Page 24 of The Consequence of You
Fuck my life.
Calliope Messina is a fucking vision.
She’s dressed in a striking deep red. The dress has a tight corset top, which pulls in her already tiny waist, and pushes her breasts up where they are almost spilling out of the top. The bottom half of the dress hugs her hips, but with just a little movement in the silk. It finishes mid-thigh, and despite her petite stature, her legs look like they go on forever.
I’d been expecting her to wear stilettos, but instead, she’s wearing black heeled boots which add at least three inches to her tiny stature. They show off her slender ankles, and the whole ensemble has my cock jumping in my dress pants.
I told her to wear black, and the naughty princess disobeyed me. Just like I hoped she would. I never dreamed she’d do it as spectacularly as this, though. My parents will have a fit.
She grasps the bannister and slowly and gracefully descends the stairs. As she gets closer, I see her slowappraisal of my own outfit. I’ve gone for a classic black dinner suit, but it’s tailored to perfection. Her throat bobs as she swallows hard.
I look good. Better than good, and she isn’t able to disguise she likes what she sees.
“Asher. You said you were sending a car.”
The sound of my name on her lips makes my cock jump again. Fucking traitor. It needs to behave if we’re going to get through tonight.
“Calliope. You said you would wear black.”
“I did not. Youtoldme to wear black, but our deal was that I attend this meal. The black was an unrelated request.”
Rossi shifts his stance in my periphery. He’s privy to this entire conversation, and I’m sure he’s curious about our deal. I don’t imagine Callie has elaborated. If she had, I’m sure our doorstep exchange would have gone down differently.
“We don’t have time for you to change, but you should know I don’t take kindly to being disobeyed.”
“I don’t take kindly to being ordered about either.” She snipes back at me. She’s in a feisty mood tonight. Good.
“Jacket? It’s cool tonight.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“I said,jacket.”
“And I said… I’ll be fine.”
Fuck me. It’s going to be a long night.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ASHER
The car journey is made in almost complete silence. Callie couldn’t sit further away from me in the back of the limousine if she tried. I make the most of the space, sitting with my legs spread and arm flung over the back of the seat.
The party is north of town, so it’ll take a good half an hour to get there. I can think of plenty of good ways to spend half an hour. This isn’t one of them, so I take my phone out and connect it to the limo’s stereo.Lana Del Rey’s Ridepunctuates the air around us.
I sneak a sideways glance at Callie. Her tiny hands are fisted in her lap, and her shoulders are tense. Rossi clearly means a lot to her for her to agree to this.
She’s not a big socialiser. To an outsider, she appears to be a classic introvert, but based on the way she interacts with me, I doubt that’s the case. She rarely attendedparties at the academy in high school, and since we started university, I can count on one hand the social events I’ve seen her at. I’m sure she only goes when our friends Grayson and Dahlia invite her along, so maybe she genuinely suffers from social anxiety.
A pang of guilt hits me as I look at her red dress. I tricked her into wearing it knowing full well the dress code tonight is black and white. Then I remember her rejection last week, and I push away my guilt. She deserves this.
Less than an hour later, I realise how fucking wrong I was. Callie might not choose to socialise much, but it most definitely isn’t because of anxiety. She’s a natural.
The instant we walk in, it’s obvious she’s the only one dressed in a different colour. But instead of walking straight back out again, she shrugs it off and straightens her shoulders, like she doesn’t have a care in the world. As soon as we walk into the large function suite at the hotel, the eyes of the room are on her, and she owns it.
From that moment on, she has men clamouring over each other to introduce themselves. Everyone tends to know each other at these events, and I may as well have introduced fresh meat into a room of circling sharks.
As each one introduces themselves, she bats her eyelashes, smiling coquettishly at them. She laughs at terrible jokes, feigns interest when they talk about stock market fluctuation, and deliberately flirts with them.
