Page 11 of Captive in His Castle (The Martinelli Wedding #1)
“Or maybe you do,” he murmured, and was rewarded with an even darker blush and, a beat too late, a choked curse .
Laughing softly, he carried her through the castle on feet that felt suddenly lighter.
There was no scent of strawberry in the hair tickling his chin, but he could smell something even better, the scent of Callie herself, and he had to concentrate hard not to rub his nose into it and inhale deeply.
As arousing as it was to imagine Callie fixing that death stare on him as she punched him for sniffing her, only a complete bastard would take advantage of a woman who was tired, hungry, overwrought and barely capable of walking.
When she was in a better frame of mind, she’d understand why telling Niccolo about the pregnancy would be a disaster, and if she didn’t or was too stubborn to try to understand, then so be it.
Here, in his castle, Callie and her explosive secret were safe, a world away from where danger lurked.
Knowing the secret only made Dante more determined to keep her close.
How close that closeness would get… Dio, he must not allow himself to think of the possibilities when her plump breasts were crushed against his chest and the warmth of her breath was dancing into his neck.
It was as he strode the corridor to her bedroom that it happened, a happening so subtle he could have believed he’d imagined it if sensation hadn’t burned through his skin: Callie turned her face, ever so slightly, and pressed her nose to his throat and breathed him in.
And then she froze as if she couldn’t believe what she’d done.
Dio , this woman was something else.
Clenching his jaw in an effort to control his reactions, it was with equal measures of relief and regret that he entered her room to find Geppa already there.
Callie didn’t think she’d ever been so happy to see another face as she was when Dante carried her into her room and she found Geppa waiting for her, would have gladly thrown herself out of Dante’s hold and into the safety of the young girl’s arm if he didn’t have such a firm grip of her.
God help her, what had she been thinking ?
She hadn’t been thinking, that was the problem.
Not with her head. She’d been encased in the solid heat of Dante’s arms and chest with that awful dream dancing like a taunt in her mind’s eye and with his spicy citrus scent filling her senses when a compulsion to smell beneath the cologne, to smell him , had gripped her with such speed she’d obeyed without thinking.
The only solace she could take was that she’d stifled the accompanying compulsion to taste his skin with her tongue, but as solaces went, it brought little comfort. She knew Dante had felt her sniff him, and when he deposited her on the dusky blue velvet chaise longue, she was trembling.
“I will leave Callie in your capable hands,” he said to Geppa, his tone completely ordinary, as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened. But it had. They both knew it had.
He turned his stare to Callie. A faint, knowing smile tugged at his lips. “If you are still struggling to walk, I will be happy to carry you down for dinner.”
She’d rather throw herself out of the window.
Painfully aware her cheeks were still burning… God help her, it felt like her entire body was a furnace… she summoned all her strength to speak evenly. “You’re not going back to Accardiano tonight?”
She’d assumed that now he’d found his lost ‘house guest’, he’d fly straight back to the celebrations of a wedding he knew damned well shouldn’t go ahead but wasn’t prepared to do a damn thing about.
“Not until Saturday.”
She gazed into his dark eyes in sudden panic… or something that felt similar to panic but also felt even more frighteningly… thrillingly… like anticipation.
He tutted and shook his head with faux regret.
“You shouldn’t have stolen that phone, Callie.
My staff are good, hardworking people, but it isn’t fair for me to expect them to watch your every move when you’ve proven yourself such an excellent opportunist, so I’m going to stay right here with you and watch your every move myself.
” A sparkle glimmered. “Just think what we can spend all the long hours and days we’ve got ahead of us doing…
” Then, with a wink and an, “I’ll see you at dinner,” he sauntered out of her room whistling that now-familiar tune.
Callie, a bath towel wrapped around her, trod carefully across the floor in her bare feet.
Geppa had treated her blisters and put a protective dressing around the burst ones, which mercifully were just the ones on her heels, but the pads were hurting a little too, a similar ache to what she experienced after a night dancing full throttle in pretty heels.
Next time she decided to walk tens of thousands of miles doing a Great Escape, she’d make sure to wear trainers or proper walking boots, not the tight-fitting ankle boots that were so new she’d barely broken them in.
