Page 22 of Captive in His Castle (The Martinelli Wedding #1)

“It is a foolish person who has personal wealth the size of Niccolo’s and who doesn’t have permanent security. That was months ago, so do you only eat ice cream when you are worried?”

“Georgia and I haven’t spent much time together in recent months, and I never think to eat it when it’s just me.

We used to pig out on it every week or so.

We’d have a film night and stuff our faces with ice cream and popcorn.

” The sadness suddenly lifted and her lips quirked. “That’s why my bum’s so big”

He laughed. “Then I shall feed you nothing but ice cream and popcorn for the rest of your stay here.”

Her eyebrows drew together in bemusement. “What, you like my big bum?”

“Callie, your backside is incredible .”

“It’s huge.”

“No, it’s perfect. Tell me what your favourite film is.”

“Erm… why?”

“Because I want to know you,” he said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“Okay… probably Dirty Dancing.”

He groaned. “That is my sister’s favourite film. I cannot tell you how many times she made me watch that when we were kids – we only had one television and so had to share.”

“I take it you’re not a fan,” she commented drily.

He gave a mock shudder. “I learned at a young age that I prefer films where there is more danger involved than carrying a watermelon. Favourite book published in the last fifty years?”

“The Time Traveler’s Wife.”

He rolled his eyes. “My sister will love you.”

While they slowly demolished their bowls of ice cream and all the chocolate and wafers, Dante had the great delight of watching his English beauty slowly relax as they exchanged favourites of everything from cars to colours.

Trivial topics for sure, but revealing nonetheless, and by the time he’d cleared their bowls away and topped their glasses up with more rum, he knew more about Callie than she would have suspected, her body language looser than he’d ever seen it.

“How can you like fish in batter ?” he demanded to know. “It is a sacrilege.”

“How can you not like it?” she retorted.

“I spent three years in England. You English have very bad taste in food.”

“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”

“I will knock it without trying it. The idea of it is an affront to my taste buds.”

For the first time since he’d confessed his real identity to her, Callie laughed, a light, musical sound that soaked through his ears and filled his chest. Taking another drink of her rum.

she caught his eye and laughed again, spilling a droplet of the rum.

It landed on the top of her cleavage, right above where the bedsheets were tucked around her.

Without a moment’s hesitation, he bowed his head and licked it up. She’d frozen before his tongue made contact with her skin .

When he looked back at her, all the laughter had faded from both her mouth and her eyes.

For the longest time, he simply stared into the large eyes suddenly bright with apprehension… but also bright with the awareness that flowed between them like its own pulse.

“Intimacy frightens you, doesn’t it,” he observed.

She shook her head.

“Then drop the sheet.”

She shook her head with more vigour.

He continued staring at her, thinking of all the things she’d unwittingly revealed in their days together.

A woman with a fiercely protective nature who would do anything for those she loved.

But she did not love easily, for which he placed the blame firmly on her parents and their emotional neglect.

A woman who liked to lose herself in romance but shied away from intimacy, whatever she said, and love affairs…

She’d had to wind herself up to allow him into her bed.

Her defiance hadn’t been for him. It had been self-preservation.

Trust. That’s what Callie was frightened of. Trusting people. With her heart or her body.

Palming her cheek, he brought his face to hers. “You know you can trust me, carina .”

She made to shake her head again but then stopped herself and gave a tremulous smile. “I really shouldn’t trust you at all.”

“But you do.”

There was a helplessness in her stare. “As mad as I know it is, considering you’re a kidnapping bastard, I think I must do.”

He groaned a laugh and kissed her before pulling away to drain his glass. Then he plucked her half-full glass from her hand and put both glasses on the bedside table. “Lie down for me.”

Eyes wide and watchful, not a hint of defiance in them, she did as he commanded.

He lay on his side beside her, gazing down at her uniquely beautiful face. “Tell me what you like.”

Callie didn’t need to ask what he meant.

Throughout the easiness of the time they’d spent talking and binging on ice cream had been an undercurrent in her veins that soon he would want to have her again.

And she would let him. Let him because the undercurrent in her veins was heady anticipation. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

He slowly drew the sheet down to her waist. “What did you like that I did to you earlier?”

Hot colour scalded her cheeks as she confessed, “Everything.”

His strong nostrils flared. Fingers tiptoeing up her abdomen, he covered a breast that suddenly felt tight and needy, and gently squeezed. “You like this?”

Moisture filling her mouth, she nodded. Like it? Some understatements deserved awards.

He rubbed his thumb over a hardened peak and sucked in a breath. “ Dio , you are so receptive.”

