A faint blush crept up her neck, blooming across her chest in that telltale sign that the alcohol was hitting. Her lips were pink and glossy. Her eyes were bright and blown wide. One strap ofher dress slipped off her shoulder, and suddenly all I could see was skin. And memory. And every filthy promise we hadn’t even made yet.
I swallowed hard, shifting in my seat, willing my body tonot react.
Fucking useless.
So I did the only thing I could.
I focused on our friends.
Marco and Ivy had shifted closer, magnetized. His hand found the back of her neck, fingers gently massaging into her skin as she sipped her drink, and something about the way she shivered made him smirk. A beat later, Ivy reached up, grabbed his hand, and tugged his arm until it rested across her shoulders. She twined their fingers together.
Marco’s laugh changed after that. Lower, warmer, like he’d been claimed mid-sentence.
Lucy, loosened by alcohol, leaned in toward Kimi with a confidence that hadn’t been there earlier. She brushed her fingers along his forearm when he made her laugh, lingering just a second too long. His ears flushed immediately, the tips going pink, but he didn’t pull away. Didn’t move at all, actually, as if he was afraid to break the spell and she’d stop touching him if he so much as breathed wrong.
And then—Jesus Christ—she reached up to fix a lock of hair behind her ear, and he leaned in to say something just for her to hear. She laughed, soft and startled, and looked up at him with a gaze that practicallyglowed.
There it was. The shift that was subtle and quiet and dangerous.
I felt Auri clock it instantly. Of course she did.
Because that secrecy—that forbidden, hypnotizing pull of something that shouldn’t happen but does anyway—wassomething we knew all too fucking well. And I knew that the mischievous grin on my wife’s face meant nothing but trouble.
Lucy giggled at something else Kimi whispered in her ear and swatted at his arm, her cheeks flushed and her smile just a little too pleased. “If you keep flirting like that,” she said softly, “you’d better have the track record to back it up.”
“What, you planning a full report card already?” Marco drawled, leaning further into Ivy’s space, brown eyes glittering with trouble as he angled his body toward hers like it was instinct. “You better be careful, mate. Lucy looks like the type her rates her kisses out of ten.”
“Can you blame her?” Ivy raised her glass, one brow arching. “First kisses say a lot.” She tipped forward conspiratorially, lowering her voice just enough to be dangerous. “Is there chemistry? Does it make your stomach flip? Do you walk away thinking about it for days?” She smirked. “If it doesn’t light something on fire, what’s the point?”
Kimi coughed into his drink, eyes flicking to Lucy’s like she’d just detonated a bomb in his lap. Lucy just rolled her lips together before swiping her wine glass off the table and tipping it back, draining the rest.
Auri hummed thoughtfully, tapping her nails on the lacquered surface of the wooden table with one hand while the other squeezed my thigh. “Some first kisses come out of nowhere,” she said, gaze locking with mine. “And leave you wrecked in ways you don’t recover from.”
My jaw tightened.
“Ours did,” she added with a little shrug, as if she hadn’t just upended the table.
Fuck.
The table froze.
Marco, naturally, leaned in, always too eager to know the details of our intimate life. “Wait, wait, wait. You can’t just say something like that and not elaborate.”
“What he means is,” Kimi added, suddenly very invested, “we’ve been trying to timeline this for months. Wheredidit happen? Who made the first move?”
Auri gave a lazy shrug, her palm gliding higher up my thigh under the table, a perfect picture of innocence. “It’s not that interesting.”
“She’s lying,” I muttered, clearing my throat as I adjusted slightly in my seat. Or at leasttried to, given I was half-hard and hanging on by a thread.
“That’s all we get?” Marco protested.
My wife rested her elbow on the table and propped her chin on her fist, hand sliding dangerously higher. “Does it really matter?”
“You’ve made us rely onfanfictionfor dirty little details about your relationship until recently. I feel like you owe us at least this.”
Kimi leaned back against the booth and squinted up at the ceiling. “Imola,” he said confidently. “That leaked photo of Aurélie in Callum’s shirt.”
Marco nodded slowly. “Sì, maybe. I did show up at Fraser’s room the morning after the race. She was leaving, he was shirtless and covered in scratches.” He frowned, then shook his head. “But no. No, I don’t think that was the first kiss. Don’t you remember Miami?”
