it to hurt. Wanting something he said or did to have some effect on her—which told him a bit more than he wanted to know about his unresolved feelings about this woman. “That’s all you really have, is it not?”