Page 14

Calisto

I hid in Asher’s room for the rest of the evening, filling the time with watching stupid videos on my phone and scrolling random gossip articles about celebrities I didn’t much care about, but who were interesting enough to provide a distraction.

None of my family came to find me, which, while a relief, was also surprising.

Had Asher told them to stay away? And where was Asher? Was he hanging out with them? Despite the almost obsequious politeness he’d displayed since their arrival, I doubted it somehow. Asher struck me as someone used to spending most of the time on his own, and who’d feel suffocated surrounded by people. Especially people like my family, who’d never encountered a boundary they couldn’t cross.

Guilt gnawed at my insides for deserting him at dinner—no number of cute cat videos able to eradicate it completely. I should have stayed. They were my family, after all. They were here because of me.

My family.

My problem.

The guilt wasn’t strong enough to make me leave the room to find out. I’d sleep, and then tomorrow I’d meet the day with renewed vigor, or at least something close to it. Baxter would come back and I’d apologize for taking things out on him. I’d talk to Ben and get an update on O’Reilly’s whereabouts instead of letting things passively happen around me. I’d speak to my family and set some ground rules for their stay here—ground rules I should already have set, instead of assuming Asher would lay the law down with people he didn’t even know. And last but not least, I’d sit Asher down and have a proper conversation with him, memories of feeling like Judas betraying Jesus when I’d said Asher wasn’t my boyfriend refusing to go away.

I waited up for Asher, feeling it somewhat rude to retire to another person’s bed without them in it. When the clock passed midnight, I gave in, lack of sleep from the night before catching up with me. I must have dozed off, only blinking awake when the other side of the mattress gave under someone’s weight. “Asher?”

A slight pause, and then… “Who else would it be?” He sounded amused, something about his tone different from what I was used to.

“My family is in the house,” I admitted. “I wouldn’t put anything past them. I thought my grandad might have staged another coup on this room.” The mattress creaked as Asher sought a more comfortable position, the thought arising that perhaps I would have been better pretending to be asleep. Too late for that now. “What time is it?”

“Just gone one.”

I hadn’t been asleep for long then. Less than an hour. I turned over in the bed so I could see the back of Asher’s head, the light not so dim I couldn’t make out the shape of his skull. “Where were you?” I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth. “Sorry. You don’t have to answer that. It’s absolutely none of my business. This is your house, and you can do whatever you want in it.”

“Pleased to hear it.” That lazy thread of amusement was still there, something about it pleasing to the ear. “I was in the shed. Well… it’s not really a shed. It’s more of a…”

“Second house?”

He gave a low chuckle. “Not quite. A summerhouse, maybe.”

“Of course you have a summerhouse.”

“I have the only key,” Asher said. “I thought I might benefit from spending a couple of hours there.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“I considered sleeping in there, but I thought better of it.”

I winced. “Does it have a bed?”

“No. Just a sofa.”

“Then I’m glad you chose not to.”

“Why?”

The directness of the question took me by surprise and had me scrambling for an appropriate answer, my state of drowsiness not helping. “Because… this is your bed, so if anyone should sleep in the summerhouse, it should be me. If I’d known you had one, I would have suggested it before.”

“You don’t have a key.”

“No, I don’t. And we’re adults. We can share a bed without making a drama out of it.” My fingernails digging into my palms told that for the lie it was, but thankfully, there was no way Asher could tell.

“We can.” Silence had me closing my eyes again. I was still tired enough that sliding back into sleep would require little effort. “I should probably confess something,” Asher said, all traces of amusement gone from his voice.

“Oh?”

“I had a reason for hiding in the summerhouse.”

“Because of me,” I said, my throat tight. It was the obvious reason when he’d already admitted his thoughts of sleeping there. “You shouldn’t have agreed to letting me sleep in here. We could have found an alternative arrangement for one of my family. Let’s be honest, if O’Reilly took my Aunt Margarita, she’d be begging me to take her back within an hour.”

The bed gave again as Asher turned over and I found myself face to face with him in a position that should have felt too intimate, but didn’t. Maybe because of the near darkness cocooning us. “Nothing to do with you,” Asher said quietly. “Once you left the table at dinner, some things were said.”

“By whom?”

“By me, mostly. I ran out of patience.”

The news should have upset me. Instead, it had me smiling into the darkness. “Thank God! Because I was starting to think John was right, and you are made of ice. And if I’d heard you say ‘it’s fine’ one more time when you should be anything but fine, I would probably have been the one to flip out. My family have waltzed in here like they own the place.”

“It’s only for a short while.”

“Is it?” I lifted my head off the pillow. “Because all I keep hearing about O’Reilly is how untouchable she is. How exactly are we supposed to make her go away? Because everyone seems remarkably quiet on that front.”

“We’ll work it out.”

I dropped my head back on the pillow with a sigh. “And in the meantime, we just hide from her?”

“Do you have a better plan?”

“No.”

“Well, there you go, then.”

“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful.”

“You don’t. I’m sorry if I made things more difficult for you with your family.”

“What did you say?”

“That I wanted my kitchen back the way it was before, that I had zero interest in spending the day with your brothers abusing my car, and that I resented your aunt downing a bottle of expensive vintage wine without even asking. Oh, and I left most of your mother’s cooking.”

“All perfectly reasonable.”

