by Bethany-Kris
After all, it wasn’t like she would be permanently staying, and she couldn’t be forced to do anything that she didn’t want to do while she was in Vegas. She found all of those things very reassuring.
Emma was not the same woman she had been the last time she was in Las Vegas, never mind in the presence of her family. She was entirely different. Married, divorced, a mother, and a married woman again.
But these same details that made her a different person, also worried her, especially where her mother and father were concerned. They were not the kind of people who cared about the semantics of circumstance, or a person’s happiness. They cared about appearance.
They had only ever cared for how they looked to others.
Their public image.
Very little else mattered to George and Minnie Sorrento.
How would Emma, as a divorced Catholic, remarried to her previous husband’s nephew, with a child on her hip, make her parents look?
Not well at all.
She had done what her parents demanded of her, when they demanded it. She married the man they chose, when they chose him. She hadn’t fought them on it. She could not help the events that followed, leading her to where she was now.
Happy.
Loved.
Protected.
Content.
Adored.
“We can always get this plane back up into the air,” Calisto said. “It just needs a quick refueling stop.”
Emma sighed. “No, it’s fine.”
“Is it?”
“They’re my parents,” Emma said. “They’re Cross’s grandparents. He deserves to know them, doesn’t he?”
Calisto and Emma looked to their sleeping son just across the aisle. The plane ride had not bothered him at all. He didn’t even wake up when the plane touched down on the tarmac. Emma swore her son could sleep through a hurricane.
In that moment, she was grateful.
“Do you think that they really care if they have a grandchild?”
Emma frowned. “No.”
“Then let’s not use Cross as an excuse to do this, Emmy.”
“It’s me,” Emma said quietly. “I’m just feeling off.”
Calisto nodded once. “Okay, then. You say the word, and we will go. Anytime. Got it?”
“Yeah, Cal. I got it.”
She knew he meant every word, too.
Emma loved him even more for it.
“Emma!”
The high-pitched—too high, false, and practiced—greeting from her mother, made Emma cringe. She managed to hide her reaction just in time to accept a half-hearted hug from Minnie.
“Ma,” Emma greeted. “How have you been?”
Minnie waved a hand high. “Busy, the usual.”
Emma wasn’t the least bit surprised when her mother didn’t return the sentiment by asking how she was. Minnie had only really cared for her own happiness, after all. Others joy did not matter, never mind a lack thereof.
Calisto caught Emma’s eye, and for a second, his cool mask slipped as he offered her a reassuring smile. Little Cross sat happily awake in his father’s arms, his wide eyes, innocent and curious, locked on the new person in his small world. His grandmother.
“Ma,” Emma said, directing Minnie toward her husband and son, “this is Cross. And you remember Calisto, I’m sure.”
Minnie flashed Calisto with a smile, and barely gave her grandson any attention at all.
“Of course,” Minnie replied. “How far you have climbed since last we saw one another, Calisto.”
Emma saw the flash of annoyance in Calisto’s gaze, but he hid it well enough. He chose his next words carefully, Emma noticed.
“Sometimes, that’s just how this life works out for us,” Calisto said.
Minnie pursed her lips, an amused glint in her eye as she glanced between Emma and Calisto. “Yes, I’m sure.”
Calisto didn’t bother to respond to that.
Neither did Emma.
“Gamma.”
Cross’s sudden babble, a word that Emma had been working with him all week to say—Grandma—finally drew in Minnie’s gaze. She smiled tersely at the baby, as though she had no patience or interest in his chatter, or his curiosity in her.
“Cute,” she drawled, “but I am much too young and pretty for that child to be calling me grandma.”
That child.
Both Calisto and Emma stiffened on the spot.
Cross, on the other hand, pointed at Minnie, unaware and uncaring about her annoyance at him.
“Gamma,” he said firmer, wanting confirmation that he had gotten the word, and the person, right.
“Yes,” Emma assured her son, hoping it would be enough to quiet him. “That’s Grandma, Cross.”
“God, Emma.”
She ignored her mother.
Calisto gave Emma a wink. “I think he needs a diaper change.” He passed Minnie a look, adding, “I’ll just give you two a minute.”
Once Calisto had disappeared down the mansion hallway, Emma turned back on her mother. She tried goddamn hard not to show her anger at having her own mother outright dismiss her son, and failed miserably.
“You could at least smile at Cross,” Emma said. “Wave. Say hi. Or something. He’s a baby, Ma. He doesn’t understand why you don’t want him to call you his grandma.”
Minnie shrugged. “He’ll learn.”
Emma had all she could do not to slap her mother. It wouldn’t have done her any good, and that was probably the one and only reason why she held the urge back.
He’ll learn.
How silly and stupid that sounded.
Yet, at the same time, Emma knew her mother absolutely believed it, too. It had been the same lesson, in theory, that Emma had been forced to learn as she grew up with Minnie as her mother.
She was only for show.
Happiness could be bought.
And faked.
She had probably only been born to her parents because it had been the right thing to do for their image, not because they actually wanted children.
