Page 13 of Captive in His Castle
“Yes, please.”
He beckoned the unobtrusive server on duty by the main door and, speaking in his native tongue, asked for a pen and some paper, something Callie only realised when the server crossed the room to a large bureau and removed those items from it and handed them to him.
“Per favore,” he said to the server, who then cleared their empty soup dishes away.
Shifting his knife and fork to one side, Dante bowed his head and got to work.
“I’m going to take a look at the books,” she muttered. No point pretending not to be interested in them – he already knew she was itching to study them.
“Go ahead,” he replied, not looking up from the sheet of paper he was scribbling on.
With Dante’s attention finally away from her, Callie crossed the room to the far side of the library and, keeping her back to him, expelled her first proper breath since joining him in it.
She had to be fifty feet away from him, and yet his scent had followed her because her first proper inhalation came with a hint of spicy citrus that made her mouth water and her head try to do a 180 to look back at him.
Just breathe,she told herself as she perused hard-bound Italian titles that were older than her local church and filled her nostrils with their scent and the scent of the dark wood floor-to-ceiling shelves they were encased in, all in the hope it would drive out the scent of Dante. She would eat her main course, and then she would go to her room and sleep like a princess for the night in preparation for her long walk the next day.
The inscription on a brown hardback book suddenly caught her attention.Divina Commedia. She peered closer at it, had just wrapped her fingers around its spine when the hairs on the nape of her neck lifted and a spicy citrus scent became trapped in her airwaves.
“That is an original of the first translation into English of the Divine Comedy from the early nineteenth century,” a deep voice murmured, close enough behind her for every cell in her body to lift and her lungs to close back up. “There is an illustrated handwritten version that dates to around 1450 in the vault.”
He wasn’t even touching her, and yet her lifted cells were vibrating with the same awareness as if he’d pressed his body against hers, and she had to swallow hard to say, “Were you named after him?”
“After Dante Alighieri? No, I was named for my paternal grandfather.”
“A very fitting name, though, seeing as you’ve pulled me into hell.”
She sensed rather than heard him take a step closer. “You think you are in hell when you are surrounded by such history and beauty?”
“A prison is still a prison, however big its cells.”
Warm breath danced into the roots of her hair. “Then you will be pleased to know I’ve finished your map for when you attempt your escape.”
Knees weakening at the unfamiliar sensations in her hair and skull, Callie held tighter to the ancient book still in her clasp.
Coldness flushed through her skin before she even registered Dante moving away to stand beside her. He held a folded piece of paper to her.
“Your escape map, my little spitfire.” His dark eyes swept over her with a gleam that told her he knew exactly the effect he was having on her, that he knew it and was enjoying it.
She snatched the paper from his hand and then took such a hasty step backwards to move out of his orbit that she tripped over her own feet, would have gone tumbling to the floor if he hadn’t shot an arm out. In less than a second, the arm was hooked around her waist and she was being pulled against him.
Within even less time, the entirety of her senses was filled with his heat and scent, the beats of her heart a thrash pounding hot blood into her head as she found herself trapped in Dante Coscarelli’s gorgeous stare.
For the beat of a moment, time hung suspended.
Slowly, the gleam of knowing amusement ringing down at her melted into something dark and swirling… hypnotising…
Suddenly terrified of what she was reading, even more terrified at all the sensations filling her in reaction to it, Callie pulled herself out of his hold. With a muttered, “Thank you,”she pegged it back to the table with as much dignity as she could muster.
By the time he’d joined her, she’d downed two glasses of iced water in an effort to douse the heat pulsing through her and cool the colour on her cheeks.
It was a futile effort.
The end of the meal could not come quickly enough.
Chapter Four
Callie rolled onto her stomach, pulled one of her four plump pillows over her head and gave a muffled scream of frustration. She’d escaped to her room hours ago, but her hopes of a good night’s sleep in preparation for her escape had been foiled by the very man she needed to escape. Once she’d eaten as much of her dinner as she could fit into her knotted belly and said she was going to bed, he’d fixed those horrible dark eyes onto her and wished her a good night’s sleep before saying, “If you hear strange noises in the night, do not be afraid, it is only the plumbing.” And then his eyes had gleamed as he’d added, “Or it might be one of my ancestors, or it could be me – my room is directly opposite yours.”
