Some Kind of Perfect (Calloway Sisters #4.5) (12 page)

My shoulders dig into the mattress, and my back arches, asking to move forward. I can’t deny myself what my body craves any longer. I’m so pent up that I moan when his hand skims my breast. I breathe and cry out like I’m being lit on fire.

“
Connor.
”

He pops his mouth off my fingers. “What am I?” he asks in such a demanding tone. He kneads my hip, giving me a taste of force that he’d use all over my body.

I squeeze my eyes shut, all my soldiers abandoning this battle.

“What am I?”

“A god.” He drives so hard forward that I instantly come. Clenching around his cock. He thrusts deep and hard, building me to another peak before I descend from the first. I struggle to keep my eyes open.

He kisses me with rough affection, my lips swelling beneath his. My body blazes with my mind, and he tugs my hair. Yanks until the pressure lights up every nerve. Before my eyes roll back, I peek at his ass that flexes as he drives in, so fast it’s like he’s running a marathon between my legs.

Connor.

He groans against my mouth. “You want to be ridden hard, Rose? You want me to
grab
every fucking inch of you?”

I mutter out a pleasured approval.

He bites the flesh of my neck, and I gasp sharply.
Connor.
He sucks my neck before wrapping his hand around my throat. I love when he chokes me, but I know he won’t do it for long while I’m pregnant. He’s gentler about this than usual.

He whispers in the pit of my ear, “You can feel how hard I’m fucking you.” He goes deep, so deep that I arch into him and moan into his shoulder. Connor holds me against his body, cupping my ass, and pushing me closer, until he’s so far in I can hardly breathe.

We both hit a staggering climax.

Even before we calm, I ask him in a tired voice to
stay in.
I’m not sure he even hears at first. I keep my cheek on his shoulder, my muscles fatigued and eyes shut. I feel him carrying me, my legs still around him, and he rests my head against my pillow, his body pressed up against mine.

I fight to stay awake.

Connor is on top of me, unlocking my handcuffs. He also, very clearly, heard my request.

“I think I just had this strange nightmare,” I say with more contentment than I planned.

He sets the handcuffs aside. “What made it a nightmare?” He kisses my sore wrists, watching me intently.

“I called you a god.”

His lips rise in his next kiss. “Then your nightmare is my dream.”

“Not your reality?” I rebut.

He leans forward. “All my dreams are realities, darling. And your dreams are my dreams.” He presses the warmest, most loving kiss to my forehead.

2019

“Fuck it.”

- Ryke Meadows,
We Are Calloway (Season 1 Episode 13 – Cornfields & Butterbeer)

< 8 >

January 2019

The Meadows Cottage

Philadelphia

RYKE MEADOWS

“Why the fuck did we volunteer for this?” I ask Dais, gripping the base of a silver ladder.

She stands on the second highest rung with only one foot. “Because he’s one of our closest friends.” Daisy rips a piece of duct tape with her teeth and adheres the string of a long blue banner to the ceiling. Our first floor is just one big fucking room, no foyer or archway to hang this across.

I grumble, “He’s annoying as fuck.”

My statement is interrupted by
ping ping
and
bop bop
sounds. Ten feet away, surrounded by a mound of fucking pillows in the living room area, our eleventh-month-old baby bangs on her kiddie keyboard. Nutty, our white husky, sleeps through the terrible music, curled on the foot of the stairs.

Sulli’s not going to win a fucking musical award any time soon. It’s not like we expected her to be musically inclined. Daisy can barely hold a tune, and I’m not that fucking great at singing either.

Though I’m a hell of a lot better than my little brother.

“But you love him,” Daisy mumbles, biting another piece of tape.

“That’s a strong fucking word to use between me and Connor.”

She slaps the tape onto the ceiling and then glances at me with a lopsided smile. “So salty, that Ryke Meadows.”

I just know that whatever we fucking do, he’s
going to shit on it.

So yeah, maybe I am a little fucking salty.

The tape suddenly peels off for the fifth time, and the banner falls onto Daisy’s head. I reach up and clasp her thigh, so she doesn’t fucking plummet.

Daisy pushes the banner off and then mock gasps, “He’s touching my ass.”

I raise my brows at her and then move my hand up to her round ass. “
Now
I’m touching your fucking ass.” I pat her ass and squeeze.

She puts her hand to her forehead. “What will my husband think? I let another man fondle my butt?” Daisy theatrically falls
backwards
off the fucking ladder.

I anticipate it so much that I easily catch her in time. My baseball cap, that she was wearing, drops off her head and thuds to the hardwood.

In my arms, she looks up at me.

I look down at her. “Your husband is thinking he’s married the craziest fucking Calloway girl.”

Her lips curve upwards. “You’re friends with my husband?”

I toss a piece of hair into her face, and then I fucking kiss her. My body warms at our embrace, and I feel her smile beneath my lips.

She mumbles into the kiss, “Hi, husband.”

I nip her bottom lip and whisper, “Hi, wife.” I abruptly toss Daisy over the couch. She lands on the cushion with a contagious smile.

Sulli laughs at the sudden sight of her mom.

Daisy sits up and leans towards Sulli. “You didn’t know, peanut butter cupcake? I can
fly
.” Her voice is so melodic—I could listen to her talk to our daughter every day.

I gather the blue banner and go to the nearby kitchen counter. Like I said, our first floor is all one fucking space, divided off by furniture.

“Let’s just fucking tape this across the barstools.”

“I like it.” Daisy makes a silly face at Sulli before helping me re-tape this thing. When we’re finished, the words are bold and clear in her handwriting.