“You’re his only grandmother,” Emma said quietly.
Calisto’s mother was dead. Cross had literally no one else to fill that spot in his life. For the once a year—or less, likely—meetings the Sorrento and Donati families would have, couldn’t Minnie at least pretend to give a shit?
Apparently not.
“So?” Minnie asked.
Emma had her answer.
She still wasn’t surprised.
“You know what,” Emma said with a heavy sigh, “never mind, Ma.”
Minnie, it seemed, had already moved on. “Your father and uncle will be here soon for dinner. You did bring along a nanny or something for the boy, right?”
“No.”
“No?”
It was almost laughable how shocked her mother sounded.
Emma wished she cared.
“No,” Emma repeated, walking on past her mother to go find Calisto and her son. “See, I’m trying this thing that you never did, Ma. It’s called actually raising and loving my child.”
“We loved you.”
Emma scoffed. “Not nearly enough, and only when it was convenient for you.”
That, Minnie didn’t deny.
She couldn’t.
“Calisto, take a walk with me, and we’ll talk.” Maximo smiled across the table. “Like all good Dons should do, yes?”
Calisto looked to Emma, a silent question in his eyes. Is that okay?
Emma nodded, and Calisto passed their napping son over into her waiting arms. It wasn’t long before Calisto and Maximo had disappeared from the dining room, leaving Emma alone with her father.
Minnie had long excused herself to bed.
Thank God.
“You’re looking quite well, Emma,” her father said.
Emma smiled at George. “Thank you, Daddy.”
“And the little one, he seems happy. Healthy, too.”
She held Cross a bit tigh
ter. “He is.”
“I wondered how you would fare as a mother,” George admitted. “A wife, I had no worries. You were raised for that position. A mother, however, is a different story.”
“And why is that?”
George sipped from his whiskey, shrugging. “It’s hard to connect and care for children that are, in a way, forced upon you. I told you to marry Affonso, but he was the one who demanded the offspring. I don’t think it’s the same thing.”
She had news for her father.
“It’s exactly the same thing. Except I do love my son. Entirely. He was simply born. He didn’t ask to be.”
“Fair enough,” her father conceded. “Although, you’ve done quite well for yourself, haven’t you? Regardless of Affonso’s doings, you have still managed to do well and keep your position. I’m quite proud of you for that.”
Emma’s brow furrowed. “Pardon?”
George smirked. “Your new husband, Emma. It’s an embarrassing shame that Affonso did what he did; up and leaving, and then sending divorce papers after he was gone, never to show his face again. And yet, here you are, married again to another boss, your position and respect intact. Shame about the divorce, of course, but I believe that given everything else you managed to accomplish, we can overlook that misstep.”
Emma was struck silent, stuck between being unsure that she had heard her father properly, and being extremely offended because she had heard him just fine. She knew that the story he repeated to her was the one that had been offered to the public; it was widely accepted and believed. It was the same as how people believed that Cross was actually Affonso’s son, and not Calisto’s, but that didn’t mean Emma had to like it. Sure, it was the safe story and route to go to protect their lives and reputations, but it was still fucking offensive.
She loved Calisto.
He loved her.
She wished there didn’t have to be a whole story, as fake as it was, to go along with it.
“I …” Emma’s words failed her for a minute. “I’m happy that at least one thing I have done in my life has made you proud, Daddy.”
She meant none of it.
George looked as pleased as ever.
Emma just felt sick. “Excuse me for a second.”
“I can hold the boy, if—”
“No, it’s fine,” Emma rushed to say.
Like fuck would she ever be handing her son over to her mother or father. Never. Once upon a time, she would have given anything to see her parents soften toward her or her children. Now, she just couldn’t find it in her heart to give a shit.
Cross had a mother and a father who loved him, who would never do to him what had been done to them, by the people who should have loved them. He had a whole army of people—Donati people—to look after him, and walk him through life. Calisto was making sure of that. Emma, too.
Cross didn’t need these people.
Neither did Emma.
Not anymore.
She was gone from the dining room without bothering to say goodbye to her father. Soon, she found Calisto sitting in the upstairs office with her uncle. Maximo looked irritated to have his conversation intruded upon. Calisto only looked concerned to see Emma standing in the doorway.
“Not now, Emma,” Maximo said. “We’re almost do—”
Calisto held up a hand, stopping Maximo from saying more. He only looked to Emma, his wife, the one person he cared about the most alongside his son. It was something that Maximo couldn’t possibly understand, Emma thought.
“Emmy?” Calisto asked.
“I’m ready, Cal.”
He didn’t ask what she meant.
He didn’t have to.
Their jet was in the air in less than two hours.
Thin Lies – Chapter Twenty
Author’s Note: Thin Lies was certainly a slow burn for the readers, as far as romantic (read: sex) scenes goes. Even the first scene that dealt with something sexual between the main characters was not full on sex; that came shortly after. But the first full scene was cut short, as while the readers waited a long time for it, the scene was simply too long. Even for one of my scenes. This is what had to be cut from that scene; the morning after.
