Calisto
“My apologies,” Calisto said, chuckling. “I can only guess how you’re feeling right now, and it’s probably a lot worse than me.”
“Probably,” Emma echoed.
She shifted on her feet, and the swell of her breast peeked out from the side. Calisto’s jeans tightened all over again.
“Would you please get dressed or fix your dress?”
She quickly corrected her dress, sliding her other arm in and letting the fabric fall down her toned figure. The dress clung to her curves and the skirt swayed when she moved.
Calisto had to look away.
Naked or clothed, it didn’t really matter. The woman was still gorgeous. Calisto was beginning to wish he didn’t notice these kinds of things about Emma. It wasn’t helping his dangerous attraction.
“Well, the good news for you is that I’m done shopping for today. No need to babysit what dress I’m picking out.”
“Oh?” he asked.
Emma shrugged. “One panic attack is enough. I’m not interested in shooting for a second.”
“I don’t blame you.”
But she would need to pick one. She was getting married, the girl would need a dress to wear for the day. Affonso wouldn’t accept Emma walking down in her jeans, or God forbid, a black dress that showcased how she truly felt about the day.
Calisto’s stomach turned at the thought.
“I guess our deal is off, huh?” Emma asked.
“Pardon?”
“I had a ‘fit,’ as you put it. You said if I didn’t, we could have some fun tonight and I could empty your pockets at the casino. I lost the bet. Hence, no fun.”
Calisto frowned. “There was no bet. I was trying to get you to do what you were told. We’ll still go. I might have to limit your time at the poker table, seeing as how I like my cash, but we’ll go.”
Emma’s smile came off brilliant and bright. “Yeah?”
“Why not?”
You know why not, idiot, his mind growled.
Calisto ignored it.
He’d never pushed aside his gut feeling before. It had never failed him, not once. When something felt like it was off, then it probably was. If someone gave him a bad vibe, they were probably hiding something.
That was how he lived.
By his gut.
It kept Calisto alive.
The problem with his gut instinct was that it didn’t seem to be giving him anything useable where Emma Sorrento was concerned. It felt both good and bad—a should and shouldn’t kind of feeling that left him nowhere but confused.
“Okay,” Emma said quietly. “I have a dinner with my mom and dad later first.”
“I’ll be around.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
Despite her teasing laugh that followed, there was a sadness in her eyes that she hid well. Calisto still saw it. He knew Emma hated that he was constantly following her. To her, it probably seemed as though he was keeping tabs and reporting back to his uncle on her whereabouts and doings.
Mostly, Calisto gave Affonso the same info: nothing to see here. There wasn’t anything to report. Emma was, for the most part, keeping a clean nose. She wasn’t doing anything wrong, she hadn’t been out living up the Vegas nightlife since the engagement, and she kept quiet. But even if she did …
Calisto wasn’t sure he would tell.
“Miss Sorrento, I’m so sorry that took so—Oh!”
Spinning on his heel, Calisto found the heavier set, dark-haired woman standing in the entrance to the private sitting room. He had noticed her earlier talking on the phone.
“Hello,” the woman said, looking him up and down.
Calisto offered a smooth smile. “Hello.”
“Calisto, this is Marian. She’s the owner and a friend to my mother.”
Glancing over his shoulder at Emma, he took note of her unhappiness.
Ah.
Well, that explained the half-hidden frown Emma was sporting.
“I didn’t see Minnie leave,” Marian said.
“She rushed out after my father called, needing something. I’m finishing up, anyway. Next time, okay?”
Marian scowled. “But … well, I found a dress for you, dear.”
Calisto could practically hear Emma’s teeth grind behind him. “I think Emmy wants to head out and finish this up at another time.”
“One more, please?” the woman asked, brushing Calisto’s comment off. “I promise you’ll love it. Those dresses your mother demanded were not suitable for you, Emma. It’s what she wanted to see you in, not what you wanted to be seen in. This one is perfect, I know it.”
Emma sighed heavily.
Calisto passed her another look. “You don’t have to, if you’re not in the mood. We can go. Do this another day, Emmy.”
“You want her to look beautiful when she walks down the aisle to meet you, right?” the woman asked.
He damn near choked on his answer.
“I’m … uh, not—”
“Get the dress,” Emma said, interrupting Calisto’s stumbling words.
“Jesus,” he mumbled when the woman was gone. Turning back to Emma, he found her shaking her head and giggling. “I thought you said she was a friend of your mother’s? Doesn’t she know who you’re marrying?”
Emma scoffed. “Arranged marriage is only acceptable in certain cultures and the mafia. Just because my mother supports my marriage to Affonso doesn’t mean her arrogant, superficial friends won’t stick their noses up at her. She has to save some kind of face. That doesn’t include explaining that my future husband is thirty years older than me.”
“Damn.”
