Kiss the Sky (Calloway Sisters #1)(60)

I straighten in my chair, becoming more serious. “I’ve seen the kind of love that cripples. Take Loren Hale and Lily Calloway—when one is shot with an emotion, the other feels it. If you stripped one from the other, they’d be less than themselves. If that’s love, I want no part of it.” I want to be whole. I want to be the best possible version of myself without the chance of being wounded or broken.

“Can you empathize with Rose?” he asks me.

“Yes, but love is a weakness that I won’t submit to.”

“Sometimes you can’t control everything, Connor,” he tells me. “Even as intelligent as you are, there are things out of your grasp. Love, death—you can’t predict either. They just happen.”

“And you believe it’s already happened?” I refuse this outcome. It’s not computable.

“Why are you with her?”

“Attraction.”

“And?”

“Affection.”

“What else?”

“Amusement—these are just words, Frederick.”

“Love is just a word.”

“I can’t love her,” I tell him definitively as I stand and pocket my phone.

He stays seated, and yet, I feel as though he has the advantage on me. He still sees what I can’t. “And why is that?”

“Smart people do stupid things when they’re in love. I’ve yet to do something inane.”

Frederick grins. “Give it time.”

I suppress the urge to roll my eyes. I wave him off and head to the door. “See you next week.”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

“Of course you are,” I say back. “You get to hear about me spanking my girlfriend.”

“Get out of my office, Connor.” He returns to his papers, but his grin grows wider and wider until I leave.





*



I stop by the liquor store after my session with Frederick, and it’s late when I arrive home. The lights are off in the living room, and I don’t hear Lily or Lo’s climaxes through the walls.

When I reach the second level, I stop by my door, not about to knock. I haven’t been that courteous since we moved in together. There are some barriers that I choose to destroy for her.

As soon as the door creaks open, I find Rose sitting on the bed, flipping through the latest issue of Vogue. Her eyes flit up to mine and she drops the magazine on her lap. “Did you bring it?”

I hold up the brown paper bag. “Wine and tequila as you requested, but I would advise only choosing one tonight. Unless you’d like to be ill.”

“The wine is for you,” she says curtly.

My eyebrows rise. So the tequila is for her. She’s that nervous.

She pats the mattress. “Take a seat, Richard. You look like a scared little cat. Sadie would claw you for your cowardice.”

“My cat loves me unconditionally,” I reply. The bed rocks as I climb onto it, and I set the paper bag in between us. “And I’m fine, so you must be projecting your fear onto me.” I smile, just so I can see that flicker of contempt in her eyes.

“I’m not scared.” She straightens up and pulls her shoulders back. “I know exactly what we’ll be doing tonight. I can’t say the same for you.”

“So what are we doing tonight, hun?” I ask. “Other than getting drunk.”

She reaches into the paper bag and pulls out the bottle of Patron. I watch her unscrew the cap and start rubbing the lip with the hem of her black thigh-length nightgown. It’s silk and looks like a slip underneath a dress.

I immediately imagine myself slowly lifting the thin fabric off her body, leaving her bare for my touch. I want her naked. Now.

Patience.

I place my hand on the smoothness of her leg, her skin nearly as silky as her nightgown and exceedingly warmer. The minute I pull her closer to me with that one hand, her chest rises. But she focuses on wiping the rim of her Patron.

Rose plans on drinking straight from the bottle. She’s trying hard to progress our relationship, willing to forgo a glass. That’s a big deal in Rose Calloway’s world. Her effort hasn’t gone unnoticed in my eyes.

When it’s successfully clean for her lips, Rose takes a swig from the bottle. She nods to the bag. “Get your wine. And then we’ll play the game.”

“What game?”

“Truth or dare.”

She says it with a straight face, almost challenging me to laugh. I keep my expression complacent, but I can’t help what I say. “Shall we spend seven minutes in heaven too?”

She shoots me a heated look. “We’re playing. Don’t make me tie you up.”

I laugh and rub my lips, unable to contain my amusement. “Darling, if anyone is going to be tied up,” I say, my hand descending towards her ass, “c’est toi.”

It’s you.





CHAPTER 21





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.”