Page 20 of Captive in His Castle (The Martinelli Wedding #1)

Her eyes were closed, cheeks flush, hands limp by her head, her breathing heavy.

His breaths were heavy, too.

“Callie, look at me,” he commanded huskily.

It felt like forever until she obeyed and glazed eyes of the deepest blue locked onto his.

Something… a pulse… passed between them and punched deep in his chest. “ Sei molto bella ,” he breathed before lowering his mouth to hers.

There was only a moment of resistance before her lips yielded, and then the sweetness of her breath seeped into his senses and melded with the musky taste of her already lying on his tongue.

Dio , he thought he might just have died and gone to heaven.

With a gentleness he hadn’t known he possessed, he coaxed her lips apart and slid his tongue into the hot, sweet depths of her mouth.

To feel the first tentative flicker of Callie’s tongue against his and the first tentative touch of her hand on his bare neck…

the shock of sensation was incredible, drowning out any expected triumph.

Groaning into her mouth, he deepened the kiss.

Mouths and tongues locked in a sensuous, silent dance, her fingers scorching his skin in a slowly emboldening exploration, the need to possess her and make her his thrummed through his flesh and bones in a heavy, rhythmic beat.

“ Dio, carina , you are driving me insane,” he muttered. “I need to have you.”

Callie had lost her mind. She’d never known that kissing…

kissing … could make a person so drunk with desire.

The climax Dante had taken her to was already nothing but a whispered memory in her veins.

Shockingly, she wanted more. Wanted everything.

His erection was nudging against her, bigger and harder than even her most shameful imaginings had conjured, and she wanted it.

She wanted him … needed him inside her with a fevered desperation that had her scraping her fingers through his soft hair, the only softness on a body that was rock wrapped in smooth, warm flesh.

He groaned into her mouth again and muttered her name, the groan deepening as she tightened her hold around him, crushing her breasts against his chest, and raised her thighs in a silent plea.

A dim something was pulsing in Dante’s head, a vague sensation that there was something he needed to do, but then she tilted her pelvis and the tip of his erection was clasped by a heat he couldn’t begin to resist, and when she hooked a thigh around his waist and her hand clasped his buttock in a mute plea, all he could do was obey the demands of their mutual passion and sink himself inside her tight, slick heat.

Dio del cielo .

He didn’t know who broke the fusion of their mouths to lock eyes, but the shocked wonder reflecting at him seared itself straight into his heart.

He kissed her again… Dio, he’d never known kissing could contain such passion and meaning…

and groped for her perfect bottom. Clasping it tightly, he withdrew to the tip and then slowly drove back into her until their groins fused.

And then he did it again and again and again, drawing out the heady pulsating pleasure that was like nothing else in this world, revelling in the sensations, the primal moans coming from Callie’s throat feeding the all-consuming intensity until it was all he could do to hold on.

Callie clung to him, all her senses, every atom of her being consumed by Dante, her moans smothered by his mouth.

He was inside her, massively inside her, filling her with a completeness she’d never known existed, driving her to a place where she didn’t know where he began and she ended.

Utterly out of control, she hovered on the edge of ecstasy as he drove her higher and higher, the tempo of his thrusts becoming faster, harder, taking her closer and closer to the pinnacle still alive in her veins but even higher; higher, higher, higher until her world exploded and she exploded, panting and crying as sensation racked her in a rhythmic motion that clasped around him and drove him into her one final time and their bodies spasmed together in a drawn-out wave of rapture.

The heavy beats of Callie’s heart pressed like a burr through their sweat-slicked chests. Dante had no idea how long they’d laid like this, with him still tight inside her, arms wrapped tightly around each other, and their cheeks pressed together.

But his weight must be squashing her, and it was with much reluctance – more reluctance than he’d ever felt before, that he nuzzled his nose into her cheek for one last inhalation before pulling himself off her.

Flat on his back, he reached for her hand and tried to snatch a breath.

There was a fleeting moment where their fingers locked and she returned his squeeze, but then she tugged her hand away and rolled onto her side with her back to him. “You can go back to your room now.”

He gave a shout of shocked laughter and stretched his sated body. “Are you kidding me?”

“Nope. You got your way, and now you can sod off.”

