Page 14 of Captive in His Castle (The Martinelli Wedding #1)

Chapter Seven

C allie left her bedroom with a thumping heart.

The truth was, it hadn’t beaten normally since she’d felt those first tendrils of awareness for Dante in that short space of time before he’d revealed his true self to her, and now she feared it would never settle back into a normal rhythm.

Not now. Not while she stayed in this castle.

Not after what she’d done to get herself to sleep.

How could she have done that? How could she have fantasised about him? Did she have no shame?

Callie hadn’t masturbated since she’d been a hormonal adolescent. Any pleasure she’d got from her own flesh had died after her first sexual experience, and to feel those long forgotten urges reawaken, and for that man of all people… Oh, it was just too shaming.

But even as she castigated herself, there was a twinge between her legs to remember how good it had felt, a twinge that deepened into a heavy pulse as she locked onto Dante’s closed bedroom door and imagined him being the one to bring her to climax.

Oh God, how was she going to face him? He was displaying an unerring ability to read her most private thoughts. If he should read her mind…

She’d go and hide herself in the maze and not come out until Sunday.

If Geppa hadn’t appeared on the corridor with that sweet smile of hers to escort Callie down to breakfast, there was every chance Callie would have stood on that spot with her feet glued to the floor and her gaze fixed on Dante’s bedroom door until she fossilised.

Any faint hope she’d had that he’d decided to leave her in the castle without his direct supervision and had flown back to Accardiano after all was dispelled when she entered the library.

Their eyes met.

She could no more control the electricity that charged through her veins and set her pulses into meltdown than she could control the scorch of colour flaming her cheeks.

After a long beat, he rose from his chair and softly said, “ Buongiorno, carina . Did you sleep well?”

Struggling to breathe, she gave a short nod and, on legs that had gone all wobbly, took the seat Bernard held out for her with whispered thanks.

Small mercies came from the staff bustling around her, pouring coffee and fresh orange juice, giving her just enough time to pull herself together before they were left alone to eat.

“I trust you are happier with those clothes?” Dante said, breaking the silence. His voice was its usual deep, affable tone, nothing in it or in his mannerisms that even hinted at him having spent a night dealing with the tortured frustration she’d suffered.

And why would he suffer? To Dante, Callie was just another woman he was attracted to. She was reasonably pretty and they were stuck together. Once he set her free, he would move on to the next woman who captured his interest .

She nodded again in answer. She was a fraction more in control of herself but still couldn’t bring herself to look at him.

But she could smell him, freshly showered, the spicy citrus of his cologne a torturous delight to her airwaves.

There was not a single thing about Dante Coscarelli that wasn’t torturous to her, and all in the wrong way.

“You look beautiful.”

Her eyes jumped to his before she could stop them, and she came within a whisker of saying, “So do you.”

Dressed in a crisp white shirt and trousers, he looked like he was a tie and jacket away from waltzing into a boardroom, dominating all the proceedings, and turning the females in the room into quivering wrecks, and as she thought that, the shameful memory of what she’d done alone in her bed flashed through her again in vivid colour.

“You were right about your sister having a good eye for fashion,” she said, straining to sound normal as she reached for a pastry with a trembling hand.

If he could act like nothing had occurred between them – and nothing had happened; all that had taken place had been the most excruciatingly embarrassing and yet, perversely, exciting and arousing conversation of her entire life – then she could pretend the same.

She would not be the quivering wreck of the women she had just imagined.

Just because she’d brought herself to a climax for the first time in a decade with Dante’s face fixed behind her closed lids meant nothing other than that she was human.

If she hadn’t woken with such shame and such heavy butterflies in her belly, she’d have swooned over the clothes Geppa had brought into her room. They were the exact kind of clothes Callie liked to wear, but with a price tag she could never have afforded in a thousand years on her teacher’s salary.

“When Georgia and I were at university, we had a Christmas job in a warehouse,” she continued, suddenly frightened of the silence that would come when she stopped talking.

Frightened of what he’d fill that silence with.

“It was where all the unwanted items from an uber-exclusive department store were sent for returns. I once had to sort a pair of jeans from the designer who made the jeans I’m wearing now.