Only for you …

His lips whispering against hers, his voice dropped to a husky murmur. “I want to know all of you, carina . Every inch.” And then he rolled on top of her and moulded his lips to hers, sweeping his tongue into her mouth and kissing her so thoroughly that she melted into him without another thought.

She wasn’t just losing her mind, Callie thought late the next morning as Dante drove them to the winery for her own personal tour of it – she’d lost it. Lost it completely

The bewilderment she’d always felt at how anyone could declare themselves addicted to sex… well, she understood it now .

A whole night and half a morning of sex with Dante had taken her to paradise, but instead of revelling in the discovery that she wasn’t frigid and that she was as receptive to the human touch as anyone else, now that her body wasn’t wrapped around his and she had a few inches of space to breathe and think, all she could think was that she was only like this for him, could only be like this for him.

And that was so unutterably terrifying that she realised the best thing was to not allow herself to think about it at all.

She was going to take Dante’s advice and, for the first time in her life, set her mind free.

For the next two days, she would live for the moment because the moment she was living was the headiest joy she’d ever known.

When he stopped the car, the first thing he did was lean into her, cup her cheeks, and kiss her like their lips hadn’t locked in forever.

“That’s better,” he said with a seductive glimmer. “You have got a seriously addictive taste.”

She only just managed to restrain herself from saying that he did too. Impossibly addictive.

One more deep, bone-melting kiss, and he pulled away. “Come, carina . Let me show you what has been the most important part of my life for the last ten years.”

About to open his door, Dante became aware that his arousal wasn’t just a heavy thrum racing in delicious anticipation in his veins.

Shaking his head in disbelief, he untucked his shirt to cover his groin and laughed. “See what you do to me? You make me feel like I’m sixteen again.”

To his amazement and delight, Callie straightened in her seat and fixed him with her death stare…

but it was a death stare like she’d never given him before.

This was a death stare that gleamed, and when she finally spoke, it was in a tone he just knew she used on particularly disobedient students.

“Th en maybe, Mr Coscarelli, you shouldn’t behave like a sixteen-year-old. ”

Roaring with laughter, he climbed out of the car and met her stare again over the roof of the car, and was bestowed with a smile that took his breath away.

Dante had given personal tours of his winery and vineyards to many people since the renovations for it had been completed seven years earlier.

The winery and the staff living quarters had been his priority, more so than his own living quarters.

He was proud of what he’d accomplished and loved showing it off to family, friends, business acquaintances and wine buyers.

Never in all those seven years had he enjoyed a tour more than this one with Callie.

Watching those large eyes widen into orbs when he led her into the cellar filled his chest like nothing had ever done before.

“How many barrels are in here?” she asked faintly.

“More than seven thousand.”

“And you say each barrel has enough wine for three hundred bottles?”

“Correct.”

“You could throw one hell of a party here.”

“I have thrown many parties here. The best thing about it is not having to worry about disturbing the neighbours.”

Laughing, she placed a hand gingerly to the nearest barrel. “Clarence, the Duke of York, was drowned by his brother in a barrel of wine.”

“Was he the Duke who had ten thousand men?”

She grinned. “No, that was rumoured to be his father. This Duke, Clarence, was Edward the Fourth’s brother – by all accounts, it was Edward and their other brother Richard who drowned him. ”

“For what reason?”

“Treason. They drowned him when the Medicis were at the height of their powers. It’s believed that Edward’s failure to pay off his debts to the Medici Bank contributed to the Medicis fall.”

“And you say you’re not a historian,” he said with an admiring shake of his head. “Which is your favourite period?”

Her pretty teeth razed her bottom lip as if she were biting back laughter. “The medieval period.”

“I knew it,” he said smugly, folding his arms across his chest. “You must find staying in my castle as thrilling as you find me.”

Her face became a beacon of sweetness. “How many years of practice did it take to grow an ego as big as yours?”

“If you were to ask my sister, she would tell you I was born with it.”

“Now that I can easily believe.”

“Can I help that I was born blessed with a ready-made ego?”

Her laughter at this fell like music to his ears. The Callie he’d woken up to was a very different Callie to the one who’d been waiting for him in her bed, as if the real Callie had been a shimmer hiding beneath her skin and had now broken free.

Dante thought about the pre-wedding celebrations taking place in Accardiano and felt not a single pang of envy. A five-day party he’d spent months looking forward to versus Callie Thomas? No, not a single pang of regret. He wouldn’t be anywhere else than here with her. He wouldn’t change a thing.