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April 2024
Calloway Couture Boutique
Philadelphia
ROSE COBALT
I closed the boutique.
Just for the day. Interior designers left about five minutes ago after canvassing the space and snapping photographs, all for Calloway Couture’s retail expansion into New York City, San Francisco, and Chicago.
The boutique is quiet, and so I sit behind the cash register and sketch a lace bustier. I spend most of my time creating baby clothes and dresses, but I’ve been drawing some haute couture gowns and thinking about fabrics. They’re incredibly unaffordable for the everyday woman, which is not what Calloway Couture is about, but I’ve felt compelled towards the designs, more inspired to go down this path.
My five-year plan is to create a fall fashion line of them. I’m constantly busy, even with all my gremlins in school, but a five-year timeframe should be achievable.
I check the clock. Ben, just two, is in pre-pre-K for another hour and then I have to pick him up from school. I tap my pencil to my sketchbook and skim the racks of clothes, the ottoman cushions, the twinkling chandeliers. This one store will become many. My clothes are being worn by thousands, and I’d return to myself at twenty-three and I’d just say, breathe.
I worried so much about my fashion line. Would it survive the media fallout? Would my dream last? It took a lot of time, more work than I sometimes thought capable, but Calloway Couture survived with me.
Outside of my store, paparazzi start sprinting to the curb. Their cameras and bodies angled towards the street. A black limousine parks.
I instantly know who’s inside.
Connor Cobalt emerges like the celebrity he probably always envisioned inside his head. Though now he has literal cameras flashing in his face. He acts as though it’s all background to his world, his wavy hair perfect and the sleeves of his button-down rolled up his forearms.
His confidence is his most alluring accessory, and I find myself pressed against the checkout desk to near him. Honestly, Rose. He’s not as amazing as you.
I flip my hair off my shoulder.
Domineering and poised, Connor heads for my store, and cameramen part like the Red Sea. Connor unlocks the door with his set of keys, a small white shopping bag in his hand. He shuts and locks the store behind him.
The paparazzi can’t catch much through the tinted glass, so they don’t linger for long.
“You cheated,” I say as he approaches me.
“So you’ve reminded me seventeen times now.” He places the shopping bag beside the register, a tempting distance. I try not to eye it for long.
Stay firm, Rose.
“And yet you still lack remorse.”
His amusement lifts his lips. “I didn’t personally cheat.”
“You can’t blame Eliot and Tom. They were on your team. Your entire team cheated.” We played Pictionary last night. Jane, Charlie, and Ben were on my team, and Beckett, Eliot, and Tom were on Connor’s. The two four-year-olds kept flipping the sand-timer over during their rounds to give themselves extra seconds.
Connor says they thought it was a toy, but children have their motives. They’re devious little things.
He rests casually against my checkout counter. “We gave your team extra time in the final round, and yet you still lost.”
I glare and raise my hand at his face. “Your voice just shriveled the last of my eggs. I’m barren and frigid.” I point at the door. “The exit is that way.” I do the thing that annoys him most.
I ignore him.
And I resume sketching.
“I bought you something. I didn’t mean for it to be a peace offering, but it can if it satisfies you.”
I struggle to bite my tongue. I don’t even last a full thirty-seconds. “You’re terrible at admitting defeat.”
“Because I’m not capable of feeling defeated.”
It’s easy to forget that he’s not just a narcissist in a loose sense. I smooth my lips together, my glare investigating his calm, relaxed exterior. “I reject your peace offering.”
Why is he grinning?
I rise to my feet. “I said rejection, Richard. I just rejected you.”
“Rose.”
I quickly cover his mouth with my hand. “Can you not say my name like you’re fucking the syllable?” I feel his smile beneath my palm. Ugh.
He clasps my wrist and tears my hand off his face. “I said your name how I always say it. Rose.”
“You have a death wish.” His strong grip on my wrist stimulates my sensitive nerves that only scream, more, harder, deeper.
He walks around the checkout counter, so nothing, not even the register, separates us. “How do you plan to kill me?”
I raise my chin. “With a pickaxe in each eye.” I can’t stand his smile, and yet, I want it to stay. I reach out with my free hand to cover his mouth.
He seizes my other wrist. God, yes.
Then he tugs me towards his body, so abruptly that a sharp breath escapes my lips. I keep my piercing glare on his deep blues, his eyes as smooth as water and silk.
He towers above me, but I lift my head as much as I can and say, “Then I’d set you on fire.”
His lips hover close to whisper, “Tu l'as déjà fait.”
You already have.
Before I think properly, he hoists me up, my legs around his waist, dress riding up to my thighs. His defined muscles cut sharper in his biceps, even through his white button-down. He carries me towards a dressing room, veiled by a black curtain.
My collarbone juts out, my oxygen tight in my lungs. Connor kisses the bone before noticing the necklace I wear. I feel his breath stagger.
His liquid gaze looks to me in complete and utter knowing. He catches the diamond pendant, pear-shaped like a water droplet, between his teeth.
I pulse.
This necklace is the first piece of jewelry he ever bought me. I was in college. We’d just started officially dating. I kept it in a safe deposit box so I wouldn’t lose it, but I thought about it today and checked it out so I could wear it.
All of a sudden, my back hits the dressing room wall, the black curtain yanked closed. My legs are still parted around his waist, and he seizes my wrists again, this time with one hand. He elevates them above my head, stretching and pinning them there.
“I hate you,” I argue in the sh
allowest breath.
“Tu m’aimes.” You love me.
He drops the necklace, and his lips find mine. The aggressive, forceful kiss contains aching need and desire. When he nips my lip, his mouth trails to the pit of my ear. “Rose.”
Good God.
I melt but tense against him. It’s such an oxymoron. I know he loves those. Our faces are so close, and his free hand starts ripping off my panties.
“I’m going to claw your face off,” I pant, more breathy than I intend.
He cups my jaw, then drifts to my throat. Choke me. He squeezes much harder than he’s been able to in the past since I’m not pregnant.
“You know what I heard you just say, Rose?” He kisses me and then murmurs, “I heard you say that you love my mind, my body…my cock.” Connor removes his hand to slip his two fingers inside of me. In and out. I shudder. He rams his body against mine, and I jolt with pleasure.
Connor cages me to the wall with his six-foot-four build. My nerves electrify, and I grow so wet that I moan when he grips my hair and pulls. I feel utterly and completely in his possession.
He kisses me once more, my lips stinging by the force. His hand returns to my wrists, and his fingers between my legs never leave. Against my mouth, he asks, “How much pain?”
“None,” I whisper.
He’s not asking how much pain I want. He’s asking if I’m in any.
I gave birth to Winona four weeks ago, and the rules are six weeks, no sex. My mind is a pool of betrayal. 100% horny and undone. I’m leaning towards breaking all the rules in favor of sex.
Traitor.
Rose Calloway Cobalt doesn’t break rules. I follow them.
Do it, Rose. Let his cock drive so hard inside of you.
There aren’t any security cameras inside the Calloway Couture dressing rooms. Everything says yes except this one stipulation.
Fuck it.
I consent to this with a nod. Horny Rose wins today. Connor barely pauses, unzipping my dress and pulling it off my head. He lets me have control of my hands, only to unbutton his shirt. He unclips my bra, and I’m entirely bare as he steps out of his slacks and pulls off his boxer-briefs, while still tucked up against me.
