by Bethany-Kris
It’d been too long for him and her.
Far too long.
Memories had sustained his need for a short while—that wasn’t going to last much longer for Calisto. Not when he had Emma close, even if for a short while.
“I wasn’t alone—I had Cross.”
Calisto’s gaze was drawn to the soft arch of Emma’s lips, and then she was raising up on her tiptoes to press a quick, searing kiss to his lips. She tried to pull away, but he refused to let her go, dominating the kiss until she was tipping her head back and gasping for air.
He didn’t mind.
That just let him kiss down the delicate column of her throat, feeling her swallow and her muscles work under his licks and nips.
“I missed you, Cal.”
“You’re going to stay,” Calisto whispered against her skin. “At least for a little while—give me that, Emma. You want it, too, don’t you? Haven’t you missed this, too?”
She shivered, and he took that in like a drug straight to his vein.
“God, yes.”
That was the only confirmation he needed. He took care not to damage the red dress with the tag still tucked inside as he pulled it off her body. Calisto’s gaze swept her form, taking in the curves and skin he’d been without for far too long. Emma let him explore with his mouth and hands as he walked her back to the bed.
“Leave the heels on,” he said.
Emma grinned. “Yeah?”
“You’re going to need the extra couple of inches.”
Her teeth sank into her bottom lip. “Oh?”
Calisto took another step forward, crowding Emma at the footboard of the bed. She couldn’t move further as he leaned over her, taking her mouth with his own in another long, hot kiss.
“Fuck,” she mumbled against his mouth. “I did miss this.”
“He doesn’t … touch you … does he?”
Calisto had asked the question quietly, but his fingers clamped onto her hips and held tight. She was his, and the thought of her being touched by another man, even if that man was her husband, pissed him off like he couldn’t explain.
Emma’s fingers slid under his jaw, and Calisto met her gaze. “No.”
“Never?”
That was a surprise.
“He has women for that, and I am, as he always believed I was, useless to him. A whore, now. Nothing else.”
Calisto frowned, his jaw working out his agitation. “You know that’s not true.”
“I know that I don’t care, not right now. I just want you—all of you, as hard and as fast as you can give me it, Cal. That’s what I want. Please.”
His darker urges thrummed deep.
“You don’t want me to lay you back and worship you like you deserve, Emma?”
She didn’t even bat a lash. “I know you love me—I know you worship me, Cal. I just want you to fuck me.”
Jesus.
Shit, yeah.
“All right,” he said gruffly.
He stole another kiss from her pretty lips, feeling her hands work at the buttons on his dress shirt and the zipper on his pants. He let her push his shirt down his arms until it fell to the floor, and then she was shoving his pants down, too.
The second her palm wrapped around his cock in a tight, firm grip, he stilled, enjoying her touch and how soft her hand was despite how badly his dick ached. He couldn’t let her do this for long, he couldn’t take it. As much as it felt like heaven, it hurt, too.
He just wanted to fuck.
“Ass up,” he said thickly.
Emma’s hand stopped moving. “What?”
She didn’t even get a chance to take a breath before he had her flipped over, and he pinned her upper half against the bed. Running his fingers down her backside, and to her sex, he found her wet and hot against his touch.
“I want your ass up,” he said.
Emma sucked in a quick gulp of air, letting it hiss out slowly between her teeth as his fingers pushed into her sex, taking her fast like that. She squirmed under his hold, a long moan breaking free from her chest.
“Another time,” she said between clenched teeth.
Yeah, he agreed.
He’d tease and touch all he wanted another time.
Surely it would come.
He’d make sure of it.
Calisto replaced his fingers with the head of his cock, letting the tip press just far enough into the entrance of her slit that she could feel him beginning to stretch her open. The sliver of her sex glistened with her fluids, and the heat of her pink flesh wrapped him with a dark promise.
He gave no warning, simply flexed his hips and took her deep.
The force of the thrust sent her up on her toes in the heels, and her hands flying out to find purchase against the bed. Calisto didn’t give her relief to become accustomed to his length or girth, and she didn’t ask for it.
“Again—more,” Emma begged.
Fuck, yes.
“Whatever you need, bella.”
He wanted to fuck her longer—deeper and harder. Fuck her until every single one of her sounds were forever imprinted on his memories. Until the feel of her skin was painted on his own flesh. Until the sights of her under him, over him, beside him, were the only things he could see when he closed his eyes. He wanted to taste her on his tongue every time he took a drink. He wanted to smell her in the air all around him.
He never wanted to forget her again.
He shouldn’t have forgotten her in the first place.
So, he did.
Fucked her harder, to the point that his own muscles ached and protested.
Fucked her until her cries came out hoarse and broken.
Fucked her with his hands on her throat, buried in her hair, and raking down her skin.
He sucked her fingers clean after she toyed with her clit while he fucked her from behind and she was bent over the footboard. He buried two of his fingers knuckle deep into her ass when she begged for more, just to make her scream louder when she came the first time.
