by Bethany-Kris
“Sure,” Ray said, but he didn’t sound like he believed it.
“What is it, Ray? Speak up or don’t.”
“Didn’t they remind you of anyone in particular tonight?” the underboss asked.
“Like who?”
Ray cleared his throat before saying, “Camilla and Richard.”
Calisto’s mother and father?
Emma didn’t understand what Ray was getting at.
“I’m only a couple of years younger than you,” Ray continued. “I was around with my father back then. Richard used to play for Camilla like that, didn’t he? She enjoyed it.”
Affonso was quiet for a long while.
Too long.
“Yes,” her husband eventually said. “My brother and his wife used to do that a lot. I believe that was how they … connected. When they were first engaged, I mean. Richard needed something to make Camilla trust him. She was enamored with his piano playing.”
Ray made a curious noise under his breath. “And you were enamored with her.”
“Watch it, now.”
“Well, you were.”
“A little,” Affonso admitted. “But what good did it do me, huh?”
“Point taken. It did remind me of them, though. Emma and Calisto, I mean.”
“Not me.”
“Why is that?”
Affonso chuckled. “Because Calisto isn’t Richard. He’s too much like—”
Emma didn’t get the chance to hear the rest of Affonso’s statement. A hand landed on her shoulder, and another covered her mouth. She shrieked, but it was muffled into the familiar palm keeping her quiet.
She playfully glared at Calisto as he turned her in his embrace to stare at her. Without a word, he pushed her into the library and shut the door so it was only open a tiny crack.
“What are you doing?” Emma asked.
“Unlike you,” Calisto drawled, smirking wickedly, “I’m not eavesdropping.”
“Hey, you learn a lot that way.”
“It can be bad for your health, bella.”
Maybe so.
It was only then that she realized he had gotten her alone.
Affonso thought Calisto was gone.
It was dark all around them.
And then Calisto was kissing her.
Hard.
Emma
Calisto’s kiss was enough to send a raging torrent of heat shooting straight down between Emma’s legs. His stubble scraped her sensitive skin and his teeth nipped on her bottom lip. She didn’t want to stop kissing him and feeling his tongue battle with hers while his palms skidded up her thighs, but she had to.
Every warning bell in her head was going off like crazy.
Crazy like they were.
“Wait,” Emma gasped, turning her head away from the next bruising kiss. “God, Cal, just wait.”
“What?” Calisto asked, a little too harshly.
Emma shot him a curious look, but the darkness of the room shrouded his features too much for her to see his reaction. “This is stupid.”
Calisto’s hand left her dress. He rested it over her heart gently. “Your heart is racing. I can feel it.”
“I wonder why.”
“I didn’t say goodbye to you,” he murmured.
Emma’s breath caught. “And that’s why you dragged me in here?”
“You liked it.”
“Still stupid, Cal.”
“You made me stupid quite a while ago.”
Emma chewed on her bottom lip, wishing she could get her thoughts and heart on the same damn page for a second. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”
Calisto sighed heavily. “I get it. It’s perfectly fine for you to approach and back me into a corner, but when I do it, suddenly it isn’t okay.”
“I didn’t say—”
“You did,” he interjected coldly.
“Don’t do that,” Emma said.
She reached out to grab his hand in hers, but Calisto pulled it away just as fast. The rejection stung like a million little bee stings to her heart.
“Calisto, I didn’t mean it like that,” she said.
“Then how did you mean it? Why do this again, huh?” he asked sharply, but quietly. “We were doing just fine the way we were, Emmy. I was starting to fucking think we could stand to be around one another—friends, even. I was breathing again, for Christ’s sake.”
Emma’s brow furrowed. “What does that mean—breathing again?”
“Never mind. It’s not important.”
“It is,” she insisted strongly. “Tell me.”
“I felt like I couldn’t breathe around you, Emmy. Every single time. Something else hurt. Something else irritated me. It was a constant this or that. And then I was doing okay. But you fucked that up big time. You know what, I didn’t even mind. I was just handling myself, and not much else. I didn’t mind.”
Emma was unsure and warier than ever.
“I don’t want this whiplash,” Calisto continued, unaware of Emma’s internal war. “Not with you, Emmy. It’s bad enough without it. It’s crazy enough. Don’t do one thing and tell me another.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she repeated weakly.
“Then how did you mean it?”
Emma, exasperated, waved at the door. “Look at where we are!”
Calisto took a step forward, pressing Emma’s back into the wall. She was so stunned by his fast movement that she flung her hand out to grab something and grasped a hold of the bookcase. The small crack in the opening of the doorway sent a stream of light from the hallway cascading in. It streaked across Calisto’s dark features, letting her see the blackness in his gaze and the hard set of his mouth.
It turned her on like nothing else.
His anger made her hot.
“Where we are,” Calisto drawled, “will never matter. It’s always going to be stupid and dangerous, Emmy. It’ll always be bad and wrong. The only thing that I care about is making sure you get out pleased and alive each and every time.”
