Page 37 of Red Flagged
He met my gaze with zero hesitation. “Like the board’s already yours. And you’re just deciding when to call checkmate.”
Something shivered down my spine, slow and sweet and dangerous. I leaned closer, close enough that our noses almost touched, his breath ghosting against my lips. “Then you’d better hope you’re on my team.”
He tucked my hair behind my ear with all the tenderness in the world. “I’m not worried.”
“Why not?”
“Because I already lost the game the second I met you.”
Oh.
He said it so casually, as if it wasn’t profound. But itwas, because the second I saw his piercing blue eyes and heard hissubtle Scottish accent, I’d been consumed by thoughts of him. That felt like a lifetime ago.
I blinked at him as he turned to grab a bottle of water on the nightstand, stunned by the softness of the moment, until something wicked overtook me. I tilted my head, blinking slowly and feigning innocence. “Well, well. Poetic Callum is gracing me with his presence, I see. What a far cry from Daddy Dom Callum?—”
He’d just taken a sip of water, but the second those words left my mouth, he spit it out, choking and spluttering, spraying both of us in a light mist of “The World’s Finest Water”. What a waste.
“Christ,Auri—” he wheezed, swiping at his chest.
I cackled, fully feral now. “You’re lucky I didn’t sayDaddy Dom Cal, CEO of making me beg.”
He froze like I’d physically short-circuited him. His hand hovered in midair, water bottle half-forgotten, eyes wide as his ears turned an adorable shade of pink. “I swear to God,” he muttered, blinking fast like he was buffering. “I willliterallybend you over the nearest surface.”
The threat made my stomach flip violently. My face warmed in that helpless, hopeless way it always did when he got like this—hot and wrecked and pretending he wasn’t proud of himself. I bit my lip, then hummed low in my throat. “Icould’vemoaned it in French, you know,” I murmured, voice suddenly sweet and sinful. “WhimperedPapa dominantright into your ear and taken a spanking with the hands that ruin me. All while you command me in the voice that makes me cry.”
He set the water down like he was preparing for his own funeral. Then he just… stared at me. Blinking. Processing. Dying slowly in real time.
“Don’t pretend you don’t like it,” I said smugly, watching his pupils dilate.
“You’reunhinged,” he whispered, still recovering, but his grin gave him away as he reached for me again. In one swift motion, he rolled on top of me, pinning me to the mattress with his weight and a stupidly romantic look on his face.
“Fuck it,” he said, brushing a strand of hair from my face. “Let’s get married right now. I’ll call Ivy. I’m sure she’s ordained. We’ll do it in the hallway. Or in the elevator. Or hell, the bathroom downstairs?—”
I snorted, hands braced on his chest. “Slow down there,mon Casanova catastrophe.”
He tilted his head to the side, and for once it felt nice that he was the one not understanding me. “My what?”
“Casanova,” I repeated sweetly. “Because you’re charming, stupidly hot, and you talk a big game about seducing me in elevators.” I propped myself up on my elbows, our faces close together now, and dropped my voice. “Catastrophe… because you destroy me every time. And youknowit.”
He chuckled like a man on the verge of spontaneous combustion. “Does the idea of marrying me seduce you, Aurélie? Because you’re looking at me like it does.”
Merde.I could never hide myself from him. He knew me too well.
I’d been thinking about it more and more as of late, in the moments between the chaos, when I had a moment to breathe. When we weren’t fighting a war or fucking each other or falling apart—when we were justus—I’d fantasize about it. The ring, the vows, the intimacy of just our loved ones.
Pink peonies, of course. A sea of them. A romantic ceremony at sunset, as all beginnings start at the end of one life to join two. A man who looked at me like I was his entire fucking world. And a white dress, not because it symbolized innocence, but because it symbolizedhim. Because he was possessive enough,traditional enough, to want me in it. And I wanted to please him. Of course I did.
For me, it wasn’t about the tradition. It was because when I wore it, he’d see I was his—by choice, by vow, by fire.
I wouldn’t be a virgin in white, but a goddess in it. Sacred. A holy figure at the altar. And his eyes would say exactly what we both already knew.
I was divine. And I was his.Forever.
“Tempting,” I purred, all faux-innocence. “But I’d rather not debut my wedding dress with your handprints on my ass. I’ve already done that once. Now the world knows who I belong to.” I dragged my bottom lip through my teeth before releasing it, loving that his eyes tracked the movement. “And God help me, I do want to marry you someday.”
“Careful,” he rasped. “You talk about marrying me in that voice, and I’ll have you in the stairwellandthe elevator.”
“You asking me that in your sex voice is unfair,” I murmured, squirming under him. “But yes. I might let you marry me. If you ask properly.”