And when she came that first time, Calisto swore he saw fucking God in her face.
It was heaven for him.
A blissfully sinful, familiar heaven.
Breathless, soft, needy sounds crawled from her throat with every stroke of his cock inside her clenching, wet pussy. Every drag made his muscles tighten a little more, and his breaths came out feeling thicker.
Her whispers were everything that haunted his dreams when she wasn’t there.
There, Cal and Like that, just like that.
Make it hurt and Fuck me raw.
Calisto almost wished their first time together after so long was a little slower, a bit softer between them. He wondered if taking his time would have made a difference, but he doubted it.
He couldn’t control the need burrowing deep into his very soul to fill her full, hold her down, and make her scream. Because that’s what Emma liked—that’s what he needed.
They could do soft and slow another time.
There would be more—he’d make sure of it.
Calisto released the hold he had on Emma’s hair, instead grabbing the back of her neck and keeping her pinned down to the bed. He knew every punishing thrust was sending her thighs straight into the hard metal of the footboard, but her profile was a mask of pleasure. His other hand palmed her ass, and he grabbed tight, spreading her open a little more.
He loved the sight beneath him.
Her pink folds—wet and hot.
His cock—bare and slick.
She twisted and shuddered under him when he teased the tight hole of her ass with the tip of his finger again.
“This is all mine,” he told her, a tremor rocking through his words. “Your pussy, your ass, your mouth, and your body. I fuck you like this—nobody else. You shake for me, baby. You get wet for me. You beg me. It is mine, Emma. It has always been mine.”
“Y-yours,” she breathed.
Calisto sucked in a hard breath when Emma glance
d over her shoulder at him, and he felt the tremors of her second orgasm begin to hug his shaft with every thrust. Usually he slowed their fucking down a bit when she came, wanting to savor every last sensation of her walls contracting around his cock. But this time … this time he picked up the pace, making sure to keep that steady, hard rhythm going as she grabbed a fistful of the bedsheets and shouted his name.
He let the constricting waves of her orgasm milk him harder and deeper into her heat.
That was all he felt.
He only heard them, and her.
His senses focused on them, and nothing else.
The whole while, she watched him over her shoulder.
“God, Cal,” she mumbled, eyed heavy-lidded and watery. “Come on, Cal—come. I want to feel you come. I need it.”
The thin line of control keeping Calisto contained snapped.
Just like that.
He squeezed the back of her neck harder, his thrusts turning even more brutal. Emma begged him again, her lips wet and bitten red. She sighed sweet and pleased when he painted her back with his semen, and groaned her name in a husky breath.
His memories hadn’t done her justice.
Not at all.
Calisto
Calisto swept his thumb over the side of Emma’s hand, not wanting to let her go. She had changed out of that red dress, and back into her other clothes she had been wearing earlier. Sitting in a borrowed car, Calisto watched her from the side, taking in her features and how familiar she was to him.
“Emmy?”
“Yeah?” she asked, smiling slightly.
“I do love you.”
“I know—always, yeah?”
“Forever, dolcezza.”
“Then trust me,” she said softly, reaching up to pat his cheek with the tips of her fingers. “I have a number for you if something happens. I will go through the mall, get in my car, and go home with an excuse that the enforcer lost me, and I got sidetracked by shopping and didn’t realize time passed me by.”
Calisto opened his mouth to speak, but Emma’s fingers landed on his lips, quieting him.
“I will be fine, he has nothing to prove I did anything other than what I will say,” she continued. “I will take care of Cross until you have everything sorted. I will be careful, Calisto.”
He knew she would.
It still killed him.
But he wouldn’t force her away from their child.
Not if she didn’t want to go.
He loved her far too much to hurt her in that way.
“Kiss him for me … or something,” Calisto said, feeling a little lame.
Emma’s smile bloomed wider. “I always do—I always did. Even when you didn’t know it.”
“I loved him from the moment I knew, Emmy.”
“I didn’t doubt that you would.”
Calisto flipped open the middle console, and pulled a familiar pack of letters out. He picked out the first few off the top, having carefully chosen which ones he wanted to give to his uncle. Letters that his mother had written to Calisto over the years, detailing the truth of her attack—her rape—his birth, and the years of manipulation that followed. There was also the letter from Affonso to his mother where the man apologized for his attack, and was asking to be a part of the baby’s raising.
He wanted Affonso to know Calisto was coming for him.
He wanted the man to fear like his mother had—like even Emma had.
Affonso deserved that before he died.
“Here,” Calisto said, handing the letters over. Emma took them without question, and put them in her purse. “I was going to have Wolf leave them for Affonso, but you’re much closer. One at a time, drop them wherever he might find them. Be careful.”
Emma didn’t ask why, or what the letters were. “I will.”
He leaned over the middle console, and kissed his lover until she finally pulled away. Without another word, she got out of the car, and headed toward one of the many entrances for the large, multi-level mall.
It will be fine, he told himself. It has to be.