“Well, you certainly know how to bring a man back down to earth. I don’t think I expected gushing plaudits, but I have to admit, I hoped for something a little more effusive than sod off .”

Her shoulders were shaking.

Grinning, he rolled over and spooned himself to her laughter-wracked body. He understood why she was laughing. He wanted to laugh, in sheer incredulous joy at what they’d just shared. “I’m sorry, carina , but that was so good that I think I’ll just stay here so we can do it all again.”

Good . Possibly the biggest understatement of his whole life.

But then, how to describe the best experience of his whole life?

Even best didn’t do it justice. The way he was feeling in that moment, he could bound over buildings in single strides.

It had been incredible . Just incredible .

Of course he’d known it would be good – that understatement again – between them, but he’d never known it would transcend every single sexual experience of his life. Hell, it transcended every experience of his life.

Feeling Callie melt for him… He’d thought that would be the pinnacle, but it had been only the beginning.

Not only was she as sexy as sin, but her curves made her perfect cuddle material, which was strange as Dante would never in a million years have described himself as a cuddler.

It was only when she shuddered and swallowed that his brilliant mood dimmed a notch. “Are you okay?”

Instead of answering, she elbowed him sharply and pulled out of his hold to curl into a ball on the edge of the bed.

“Callie?”

“Just go, okay?” she choked. “I don’t want you here.”

Was she crying ?

“What’s wrong?”

“How can you ask that? You’re what’s wrong, so please, fuck off.”

Had he heard her swear before? Definitely when he’d carried her kicking and screaming onto the helicopter, but he couldn’t remember her swearing since even though, being honest with himself, he’d given her plenty of reasons to.

In the silence that followed, a heaviness settled in his chest, driving out the last of his excellent mood.

For the first time since he’d left university with his determination to bring the Castello back into the Coscarelli family, Dante found himself uncertain what to do.

Usually, when a woman told him to fuck off – and admittedly, that had never happened in the bedroom, had only occurred when he’d ended a relationship – then he took that advice and went whistling out with a smile on his face and without looking back.

If he walked out of this room as Callie wanted him to do, there would be no smile or whistle .

“Did I hurt you?” he asked uncertainly, him, a man who never experienced uncertainty. Nothing had suggested that he’d inadvertently hurt her during their lovemaking – the opposite, in fact – but if he had, then he needed to know.

She didn’t answer.

“Did I hurt you?” he repeated.

“For God’s sake, Dante, why can’t you just leave me alone to lick my wounds in peace?” she cried despairingly.

“So I did hurt you?”

Holding the sheets tightly to her chest, she wrenched herself upright and twisted to face him. “Yes, you’ve hurt me,” she said, rubbing furiously at her leaking eyes. “Every minute I’ve been forced to spend in your company has hurt me, and then you do that to me.”

Sickness gripped his guts in a vice. “I’m sorry. I swear, I thought you enjoyed it.”

“And that’s my whole bloody problem! I didn’t want to feel any of that, and I don’t want to feel what I’m feeling right now, not about anyone, but especially not about you. Why does it have to be you ?”

At his bewildered expression, Callie experienced an urge to kick him that was so strong that she laughed through her tears at the absurdity of it all.

“See? You haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about, do you, because to you, I’m just a convenient way to pass the time while you’re stuck here making sure I don’t escape.”

He levered himself up onto his elbows with the expression of a man who believed himself good enough to race cars for a living being told he needed to retake his driving test. “You think that was just a bit of convenient fun? What the hell gave you that idea?”

“Oh, I don’t know… I’m here, I’m female, and I have a pulse.”

“Either you have terribly low self-esteem or you think I’m a sex-mad desperado who lets his cock do his thinking.

I have never denied wanting you, Callie.

You’ve got a body that would make a grown man weep, but I wanted you because you turn me on and you intrigue me.

It’s not just your body I want, it’s your mind, because since you’ve been under this roof, I can’t get you out of my mind. ”

“Don’t say that,” she wailed. “You kidnapped me! You’re holding me here against my will, and now it feels like you’ve made love to me when all I wanted you to do was screw me and then go away.

I didn’t want it to feel like that, and I don’t want to be on this bed with you feeling like this, so please, for the love of god, go away and leave me alone. ”