21. Rose Calloway
ROSE CALLOWAY
“Don’t be a pussy,” I tell Connor. “If I can do it, you should be able to.” Although with that confident declaration of tying me up—my brazen attitude feels more like a front than anything else.
“Name calling gets you nowhere in life,” he refutes with ease. “And just so you know, I was only going to drink from a glass in case I spilled it on your comforter. But your loss.”
He acts like he’s going to tip the wine bottle accidentally onto my white-laced bedspread. My heart jumps into my throat, and fear bulges my eyes.
He grins and then puts the bottle to his lips, taking a large swig.
The wine and tequila are strategic. I need more liquid courage than him, and I’d rather be buzzed.
I’ve never seen Connor drunk, which means he could very well turn into an inebriated asshole.
Someone I do not want to play truth or dare with. But it’s a risk I’ll take.
“Truth or dare?” I ask him after another sip of tequila. The liquor slides sharply down my throat, but I’m too nervous to care. Normal couples who share a bed would be fine playing truth or dare together. Another piece of evidence that I am not normal. We are not normal.
He doesn’t blink. “Truth.”
I don’t want to ease in. “What’s your favorite position?”
“I won’t hurt you,” he says, reading into my question. “I know you’re nervous to have sex, but I promise I’ll be…” He smiles at his own thought. “…no that’s not quite right.”
“You were about to say gentle, weren’t you?”
His lips rise further, validating my assumption .
The aftertaste of tequila sticks to my tongue, and my head dizzies at the idea of Connor being anything but gentle. I’m not the softest girl, so the image of being handled by a soft, careful boy makes me squirm.
“I promise I’ll be me,” he says, grinning into his next swig of wine.
“It’s a good thing I like you then.” My voice is still icy. The alcohol hasn’t kicked in just yet.
“ Like me? Qu’en est-il de l’amour?” What happened to love?
“You don’t believe in love,” I retort. “So you’ve lost the right for me to love you back.” I nod assuredly at this new stance I’m taking. “But I still like you. Don’t worry.”
“I never worry,” he says. “I do believe in love. When I was a child I thought it wasn’t real, but I’ve come to see that it does exist for some people. Just not me.”
Right. He can’t love anyone. He’s too analytical, I suppose.
I’ve come to accept it, but there’s a part of me that wants so badly to be his first love the way he’s mine.
His hand keeps descending, gripping my ass above my silk nightgown.
I tip the bottle of Patron against my mouth, taking half a shot.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I say.
“What’s my favorite position?”
“Yes.”
“I have a lot of favorites.”
“Choose one, Richard,” I snap.
He smiles. “Missionary…with a few alterations.”
“What alterations?”
His lips just curve higher, as if he’s partaking in a personal inside joke. I kind of want to punch him for the smirk, but I also want Connor to kiss me roughly. It’s an odd mixture that’s pounding my head.
At least he doesn’t want me to ride his dick like a sexy dominatrix.
I don’t think I could confidently pull that off.
It’s not something I’ve ever visualized either.
Although when people meet me, I know it’s their first assumption, their first wild picture.
Of me in stilettos, a heel at a man’s throat.
All these years, I believed in the stereotype too.
That to be a strong, confident woman outside the bedroom, I’d have to be as equally dominant inside.
It’s a reason why I rarely brought guys back to my apartment in college.
Because I’d disappoint them. And I’d rather shove them out of my door and be called an ice cold bitch than be laughed at for not making good on their fantasies.
We’re all more than we appear to be.
“Truth or dare?” His question pops my thoughts.
“Truth.”
“What’s your strangest fantasy?”
“I change my mind. I choose dare,” I say quickly.
He laughs. “Play by the rules, darling.”
“Dare,” I repeat, not backing down.
“Fine. I’ll let you cheat this once.”
Cheat . That is a vile word, but I stay my course.
“I dare you…” His eyes flit around the room before landing back on me. “To answer my question.” He full-on grins.
“You’re terrible,” I deadpan.
“You love me. Even if you won’t say it anymore.”
“Maybe.” Ugh. I stare at my traitorous bottle of Patron for loosening my lips and deteriorating my brain.
His hand dips further to my ass, and he pulls me so close that I realize I’m sitting on his lap, my legs sprawled to the side. He combs the hair off my neck and places a light kiss on my nape. He watches how my body shivers from the touch, warms from the alcohol, and dizzies from his closeness.
“You wanted to play this game,” he reminds me. “Somewhere in your heart, you wanted these things to be revealed.”