Calisto found peace in the backstreets of Hell’s Kitchen. Some might have thought it was too open of a place for a man who needed to stay out of sight, but he didn’t think so.
Hell’s Kitchen was a melting pot for all different kinds of cultures, and for people from all different walks of life. With a cap on, a hood pulled up, and regular clothes on, Calisto was just another face in the busy New York crowd as he walked along, needing space and time to think.
Days ago, when he’d allowed Emma to go back to Affonso for his son’s sake, he didn’t realize quite how hard it would be for him not to immediately rush in and take what he knew was rightfully his. It would do him no good to rush Affonso as if Calisto was a bull in a China shop.
Men like Affonso needed to be handled carefully.
Calisto needed to tread wisely.
That still didn’t help the way he felt.
Lonely.
Empty.
So fucking cold.
Pulling out his phone, Calisto kept his head down and turned the device on, weaving in and out of people. He barely noticed them at all, and he suspected they didn’t pay him any mind, either.
Bringing up the email he had pinned to the top, Calisto opened the folder inside, finding rows of pictures. Most were black and white, but a few were of color.
All of them, however, were of the same two people.
Emma.
His son.
He’d had a contact keep watch on Emma during his time away, just to make sure that she and his son were safe. He’d jumped the gun on taking them before everything was settled, and now he would have to handle that.
The pictures helped a bit to settle his frayed nerves.
But never for long.
The buzzing of his phone brought him out of his thoughts as a familiar number lit up the screen. Calisto picked up the call on the second ring, putting it to his head as he said, “What do we have, Connor?”
The Irish boss chuckled deeply on the other end of the line. “You’re not one for pleasantries, huh?”
“Not when we’ve got business to do.”
Connor O’Neil was down for business—as long as that business meant taking Affonso Donati off the map. It’d taken a bit of convincing, but the Irish boss didn’t hesitate to offer help to Calisto after he’d explained what had been happening over the last several months, and his amnesia, not to mention Affonso’s manipulations.
Thankfully, though the street war between the two families had been ongoing for months, Connor’s daughter, and the child she had birthed that belonged to Affonso, were both okay.
Connor was willing to make sure that was permanent.
So was Calisto.
“Yes, business,” Connor said. “I have the package we talked about. It’s waiting for you at the Slaughterhouse.”
Calisto stepped up to the discrete entrance of a rather shoddy building in a quiet part of New Jersey that he only knew as the Slaughterhouse. The name gave off the impression of some kind of meat factory, but in fact, was nothing of the sort.
Sure, there were hooks hanging from the ceiling.
Bloodstains on the floor.
A man good with knives …
But no one he knew would be willing to buy the kind of meat the Irish boss liked to have cut up in the place.
The man on the other side of the Slaughterhouse’s door barely acknowledged Calisto when he stepped inside. He wasn’t stupid enough, however, to think the man didn’t take inventory of him as soon as he came inside, gauging whether or not he was dangerous and needing to be disposed of.
Connor likely would have warned the man someone was coming.
“The boss?” Calisto asked the silent man, choosing not to elaborate in case Connor hadn’t explained who was in one of the many backrooms.
Hopefully shackled to a wall already.
“Furthest room on the second level,” the man replied, soundi
ng bored. “Just follow the stairs and the hallway, you can’t miss the red door.”
Calisto gave a nod in thanks, but didn’t bother explaining to the man that this wasn’t his first time at the Slaughterhouse. Twice, he’d met Connor in this godforsaken building because this was where the Irish boss found his peace.
In splitting skin.
Cut muscles.
Blood dripping to the floor.
Gasping screams …
Calisto chose not to judge how other men in his business handled … well, their business, so to speak. Whether being the hands on type when it came to managing issues, or if it was a way to handle his stress, Calisto didn’t ask the Irish boss.
But the man liked to cut.
So, he’d made himself a place to do just that.
The Slaughterhouse.
Ignoring the chill running down his spine, Calisto made his way through the dark, damp-smelling building. It didn’t take him long at all to find the one of many red doors he was looking for. All of the rooms that were used for … reasons … were painted with red doors. It stopped men from entering without hesitating first, wondering if the reason they had been called to the Slaughterhouse was a good one, or the end of their road.
Mind games.
Connor loved those, apparently.
Calisto had figured out after a while that he still had a lot of learning left to do where being a boss was concerned. After spending the past few years pushing against the idea of becoming the Don of his family, he no longer had that option—not if he wanted to take back what should be rightfully his.
Pushing open the red door, the smell hit him first.
Wet. Warm. Musty.
Then he heard it—air hissing through teeth, choking sobs, and breaths catching on the exhale.
Pain.
That’s what he heard—pain.
Quietly, Calisto let the door click shut and took a spot in the corner. That was what Connor always asked for someone to do if they interrupted his time and work. He asked for people to wait until he was ready to chat, or he was finished because the victim was dead.
Whichever came first.
No one seemed to notice his entrance—not Connor, standing across the room in his worn jeans and a blood-spattered T-shirt, or the man chained to a hook from the ceiling.