Emma let the steaming hot water of the shower work out the kinks in her sore, tired muscles. She focused on massaging the shampoo into her hair, and not the sinfully sexy man she had left sleeping in her bed.
Calisto.
Even in the safe privacy of her mind, she breathed his name like a prayer.
That was bad.
So. Fucking. Bad.
It was not like Emma to wake up early, especially not before ten. It also wasn’t like her to share a bed with a man, either. It only took the hard warmth of Calisto’s body pushing against Emma’s naked back, and she had suddenly been wide awake.
Wet and sore between her thighs.
Hot all over.
Horny as fuck.
Awake.
Same difference.
Emma scrubbed her hands through her hair with a bit more force than was necessary, hoping that would get her mind away from those thoughts. The distraction did the trick, as the sting in her scalp helped her to ignore the ache between her thighs.
What did you do?
Emma ignored her inner voice, knowing damn well that it would do her no good to feed into the self-deprecating thoughts. At least, not right now.
She had just finished rinsing the soap from her hair when she heard the shower door slide open. Her vision was blurry from the spray of water, but even still, she saw the unmistakeable shape of Calisto sliding inside the shower.
Naked.
Of course.
Calisto reached for the soap on the corner shelf behind Emma. “You don’t mind, do you? Sharing, I mean.”
Emma shook her head.
What was she going to say?
Yes, it bothered her?
No, he should wait?
After last night?
And she wouldn’t even mean those things if she did say them.
“Flight lifts off in four hours,” Calisto said.
Emma barely heard him.
Soap. Muscles. Hot water. Gorgeous body.
“What?” she managed to ask.
How could he look that good just taking a fucking shower?
Emma was clearly punishing herself now. The rest of her life was sure to be fun.
“The flight,” Calisto said. “In four hours.”
Emma swallowed the heat in her voice, saying, “Okay, great.”
“You okay?”
“Hmm?”
Seriously, there wasn’t a mark on Calisto’s body. No tattoos. No blemishes. No scars that stood out. He was incredibly fit, from the definition of his chest, to the hard chiseled V of his groin. Emma was sure she would have noticed all of those details the night before, had it all not happened so fast. She had been so caught up that she hadn’t properly admired Calisto.
What a shame.
And a waste.
Emma’s gaze once again took inventory of the beautiful man, starting from the top, and working her way down. Only this time, she found his cock was jutting out—hard, long, and proud.
Jesus.
“You’re going to give me a complex, donna.”
Emma’s gaze snapped up to meet Calisto’s in an instant, heat filling her cheeks. “I’m sorry?”
“You heard what I said.”
Why was he smirking?
Goddamn him.
“I just—”
“What?” Calisto asked.
“I didn’t stop to admire last night, that’s all. You’re not giving me much of a choice right now.”
“Oh?”
“That’s my story, Cal.” She eye-fucked him again, unashamed. “Do you spend a lot of time in the gym, or …?”
“I box, occasionally.”
“Huh.”
“And I run when I can.”
“That would help.”
“But it’s mostly good g
enes,” he added with a hint of bitter sarcasm.
“I bet.”
Emma decided then and there that she needed to get the hell out of that shower, and far away from this man. Just to take a breather, for some space, at the very least. Last night had been enough. As it was, their just once had turned into twice.
She had already fucked up.
She indulged when she knew better.
Emma didn’t even get to make it fully past Calisto before he had grabbed hold of her wrist and pulled her back. Her mouth opened with a question—maybe even a rebuttal—only to be quieted by his kiss.
And fuck, could the man kiss.
She was made weak by his mouth alone. Struck silent in his demand and force. The slow strokes of his tongue exploring her mouth was a sinful reminder of what he felt like eating her pussy.
Emma was gone again.
Just like that.
“Fucking hell, your mouth,” Calisto grunted against her lips. “Drives me insane, Emmy.”
The hard length of his erection pressed against her stomach, heavy and hot and fuck.
He didn’t ask for permission as he backed her into the tiled wall, out of the reach of the shower’s spray. But then again, he didn’t really have to ask. Emma’s lust and desire was screaming far louder than the rational side of her brain.
It sounded a lot like it was begging for Calisto, and yes, and more.
That could have also been her saying those things out loud, but Emma wasn’t really sure.
She was too far gone.
And she didn’t even care.
Calisto didn’t even have to ask for her legs to widen, and she barely got in a breath as he lifted her to the wall. His hand slid between their bodies, she felt the nudge of his cock against her folds, and that was it.
All her air left.
All her thoughts disappeared.
One flex of his hips forward, and Emma was fucking full again. Blissfully full and aching. She was damn wet, too, and that only aided in sensation of his cock dragging along her inner walls and nerves with his next thrust.
“Fuck,” she mumbled.
Calisto hummed, deep and satisfied. “Yeah.”
“Fuck.”
The second one of her curses seemed to come out more like a whine. She couldn’t help it.
A tenderness settled in her pussy, a sweet, yet bitter aftereffect of the night before. Yet, she didn’t mind. It certainly didn’t make her want to stop, or even to ask him to slow.