“I have to say, I really enjoyed watching my mother fumble for a response when Marian asked earlier where her invitation was.”
Calisto grinned. “Lost in the mail?”
“Apparently, it’s not sent out yet.”
“Smooth.”
Emma lifted a single shoulder like it didn’t make a difference to her either way. “My mother has always been a good liar. And she knows that if she explains the wedding is happening in New York, the mouths will run that it’s a connected wedding. If you know what I mean.”
“A mafia wedding.”
“Mmhmm. She doesn’t want more people talking than what already do. That, or George doesn’t want people talking and making rumors. Dad wants this all to happen as quietly as possible. Mom isn’t the only one who doesn’t want to hear people’s opinions over the fact that he’s marrying his daughter off to someone thirty years older than her.”
“Doesn’t she read the socialite magazines?” he asked.
“Probably. It’s like an addiction. She knows better, but she runs to the store every week for the new issues.”
Strange.
Calisto dropped the topic when Marian strolled back into the sitting room with a garment bag slung over her arm. It was a much smaller, thinner bag than he expected to see for a wedding gown. Pointing at Calisto with her free hand, the woman barked, “You, out.”
“He stays,” Emma said quickly.
Marian’s mouth opened to argue, but she didn’t get a chance.
“I want him to stay,” she clarified.
Calisto cocked a brow at Emma. “You’re sure?”
“Lots of men see their brides in dresses before the wedding. I want his opinion.”
Calisto clenched his jaw in an attempt to keep quiet. He didn’t want to sit through Emma putting on another dress, but he knew what she was doing. She was likely giving him the chance to see what the dress looked like and tell her if it was appropriate for Affonso’s tastes and demands.
“Fine,” the shop keeper muttered. “But it’s her dress, mister.”
“Hers,” he agreed.
Calisto found the closest chair and sat down. The seat was so plush that the butternut colored leather practically swallowed his lower half. He admired the stitching design on the arm of the chair as the women chatted inside the dressing room. Safe conversation, he noticed. Marian asked about wedding details, and Emma answered vaguely.
Smart girl.
The shuffling of a garment bag echoed out to his spot, drawing his gaze up from the leather toward the closed door. He found his reflection in a mirror hanging off the door. Instead of a woman coming out in her wedding gown, he found himself. His impassive, unfeeling self—except he was neither impassive, nor unfeeling in the reflection.
A curious excitement buzzed in his gut. His gaze burned brightly with interest. He would usually sit in such a way that his side was turned to the room, keeping his posture unavailable for conversation with others. Now, he was sitting forward, ready to be involved.
This was all wrong.
How many times had he thought that very thing just today alone? Calisto could hear his mind screaming at him, warning him and taunting him all at the same time.
What are you doing here? You know better than this. Step back before you fuck this up. There’s a bullet waiting for you. And a seat in hell.
He pushed his thoughts away. He indulged the bit of attraction thickening in his blood for a woman he didn’t know all that well, but was still unobtainable. He forced back the little voice warning him that he was toeing a very fragile line of acceptable conduct with Emma.
Calisto had control of this shit. He knew what was right and what was wrong where his uncle’s fiancée was concerned. He didn’t have to give in to the lust still keeping his cock semi-hard, or focus on the image of Emma’s bare back under his palms.
He wouldn’t feed into this.
Whatever it was.
Right?
The high wail of a phone brought Calisto out of his head with a bang. He straightened even more in the chair and realized he’d been holding so tightly onto the arms that his fingernails had left scratches on the leather.
“Oh, damn it,” Marian muttered behind the dressing room door. “I have to get that. I’m going to shoot my new girl for not coming in today. Will you be okay for a minute, dear?”
“Sure,” Emma said.
Her quiet response caught Calisto’s attention instantly. Her sweet tone came off as unsure, confused, and weighed down. He didn’t have the chance to think on it for long.
Marian slipped out of the dressing room, closed the door behind her, and gave Calisto a pointed look that told him to stay where he was without even saying a word. She quickly hurried from the private sitting area, mumbling on about her missing employee.
Calisto fidgeted in the chair, waiting.
Then, Emma opened the dressing room door and poked her head out. His gaze founds hers right away, and he knew that he was right. The brightness of her eyes was dulled like she had something new on her mind.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” he said.
Emma dropped his stare. “Could you help me really quick?”
“Sure.” Calisto pushed up from the chair in a fluid motion. “What do you need?”
“Marian had most of the buttons done up in the back herself. There were just a couple left toward the top. I mean, if you wouldn’t mind.”
Calisto swallowed the words wanting to come out, the ones that would tell her that he minded a great deal. He still wasn’t going to feed into that nonsense, after all.
“Not a problem, Emmy.”
