Page 21 of Captive in His Castle (The Martinelli Wedding #1)

Chapter Ten

C allie had never seen Dante look so serious, not even after she’d told him of Georgia’s pregnancy.

After what felt like a whole era had passed, he lifted himself upright and gently ran a finger down her cheekbone. “What’s so bad about what you’re feeling for me?”

She flinched away from him and hugged herself tighter; had to hug herself because if she let go, there was every chance her arms would wrap themselves around him. “Is this a joke to you? You kidnapped me!”

“Abducted,” he corrected, “and putting that little thing aside…”

“Little? You call abduction little ?”

“Have you, at any point, felt you were in danger with me?” he challenged. “Have you felt any fear for even a single moment?”

“That is not the point!”

“That is precisely the point. You have never feared me, not even at the beginning. You was furious with me for tricking you and abducting you, but at no point was you scared, which suggests that on some instinctive level, you must trust me. You knew when you invited me into your bed that I wouldn’t hurt you–”

“I didn’t invite you,” she quickly interjected, even as her whole body flamed at the lie.

“Yes, you did,” he refuted calmly, leaning back against the headboard and stretching out his long legs, as unashamed of his nudity as Callie was trying desperately to protect hers.

“And I think part of the reason you invited me… other than the scorching chemistry between us,” he added with a wiggle of his eyebrows and a flare of his nostrils, “… was because you knew that if at any time you told me to stop, I would have done.”

Callie hugged her knees even tighter and wished she could refute everything he’d just said.

Throughout the whole wonderful, heavenly experience with Dante, her only fight had been with herself. It was the same fight she was battling now.

This was all so wrong, and on so many levels.

Until Dante, every time she’d sex, all she’d wanted was for the man to leave so she could scrub herself clean from the touches that had so repulsed her.

She wanted Dante to leave for the opposite reason, because she was craving more of his touches.

If he hadn’t rolled off her, she’d still be lying dazed under his weight, her senses still filled with his scent and the scent of their lovemaking, and with no wish to ever move again.

It had been like falling into a dream she didn’t want to wake up from.

“You know we didn’t use protection?”

“I’m on the pill to regulate my periods,” she muttered, mortified to remember how she was the one who, in her desperation to feel him inside her, had tilted her pelvis, and as she remembered that first moment of penetration, a pulse of heat throbbed in her core.

For the beat of a moment, she let her gaze drift the length of Dante’s gorgeous body and, with a sense of helplessness, felt the pulsing heat spread through the rest of her.

“So I must trust you too,” he said. “Because I never not use condoms.” Suddenly, he grinned. “Or maybe I subconsciously want you to have my babies?”

She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at both his baby quip and at how she couldn’t dispute a single word of his analysis. “Don’t even joke about it.”

“Probably not the best-tasting joke considering the circumstances,” he conceded before his amusement faded.

“Callie, I brought you here to stop you destroying Niccolo but also for your own protection, and I make no apologies for that, and I make no apologies for finding you attractive… very attractive… but this thing between us isn’t a game.

It might have started as one, and you could be right that it was proximity and circumstance that heightened my interest in you, but it doesn’t feel like a game now.

There is something between us, Callie. We both feel it. ”

How she wished she could deny it. Taking the metaphorical bull by the horns and inviting Dante into her bed in the hope the sexual attraction between them would be expunged and leave neither of them wanting more had backfired. Everything had backfired.

If she’d been frightened before, that was nothing to how she felt now.

“Are you hungry?”

She blinked at this latest swerve in conversation that Dante was such a pro at. “What?”

“You must be. You hardly ate any of your dinner.” He climbed off the bed and reached for his robe.

She hugged the sheets tighter around herself and tried to swallow the despondency that he was leaving her.

Robe on, he leaned over the bed to capture her chin in his hand. “I’m going to raid the kitchen. I won’t be long. ”

“You’re coming back?” She couldn’t believe she was even asking it, let alone in a tone that sounded like a plea when only minutes ago she’d told him to leave… but not because she’d wanted him to leave but because the depth of everything she was feeling had terrified her. Was terrifying her.

Oh, this was all such a mess.

