Chapter 5 #3
“Aw.” I grinned. “How sad. No fuck buddy for you.”
Knox shrugged. “We’ll see each other again in a couple of weeks. So you finally caught a lumberjack.” His nostrils flared. “And you’re boyfriends, are you? Here I thought you were a master of the Grindr hookup.”
“John! You were on Grindr?” Teagan looked like he couldn’t decide whether to vomit or punch me. “You said you weren’t doing that anymore. You pinky promised!”
“I…” John, on the other hand, looked miserable. “It’s…”
“We didn’t meet on Grindr. We met at the bar earlier tonight. The specifics are all a blur,” I lied smoothly. Semi-smoothly. Probably not at all smoothly. “But we’re very committed. Aren’t we, honey bear?” I hooked my arm through John’s.
“Committed,” he agreed sadly.
“Goodman, what’s John’s last name?” Knox demanded because he was an asshole like that.
I rolled my eyes. “John and I were dancing before you rudely interrupted us. Come on.” I nudged John and half dragged him a few feet into the crowd before I hissed, “Boyfriends?”
“I panicked,” he whispered back. “God, did you see T’s face? Did he look upset? He looked upset, didn’t he?”
What was upsetting was the way I hadn’t noticed any damn thing about Teagan after Knox showed up.
“We’re dancing,” I informed John. “We can have a shocking breakup at the end of the night.” I swayed my hips to the beat and grabbed John’s hands in mine to make him do the same.
“Yeah, okay. And it’s Curran, by the way. My last name,” he explained when I peered at him blankly.
Oh.
The music was still good, and the rhythm was still infectious, so I tried to get lost in it…
but as was always the case when I tried really hard to do something, it became kind of impossible.
One part of my brain was very centered on Knox, wondering why he was here, at this random bar.
And more pertinently, why he was angry at me.
I glanced back at the last place I saw him and nearly jumped out of my skin when I realized he was right next to me on the dance floor… and that he was dancing with Teagan.
The two of them were… okay, they were kind of beautiful together.
Teagan was short and sort of lithe, and his navy blue crop top showed off his lean stomach.
He lifted his arms in the air and swayed his hips in a way that made his thick red hair fall over one eye like a curtain.
Knox braced one hand on Teagan’s hip and moved in time with him, incredibly graceful for someone so big, and every movement made his ass flex in those tight, tight jeans.
“Spin me,” I told John impulsively. Anything to distract me from this show.
John did better than that. He grabbed my hand and spun me so my back was to his chest, then put his other hand on my hip and held me that way, not quite grinding, but almost.
I flicked a glance at Knox to see if he’d noticed and found him looking right at me. God damn, the way his eyes glowed in the purple club lights was so unfair.
He pulled Teagan closer, front to front, so that Teagan had to brace his hands on Knox’s big, broad shoulders.
Mother. Fucker. I had a very brief but satisfying vision of ripping Teagan’s hands off his arms, which was concerning since I wasn’t normally prone to violence. Once again, I blamed my uncharacteristic behavior on Knox the Cranky Lumberjack.
I bent over slightly, hoping John would get the message and go along with it, and he did, pulling me more tightly against him and moving his hips in a simulated grind.
It was approximately as sexy as dancing with a chair, but I didn’t care as long as it looked good, and the way Teagan’s eyes flashed as he stared pointedly at all the places John and I touched suggested that it did.
It also suggested that, despite whatever fuckery had transpired with other-John, this John was very much the John that Teagan was invested in.
John pulled me upright, put his face in my neck like he was biting me or something, and said, “What the fuck are we doing right now?”
“Go with it,” I told him. I lifted my arm over my head to wrap around the back of his neck and whispered in his ear, “Teagan is giving us jealous eyeballs, dude. I think you misunderstood some shit.”
“Yeah? Well, your friend looks like he’s thinking about where to dump my body.”
And the crazy thing was… John was right. Knox did look faintly murderous. Though I was pretty sure it was aimed at me more than John, which figured.
The dance floor got more crowded, pushing everyone closer together, and suddenly I was grinding on John right next to Teagan, which was uncomfortable on many levels.
Teagan went up on his tiptoes and wrapped his arm around Knox’s neck.
“Oh, oops!” I said as I knocked Teagan with my hip. “My bad.”
He glared daggers at me and very deliberately ran his hand through Knox’s hair.
I sucked in a breath and spun around to face John. “Dip me.”
“Dip you? Do I look like Fred Asta— Oh, Jesus,” he exclaimed and hurried to brace me with his hands as I wrapped my arms around his neck and force-dipped myself nearly into a backbend.