Stepping up on the raised platform, Calisto grabbed for the doorknob, and opened the door just enough to slip into the dressing room. Emma already had her back turned, but white lace surrounded his vision from all sides. Mirrors lined all four walls of the dressing room. It was impossible to ignore the beautiful, classic, A-line dress with capped sleeves she wore. From the top of the gown to the very bottom, intricate, off-white lace hugged Emma’s body and curves.
Calisto forced himself to focus on his task, instead of how amazing Emma looked in the dress. He quickly found the last four pearl buttons on the back, and did them up. It was a perfect fit. Not an inch too big or too small. The pearls made a pathway from the middle of Emma’s back to right above the swell of her ass. It left a peek of her shoulder blades and skin exposed.
Enough to be tasteful.
Just a promise of what was below.
It was both regal and sexy.
“You look wonderful,” Calisto said, trying to tamper down the huskiness in his voice.
Get a grip, man.
Emma sucked in a hard breath, eyeing the gown in the mirror. “She was right.”
Calisto found Emma’s stare in the mirror, and held it. “Pardon, dolcezza?”
“Marian. She was right about the dress. It’s perfect. It’s beautiful. It’s very me, I guess.”
“You love it,” he said, filling in her obvious blank.
Emma frowned and wet her lips as her hands rubbed together nervously. “Yes.”
“So why are there tears in your eyes, Emmy?”
Shouldn’t it be a good thing that she had found one thing in this awful mess of her arranged marriage that she could actually love? Even if it was something silly like a dress, couldn’t she take some sense of happiness from it?
“Why does it have to be so goddamn perfect?” Emma asked, her voice barely above a breath.
Calisto didn’t understand. “I—”
“Why does this have to be the dress, Cal?”
“You’ve lost me.”
“The dress. The one. Every girl has her one dress. She dreams about it; dreams about finding it and wearing it as she walks down the aisle to meet her groom. It’s a focal point for a bride. Why does this have to be the dress for me? Why?”
He didn’t have an answer for her.
Calisto put his hands on her shoulders and turned Emma around. Quickly and quietly, he wiped away the few tears that had escaped from the corners of her eyes. She shivered under his hands, but didn’t force him away.
Instead of letting her go like he knew he should, Calisto kept holding Emma’s face between his palms. He liked her heat, and the fire in her eyes that was sometimes hidden. He liked the softness of her skin, and how she seemed to lean into his touch, curious and hesitant.
It was dangerous to feed attraction.
It was stupid to indulge emotion.
Calisto was smarter than this—he was.
But his mother, Cam, had always taught him to treat women, no matter what kind of woman she was, with the utmost respect. She had told him never to make a woman cry, to apologize to a woman he had done wrong, and to wipe a woman’s tears away—no matter if he was the cause or not.
Calisto was not a good man. He’d taken lives before it was their time, he’d skipped church more than he went, and he’d rarely felt guilty over his actions and choices. He was unapologetic. Sometimes he would lie and cheat his way through something just to say he could do it, and he liked the smell of dirty money in his hands far more than clean, hard-earned cash. He had drug dealers on speed dial, a collection of illegal guns, a rap sheet a foot long and enough familiarity with police to be on a first name basis each time he got arrested just for being him.
Good was not a word to describe Calisto Donati.
But he wouldn’t let a woman cry.
Good, no.
Honorable where it counted, however … yes.
“Shh,” Calisto soothed, sweeping his thumbs over Emma’s high cheekbones again to remove the remaining tears. “Don’t cry, ragazza. You’ve got far too beautiful of a face for it to be covered in your tears.”
“Don’t say that, Calisto.”
“I prefer Cal, you know.”
Emma batted his hands away, but he held strong. “Stop it, I said.”
“You like the dress, don’t you?”
“I said that I did.”
“And you look great in it,” he pressed.
“That’s not the point.”
Calisto frowned. “It’s the dress. Yeah, I got that.”
“I don’t want to wear the perfect dress, the one that’s perfect for me, on a day when I have to marry a man I will never love. How is that even okay?”
It wasn’t.
She was right.
“I’m sorry,” Calisto murmured.
His words didn’t help Emma much, if her fresh round of tears was any indication. Knowing wiping them away wasn’t going to help that time, Calisto pulled her into his embrace without a word and wrapped her in a tight hug so that Emma could hide her pain for as long as she needed.
In his arms, he hoped he could help her.
Somehow.
It also felt good to hold her—intimate even.
Too intimate.
“I want the dress,” he heard Emma mumble.
“You can have it.”
“I don’t want to wear it for him. Someone else, but not him. This isn’t fair.”
Calisto didn’t know what to say. He’d already crossed a dozen lines where this woman was concerned.
A knock on the dressing room door made Emma and Calisto break apart quickly.
“Emma?” Marian asked.
“Just a second. Calisto helped me fix the dress.”
Shit.
Calisto’s mind ran a million miles a minute. It only took one person’s misguided and half-truths being whispered for word to spread. Just the wrong person talking would cause him and Emma a hell of a lot of trouble.
