by Bethany-Kris
Calisto’s mouth found Emma’s, wanting her taste and her kiss. He liked the way her skin tasted under his tongue just before sex—fevered, and sweet. Her nails raked down his chest to his hard cock, making him shudder all over. She wrapped her fingers around the base of his length and squeezed.
He lost his ability to breathe for a second.
But God, it was good.
“Fucking hell,” he mumbled against her lips.
Emma laughed a breathless sound. “Been a while.”
“Too long, Emmy.”
She rolled to her back, letting him fit in between her thighs. He pushed her legs open wider, and grinded his erection into the soft slickness of her pussy. She was still bare—so smooth under him.
Emma whined, digging her fingers into his hips and pressing the heels of her feet to his lower back. Calisto’s muscles clenched as he held back the desire to spread Emma open even more, and dive right in. He wanted to pound into her until his memories were sedated and he couldn’t think about anything else.
He’d been denying her for so long.
“Come on, Cal,” Emma urged low.
Calisto’s hand drove down her stomach to the sweet spot between her legs. His thumb circled her hard, little clit slowly, and he soaked in the sounds of her quiet cries below him. All it would take was just the right shift of his hips and he’d be stretching her full and fucking her hard.
He pushed her back down into the bed when she canted her hips upwards, seeking more. His gaze snapped up from her pussy, finding her watching him intently.
“When I say so,” Calisto growled.
“Calisto.”
“I miss this.”
Emma quieted, but it didn’t last long. A long, broken cry escaped from her lips when he sank two fingers deep into her sex.
Wet. Hot. Tight.
Fuck.
Her pussy hugged his fingers, and soaked them at the same fucking time. He was caught up in seeing his fingers disappear into her sex as he pumped them harder and deeper with each twist. His thumb rolled over her clit in time with his thrusts.
Emma’s sounds melted into breathy gasps.
But she kept saying his name.
“Cal.”
It was beautiful.
When she said his name, it was addictive.
He wanted more.
Whispered, needy, and stupid.
She called for him.
And he wanted more of it.
“Calisto … God,” Emma breathed.
“Right there,” Calisto told her, swallowing hard. He curled his fingers on the next thrust, and watched her back bow against the bed. “Right there, Emmy, just like that. You’re going to come for me, and you’re going to love it.”
“I want to, please.”
Right then, he knew.
Too long for him was just as long for her. Just because she had been made to lie down with another man didn’t mean she had gotten what she needed or wanted from it. A strange sense of satisfaction filled him at the revelation.
Calisto wanted to be the only man who did this to Emma. The only man to make her beg, twist in his sheets, and cry his name out to a dark room.
Just him.
When her thighs started to shake, he leaned down and caught her rising cries with his mouth. Her sounds muffled against his lips, but her eyes flew wide in her orgasm, zoning in on his like he was the only thing she wanted to see.
Calisto didn’t give her the chance to recover. He pulled his hand from between her thighs, pushed her legs open more like he wanted to, and then he was pushing in.
He couldn’t fucking speak.
Not with her surrounding him like that.
All wet and hot to the touch.
Snug all around.
Emma let out the softest sound, and her lips parted against his. Her head tilted back when he flexed his hips against hers, taking her deeper, sinking in the rest of the way.
“Too long,” he repeated.
Her tongue peeked out, wetting her lips.
Calisto’s thumb followed right after, feeling the smoothness of the plump flesh and her saliva.
“Jesus,” she mumbled. “Move. I need you to move, Cal.”
“We can do slow, Emmy, but it won’t last long. I wanted this too much not to make it worth it.”
Emma sighed, pleased. “Just for a little while.”
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“Fuck me.”
Dio.
Yes.
Calisto wrapped his arm under her back and held tight. His other hand drove into her hair and tangled there, rooted to the spot. His thrusts came fast, hard, and deep, but they were all skin on skin, her fingernails digging into his back, and his mouth never leaving hers.
Slow.
For a little while.
He soaked in her kitten-like sounds and the way her body moved against his. He took in the taste of her skin where her shoulder met her neck, and forced himself not to leave a mark behind. Her thighs tightened around his hips, holding him closer as her pants of breath echoed into the room.
So close.
Again.
“I’m going to come,” Emma said, stilted and sharp.
“Give it to me,” he demanded.
Calisto knew he couldn’t leave a single piece of him behind on her body for someone to find, but that was okay. She left her own all over him. Scored lines on his back that stung, but made his cock harder. Teeth marks on his shoulder when she muffled her scream against his skin.
Beautiful.
“Harder,” he heard Emma breathe.
He could do soft for a little while longer if that’s what she wanted.
Apparently, she didn’t.
“Cal, again … harder,” she mumbled.
Whatever she wanted.
Calisto rolled them over in one quick movement. His back hit the bed, and Emma was above him. She hadn’t been expecting the surprise move, if her wide eyes were any indication.
“Hard as you want,” Calisto said. “Fucking take it, Emmy.”
