Page 47 of Red Flagged
I melted into him as one hand hitched my leg up over his hip, the other still fisting the laces. Heat spread down my thighs. I arched closer.
“They saw your fucking tattoo,” he rasped, dragging his mouth down my throat, biting just beneath my jaw. I shivered, nipples hardening against the dress, my tender breasts aching. “You turned around and gave them a fucking view of it like a present. Like it doesn’t already have my name all over it.”
I whimpered as he grounded his hips against mine—hard, precise, brutal. Every nerve ending in my body lit up like a goddamn power grid. “Mon amour, you’re so sexy when you’re jealous.”
“I swear to fuck, Auri?—”
Then the door burst open again.
“ABSOLUTELY NOT.” Ivy’s voice cracked through the room like a whip. “Fraser, if you mess up her face, I swear to God?—”
Callum didn’t let go. Instead, he pressed into me further, and I whimpered from the friction against my clit.
Ivy marched forward. “She has exactly two layers of foundation on, not nearly enough setting spray, and I swear if I have to redo that liner?—”
“Ivy!” I choked out, breathless as I dropped my head back against the wall. “We weren’t—we didn’t?—”
She pointed a manicured finger at him. “STEP. AWAY. FROM. FRENCHIE.”
Callum sighed and stepped back with all the reluctance of a man handing over his last cigarette. His lips were glossy from mine, eyes dark and full of heat and intent, and I was suddenlynot so stable on my own two feet as my leg dropped to the ground.
“She looks like sex on legs,” he protested. “And you’re mad at me for reacting like it.”
“I’m mad at you for ruining my artistry,” Ivy snapped, grabbing my chin and inspecting my lips. “Ugh. Lip gloss smudged. You owe me a brown sugar shaken espresso with coconut milk, a single pump of white mocha,nocinnamon, and an extra shot.”
Callum raised a brow. “Did you run out of vowels or just human decency when you came up with that order?”
“Oh myGod,” Ivy groaned, throwing her hands in the air. “Get back in the corner and cool your dick off, Casanova. Some of us are trying to work.”
He smirked as he backed toward the door, slow and deliberate, eyes never leaving mine. “You’re lucky I’m a gentleman,” he murmured. “Otherwise I’d be on my knees right now.”
Ivy muttered something under her breath. “DO NOT say ‘on your knees’ while I’m standing right here.” Then she slammed the door on him.
I bit back a grin, chest still rising and falling too fast. “Okay, okay. I’ll behave.”
“You’llbothbehave,” she corrected, rushing to fix my gloss before turning toward the rack. “Now come on. We need one that doesn’t make him feral.”
So I reached for the one I hadn’t been sure about. The plunging twist-front dress that seemed almost perfect—long sleeves, soft fabric, stopping at the top of my knees. But there was something about the weight of it in my hands. As if it was keeping secrets.
“This one’s elegant,” Ivy said after she tightened the knot at my waist, “but still dangerous.” She brushed her hands overmy shoulders, turned me toward the mirror, and met my eyes in our reflection. “Still the epitome of France’s most impressive woman under thirty. And it shows. Beautiful. Smart. Charming. Fluent in sarcasm. World-class at everything from racing to sexual tension to putting dickhead executives in their place.” She paused. “No wonder Fraser can’t keep his eyes off you.”
She stepped around me to face me. “This is the safest option,” she said softly, “but it won’t make him want you any less. And I think you know that.”
I blinked slowly, the words catching somewhere in my chest. My limbs still felt floaty and warm from the Vicodin, my head full of fuzz and heat, but Ivy’s words pierced straight through.
“I don’t know if I want safe,” I whispered, then hesitated. “But I think this is powerful.”
“Exactly.” Ivy nodded once. “Let him suffer with that.”
When I stepped out, I didn’t say a word. Just padded barefoot into the living room, smoothing my palms down the satiny black fabric. The neckline plunged low, dipping into a deep V that stopped just above my navel, cinched with a knot that hugged the smallest part of my waist. From there, it draped over my hips like poured ink—shimmering, fluid, obscene in its simplicity.
The slit climbed high up one thigh, flashing skin with every step, but not enough to flash that bloody handprint. It was modest. Technically. But the way it clung to every inch of me like it had been sewn on by sin itself? There was nothing modest about that part.
And there was certainly nothing innocent about the strangled sound Callum let out when he saw me. “Christ.”
Kimi coughed into his drink. “Holy shit, Dubois. You’re going to be the problem tonight.”
“You look like you just fucked a diplomat and crashed his motorcade,” Marco said.
