Page 23 of Captive in His Castle (The Martinelli Wedding #1)

Chapter Eleven

T he tour finished, they took their seats on a large outdoor table under the pagoda created for the tourist vine tours. Six bottles of varying vintage were opened and breathing, and a spread of food laid out.

Waving away the winery manager who was heading over to do the honours, Dante poured them both a small measure from the nearest bottle and passed Callie’s glass to her, saying, “This is from last year’s vintage. Swirl the glass to release the aromas, and then take a sip and swirl it in your mouth.”

Calli did as told but ignored his additional command to spit it into the bucket.

He grinned and shook his head. “I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but spitting it out makes it taste better – you feel more of the wine on your palate.”

She came within a whisker of making a quip about spitting that would make a nun blush, and then felt her cheeks go the colour of the wine regardless.

Callie never made quips of a sexual nature.

Never even thought of them. She always joined in and laughed when others made them but secretly never found them funny.

The difference was Dante. Before he’d stolen her away, she’d recoiled from sex in body and mind.

One long, glorious night with him had switched something on in her.

Dante had liberated her body and mind. He’d brought a sexuality she’d believed missing to the surface and shown her how passionate and tender and fun sex could be.

Maybe she was suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, but she no longer cared. She would never regret this time with him. She would never regret becoming his lover.

“What do you think?” he asked about the wine she’d just tasted.

“Very nice.”

“You could make a grown man’s head swell with praise like that.”

“Okay, it’s very, very nice. Is that better?”

“I can see why you teach history and not English. You need to work on your adverbs.”

Sniggering, she had a drink of water. “How come your English is so good? I actually think it’s better than mine.”

“I would love to say it’s because I’m naturally talented at languages, but really, I just wanted to speak it better than Niccolo. We both studied in London and, being young and horny, believed speaking the language fluently would increase our success rate with the ladies.”

“And did it?”

He raised a dark eyebrow and wiggled it. “What do you think?”

She thought she’d like to cast a spell on him to stop him from looking at any other woman ever again.

Stunned at this unexpected and definitely unwanted flush of jealousy, Callie’s face couldn’t work out a pose to strike, and she found herself biting her cheeks, something he, naturally, noticed.

“Have I offended your educational sensibilities, Miss Thomas?” he asked with another wiggle of his eyebrows .

She drank some more water to douse the disturbing and unnecessary reaction – for heaven’s sake, she’d known from the start that Dante was a player, had known too that when she invited him into her bed, she would be adding herself to a very, very long list. She had no right to feel even a twinge of jealousy.

“Where did the Miss Thomas thing come from?” she asked lightly.

His eyes gleamed with seduction. “I’m getting a real kick out of imagining you standing in front of a class… If you’d been my teacher, I would never have skipped school.”

That was better. Safer. “You were a tearaway who never tried, weren’t you.”

A delighted smile lit his gorgeous face. “You can tell?”

Her laughter expelled the last of the disturbing jealousy. “You’ve got the tearaway vibe about you. In fact, I’m amazed at what you’ve made for yourself.”

“Competitiveness and a long-term plan go a long way in motivation. I wanted to earn enough money to buy my ancestral castle and become richer than Niccolo.”

“Then why didn’t you try at school?”

“Because school was boring and I didn’t fancy any of my teachers.”

This time, her laughter came with a warmth that rose from the pit of her stomach and filled her chest. “Now you really do sound like you’re sixteen,” she teased.

The seductive gleam darkened. “Going to put me in detention and punish me?”

A sudden image of pushing Dante onto a chair, hitching her modest school teacher skirt to her hips and straddling him made her pelvis contract with rich heat.

Fully aware her cheeks had flushed with the same heat, Callie fixed him with her best death stare and adopted her strictest school teacher voice.

“Mr Coscarelli, unless you want me to leave you to finish tasting these wines on your own, I suggest you take your mind out of the gutter, shut up, and pour the next wine.”

His perfect teeth flashed. Reaching for the next bottle in the row, he murmured, “Whatever you say, Miss Thomas.”

Much later that night, Callie was finally drifting off into sleep when Dante murmured, “Did you always want to be a teacher?”

She yawned, wriggled her bottom into his abdomen and held tighter to the arm hooked around her waist, smiling sleepily to remember his reaction to the silk red dress she’d worn to dinner for him.

When he’d peeled it from her body, it had been every bit as hedonistically glorious as she’d imagined.

“Not really,” she answered with another yawn.

“It just seemed the most logical career path.”

“Logical, how?”

“Teaching has job security.”

“Was that all you wanted from a career?”

She gave another, even wider yawn. Sleep would have to wait a little longer.

Dante’s curiosity about her life was seemingly limitless, which she found strangely touching.

Her own thirst for knowledge about him had proved equally strong.

Sometimes, it was easy to forget that she wasn’t there out of choice.

“Security was the main factor. History was the only subject I actually liked at school and wanted a career in, so it was a no-brainer to follow the teaching path.”

“Security was the main factor in your choices when you were eighteen?”

“We knew when we were doing our A ‘Levels that our parents would be moving to France when we finished school.”

“Did they invite you to go with them?”

“No.” It had never been in question, she thought with a sharp pang.

Their upping sticks and moving to Provence had been presented to Callie and Georgia as a fait accompli .

They would pay the girls’ rent while they completed their degrees, and then they would be expected to make their own way in the world.

Not that it had been said so explicitly, but it hadn’t needed to be.

Dante was silent for a long moment as he wondered how parents could go to so much effort to have children only to effectively abandon them to strangers to raise and then abandon them physically the moment they became legal, if not emotional, adults.

Was it any wonder Callie kept such tight control of herself and her environment and was so protective of her twin?

“If job security hadn’t been such a big deal for you, what would you have done?

If you could have chosen any job in the world? ”

She threaded her fingers through his. “I’d have liked to have been a tour guide or part of the team somewhere like the Tower of London or the London Dungeons. Something like that.”

“That kind of job doesn’t have security?”

“Not the way that teaching does.”

“But do you enjoy teaching?”

“It can be pretty stressful at times, but I enjoy the actual teaching. I don’t have to worry about redundancy and it pays the bills, which is the main thing.”

Dante’s parents had had the same philosophy, but only because they’d had children to feed. “Don’t you ever feel that you’re missing out on the fun and adventure life has to offer?”

“Getting kidnapped is the closest thing to an adventure I’ve ever had,” she lightly deflected.

“Abducted,” he corrected, sliding his hand up her belly to cup a weighty breast. “Everyone should experience adventure in their life. ”

“Have you had many adventures?”

“More than I can count. I built my business from nothing.” He squeezed the breast in the way she so liked it.

She arched her back, pressing her backside tighter against his growing arousal, and breathed, “How?”

“By saving every spare cent I earned until I had enough to invest in a university friend’s fledgling technology business.

” He roamed his hand down her side and between her legs.

“I had my goal, but I never forgot to have fun while I was achieving it.” Finding her clitoris, he rubbed it in the way that drove her so wild.

Dio , she was already swollen with excitement.

Sliding his rock-hard cock inside her, he continued to stimulate her with his fingers.

“You, Miss Thomas, need to have more fun.”

She moaned. “I’ll bear that in mind when I escape this castle.”

Thrusting in and out of her sticky heat, Dante gathered Callie’s hair together and gently pulled at it, eliciting another moan of pleasure. Mouth to her ear, he grunted, “Escape is impossible, Miss Thomas.”

Her breaths had become heavy, her voice laden with desire. “Nothing is impossible.”

“You leaving me is.”

And then there were no more words, only pleasure.