It didn’t matter if nothing was going on.
“I’ll be outside,” Calisto said.
Outside of the damn dress shop.
Emma blinked up at him, confused. “Okay.”
“Get the dress.”
“But—”
“Get it. The rest doesn’t matter. This is still going through, whether you want it to or not, whether you are happy or angry at the world. The least you can do for yourself is have one thing for you when they force you into it. Get the dress, Emmy.”
“Okay,” she whispered.
Without another word, Calisto left the dressing room. He moved past Marian without so much as looking at her.
Behind him, Calisto heard Emma call out his name.
“Yeah?”
“Is your deal still on for tonight?” she asked.
No.
No way.
Nope.
Calisto wasn’t an idiot. He knew where to draw the lines.
“Yeah, Emma, we’re still on.”
But apparently he was saying fuck all the lines tonight.
Calisto tossed back another shot of rum, needing the burn in his throat and the distraction for his overwhelmed mind. The sounds of the club behind him were only a dull roar to his senses. He barely heard it at all.
Stupidly, Calisto had thought that coming to a club, having a few drinks, and watching women dance would be enough to clear his head before he had to meet up with Emma after she had dinner. He wasn’t supposed to leave her alone at all, but he figured she was safe enough with her parents.
She didn’t even know he left.
Turning slightly, Calisto rested his arm on the bar and surveyed the crowd. Beautiful, young women moved throughout the people, their hips swaying in their tight, short dresses. Skin-tight. Short as hell. All a man needed to do was pull their dresses up a bit, bend them over, and pull their panties to the side.
Easy fucking access.
Yet, none of them interested Calisto.
Not a damn drop.
He wanted a distraction. Something to take his mind off the experience he’d had earlier with Emma, or the way he was still thinking about it—her—and her naked skin under his palms.
“You’re looking awfully lonely here by yourself,” said a sultry voice from his side.
Calisto met a brown-eyed girl’s stare, unaffected. She, like most of the other women in the joint, was dressed for the occasion and looked good. He just wasn’t … there. Not for her or any other female.
His dick had apparently settled on someone else.
Someone impossible.
“I enjoy my own company,” Calisto said.
Take the hint.
The woman didn’t.
“Why don’t you buy me a drink?” she asked. Calisto pulled a bill from his pocket and handed it over to the woman. She looked down at the bill, her brow furrowing. “What—”
“Buy yourself a drink, sweetheart.”
With that, he pushed away from the bar and strolled out into the dancing crowd. Calisto made a beeline for the front of the club, more stressed than he had been when he entered. He just wanted to get his mind off things, and somehow, he’d made it worse. He was still thinking about Emma, her body and curves, and his interest only seemed to climb higher.
Why did Emma have to catch his attention?
Why her?
Calisto walked past the bouncers and out to the street. He made his way toward the lot where he had parked his car, each step he took was a little rawer than the last.
His cock was hard.
It had been painfully fucking hard since he touched Emma.
This was ridiculous.
Calisto was ridiculous.
Once he was inside the rental Mercedes, Calisto placed his hands on the steering wheel and leaned over it, letting out a heavy breath of air. He thought about whatever he could to get his erection down. Nothing worked.
The zipper of his pants bit into his tender cock through his boxer-briefs, irritating Calisto further. Readjusting his length did nothing but make his dick jump in his own hand. More frustrated than ever, he checked the time and noted it was close to when Emma was supposed to be finishing her dinner with her parents.
He couldn’t do this shit.
He needed to get that girl out of his fucking head.
Biting hard on his lower lip, Calisto hoped the pain would be enough to distract him from his thoughts of Emma for long enough to handle his little problem. He undid his pants and slipped his hands under his boxer-briefs. As long as he could get the damned hard-on to go away, he’d be fine for the evening.
Surely.
The very second his hand wrapped around his length and tugged with a firm grip, relief flooded his bloodstream. Unfortunately, his thoughts shot right back to Emma. Her pretty lips, inviting, red, and needing to be filled.
He stroked harder, faster. His cock throbbed in his hand.
Groaning, Calisto clenched his teeth, letting his thumb roll over the head of his cock with every pull. He was still focused on her.
Perfect curves, the kind a man would kill for. The kind that fit perfectly in a man’s hands—his hands. Silky skin made to bite and taste, or paint with a stream of his come.
He bet she felt like fucking satin inside.
Fucking Emma would be heaven. His fingers digging into her skin, turning it red as he fisted her hair and listened to all the sounds she would make for him.
Yeah, perfect.
That one thought alone was enough to send him over the edge. Calisto came hard, his semen spilling over his shaking fingers in hot, sticky streams.
Calisto sucked in a hard breath and rested back against the seat, still holding his hard cock. At least it wasn’t aching anymore.
As for him?
He was still fucked either way.