Page 107 of Thin Lives

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.