I remember wondering what it would feel like to wear them. ”

“And?”

She gave what she hoped looked like a nonchalant shrug. “They feel nice.”

More than nice. Now she understood how a pair of jeans could be priced at more than twice her annual London transport costs.

She’d never known jeans could feel like a second skin or that a cream cashmere top could feel like a caress, and she quivered to remember how when she’d slipped the top over her head and smoothed it down, she’d imagined Dante’s hands smoothing it and stroking her breasts.

“I had a similar job when I was at university,” he said.

She pressed the top of her thighs together in a desperate effort to stem the throb beating between her legs, and ripped into the pastry. “Really?”

“I read business and economics in London – London prices were quite the shock to a poor Italian boy.”

“How could you have been poor?” she asked, confused. “I thought this castle was your ancestral home since the Medicis?” But as she asked the question, she remembered Geppa saying, ‘ When Signor Coscarelli bought the castle ,’ words that hadn’t properly penetrated at the time.

“It was until sixty or so years ago. Successive generations squandered the family wealth and were too busy having a good time to keep the castle in good repair. It was sold off before my father was born, but the new owners didn’t understand – or most likely were hoodwinked by my grandfather – the extent of the disrepair it had fallen into and the extent of the damage that was wrought on it during the Second World War.

My father grew up with tales of the Coscarelli glory years but never experienced them for himself.

I grew up with those same tales and knew I would be the one to bring it back to the family. ”

“So you really were poor growing up then?”

“It depends on your definition of poor. There was always food on the table and we always had warm clothes, but my parents’ drove battered second-hand cars and there was little money left over each month for treats.”

‘ Everything was dying ,’ Geppa had said. ‘ He brought it back to life .’

“Was buying the castle the driving force behind your success?”

“The main motivation,” he agreed before dropping a subtle wink. “I don’t deny there were other factors at play in my drive for the lifestyle of the rich and famous.”

Women. Private travel. The world deferring and bending itself to your whims. But even as Callie wrote her mental list of the perks that must come from being fabulously wealthy, she couldn’t help but think of the hard work and dedication it must have taken for Dante to create his mammoth wealth from nothing.

“What do your family think about it? They must be proud of you.”

“For sure. Bringing the castle back to the family was always my father’s dream too, but he married young and then Tullia came along, followed by me only a year later.

” He raised a shoulder. “Every hour was spent in making ends meet. Both my parents worked hard to provide for us, and now it is my turn to work hard for them.”

“Do you get to see them much with your jet-set lifestyle?”

He flashed his teeth. “I see a lot of them – they live here.”

She whipped her head around as if they were about to suddenly burst through the door. “Seriously?”

“ Si , seriously. Tullia makes noises about moving in too, but for the moment she is happy to treat the castle like a holiday home. She comes and goes as she likes.”

“Doesn’t it bother you?” she asked, thinking of how her parents seemed to go out of their way to actively discourage her and Georgia from visiting them. Just turning up at their door was unthinkable. Them turning up at her door was unheard of.

He looked surprised that she would ask. “Of course not. Family is everything.”

That depends on the family, she thought sadly. “So where are they?” Because she hadn’t seen or heard a whisper of them or even a reference to them since she’d been brought here.

“In Accardiano for the wedding. Niccolo is like family to us.”

“Do they know why you’ve abandoned it?”

“They know I’m doing damage limitation to stop the wedding being ruined and know to say I’m dealing with a business emergency if anyone asks.”

“Do they know you’ve kidnapped me?”

“ Abducted ,” he corrected with another cheerful flash of his teeth. “They know I have a house guest here but are unaware of the details.”

“Would they disapprove?”

“They would trust me to be doing the right thing.”

She snorted a disbelieving laugh that anyone could believe kidnap to be the right thing .

“If you knew the Espositos, you’d agree I was doing the right thing too,” he said, unfazed by her reaction.

“No I wouldn’t.”

He laughed. “Then we will have to agree to disagree. Now, tell me about you,” he said before she could argue further. “What was your family like when you were growing up?”