Well, she’d broken them in now, obviously, with the added joy of practically breaking her feet in the process.
“Geppa?” she called into the empty room.
With miraculous timing, the maid, who’d left Callie alone to shower in privacy, appeared through the door carrying a tray with a cafetière of delicious-smelling coffee on it.
She practically swooned her thanks. She hadn’t known how much she’d been craving coffee until just then. Two tall glasses of water had slaked her thirst but hadn’t quenched her caffeine addiction.
“Do you know where my carry-on case is?” she asked as Geppa poured the coffee.
“In the wardrobe. Your clothes are being laundered, and there are new items for you to enjoy.”
“What do you mean?” She hobbled over to what deceptively looked like a wood-panelled wall but was, in fact, a cleverly fitted, wall-length wardrobe.
Geppa beat her to it and pressed one of the central panels.
The door opened. Callie’s mouth dropped open with it.
Inside, an array of feminine clothing hung on the rail.
“Where did these come from?” She’d explored the entirety of her appointed room before dinner the evening before, and with the exception of a grey towelling robe with the castle’s motif on it, the wardrobe had been empty.
“They arrived while you were in the shower. Signor Coscarelli wishes for you to dress up for dinner tonight.”
Just to hear his name uttered was to make Callie’s heart thump, and she had to swallow to say, “He said that did he?”
Geppa nodded.
Rifling through the clothes, it became clear in seconds that only dresses had been couriered. Not ordinary dresses either. Beautiful, sexy dresses.
For a moment, she was unable to stop her imagination conjuring Dante peeling a dress off her…
She blinked the image away, but not before a pulse of desire weakened her bones.
Trust me, carina, you don’t want to know what I want you to do to me… or what I want to do to you.
She came close to trembling at the memory. “Is there anything else? Trousers? Leggings?”
Geppa blushed. “I have instructions to unpack the other items before breakfast for you.”
“Ah.” Callie got it, and now she was the one to blush.
Looking away so the young girl couldn’t see her face, she took a deep breath to pull herself together.
She was a whisker away from falling back into the hot, sticky, emotional mess she’d been in when Dante had left her on the chaise longue.
Swallowing again, she said, “He’s not giving me any choice, is he? ”
Geppa didn’t answer.
Oh why had she been so stupid as to sniff his neck? One thoughtless little action, and now Dante thought she was his for the taking.
Violently shoving the imagery of her dream from her mind again, there was a tremor in her voice as she said, “It’s join him for dinner wearing one of these skimpy dresses or nothing, right? And if I refuse to join him and stay in my room, I’ll not be given any food. Is that also right?”
“The chefs have been working very hard on a delicious meal for you,” Geppa stated earnestly.
Callie couldn’t help it. She laughed. Her life had become so surreal she could believe she’d fallen into a Dali painting. “How can you work for a bastard like him, Geppa?”
The blush on the maid’s cheeks was the giveaway. “He is a good man.”
“Good men don’t kidnap women and then refuse to let them leave.” Or refuse to let their best friend know he was going to be a father before he married another woman.
“But it is only for a short time. I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t want to live in the castle and be treated like a princess.
Everyone around here wants to work at Castello Coscarelli.
When Signor Coscarelli bought the castle, it was all in ruins.
The land wasn’t farmed. Everything was dying.
He brought it back to life, and he did it using local people and by paying good money.
He is very generous. He pays for the town to have a music festival every year – he pays the artists who play in it so that no locals have to pay for tickets, and he paid the renovation costs of the church and when my mother needed a new hip–”
“He paid for it?”
“You know about her hip? ”
She sighed. Poor Geppa. She’d been brainwashed.
But Callie wouldn’t be, and she wouldn’t be seduced either.
It didn’t matter how wildly attractive she found him; she would never let herself forget what Dante Coscarelli was capable of or the kind of man he was beneath the gorgeous, gregarious exterior.
He might have been able to buy all the local people, but he would never buy her.
Callie was not for sale, not at any price, and tonight she was going to make damned sure he knew it and damned sure he backed the hell away from any thoughts of passing the long hours and days they had ahead of them in her bed.