Captive in His Castle Read Free

blown away by a woman, and then he had been an impressionable twenty-two-year-old. Now he was thirty-seven, highly sexually experienced—and, if he was honest, somewhat jaded from a relentless diet of meaningless affairs. But for a few crazy seconds he felt like a hormone-fuelled youth again.
    His nostrils flared and he gave his head a slight shake, utterly nonplussed by his reaction. He had met hundreds of beautiful women in his life, and bedded more of them than he cared to think about, but this woman quite literally took his breath away. His eyes were drawn to the front of her white towelling robe, which was gaping slightly to reveal the pale upper slopes of her breasts. The realisation that she was probably naked beneath the robe heated his blood, and every nerve-ending in his body prickled with fierce sexual awareness.
    Swallowing hard, Drago studied the woman’s face. It was a perfect oval, and her delicate features looked as though they had been sculpted from fine porcelain. The high cheekbones gave her an elfin quality that was further accentuated by her slanting green eyes. Her long, damp, dark red hair contrasted starkly with her pale skin.
    Something unfurled deep in his gut—a primitive hunger and an inexplicable sense of possessiveness that made him want to seize her in his arms and lay claim to her.
    ‘Can I help you?’
    Her voice was soft, with a slight huskiness that made his heart jolt. He found himself hoping that his aunt’s lawyer had made a mistake with the address and this woman was not his cousin’s mistress. The idea of Angelo making love to her incited a feeling of violent jealousy in him.
    He gave himself a mental shake, irritated by his body’s unwarranted response to her, and demanded abruptly, ‘Are you Jess Harper?’
    Her green eyes narrowed. ‘Who wants to know?’
    ‘My name is Drago Cassari. I understand that my cousin Angelo has been living here with you.’
    ‘Cousin!’
She sounded genuinely shocked. ‘Angelo told me that he was alone and had no family.’
    So he had the right address, and the right woman. Drago’s jaw tightened as he struggled to dismiss the image that had come into his mind of tracing the perfect cupid’s-bow shape of her lips with his tongue. As he walked towards her she retreated behind the half-open door and eyed him distrustfully.
    ‘I was unaware that Angelo had any relatives. Do you have proof that you are his cousin?’
    Irritated by her suspicious tone, he withdrew his mobile phone from his jacket and accessed a photograph stored in the phone’s memory.
    ‘This is a picture of me with Angelo and his mother, taken six months ago when we attended the opening of the new Cassa di Cassari store in Milan,’ he explained, handing the phone to her.
    She stared at the screen for several moments. ‘It’s definitely Angelo, although I’ve never seen him wearing a tuxedo before,’ she said slowly. ‘But…it doesn’t make sense. I don’t understand why he never mentioned his family.’
    Drago did not think it strange that his cousin had kept details of his private life secret. The Cassaris were one of the wealthiest families in Italy and attracted huge media attention. Drago had been hounded by the paparazzi since he was a teenager. He had learned to choose his friends carefully, and had taught his cousin to do the same. Although if the information about Jess Harper having a criminal record was true, then perhaps Angelo had not been careful enough, he mused.
    The confused expression on Jess Harper’s face was surprisingly convincing.
    ‘There’s a Cassa di Cassari department store in Oxford Street that sells the most beautiful but incredibly expensive bedlinen and other household furnishings.’ If she ever won the lottery, Jess had promised herself that she would shop exclusively at Cassa di Cassari. ‘It had never occurred to me until now that Angelo has the same name—Cassari. I suppose it’s just coincidence.’ She looked at the photo of