“Logical, how?”
“Teaching has job security.”
“Was that all you wanted from a career?”
She gave another, even wider yawn. Sleep would have to wait a little longer. Dante’s curiosity about her life was seemingly limitless, which she found strangely touching. Her own thirst for knowledge about him had proved equally strong. Sometimes, it was easy to forget that she wasn’t there out of choice. “Security was the main factor. History was the only subject I actually liked at school and wanted a career in, so it was a no-brainer to follow the teaching path.”
“Security was the main factor in your choices when you were eighteen?”
“We knew when we were doing our A ‘Levels that our parents would be moving to France when we finished school.”
“Did they invite youto go with them?”
“No.” It had never been in question, she thought with a sharp pang. Their upping sticks and moving to Provence had been presented to Callie and Georgia as afait accompli. They would pay the girls’ rent while they completed their degrees, and then they would be expected to make their own way in the world. Not that it had been said so explicitly, but it hadn’t needed to be.
Dante was silent for a long moment as he wondered how parents could go to so much effort to have children only to effectively abandon them to strangers to raise and then abandon them physically the moment they became legal, if not emotional, adults. Was it any wonder Callie kept such tight control of herself and her environment and was so protective of her twin? “If job security hadn’t been such a big deal for you, what would you have done? If you could have chosen any job in the world?”
She threaded her fingers through his. “I’d have liked to have been a tour guide or part of the team somewhere like the Tower of London or the London Dungeons. Something like that.”
“That kind of job doesn’t have security?”
“Not the way that teaching does.”
“But do you enjoy teaching?”
“It can be pretty stressful at times, but I enjoy the actual teaching. I don’t have to worry about redundancy and it pays the bills, which is the main thing.”
Dante’s parents had had the same philosophy, but only because they’d had children to feed. “Don’t you ever feel that you’re missing out on the fun and adventure life has to offer?”
“Getting kidnapped is the closest thing to an adventure I’ve ever had,” she lightly deflected.
“Abducted,” he corrected, sliding his hand up her belly to cup a weighty breast. “Everyone should experience adventure in their life.”
“Have you had many adventures?”
“More than I can count. I built my business from nothing.” He squeezed the breast in the way she so liked it.
She arched her back, pressing her backside tighter against his growing arousal, and breathed, “How?”
“By saving every spare cent I earned until I had enough to invest in a university friend’s fledgling technology business.” He roamed his hand down her side and between her legs. “I had my goal, but I never forgot to have fun while I was achieving it.” Finding her clitoris, he rubbed it in the way that drove her so wild.Dio, she was already swollen with excitement. Sliding his rock-hard cock inside her, he continued to stimulate her with his fingers. “You, Miss Thomas, need to have more fun.”
She moaned. “I’ll bear that in mind when I escape this castle.”
Thrusting in and out of her sticky heat, Dante gathered Callie’s hair together and gently pulled at it, eliciting another moan of pleasure. Mouth to her ear, he grunted, “Escape is impossible, Miss Thomas.”
Her breaths had become heavy, her voice laden with desire. “Nothing is impossible.”
“You leaving me is.”
And then there were no more words, only pleasure.
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’twrapped 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 cupherbreasts…
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….
