I can’t help but laugh, tipping my head back and letting my guard down. It’s not something I do easily and certainly not usually around people I’ve just met, but I can’t deny there’s something about Calla that has me pulling my armour down a little. She’s just so easy to be around; a little firecracker, keeping me on my toes. Who knows what she’s going to say next.
“Are you single?”
Her question has nothing to do with what we were last talking about, but I go along with it regardless.
“I am.” I nod. “Are you?”
“Painfully so.”
“How is a woman like you single?”
“A woman like me?” Calla repeats narrowing her eyes for a heartbeat.
“Mhm. Funny as fuck, and a knockout to boot.”
Calla pops her shoulders. “I’m too wild.”
I furrow my brow. “Too wild?”
“Yep. At least, that’s what my ex told me.”
I can’t stop the way my heart pinches at Calla’s admission.
“There’s no such thing astoowild.”
“There is,” she argues. “I can’t be contained.”
I shake my head, gripping my beer glass so tight I feel the blood begin to pool in my fingertips. “You don’t need to be contained. Be wild. Be crazy. Be whoever the fuck you want to be, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.”
“It does when I keep scaring them away.”
I pop my shoulders in a shrug. “He was obviously the wrong person for you then. The right person won’t be scared away.”
Calla squints, traversing her gaze up and down the length of me, appraisingly. I wait for her reply, but it never comes.
Instead, she cocks her head to the side, listening to the catchy pop song being pushed through the speakers.
Grabbing my forearm with her dainty fingers, Calla spins, pulling me – with more force than I thought she had in her – away from the bar and into the sweaty throng of people gyrating on the makeshift dance floor.
I shove my still half full pint glass behind me, on to the bar top, latching both of my hands around the curves of Calla’s waist as she rises up onto her tiptoes, grazing the delicate shell of my ear with her glossy lips.
“Come dance with me, Blake.”
The sound of my name on her lips…
I’m a fucking goner.
I can’t dance for shit. But I’d be stupid to say no to the free spirited, knockout of a woman standing in front of me.
Smoothing along the satin feel of her bodice, I follow Calla, staying still, and silent, when one of her friends – Princess Jasmine – bounds over, frantically whispering in Calla’s ear. When Calla smiles reassuringly, I see her friend’s shoulders drop, tipping her chin over to where I can see the bride-to-be, head to toe in starch white, grinning, and giving Calla and I two thumbs up. I catch Calla’s resounding laugh, before she pulls us a little further away from her friends, but close enough that they’re still in reach.
“Everything okay?” I ask, bending my head to be heard. The music is much louder here than it was standing at the bar.
“Mhm.” Calla blinks up at me. “They just wanted to make sure I’m safe.”
I nod. I want to say something, anything, to apologise for previous men because nobody should ever feel unsafe, but Calla simply bats my silent words away, turning in my arms and moving her hips against mine.
Chapter 3
