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My lips spread into a grin, the world around me falling away as I crane my neck to look back at him. “Maybe,” I tease, rubbing my ass against him enticingly. “You gonna dance with me, Sarge?”
He chuckles lowly, his chest rumbling against my back. “Thought I told you I don’t dance?”
I roll my eyes and turn my head forward again, attempting to wriggle out of his grasp. “Oh well. Guess I’ll have to find some other guy to dance with me…”
Cole’s arm tightens around my waist, forcing the air from my lungs. “Try it,” he growls, his other hand coming up to collar my throat. “And see how fast I take you in the back office and paint that ass of yours red, little girl.”
His threat sends liquid heat rushing to my core and I press my thighs together to alleviate the ache that thrums between them. I turn to look at him over my shoulder again, arching a brow in challenge. “Promise?”
Our lips are a whisper apart, our gazes colliding as we breathe each other’s air. The sexual tension burning between us is so thick that it’s almost palpable, ratcheting up by the millisecond.
“Boss, we’ve got trouble out front.”
The sound of Max’s voice bursts the imaginary bubble Cole and I made for ourselves, any sense of privacy between us dissolving away in an instant. All of the sudden, the sounds of the club rush back in and I’m painfully aware of all of the eyes on us- every one of my friends, Tayla the terrible, and countless others that I don’t recognize. They’re all looking on with morbid curiosity and the realization hits me that, intentional or not, Cole just outed us to his pack.
That doesn’t seem to be on his mind right now, though. Cole releases his grip on me, his posture going rigid and his jaw setting. It’s amazing how quickly he switches into business mode.
He turns to Max, giving him a nod, then back to me, heaving an annoyed sigh. “I’ll be back,” Cole grumbles.
“I’ll try not to get into too much trouble while you’re gone,” I reply, tossing him a wink as he starts to turn away.
He doubles back for a moment, his eyes flaring gold, conveying a silent promise of delicious repercussion.
My blood turns molten at the prospect. I resist the urge to fan myself, heat crawling up my neck as Cole follows Max to the front of the club and I turn back to face my friends.
Shay’s sporting a shit-eating grin, while the others look more surprised than anything. Tayla’s suddenly nowhere to be found, but before I can contemplate her absence, the others start in on giving me shit.
“So you and the alpha, eh?” Bryce snickers, making a lewd gesture with his hips.
“I frickin’knewit!” Ashlyn giggles as she hangs off Mike’s neck.
I laugh off their teasing, retrieving my drink from the ledge and taking a sip through the little swizzle straw.
I’m not sure exactly when I realize something’s wrong. Maybe it’s when the music abruptly cuts off, or when the party lights go out and the bright overhead lights come on instead. All I know is that suddenly, someone’s talking over the speaker, and my stomach sinks like a stone when I see that the owner of the voice is wearing a police uniform. He says something about the party being over, but it barely registers through the ringing in my ears.
My heart’s slamming against my ribs, pounding a mile a minute, my mouth running dry and my hands going numb. I’m panicking, and it’s only amplified by my inner animal. My wolf senses trouble, a feeling of pure dread coming over me as the people in the club react with alarm and start running for the exit. The whole place is suddenly thrown into chaos and I’m standing there frozen, paralyzed with fear, unsure of what to do or where to go.
I need to find Cole.
I throw a panicked glance toward the front of the club in search of him, but it’s swarmed with people now, everyone trying to shove past one another to exit. Several police officers are pushing through the crowd in the other direction, fanning out as they enter the club.
“What’s going on?” Kylie whines, her eyes thrown wide, looking as terrified as I feel.
“They’re shutting down the club,” Eddie replies. He’s eerily calm as he moves beside Kylie, tucking an arm around her shoulders in comfort. It’s a glimpse of the soldier in him, trained to protect and remain level-headed in the face of pandemonium.
“But why?” Shay asks, looking around wildly as chaos continues to unfold around us. We’re huddled together so we don’t get lost in the crowd, but people keep bumping into us in their frenzy to leave, all courtesy going out the window in the face of self-preservation.
Tobias shakes his head, frowning. “I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough. For now, let’s just stay calm and try to get the fuck out of here.”
I’m trying to calm down, I really am, but the sight of the cops filing into the club has me in panic mode. I’m more than a little gun shy after my run-in with the police when they hauled me in for shoplifting, and that whole ordeal is something I definitely don’t want to re-live tonight.
And speaking of that awful incident, that’s when Tayla suddenly rushes up to our group, panting and breathless.
“C’mon, we can go out the back!” She reaches out for Shay and me and I recoil from her advance, retreating a step.
I don’t trust Tayla as far as I can throw her. Then again, what other choice do I have right now?
I hesitate to move, fighting an internal battle of whether I should go with her or not, when my friends make the choice for me. Shay links her arm with mine, tugging me along, and all of us follow Tayla’s lead as she snakes through the thick throng of people pushing our way, heading toward the back of the building instead.
