Page 40 of Captive in His Castle
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 didas 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 onlybelike 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.”
