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.”
“Almost is close enough.”
Too close.
Affonso clenched his jaw tight, his gaze hardening. “What do you want from me?”
“I want you to leave me alone. I can’t give you want you want. You’ve made that perfectly clear to me. Just leave me alone. I’ll do whatever else you want; I’ll go out when you tell me to, and pretend like I give a fuck about all of this. But leave me alone, Affonso.”
He crossed his arms, regarding her in that way of his that said he was weighing his options. She hated the fact that that was all she was to him. Just an option.
An afterthought.
Had he been a different man, this might have been different.
Their marriage could have been different.
Something …
Instead, they were who they were.
And Emma hated him.
“You’ve left me with nothing,” Affonso told her. “I had nothing before you, donna.”
She hated how he called her woman with such venom spewing with his Italian language. Like being a woman was unworthy and not good enough.
“Is this about children again?” she asked.
“That’s all this ever was.”
“You have children.”
“I wanted—”
“I know what you wanted,” she interrupted angrily. “And I can’t help that my body doesn’t work the way you want it to, Affonso. You’re not God. I’m not God. I can’t make my body do what it can’t do, okay.”
“I’m aware.” Affonso leaned against the wall, never taking his eyes off her. “As I was saying, before you I had nothing. Two daughters to marry off and make my famiglia stronger. Bastards that are useless.”
“No boys,” Emma finished for him. “I already know this.”
“Well, not one that will do what I want for him to do, anyway.”
Emma stilled, watching Affonso’s reflection in the mirror.
She couldn’t help but remember his words from the night before. When he looked down at her and called her another woman’s name—Calisto’s mother. How Affonso claimed he had apologized. She remembered Ray asking Affonso where Calisto had gotten his attitude and behavior from. From his father, of course.
Emma felt stupid.
All the pieces that had been scattered about in passing conversations, missed looks, vague statements, and the bad blood all around. The focal point of her memories drove straight back to the day after a night she wished would erase from her memories. After she had lost her second child.
“Calisto.”
“Don’t touch me, zio.”
“Tu sei il primo.”
“Mai.”
You’re the first, Affonso had told Calisto outside of her hospital room. His first boy, he meant.
Never.
Calisto hadn’t denied it, he simply refused it.
Never.
Had Calisto been the result of an affair between Camilla Donati and Affonso, or something worse?
“When were you going to tell me?” Emma asked.
Affonso cocked a brow. “Tell me what?”
“That you have a son, but he hates you so much. Why does he hate you, Affonso?”
He pushed off the wall, glancing away. “Hurry up.”
“Won’t you answer me?”
“I have no son.”
He was lying. He wouldn’t look at her.
“Calisto is—”
“Do not even think about the words you want to say,” Affonso hissed, turning back on Emma with a glare that silenced her.
Panic welled in her throat, thumping right along with the beats of her heart.
What was he hiding?
“Okay,” Emma whispered.
“You did a good job at covering those bruises. Learn to keep your thoughts to yourself, or you’ll find yourself covering more. I hope I’ve made myself clear.”
Jesus.
“Yes, Affonso.”
He looked her over once more. “I’ll give you what you want.”
To leave her alone …
“Will you?” she asked.
Affonso shrugged. “You can’t give me what I want, after all. What would be the point?”
Emma didn’t bother to respond.
He was right.
Before Emma knew it, Thanksgiving rolled around. Thankfully, there wasn’t any snow on the ground, but it was only a matter of time. They were calling for a cold, windy, and snowy Winter in New York.
She missed the dryness of Nevada.
Somehow, Emma had managed to do what Affonso wanted for his Thanksgiving dinner and party. The invitations went out on time. The decorations gave the Donati home a more festive appearance. Music was provided. Catering showed up on time.
Emma put her mask on and stood at her husband’s side.
But she was jealous.
It was eating her alive.
Why?
The reason was across the room in a shimmering silver number that hugged every young curve she sported. Her legs looked to be a mile long in the matching silver pumps. She had brown hair—highlighted with red tones—that fell down her back. Her dark eyes surveyed the room, passing over the people without a second thought.
She was beautiful.
Probably younger than Emma.
Calisto had brought a date.