I did. And that’s why I had the alcohol. To build my courage. I take another small sip, my lips wet with the liquor. He rubs his thumb across them, slowly. As my breath hitches, he puts his thumb in his mouth, tasting the tequila .
“My strangest fantasy?” I repeat, studying him like he’s the most interesting specimen in the universe.
To me, he most definitely is. When the answer suddenly hits me, I pale.
I’m not even close enough to being that drunk to tell him.
But I can’t lie. I hate cheaters so damn much. “Ask me something else.”
“No,” he says, not making this easy for me.
He rests a hand on the back of my neck, so near now that his chest touches mine.
He inhales strongly, my body closing in on him.
The tension winds me in a taut strand, the place between my legs beginning to pulse for touch.
He kisses right outside of my lips. “Answer me,” he murmurs with a deep, husky voice.
“Define strange,” I breathe.
He’s abandoned his wine bottle somewhere. And I don’t even care to search for it. “Not normal to society’s traditional standards.”
Yes, my fantasy is definitely abnormal. I’ve thought about it a few times before, and I have no idea why it aroused me. “I shouldn’t be turned on by it.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” He brushes my hair out of my face again, his gaze steadily and slowly skimming every inch of me, heating me up more than the alcohol now.
“I think my fantasy is weird, even for your standards.”
He stops stroking me and his eyebrow arches, pure curiosity pouring through his gaze. “Now you have to tell me.”
“I picture you.” My vocal cords freeze.
“Good. Keep going.”
I smack his arm.
“I picture you as well,” he says. “I have since I was seventeen.”
“Really?”
“It wasn’t fair to the other people I was with, but you’ve been the most fascinating person to me. And no one could really compare in my mind. ”
I rephrase his words and hear I love you . Even if he won’t ever say them. This proclamation inflates my courage. And I sit up a little straighter on his lap. I lick my lips and continue, “I picture you and me.”
“We’re getting somewhere close, I suspect.”
I glare. “We can move on if you don’t want to hear it.”
“Rose,” he says affectionately, “I would sit here for eighty more years and listen to you talk. I love the sound of your voice and every meaning behind your words.”
“So you love my voice but you don’t love me?”
He grips my butt hard, and a gasp catches in my throat. “Maybe you should be labeled smartass after we fuck.”
I actually laugh.
He smiles with me. “Tell me,” he whispers, his lips tickling my ear. “N’ai pas peur.” Don’t be afraid.
I swallow. “I may not like it, even though I’ve imagined it.”
He groans, half in frustration, the other half in arousal. He breathes more heavily than before. “You’re killing me.”
He hardens beneath me. I really, really love that power. “Maybe I should draw out the suspense then and never tell you.”
“ No. ” He cups my face in a strong hand. “If you could live inside my mind right now, you’d realize how crazy you’re making me.”
“I want to be in your mind,” I say honestly, the alcohol doing its trick as I run my hands across his chest, popping the buttons of his white shirt.
“You’re almost all the way there.”
That does it. I take a deep breath and I tell him.
“I’m always sleeping when it happens.” I don’t break his gaze.
I stay strong. I can tell him my fantasy.
I can do this without balking like a coward.
“And I wake up to you inside of me…thrusting…” I trail off as I try to read his expression that stays blank.
I can’t tell whether he thinks I’m weird or not .
His hand rises from my neck to the back of my head, and he kisses my unmoving, frightened lips before he whispers, “I’ve done much stranger things, Rose.” I hear the smile in his words, and I immediately relax. “Your turn,” he says. And just like that, he brushes it off so I don’t keep fretting.
It felt good to share that, to be more open sexually. I think I could do this more often with him. It’s not so hard. “Truth or dare?” I ask, my knuckles whitening as I grip the bottle of my Patron, pent up the longer he touches me.
“Truth.”
“What rouses you more, my body or my brain?”
His eyes drift to the tops of my breasts while one hand slides up my nightgown, settling on my bottom above my panties. “Both, equally.”
If I wasn’t so intoxicated by his presence and the liquor, I would make him give me a definitive answer, but I let it slide.
“Truth or dare?” he asks.
The last truth was difficult, and I know he won’t make it any easier. So I say, “Dare.”
He exhales deeply, so very aroused. Places in my body are clenching that have never clenched before. “I dare you,” he says, “to let me take off your nightgown.”
Before I even nod, his hands slip all the way beneath the silk, and he slowly lifts the fabric over my head, my breasts visible for his intense, heady gaze. My nipples already stand at attention.