His warm eyes glimmered. “Believe me, carina , I have no intention of wasting a minute of the time we have left together, not after that.” His mouth covered hers, tongue sliding into her mouth in a kiss that made her stomach drop and her pelvis contract.

“Be honest with yourself and accept that this is what you want too. It’s just you and me here.

No one else. Set your mind free, Callie…

You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. ”

When Dante slipped back through the four-poster’s drapes and bestowed her with that heartbreaking smile, Callie admitted defeat.

He’d been gone only fifteen minutes, but they had been nine hundred seconds of total paralysis, her brain warring with her body over whether to put her pyjamas on and wait for him by the door so she could tell him, politely, that she had more to lose than to gain by spending another second with him.

Most especially the loss of her self-respect.

But then he bestowed her with that heartbreaking smile and put the tray laden with goods at the foot of the bed, and her heart made a motion that felt very much like a sigh.

Any self-respect had been thrown out of the window the moment she’d returned his kisses and tilted her pelvis to encourage him to possess her.

He was right. She needed to stop lying to herself and accept that this was what she wanted. He was what she wanted. Dante .

“You like ice cream?” he asked as he shrugged off his robe.

Feeling strangely shy and tongue-tied, which she supposed was to be expected as she was still naked beneath the sheets, she nodded.

His smile turned into a grin. “I knew it. I didn’t know which flavours you prefer, so I added a couple of scoops of everything.” He climbed back under the sheets. “Which is your favourite?”

“I’m not fussy.”

“But you must have a favourite. Or shall I guess…? Pistachio?”

“Mint choc chip.”

“Then you are in luck.” He stretched forward to bring the tray closer and handed her one of the two bowls piled high with varying flavours and a spoon. “Mint choc chip, pistachio, chocolate, and rum and raisin, which happens to be my favourite.”

He plucked two crumbly chocolate sticks from the plate and stuck them into her bowl, then added two wafers.

“There. Now you are ready to eat.” After adding the same accompaniments to his own bowl, he picked up the bottle of rum and poured them both a healthy measure.

“When I’ve had a long day, nothing beats eating rum and raisin ice cream out of a pasta bowl and washing it down with a glass of dark rum. Salute .”

She raised her glass a little and took a tentative sip under his watchful stare. Her eyes widened. “Wow. That’s potent.”

“Potent but nice, eh?”

She tried another sip of it and nodded. It had a flavour she could only describe as smoky caramel.

“Now have a spoonful of the ice cream and then take a drink.”

She tried the mint choc chip first, and her eyes widened again.

“You like?”

She nodded and had another spoonful. “That has got to be the nicest ice cream ever. Which brand is it?”

“My chef made it.”

“You’re kidding?”

“That’s why I pay him such an obscene amount of money. Now have some rum.”

She obeyed, and for whatever reason, the rum tasted even better on her tongue.

Trying all the different equally delicious flavours in turn, Callie thought back to the last time she’d had ice cream.

“What are you thinking that makes you so sad?” Dante asked, noticing the subtle deflation of Callie’s shoulders.

Her eyes caught his, surprise ringing out of them.

“Your body language is very expressive.” He laughed at the colour that put on her cheeks and swooped a hard kiss to her sweet mouth.

“You are like one of the ancient books in the vaults,” he murmured, rubbing his nose into her cheek.

“You have a hard spine and are written in a different language to all the women I know, but once the language is understood, turning the pages and reading you becomes easy.”

“Erm… Was that a compliment or an insult?”

“An observation. If I were to compliment you, I would tell you that you’re the sexiest woman I have ever come across.”

Callie thought of the willowy, beautiful women men like Dante normally had hanging off their arms. All the money in the world couldn’t transform her into one of those women. “Hardly.”

“Believe me or don’t, but you are. Now tell me why you looked so sad.”

He really wanted to know, she realised, and wished it didn’t make her pang with melancholy. “I was remembering the last time I had ice cream.”

“And? ”

She shrugged and scooped some more chocolate onto her spoon. “It was when Georgia went on that weekend with Niccolo.”

“You were lonely?”

“Worried.”

“Worried about what?”

She gave him a look that suggested he was mad for needing to ask. “She was whisked away in a chauffeured car by a man who had two bodyguards with him.”

“Then that should have assured you she was safe.”

“No, it made me worry about what he needed bodyguards for.”