Page 24 of Captive in His Castle (The Martinelli Wedding #1)

Callie had never dreamed time could pass so quickly, and as Friday evening approached, a weight formed in her chest to know their time was running out.

Tomorrow morning, Dante would fly to Accardiano for the wedding.

She no longer bothered to express surprise to herself that she could be dreading having to say goodbye to him.

Her only surprise was that her longing to fly to Accardiano with him wasn’t wrapped in her need to speak to Niccolo before the wedding – something she never missed an opportunity to tell Dante that she still hadn’t given up hope of – but came from a place too frightening to allow herself to think of.

Come the morning and their time together would be over.

Sunday morning, Bernard would return her passport and other confiscated goods, and present her with a first-class ticket for her flight home.

It made her stomach feel all twisted that, for the first time in her life, she was dreading seeing her sister, and she had to push aside the yearn that she could just stay here, in this glorious castle she’d fallen in love with.

Dante had given her a proper tour of it that day.

For hours, they’d explored the interiors of the sections made safe.

It had been like travelling through two millennia of history.

She’d gazed in wonder at a recently discovered full wall painting dating to the sixteenth century in one of the towers, found when the wooden panelling covering it was removed as part of the extensive renovations.

She’d goggled at a sixteen-century bath believed to have once been used by Pope Clement VII, son of a Medici, and marvelled at the labyrinth of secret passageways used over the centuries for secret trysts of political, religious and sexual reasons.

They’d barely covered a twentieth of it.

Before heading back to the East Wing to prepare for their last dinner together, they’d explored the impeccably maintained maze, the box hedges so tall not even Dante could cheat by seeing over them.

It had taken them fifteen minutes to find the centre.

With no Minotaur in sight, Callie had found herself amazed at the intricacy of its centrepiece: a marble statue of a naked woman, eyes closed, leaning back into a naked man, his hands resting on her belly but their positions indicating he was on the verge of cupping her breasts and her sex.

It managed to be both tasteful and erotic, and when Dante wrapped his arms around her waist to cup her breasts …

As she lathered herself in the shower, she closed her eyes, revelling in the memory of what had followed in the centre of the maze, revelling in the heat that consumed her to relive it, of how she’d taken Dante into her mouth…

well, as much of him as she could manage.

This time, when she caressed herself to a climax, she did it without shame.

If Dante had taught her anything, it was that her sexuality should be embraced, not weaponised against herself out of fear of losing control.

Rummaging through her wardrobe, she thought of the desks in the vaults, thought of the fantasy she’d thought shameful that had stolen her thoughts during her first tour of it. Thought too, of Dante’s unabashed fantasies of her profession….

The clock on her wall showed the time as eight p.m. Emmaline and her team would have long left for the day…

She dressed and prepared herself in a heady kind of daze and slipped out of her room.

As expected, Geppa was lurking, ready to accompany her to the dining room.

At the bottom of the stairs, Callie turned to the younger woman.

“Can you please tell Signor Coscarelli that I would like him to join me in the vaults.”

Geppa was too well trained to question this, and she hurried away.

Accompanied by another member of staff who seemed to materialise out of thin air, Callie headed into the library and opened the door to the vault. “You can leave me now,” she told the staff member. “Signor Coscarelli is on his way, so I won’t have time to escape.”

Not that escape was on her mind. No, Callie had something very different on her mind.

Dante cut through his archivists’ office, intrigued at what Callie was up to.

He found her in the main domed room, sitting at the furthest desk facing him.

As he closed in on her, he saw she was wearing a sheer black blouse buttoned to her throat and that her hair had been tied back in a severe ponytail.

There was a severe expression on her face too, an expression that didn’t change when she pointed to the chair facing her on the other side of the desk and commanded, “Sit.”

He raised an eyebrow.

He was rewarded with a death stare. “I said, sit .”

He obeyed.

She put her hands primly on the desk. “Do you know why I’ve called you in here, Mr Coscarelli?”

Well, well, well… “I cannot imagine.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Think harder.”

Leaning forward across the table, he seductively said, “Why don’t you tell me.”

“You can drop the attitude. I’ve received numerous complaints about your behaviour and so I’m afraid you need to be punished. Now sit up straight – you’re not at home.”

Dante didn’t think he’d ever had such an instant hard-on. Resting back against his chair, he had to swallow a throat that had thickened without warning. “And how do you intend to punish me?”

“How do you intend to punish me, Miss Thomas ,” she corrected. “For the next thirty minutes, your time is mine and you will do exactly as you’re told, without complaint. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Miss Thomas.”

She gave a taut smile. “That’s better. Now move your chair back a foot.”

He complied.

