THEO
“Are you sure this place is open?” Emmie asks as I push the door open to let her walk into the bar first.
“Trust me, Hellcat.” I spank her arse as she walks ahead and she squeals in delight. “You like that, babe?” I ask, quickly stepping up to her, wrapping my arm around her waist and pulling her back against me.
“I’d prefer it if there were fewer clothes involved.”
“Mmm… Revenge makes you playful.”
Spinning in my arms, she looks up at me with her huge dark eyes which have the power to totally disarm me.
“Are you going to be my playmate, boss?”
“I’ll be anything you want me to be,” I murmur, leaning forward to capture her lips as voices float down to us.
“Emmie’s a fucking bad-arse bitch,” Alex booms, making her laugh into our kiss.
I’m hardly surprised they beat us here. They were only sitting around the corner from the building entrance just in case things went south after all.
As always, we’re in this together.
Emmie is ripped away from me as Alex engulfs her in a bear hug.
“I bet you were so fucking hot, ripping that wanker a new one,” Alex announces.
“Fucking smoking,” I confess. “And mine,” I add.
“Oh, unknot your fucking knickers, Cirillo. I’m not stealing your girl, jeez.”
He passes Emmie back to me as the five of us head deeper into the club where Nico and Daemon are sitting at the bar, surrounded by shots of vodka.
“This is a Cirillo bar then, I assume?” Emmie asks me, looking around.
“Yep. And we cleared it out for a private party.”
“Impressive,” she says teasingly, taking the shot glass when I hand it to her.
“Gotta win you over somehow,” I mock.
“Oh, and your wealth and status hit me right in the feels.”
Throwing my head back, I bark out a laugh. “Pretty sure I could be the richest guy in the world and you’d be utterly unimpressed.”
“Bingo, baby. I don’t give a fuck. All I want,” she says, laying her hand on my chest right over my heart, “is right in here.”
“Drink up, kids. We need to be wasted before dawn,” Nico shouts, pulling us both from the trance we’d fallen into.
With a wicked smirk full of dirty promises of things to come, Emmie places her glass against her lips and throws her shot back in one.
As if on cue, the music starts up around us, and after two more shots each, we hit the dance floor, Seb and Stella close behind us while Alex pouts like a toddler because he’s got no playmates.
“Where’s Toby?” Emmie shouts in my ear over the music.
I glance over at Alex and Nico again, and while Alex broods about lack of female attention, Nico is sitting with a scowl set firmly in place. And I know why. I feel it too.
“It’s Jonas’s fake funeral tomorrow. He’s… not in a good place.”
Emmie stops dancing, her hands framing my face.