Her airy laugh washed over him.
And then her fingernails dug into his stomach. Air cut through his teeth like a cat’s hiss. She leaned over him, her skin flushed and pink, and her smile sinful.
So damn sexy.
“Will you ever tell me?” she asked.
Calisto found her gaze with his own. “Tell you what, bella?”
“That you love me.”
His chest constricted with pain.
Calisto was learning he was not good at hiding things from this woman. Emma was far too quick to pick up on the things he didn’t say.
“Do you need me to?” he asked.
“I need …”
“What?”
Emma glanced away. “To be loved. No one does. I feel alone all the time.”
“It’s not the same as saying it.”
“I know,” she whispered. “Will you?”
“I won’t take it away,” he said instead.
Emma’s lashes fluttered closed, but another one of her smiles curved her lips upwards.
“Someday,” she told him.
Calisto couldn’t promise that.
Emma wasn’t looking for him to.
She rode him hard, so fast. She fell down over him, tangled her hands in his hair, and buried her teeth in his jaw. He let her take what she wanted, however she needed to have it. He grabbed her ass tight, and her throat in his other hand as she fucked him wild.
Soft was good.
This was, too.
Emma didn’t relent when Calisto felt the telltale tremors rocking his hands. A pressure built in the base of his spine, and he told her to slow down.
She didn’t.
She bared her teeth, and begged him to come instead.
Calisto did—blinded and blissed.
Emma shivered each time Calisto’s fingers roved over her shoulders. He liked the way she shuddered and twisted on him, how she sighed and smiled, so he kept doing it.
She kissed his pec, and her lips curved wickedly.
“What are you grinning about?” he asked.
“You’re hard again.”
Calisto smirked, unashamed. “Yeah, I am.”
Emma propped her chin in her hand, watching Calisto. “Where are we going with this? What are we doing now?”
“I don’t have a good answer.”
“Just this, huh?”
“It’s all there is, Emmy,” he murmured.
She let him run the tips of his fingers over her pink lips. Her mouth opened a little, taking his digits into her wet heat before she sucked on them gently.
And with another grin.
Calisto was harder than fucking steel. “Keep that up, bella donna, and watch what I’ll do with that pretty mouth of yours.”
Emma released his fingers and winked. “Another time.”
Another time.
Because they would be doing this again.
Again and again and again.
Calisto didn’t even refute it. He wouldn’t. It was difficult to turn something away when you wanted it more than you’d wanted anything.
God knew he wanted Emma.
Emma laid her head back down on Calisto’s chest. “You know, in all the stories ever told, the ending is almost always the same.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t know where she was going with this, but he let her talk.
“Do tell,” Calisto urged.
“The good guys always win. The bad guys always lose.”
For the most part, she was right.
“What about it, Emmy?”
“We’re not the good guys here, Calisto,” she whispered.
And they wouldn’t win.
Calisto kept running his fingers over her soft, smooth skin. “Don’t look at it that way.”
“How else should I look at it, then?”
“Don’t think about it at all,” he said.
“Impossible,” she mumbled.
Like us, he thought.
“You’re good for me, Emma,” Calisto said, holding her tighter. “And that’s good enough for me. Nobody said that was bad.”
Emma let out a quiet breath, shifted her weight on him, and then her hand was reaching down to grasp the base of his cock. All of Calisto’s thoughts were lost the moment Emma lowered her hips and took his cock in again.
She was hot all over. Breathless already. Trembling in her thighs.
It made him fucking high.
“But it is bad,” she said from above as she rode him. “We are, Cal. All of this is.”
“I still don’t care, Emmy.”
Her gaze found his.
“Me, either.”
Calisto couldn’t find it in himself to be mad at his lover when he woke up alone in bed the next morning. Emma still had to play her part. She couldn’t be with him in the morning while her husband slept off his drinking, one floor down.
It still burned Calisto from the inside out.
It wasn’t her fault.
Calisto made the choice, after all. He’d chosen her. He had allowed himself to become attached to and love someone who wasn’t free. The consequence of that was a heavy heart, a cold morning, and an empty bed.
His pain was by his own cause.
But it was his choice to make.
Emma was worth it.
Simple as that.
Calisto made sure to get up and get out of the house before Affonso stumbled his drunk ass out of bed.
There would be another time.
Emma said it.
Calisto would make sure of it.
Emma
Emma kept her gaze on the book in her lap, pretending like there wasn’t an argument going on across the room. She had become terribly good at acting like she didn’t hear.
Calisto watched her out of the corner of his eye while he argued on with Affonso.
She was too focused on Calisto to care about their fight.
His anger. The tightness of his jaw. Searing soul-black eyes.
The two men were not the same. They might have shared blood, but their hearts were entirely different. One man never let her out of his sight when he was nearby. The other acted like she didn’t exist.
This was what it was like, she realized, to be in love with someone she couldn’t have.
Calisto Donati would never be hers.