Emma swallowed hard, taking in his words.
Calisto was planning to continue whatever this was with her, regardless of how crazy it was. He wanted to.
“I want to see you smile,” Calisto said, stroking her cheek with the pad of his thumb. “You don’t do that anymore, and it bothers me.”
Emma shivered at his touch. “Play fair.”
“I wasn’t taught to play fair for things I wanted.”
“Play fair with me,” she insisted.
“I know it’s stupid,” he said instead. “I know this wasn’t the right spot or time. I knew all of that.”
“And?”
“And it didn’t matter, Emmy. I wanted to tell you goodnight. I had to say goodbye before I left.”
Emma’s heart beat harder, screaming for a simpler time when things weren’t so fucked up and she wasn’t so messed up.
“Why bother, Calisto?” she asked.
“With you?”
“Yes. You said it yourself. I make you hurt, confused. You can’t breathe. We’re just dancing on coals around one another. Why bother with something like that, huh? You can’t have me.”
Right?
“Having and keeping are two entirely different things, Emmy.”
“Are they?” she asked.
“I can have you however I want you, as long as you let me. I simply can’t keep you.”
A blunt pain stabbed at her heart.
“Is that enough for you?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “But it’s enough for now.”
But what about when he wanted more?
Emma didn’t bother to ask.
Calisto was right, after all.
This was enough.
“Tell me something,” Calisto said, drawing a pathway over her cheekbone with his thumb again.
“Anything.”
“Why did you really come find me yesterday?”
Emma stilled on the spot, confused. “I told you. I woke up
and I wasn’t angry.”
“Tell me more.”
“I decided to get out of bed and do something,” Emma said softly. “I told Affonso I was going to go visit the baby’s grave after breakfast. He didn’t say a thing, just grunted at me like it didn’t matter. It should have pissed me off, Cal. He was ignoring the baby again. He was pretending like he hadn’t existed. It always made me angry.”
“But it didn’t this time.”
“I was going either way,” Emma replied. “So no, it didn’t piss me off again. He is who he is, and I am who I am. I went to visit the baby, to see him. And you know what I found?”
Calisto stiffened. “I might.”
“Little white roses all over his tiny little spot.”
Tears escaped the corners of Emma’s eyes, betraying her. She didn’t want to keep hurting, but her grief was never-ending. She knew it would take time; that things would get better, but she would always be a little raw on the inside for her failure.
“And then what?” Calisto pressed.
“You did that for him, and I knew it. His own father won’t even talk about him. Who else would have done it?”
“I replace them every so often.”
His admittance came softer than Emma had ever heard him speak.
“Why, though? He’s not your child. You don’t have to do those things, Cal.”
“I want to,” he said frankly.
Nothing else.
It was enough.
“I came to see you after,” Emma said. “I was hurting and confused. It’d taken me months to wake up and realize that you care, but sometimes you had to do it from afar. You care about me.”
“Sometimes I think it would be better if I didn’t.”
“I know.”
Calisto leaned down and brushed his lips against Emma’s quickly. She took his kiss without question, and didn’t push him away.
“We’re so foul,” she mumbled. “Bad, Cal.”
“But doesn’t it feel good, too? Doesn’t that make it right?”
Emma shuddered.
It did.
And it didn’t.
“Don’t feel guilty when you climb into bed tonight,” he told her.
“How am I supposed to manage that?”
She was stepping out on her husband. She might not have crossed the line entirely, but she was dancing on it with her middle finger up.
Didn’t that make her wrong?
A whore, even?
Shouldn’t she feel something?
“Why shouldn’t I feel guilty after this, Calisto?”
“Because, bella donna, I feel enough guilt for the both of us.”
Emma jerked awake at a loud thump just a few feet away from her bed. She rubbed at her eyes, willing the sleepiness to go away so she could focus. The mumbling in the background only woke her up further.
“Jesus Christ,” Affonso slurred. “Who put that there?”
Emma stiffened, trying to stay as still as possible in the bed. She didn’t even know why Affonso was in the bedroom. Ever since she had come home from the hospital well over a month and a half ago, Emma slept in the bedroom across the hall from her husband’s master bedroom.
Affonso claimed it was easier.
He didn’t have to wake up fighting.
Emma sure as hell did mind.
Thankfully, being in a different bed and room from her husband meant she didn’t have to sleep with him, or even touch him for that matter. It had been months since they last had any kind of intimacy.
She didn’t understand why he was in her room.
Two softer thumps landed to the floor before the rattle of a belt buckle echoed in the room. Emma’s throat constricted around the bile starting to rise.
She didn’t want to have Affonso in her bed.
She couldn’t be with him.
Not after everything.
The heady scent of bourbon floated through the dark space as Affonso shrugged off the rest of his clothes and grumbled to himself all the while. Emma closed her eyes, gripped the bedsheets, and pretended to be asleep as her husband climbed in the bed and under the covers.
“Emma,” Affonso said.
