And so she’d spent the last few hours alert for any sound even though the bed’s drapes were closed around her, cocooning her from noise as effectively as it did from drafts and light, straining for any creak that betrayed an intruder in her room in the form of the six foot plus hunk of a man she so despised, and with a hot, squirmy feeling pulsing deep inside her.
She could still feel his breath in the roots of her hair.
When she wasn’t straining to hear the floor creak, she found her thoughts increasingly trying to force her into imagining crossing the corridor to Dante’s room…
She could still smell him.
Go tosleep, she desperately commanded herself for the hundredth time. She needed to be fully refreshed if she had any chance of escaping and reaching help.
It was many hours before her body finally obeyed.
Callie pressed a hand to her thrumming heart, counted to ten, and then opened her bedroom door.
The door opposite hers was closed.
Summoning all her courage, she slipped into the corridor and headed to the stairs.
“Signorina Thomas?”
Damn it.
She turned to face Geppa.
“Buongiorno,” the young Italian woman said warmly. “Did you sleep well?”
She nodded even as her insides contracted. Sleep? The little sleep she’d managed to get had been the most tortured sleep of her life, caused by the most tortured, disturbing dream of her life. If she didn’t already know she had to escape this place, that dream would have tipped her over the edge.
It had been Dante. He’d come to her. He’d padded into her room naked and pulled back the drapes of her bed with that lascivious gleam in his eye. The worst part of it was she’d been waiting naked for him in a state of feverish anticipation. At the moment he’d pulled the bedsheets off her, she’d yanked herself awake to find her skin as feverish as in her dream and with a deep, aching pulse between her legs. She’d been awake eversince, completely unable to eradicate the dream from her mind.
“That is good. Let me show you to the dining room – breakfast is being prepared for you.”
“I was thinking I’d go for a walk before I have anything to eat,” she said quickly.
“You are sure? The chefs have made fresh pastries and are happy to cook anything you could wish for.”
Callie couldn’t stop her gaze from darting to Dante’s door. She didn’t know how she could face him.
Spotting the direction of her stare, Geppa smiled. “Signor Coscarellihas gone to Accardiano.”
“He’s left already?”
“An hour ago.”
Surprisingly, Callie’s chest didn’t lighten with relief at this, nor at the knowledge her wish had been granted and she would never have to face him again. Her empty stomach did, though, and she dredged a smile of her own. “You’ve tempted me. Breakfast would be great, thank you.”
Might as well eat her weight in food while she had the chance. After all, who knew when or where she would have her next meal.
Dante’s return to The Bianchi Hotel meant every single guest of the Martinelli wedding party was now in attendance. He hadn’t missed much, Niccolo had assured him. Guests had still been arriving late into the evening. One of the last to arrive had been the father of the bride, Lorenzo Esposito. Late to the party he might have been, but his presence was the first Dante had felt when he’d driven through the security checkpoint and into The Bianchi’s exclusive grounds that morning. The air always felt a little chillier when Lorenzo was around. If histhree sons – Niccolo’s other groomsmen – were with him, it was positively arctic, which, despite the warm sun bathing him, explained the chill on Dante’s bare arms.
That the Esposito family were beloved in Italy was something that never failed to make his hackles rise. He would never understand why his compatriots were happy to be duped into believing the monster patriarch was a fun-loving guy, and so forgive his myriad faults. These faults included multiple counts of tax evasion, along with rumours of arms smuggling, violence towards anyone who got on the wrong side of him, and dirty tricks towards anyone he considered a rival. Dante didn’t doubt for a minute that when the mogul who owned half of Italy’s media made his long-rumoured move into politics, he would be a huge, popular success.
The mogul in question was currently holding court at the poolside, two of his sons and a bevy of bikini-clad women a third of his age fawning at his side. Dante didn’t doubt, either, that any of those women would happily follow Lorenzo into a suite and let him screw them. Hell, if the old man asked them to give him a blow job there and then in front of everyone, he estimated at least half would oblige. And those women were friends of the bride, Lorenzo’s daughter.
The only woman seemingly immune to Lorenzo’s ‘charm’ and who refused to play along with his insatiable desires was his wife of forty years who, so the rumour mill said, had birthed their fourth and final child, a long-wanted daughter, and then declared her vagina closed for business.
Taking a drink of his Manhattan, Dante felt eyes on him and turned his stare to the two women with identically beautiful faces – he guessed they’d had their noses done by the same plastic surgeon and probably their unmoving, overlarge breasts too – sunbathing on the other side of the pool. They were whispering together whilst blatantly staring at him. He’d been introduced to them earlier. Cousins of the bride. Exactlythe kind of women he’d been looking forward to getting acquainted with in the run-up to the wedding. Women interested in a bit of fun and then happy to part ways with no expectation of seeing him again.
Had he turned into an old man overnight, he suddenly wondered. Because he should already be strolling over to those two whispering women.
