Page 19 of Captive in His Castle
“How can I respect it when she doesn’t know her own mind!”
“She knew it well enough when she told lies to stop you from getting anywhere near Niccolo. Her pregnancy is far more dangerous than soft-porn pictures of the groom with another woman being leaked to the press, and if you’d stop thinking you know best for two minutes, you’d understand Georgia knows the stakes at play and is trying to protect you both.”
Wounded at Dante’s pointed remark, furious that he didn’t care that a baby, an actual human being, was central to all this, furious, too, with the whole situation, exhausted physically and emotionally and in desperate need to get away from the man sat so closely beside her who, even during this most awful of conversations she was hopelessly aware of in a way she’dever been for anyone before, Callie flung the door open. Jumping out of the car, her emotions were so heightened they’d completely masked the pain in her feet, right until her soles touched the ground and shooting pain fired from her heels.
She’d been scooped into Dante’s arms before she’d finished crying out.
She wriggled and squirmed furiously against him. “Put me down!”
He glared at her with fresh exasperation. “If you can’t hold your own weight, how the hell do you think you’re going to make it up to your bedroom?” He shifted the arm placed under her bottom to hold her more securely, and marched her through the door. “I’m carrying you in, so stop fighting me.”
She punched the top of his rock-hard chest with the side of her fist. “I will never stop fighting you, you kidnapping… sorry,abducting… bastard.”
He snatched her wrist to stop her landing another punch on him and stopped in his tracks to bring his face right to hers. “Dio, if you’re not the most stubborn woman in existence…”
“What the hell do you expect when you’ve abducted me!” But that wasn’t why she’d punched him, she thought wildly. Callie had so many emotions raging through her, and now she was being held tightly against this great hunk of a man she despised with her breasts squashed against his chest, and all her senses were treacherously swooning, and her heart was thrashing, and the gorgeous scent she’d tried so hard not to breathe in when confined in the car with him was filling her airwaves and it felt like she was breathinghiminto her lungs.
He gazed into her eyes for the longest time, staring so hard it felt like he was reaching into the most private rooms of her mind. As the time stretched, the frustrated anger that had been etched into his face slowly evaporated. “When is it going to sink into your pretty little head that I abducted you for yourown protection?” A sensuous gleam formed, and his voice dropped to a murmur. “Now, if you hit me again, or kick me or bite me or do any of the things I can see you want to do to me, then I will take it as a licence to tie you up in the dungeon formyown protection. Understood?”
The thrill that shot through her… Lord help her, it soaked straight into her pelvis. “Even think of doing that and I really will bite you.” God, was that husky voice really hers?
The gleam in his mesmerising eyes deepened. “Has anyone ever told you what a sexy woman you are?”
Heart thrashing wildly, somehow she managed to croak, “Do youwantme to kick you?”
The tip of his nose was a feather away from rubbing against hers. “Trust me,carina,” he said lowly, his breath whispering over her mouth, “you don’t want to know what I want you to do to me… or what I want to do to you.”
Blood rushed to her head in a roar, and then suddenly, that awful dream she’d tried so desperately to suppress replayed itself with vivid imagery. Heat rose like a cascading wave, filling her from the tips of her toes to the roots of her hair, and when she snatched a ragged breath, she breathed Dante’s breath into her lungs. For the beat of a moment, the compulsion to press her lips to his and feel the heat of his mouth came within its own breath of taking control of her.
What washappeningto her, she wondered in horror as the hot colour of shame scorched her cheeks and neck, betraying her, and there was nothing she could do about it. It was like she was paralysed. She couldn’t wrench her stare away, could only gaze helplessly into his hypnotising eyes.
Dante took in the blush ravaging Callie’s mesmerising face and the expression ringing out of her beautiful eyes. Felt the heat of her body...
“Or maybe you do,” he murmured, and was rewarded with an even darker blush and, a beat too late, a choked curse.
Laughing softly, he carried her through the castle on feet that felt suddenly lighter. There was no scent of strawberry in the hair tickling his chin, but he could smell something even better, the scent of Callie herself, and he had to concentrate hard not to rub his nose into it and inhale deeply. As arousing as it was to imagine Callie fixing that death stare on him as she punched him for sniffing her, only a complete bastard would take advantage of a woman who was tired, hungry, overwrought and barely capable of walking.
When she was in a better frame of mind, she’d understand why telling Niccolo about the pregnancy would be a disaster, and if she didn’t or was too stubborn to try to understand, then so be it. Here, in his castle, Callie and her explosive secret were safe, a world away from where danger lurked. Knowing the secret only made Dante more determined to keep her close. How close that closeness would get… Dio, he must not allow himself to think of the possibilities when her plump breasts were crushed against his chest and the warmth of her breath was dancing into his neck.
It was as he strode the corridor to her bedroom that it happened, a happening so subtle he could have believed he’d imagined it if sensation hadn’t burned through his skin: Callie turned her face, ever so slightly, and pressed her nose to his throat and breathed him in. And then she froze as if she couldn’t believe what she’d done.
Dio, this woman was something else.
Clenching his jaw in an effort to control his reactions, it was with equal measures of relief and regret that he entered her room to find Geppa already there.
Callie didn’t think she’d ever been so happy to see another face as she was when Dante carried her into her room and she found Geppa waiting for her, would have gladly thrown herself out of Dante’s hold and into the safety of the young girl’s arm if he didn’t have such afirm grip of her.
God help her, what had she beenthinking?
She hadn’t been thinking, that was the problem. Not with her head. She’d been encased in the solid heat of Dante’s arms and chest with that awful dream dancing like a taunt in her mind’s eye and with his spicy citrus scent filling her senses when a compulsion to smell beneath the cologne, to smellhim, had gripped her with such speed she’d obeyed without thinking.
The only solace she could take was that she’d stifled the accompanying compulsion to taste his skin with her tongue, but as solaces went, it brought little comfort. She knew Dante had felt her sniff him, and when he deposited her on the dusky blue velvet chaise longue, she was trembling.
“I will leave Callie in your capable hands,” he said to Geppa, his tone completely ordinary, as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened. But it had. They both knew it had.
He turned his stare to Callie. A faint, knowing smile tugged at his lips. “If you are still struggling to walk, I will be happy to carry you down for dinner.”
She’d rather throw herself out of the window.