Happy 30
th
Birthday, Connor!

“He’s going to fucking hate it.” This actual fact almost makes it worth it. Truth is, he will most definitely shit on everything, I most definitely do love the guy, and I also
really
fucking love when he’s given a hard time. Which is rare. Because not much, if anything, flusters him.

“Very true,” Daisy says. “Connor Cobalt doesn’t appreciate the finer things in parties.”

“And what are the finer fucking things, Calloway?”

She outstretches her arms and tosses them higher into the air. “Blindingly bright decorations! Birthday sashes! And cake! Every birthday must have cake.” Daisy bows.

I want her in my fucking arms.

To hold her and kiss her and just fucking love her.

These sentiments never recede. Never end.

Daisy goes still. “You did remember the cake, right?” Rose and her sisters left that task up to my brother and me.

“It’s in the fucking freezer.”

Lo thought it’d be funny to give him a
vanilla
ice cream cake. Out of irony. If we had to deem anyone “vanilla” out of all of us, Connor Cobalt would be the last on the list. And you know what? I highly doubt Connor will shit on Lo’s vanilla fucking cake because it’s coming from Lo.

I’m not bitter. If anything, I’m glad that one part of Connor’s birthday might go right because of my brother. Connor may hate celebrating his own birthday, but there’s a part of all of us—even
me
—that wants him to enjoy today.

How, why, do I fucking care about him? In one breath, I want to see him struggle for once. In the other, I want him to be as happy as the rest of us—because anything else just feels wrong.

“Dada!” Sulli exclaims, in the midst of teetering towards us on two feet. She already succeeded at walking last week (we videotaped the event), but her legs still tremble beneath her with each wobbly step.

Daisy and I angle towards our daughter. There’s nothing fucking cuter than this baby in a green onesie and her dark brown hair in tiny pigtails. I have thick hair, so it wasn’t a surprise that hers grew in fast.

Daisy crouches and waves and cheers Sulli on.

As I stare between them, guilt gnaws at me.
Just tell your wife what fucking happened yesterday.
I can’t.

I lean an elbow on the bar counter.

I can’t break Daisy’s heart. It’s the last fucking thing I ever want to do in my lifetime.
She doesn’t have to know.

Sullivan skirts past Daisy, laughing as though she’s in a race against her mom. Then our baby starts to climb up the rungs of the wooden barstool.

“Hey there,” Daisy calls out. She has a hard time telling Sulli outright
no
.

So do I.

I’ll get her.
I pry Sulli away from her fucking adventure, holding her in my arms. When she looks at me, I make a scrunched face.

Sulli tries to mimic me, brows attempting to bunch.

This is my fucking baby.
I still can’t believe it, not even eleven-months in.

Daisy stands up. “Sullivan Minnie Meadows, climber extraordinaire.” She nuzzles Sulli’s nose with her own.

I’d never want a fucking baby with anyone but Daisy.

My wife scans the first floor. “Hey, look, we’re pretty good at party-planning.”

We wound gold streamers around our staircase banisters, and we blew up a few black and gold balloons. We bought most of the decorations from the New Year’s Eve themed aisle, so it looks less like a birthday party. Daisy and I thought Connor would like that. We’re lucky he’s even going to show up. Ever since his twenty-seventh birthday party, he’s let us actually celebrate with him, and he doesn’t fly off to some other country anymore.

The decoration that just won’t stop fucking giving: a cardboard cutout of Connor Cobalt.

I’m serious.

A life-sized version of Connor—with his conceited grin, single arched brow, tailored suit, and a photoshopped
crown
on his wavy hair—stands a few feet from the front door. It’ll either severely piss him off or amuse him.

Either one is fucking fine with me.

“Ten bucks he throws himself into the trash,” Daisy says.

I hold Sulli with one arm. “Fuck no. He wouldn’t defile a picture of himself.”

Daisy tilts her head. “I think he might show up, look around impassively, and just walk right out the door.” I see a pang of disappointment behind her green eyes.

“He won’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I know where he fucking lives,” I snap. I’m not throwing him a party just so he can walk on out. No fucking way.

Daisy twists the ties of her white sweatshirt that says:
sunshine mixed with a little hurricane.
“You know, you’re the only two guys that have ever understood me. Like
really
gotten to know me in a way that no one else has, and I’m not saying that I like Connor the same way that I like you. Obviously.”

“I fucking hope not.”

She tries to hide a smile. I wish she wouldn’t hide it, even for my sake.

“You can fucking smile, sweetheart.”

And so she does. “I know I don’t owe him anything. The way that you said I never owed you anything for being there for me, but I just hope my friendship with him holds the same understanding both ways. If that makes sense?”

“Yeah, but the guy isn’t a normal fucking guy. He views the rest of us as
food
in his animal kingdom.”

Her smile stretches. “But I only want you to eat me.”

Fuck.
I give her the slowest once-over, and she rises and falls on the balls of her feet.

Then the door swings open.

“Which one of you crazies ordered a subscription to
Celebrity Crush
?” My sharp-jawed brother barrels into the cottage, a bright pink tabloid in hand.

“Why the fuck are you going through our mail?” I retort.

Daisy clutches my arm like she sees an incoming car crash. “Watch out, L—”

Lo collides with the cardboard Connor Cobalt and trips on top of him, simultaneously trying to upright the cutout and not fall. “Jesus…Christ,” he curses.

I start to laugh with Daisy.

My brother straddles a life-sized image of Connor, and he just now registers what he ran into. He gives me a look. “Bro…what is this even doing here?”