His hand landed on her side and gripped tight. He pulled, trying to turn her over. She refused to move.
“Donna, come here.”
“Go to sleep, Affonso. You’re drunk.”
“I’m not drunk enough yet. My cock is still hard. Come here, woman.”
Emma yelped when the blankets were pulled away and she found herself under Affonso. He tugged at her chemise, determined to get it high enough. She could feel the length of his erection digging into her thigh.
It made her fucking sick.
“Stop,” Emma said, her tone weaker than she intended.
Her husband didn’t listen. He continued pulling at her chemise and working her thighs open. Emma wouldn’t relent. She twisted under him, pushing to get away. Fear saturated her heart, almost enough to freeze her solid.
He’d never taken from her what she didn’t give.
Never once had he forced her.
Her fighting didn’t seem to slow Affonso in the least. His fingers dug deep into the muscles of her thighs, hurting her and making her cry. She clawed at him when he finally got her legs opened. When she could feel the head of his erection pushing against the panties she wore, Emma couldn’t breathe.
“Affonso, stop! No, stop! Please!”
She slapped him once.
Hard.
It reverberated through the room.
Affonso stopped moving, his eyes glazed and wild as he looked down at her.
Emma sucked in a ragged breath when he grabbed her jaw with enough pressure to leave the marks of his fingerprints behind. He forced her head back and stared at her, hatred brimming. As quick as his anger had come, it faded into something different.
Something she didn’t understand.
“Cam,” he said quietly.
Emma swallowed the sickness down. “Emma, Affonso.”
He blinked again.
Finally, he let her go with a disgusted grunt. Rolling over in the bed, she heard him mumble, “Fucking pointless with you. Dead babies and heartache, girl.”
She wouldn’t be able to get pregnant at all, but she didn’t tell Affonso that. Once the doctor confirmed that she was healed, she had started birth control pills to prevent further pregnancies. There was a slight risk the pills could fail, like any birth control, but it was better than nothing.
“That’s all your good for,” Affonso added, still going on.
Agony sliced through Emma’s nervous system. She curled up on her side with her back facing Affonso, like she wanted to hide. She didn’t realize until she could hear the soft snores from the other side of the bed, but her body hurt all over. Between her thighs, a deep, stinging ache settled where his fingers had pried her legs open.
She wondered if he left bruises on her face.
Emma, not knowing what else to think, thought about how to hide them.
Quietly, she cried. Tears wet the pillow, but it did nothing.
Nothing would help.
Had she deserved this? After what she did, was this her punishment?
“Quiet,” she heard rumble from the other side of the bed.
Emma shoved the side of her fist into her mouth to muffle her sobs. The sickness making her vision swim wouldn’t go away.
She wanted Calisto.
He never would have done this to her.
She knew it.
“I apologized, Cam,” Affonso mumbled in his stupor. “You know I did.”
What did that even mean?
“My head feels like someone took a sledgehammer to it.”
Emma straightened on the seat, and glanced at the reflection staring at her in the vanity. Affonso stood a few feet back, watching her with his familiar cold gaze. He was in her space—her safe space. He never entered the walk-in closet that was big enough to be a small room. It housed her things,
and it gave her time away from him.
Why was he in there?
“Maybe lay off the bourbon next time,” Emma managed to say.
She went back to her work at the mirror, covering the bruises of her husband’s fingerprints under her jaw with a green tinted concealer that would neutralize the redness. There was nothing she could do about the fingerprints on the insides of her thighs except to make sure her dresses were long enough that they wouldn’t ride up to expose the marks.
Affonso watched her work in silence.
By the time she was reaching for the rows of lipsticks, Affonso had moved to stand directly behind her. She made a grab for the pink tube, the one Affonso liked, and switched to the fire-engine red that she preferred.
Affonso sighed behind her.
Emma didn’t pay him any mind as she went to work on the task of painting her lips with carefully done strokes.
“Do you want something?” Emma finally asked when she put the tube back.
“I’d like for you to wash that red off before we go to church.”
“I think you can manage to look at it for one day.”
Affonso’s gaze narrowed. “I can force you to take it off.”
“Seems you can force a lot of things when you want to.”
Emma wished she could take the words back the very second they left her mouth, but they were out there. She watched her husband’s face turn from a mask of apathy to anger in a blink. Then, he was back to stone again.
Blank like paper.
“I wouldn’t quite call it forcing anything when it’s my wife,” Affonso noted.
“The law believes differently.”
Affonso barked out a short laugh. “Sweetheart, in my world, I am the law.”
She knew that, too.
He was the judge, jury, and executioner of his family.
Of her.
No one else got a say.
Emma pushed back the simmering anxiety. “If you want to hold a woman down and fuck her like an animal, you have whores for that, Affonso. Don’t use me for the same thing.”
“You’re angry.”
“Did you think I’d be happy about what happened?”
“It didn’t happen at all,” Affonso said. “I was not so drunk that I don’t remember the bulk of it, Emma.”