She rose slowly to her feet. “Well done. You’re learning.”

“I’m a quick learner. ”

Stepping around the desk, she glared down at him. Her breasts were in biting distance. “You, Dante Coscarelli, do not get to speak unless directed to. Unless instructed otherwise, detentions are to be spent in silence reflecting on your behaviour.”

Her beautiful face now expressionless, she hitched her little black skirt up, giving him a glimpse of succulent thighs peeking atop black lace hold-ups, before hitching herself onto the desk.

Dio del Cielo, she wasn’t wearing panties …

Without a further word, she slowly… deliberately…

crossed her legs and popped open the buttons of her blouse to her midriff.

Still expressionless, her beautiful eyes the only giveaway that she was experiencing a fraction of the thick lust coursing through his skin and veins, she lifted her hand to her ponytail and pulled the band out.

Her hair, almost reverted back to its natural blonde colour, tumbled down.

Flicking it around her shoulders, she dipped her hand into her cleavage and then slipped it through the side of her bra to remove the breast, then did the same with the other.

Simply staring at him with those lusty, lusty eyes, she massaged her breasts, then bent her head to feed herself a rosy-red nipple.

He had no control of the groan that escaped his mouth. For the first time in Dante’s life, he feared he was going to come without so much as a touch, a sensation that only increased when she laid herself back and spread her legs, opening her whole femininity for his delectation.

One hand groping a breast, she slipped a hand between her thighs and moaned.

Dio del cielo….

He had never, ever, ever been so turned on.

She lifted her head. Her eyes were hooded with desire. “Give me your hand. ”

He didn’t need telling twice. The chair crashed to the floor in his haste to get to his feet.

She took hold of his hand and guided it to her sex.

He slid a finger and then another inside her… Dio del cielo, she was more than ready for him. She twisted his hand a little so he was also pressing against her swollen clitoris, and laid her head back down to cup both her breasts. “Make me come with your hand,” she commanded thickly.

The state she was in, he knew it wouldn’t take long to bring her to orgasm, but he drew it out, sliding his fingers in and out of her wet heat but barely skimming her nub, torturing her with the pleasure, torturing himself too, his need for relief the strongest he’d ever known, until he dipped his head to suck hard on a nipple at the same moment he pressed down on her nub and she convulsed around his fingers, her body spasming with the force of her climax.

She could hardly have caught her breath when she opened her eyes and propped herself up onto her elbows. “Very good,” she said huskily. “Now make me come with your cock.”

His trousers and underwear had fallen to his ankles before she’d finished her erotic demand.

Callie had never felt so in control and liberated and so entirely at one with her sexuality. In this moment, she was her sexuality, a vessel of pleasure for them both.

Sitting up, she took Dante’s magnificent cock in her hand and wiped the glistening precum from the head with her thumb, and guided it to her opening.

Gripping it tight, marvelling anew at his smooth hardness, she fed it into herself inch by massive inch until her hand was the only barrier preventing full penetration.

Releasing her hold, she groped a tight buttock and circled her hips to drive him in the last few glorious inches.

Wrapping an arm around his neck, she slid her tongue into his mouth and breathed, “Fuck me. ”

Dante, she’d learned, was superlative at straight fucking.

He was superlative at everything in the bedroom.

He was passionate and tender one minute and filthy the next, and he’d taught her to embrace the passionate, tender and filthy aspects of her sensuality too, embrace them and revel in them, which was exactly what she was doing now, with him, with Dante, the man she suspected would be the only one to ever enjoy this side of her nature.

Suspected but no longer feared. If this was it for the rest of her life, then she would take it because the joy and pleasure she’d found with him was beyond anything.

One hand on his buttock, the other on a tensed shoulder, she lifted her thighs higher and arched back to allow him fuller, deeper penetration, and closed her eyes to the sensation as he pounded in and out of her with grunts and moans of pleasure, his groin locking to hers and coaxing her clitoris back to full arousal.

“Harder,” she moaned, because she knew dirty talk turned him on… and because it turned her on too. “Harder.”

Suddenly, she was flat on her back with her ankles hooked around his shoulders, the sinews of his neck stretching as he bucked into her furiously.

Her head thrashing, the coil inside her tightened.

This was beyond heaven. Beyond everything.

“Look at me,” he commanded roughly.

She opened her eyes and locked onto a hooded gaze filled with lust and something else, something that wove around and then dove into her heart.

In the next beat of her heart, the coil sprang free, and suddenly she was enveloped in pleasure that rippled like a thousand tidal waves, only barely aware of Dante thrusting into her one last glorious time with a ragged shout that seemed to come from another world before his mouth moulded to hers and they were as one with such completeness she wished it to never end.