Thin Lives (Donati Bloodlines #3) (21 page)

He missed this woman more than he could explain. For almost a year, he had felt like he was lost in some sort of haze, all the while knowing that he was without something important, even if he didn’t know exactly what it was.

She had been that important thing.

Calisto loved her.

Entirely.

Wholly.

Crazily.

He
loved
her.

How he had forgotten the one soul made for his, he didn’t know.

“I will figure it out,” Calisto said, taking a step toward her. “I will get Cross to you—to us—the very second I can.”

Emma opened her mouth to say something, but he beat her to the punch.

“I will, Emmy. I promise.”

“You don’t seem to understand, Calisto,” Emma said as his palm came up to cup her jaw with a gentle touch. “This isn’t a question—there is no choice here, and you can’t make me stay based on a promise.”

“I wouldn’t let anything happen to our son.”

“I’ve been his only one, Cal!”

Calisto quieted, surprised by her outburst.

Emma squeezed his wrist, stepping closer as she said, “I have been the only person loving and protecting that little boy from the moment I knew I was pregnant with him. He only had me, just me. You didn’t even know I was pregnant before the accident, but I was still left alone to keep him safe. You can’t snap your fingers and make that disappear for me, Calisto. Don’t ask me to sit and wait. Not for my baby.”

“Mine, too,” he said softly.

“
Please
.”

The idea of allowing Emma to go back into what he considered a dangerous situation was out of the question for Calisto. He didn’t even want to consider it.

But he knew Emma, too.

She seemed compliant from afar.

Sweet, even.

Fragile, maybe.

The woman was stronger than anyone knew. She had strength that was built upon by years of feeling alone. She had fire in her soul.

And he loved that.

It wasn’t such a surprise to him that Emma refused to leave Cross behind, even for a short time with the knowledge that he would be brought to her as soon as possible—and safely. She was their son’s one person to count on, to love and comfort him. When his father hadn’t even known him, he had his mother.

She wouldn’t leave Cross behind.

Not like she had been.

“Emma, just consider—”

“I can’t,” she interrupted quietly. “Please understand why, Cal.”

It would make things a great deal harder—maybe even more dangerous. He would have to rethink, and plan all over again. It would be like starting over at square one.

“I do understand,” he finally said.

Calisto dropped his hand from her face, unsure of where to go next. Emma must have not liked that he let her go, because she was back in his arms before he’d even blinked once. In that one second, as her arms linked around his neck her hands tangled into his hair, and he swallowed her in a hug, time ceased to exist. The world stopped moving.

All was
almost
right.

He needed his child, too.

For now, with Emma in his arms, this was as close to perfect as he was going to get.

“I don’t want you to go back,” he murmured into her hair. “I want to keep you safe, like I should have been doing for all these months. I’m sorry you were alone again—you should never be alone when someone loves you.”

Her lips pressed feather-light to his neck, making heat dance over his skin. It was hard to ignore the way the heat traveled lower instantly, and the way he could feel her soft curves molding perfectly against his.

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 glanced 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.