This wasn’t a fairy tale that would end happily.
They weren’t star-crossed. They were impossible.
Christmas was just a week away. Emma had been in Affonso’s office when Calisto barreled in, pissed off and looking for a fight. Or rather, wanting answers. Emma was going over the plans for the large New Year’s party that Affonso had planned. His daughters were supposed to be arriving home from boarding school the next day.
Emma sat on the couch and acted like she wasn’t hearing a thing. Affonso hadn’t kicked her out of the office when Calisto arrived. Her husband rarely did, although she wasn’t sure why.
It made it a little harder.
All of the stolen moments with Calisto over the last month came rushing back to her memory, intent on burning her up. A searing kiss in a hallway. Calisto’s hand finding hers under a table. His fingers skimming her knee, up her thigh, and under her dress when people left a room. Her pants pulled down to her knees in the backseat of his car when they were supposed to be driving to one of Affonso’s monthly dinners with his associates.
Moments that made her heart ache and race at the same time.
They were playing such a dangerous game together.
It was deadly.
Mistakes were a death sentence.
Emma couldn’t stop.
Calisto was a drug—a needle to her vein.
Time with him was heaven while it lasted, but it was going to send her straight to hell.
She just wanted more.
“This is becoming too personal for it to be about business, zio,” Calisto snapped.
Emma broke out of her reverie, and decided to listen to the conversation a little more closely. Something important was happening, clearly, but she didn’t have a clue what exactly it was.
“So they burned one of the warehouses,” Affonso muttered, waving a hand flippantly as if to dismiss Calisto’s concerns. “What does it matter?”
“Not just one of them. A warehouse that you own. The O’Neils could have picked any one of our businesses to mess with. Any of them—we have hundreds between all of our men. But no, they picked yours specifically. One you frequent at least three days out of the week. That was deliberate.”
“Your point?”
“It’s a message, Affonso. A clear one. You’re not willing to sit down with the Irish boss and discuss whatever this issue is. Why?”
Affonso sighed. “Calisto, leave it alone. They will get tired of it all and move on to something new. It’s a territory scuffle, and nothing more.”
“It’s not. That’s what you wanted me to believe. The more I think about the things they were doing before, the more it makes sense. They killed a young soldier to gain attention. They irritated and caused issues with one of your best Capos. They could have picked anyone. They could have killed anyone.”
“Calisto—”
“If this was about territory they would have taken it by now because you stood back and did nothing to stop them!”
Affonso slammed his hand down to the desk with a loud smack. “You are walking on thin ice at the moment, boy.”
Emma sank her teeth into her bottom lip to keep quiet. The two men glared at one another, and neither seemed like he was ready to back down.
Then, Calisto spat out a bitter laugh. “Boy, huh? When I was younger, you used to throw that at me all the time when I angered you or made you disappointed in me. It worked then, zio, but it doesn’t work now.”
Affonso stilled, his gaze narrowing on Calisto with a warning flashing behind his eyes. “You’re to stay out of the Iris
h and those affairs. I won’t tell you again. You’re allowed to hate me all you want, Cal, but you cannot disobey me as your boss. If you want a different outcome, one you approve of, then there’s only one way for you to get that. Take my seat. I’ll even hand it over to you with a smile.”
Calisto’s fists clenched at his side. “You’re unbelievable.”
“I think the word you’re looking for is clever.”
“I’ll stick with my first, zio.”
Affonso rested back in his chair, seemingly calm again.
It concerned Emma how her husband could sometimes go from zero to sixty and then back again in a single blink. His emotional waves were especially hard for her to weather. She didn’t have the first clue how Calisto managed like he did for all those years knowing what he knew about Affonso and his mother.
Emma couldn’t look Affonso in the eye.
“You know,” Affonso drawled, reaching for his glass of bourbon, “… I could always force you into the seat.”
Calisto scoffed. “I urge you to try it if you believe I am stupid enough to fall for it. Like I did for you, I’ll deny it just the same.”
“Unlike me, you can’t deny it once it’s given.”
“Try it,” Calisto said, “and watch what happens.”
The unhidden warning colored Calisto’s tone dark.
Emma hid her shiver, but barely.
“We’re such a sad thing, Cal,” Affonso muttered around the rim of his glass.
Emma was sure she heard her husband say those words before, but she couldn’t remember when.
“You did this, not me,” Calisto replied.
“Stay away from the Irish.”
“And what if they come close enough that they force my hand, zio?”
Affonso shrugged. “They won’t.”
“Because they don’t want me, right?”
Calisto didn’t get an answer.
Emma figured he didn’t need one.
“Well, did you find something?” Emma asked.
Cynthia held up a golden Zippo with incrusted diamonds around the cover. “What do you think?”
“I think your father will love it.”
Affonso had a taste for anything gold and he liked his cigars, after all.
“Maybe you can get it engraved,” Michelle added from across the display case.
Cynthia shrugged. “Maybe.”