“Do you think?” Calisto sounded genuinely worried about my judgment of the situation.

“Definitely. I wish I’d been there.”

“If you’d been there, I doubt I would have said it.”

That had me frowning until I realized what the likely trigger for Asher losing his cool had been. “What I said—”

“You don’t have to apologize. In fact, I’d rather you didn’t.”

“It was unnecessarily mean of me.”

“It wasn’t.” Asher’s words were flat and devoid of emotion. “You were simply stating the truth. We’re not boyfriends. We’re not friends. We’re not anything. We met yesterday. Even work colleague is overstating it, when I spent years making sure our paths never crossed.”

It should have been exactly what I wanted to hear. Yet, somehow, it was wounding. Like it had only taken Asher twenty-four hours to get over me after my initial rejection. I recalled what Baxter had told me before I’d summarily dismissed him, Asher telling Cade that if it wasn’t me, it was no one. Yet here he was, only a few hours later, pretending it was no big deal. Was his plan to push me away?

My silence finally seemed to get through to Asher. “Calisto?”

Something thrummed along my nerve endings, something that refused to be silenced. “I find you very attractive,” I said.

“Okay.”

“I mean, why wouldn’t I? You’ve seen yourself. Your hair. Your eyes. Your lips. Your body.” What was I doing? Where was I going with this?

“Thank you. It’s good to know that it’s only my personality that is objectionable.”

I groaned. “I never said that. Don’t put words in my mouth.” An urge seized hold of me when Asher stayed silent. I knew the sensible thing to do would be to pull it to the forefront of my mind, to turn it over and examine it, and then to sleep on it and repeat the process in the cold light of day. I did none of that, striking with all the restraint of a cobra to touch my lips to Asher’s. Given the speed and impulsivity of my attack, I wouldn’t have blamed him for rearing back. He didn’t, his lips warm and pliable beneath mine.

They were welcoming enough that my intention just to deliver the briefest of pecks before returning to my side of the bed disappeared beneath layers of sensation. I melted instead, my lips moving over Asher’s in a sensual exploration. The hesitancy of his movement when he lifted a hand to cup the back of my neck eradicated any last lingering doubts I had, his fingers warm and gentle.

I deepened the kiss instead, my tongue probing the seam of his lips until he opened up. A groan escaped me as his tongue slid against mine, my arousal ratcheting up tenfold. I wanted this. I really wanted this. I didn’t know how far I wanted it to go, because I still hadn’t switched that part of my brain back on, but I couldn’t deny we had sexual chemistry. A lot, our kisses growing increasingly heated.

When Asher rolled on top of me, I did nothing to stop it, glad of a less awkward angle for my neck. I liked his weight pinning me down. It made me feel safe, like anyone coming for me would have to go through him first. I kissed him with growing urgency, my hands straying over the taut muscles of his bare back, down to the dip of his spine, and then to… I ripped my mouth from his and blinked up at him. “Are you naked?”

It was a stupid question when I’d had it in mind to halt my exploration at his waistband, whether that waistband comprised pajamas or underwear, only to find no waistband to be had. There was only more silken skin, hot to the touch, my fingertips resting on the swell of Asher’s arse. And it was too late to move my hands now without turning it into a thing. Except, I already had by blurting out the question like I was a maiden aunt confronted by a stripper at a hen party.

Asher rolled back to where he’d started and propped himself up on one elbow. At least that solved the problem of moving my hands. “I decided something at dinner,” he said, his voice perfectly calm.

“What?”

“That I would be completely and utterly myself from now on. No pretending to be something I’m not. That’s what triggered the honesty with your family.”

“Right.”

A flash of teeth as he smiled in the dark. “So when I came in here, I resolved to sleep exactly as I always do.”

“Naked,” I said.

“’Naked,’” he echoed. “If it bothers you, I can—”

“No,” I said before he could finish. “I was just taken by surprise, that’s all. I overreacted.”

“I shouldn’t have gotten carried away and rolled on top of you.”

“I shouldn’t have kissed you, so it’s my fault.”

“Why did you?”

“I don’t know.”

“But it was enjoyable?”

Heat rushed to my cheeks, and I was glad of the darkness to hide it. I was by no means a blushing virgin, but this was such a strange situation that it left me floundering. “You know it was. You were there.”

Asher lay back down. And either it was my imagination, or a smug satisfaction radiated from him. “You should get some sleep.”

“I was asleep,” I pointed out. “And then you came in. Naked.” Now why had I added that?

“I didn’t come in naked,” Asher said, the quiet amusement back in his voice. “That would mean I shed my clothes outside the room where any of your family might have happened along and gotten quite the shock.”

I sat up and made quite the production out of plumping my pillow. “You know what I meant.”

“Good night, Calisto. Sleep well.”

I threw myself back down on the bed, refusing to give him the satisfaction of responding in kind. He was asleep long before I was, my brain insisting on replaying every moment of the kiss. What would have happened if I hadn’t freaked out at him being naked? A hand job? A blow job? Would we have fucked?

It was amazing how quickly I’d gone from thinking nothing could happen between us to that seeming like a pleasurable possibility. It was only a few hours since I’d told my family that we were nothing but work colleagues, and I’d meant it. Now, I was fighting the urge to roll over, wake Asher up, and continue what we’d started. We might not be the fated mates he believed we were, but I was beginning to think we could be something if I was open to the possibility.