The Viper's Nest (Kit Davenport #4)(74)

“On it, same again, Red?” She grinned at me, and I found myself smiling back.

“Please.” I watched her for a while as she mixed and shook the ingredients, before turning back to my companion. His fingers were still threaded through mine, our palms hot as they pressed together, but I wasn’t complaining.

“So, what’s the plan?” I asked him, curiously. “I’d thought you would have dragged my ass straight back to the hotel... but here we are having cocktails. What gives?”

My big, scary, Romanian crime lord threw his head back and laughed, then needed to pay for our drinks before he could respond. After leaving a heavy tip, he dropped my hand—sadly—and took one drink in each hand.

“Find us somewhere to sit,” he suggested, and I looked around the room, spotting a booth that was in the process of being vacated by several girls in mini-dresses.

Pointing it out, I led the way through the crowds and arrived just in time to slide in before another group of girls got to it.

“Long island, huh?” Vali mused, watching me as I stirred the Coke through the sour, alcoholic part, then took a long sip. “I pictured you more as a vodka cranberry kind of girl.”

“Um,” I pondered aloud. “Is that a compliment or an insult? I can’t tell. But besides that, I only just recently found out I was twenty-one, remember?”

Vali gave me a wicked smirk. “Oh yes? And you never consumed alcohol when you were underage? How silly of me to think you might have.” I choked a little on the sip I’d just taken and had to cough in a seriously unsexy way to clear the alcohol from my windpipe.

“Don’t do that,” I growled at him when I was finally able to speak again. No doubt my face was bright red, too. So hot.

“Don’t do what?” he asked, sipping his own drink and shuffling a little closer to me in the booth so that when he draped his arm over the backrest, his fingers were brushing my shoulder.

A shiver ran through me at the light touch of his fingers, and I tried to focus. “Don’t say funny things when I’m not expecting them. I could have drowned on that mouthful of iced tea, and then where would we be, hmm?”

“You don’t expect me to be funny?” He looked genuinely hurt, and I cocked my head to the side, considering him.

“Mmm,” I mused. “It’s not that you’re not funny. It just shocks me sometimes. Like, you’re this big, bad, scary, powerful criminal dude, who is almost always serious, and then you whip out these sarcastic lines... It just throws me for a loop sometimes.”

“Huh.” He frowned. “Well then, I should make more effort to be less serious.”

“How is the whole family empire thing going anyway? You’ve been around a lot more lately.” I hadn’t wanted to ask about it for a while since he’d been so incredibly adamant about keeping me out of his nefarious business dealings. But I was curious to know him better.

He smiled again, and I found my breath catching. He and Cole both had the most amazing smiles, and neither of them used it enough. “Really good, Regina mea. I have put in place a very pliable and respectable figurehead, backed by two geniuses to really run things from behind the scenes. Within a few weeks, I’d say I can be officially retired.”

“A figurehead?” I puzzled. “Why use a figurehead and not your two geniuses... Oh.” It just clicked. “Really? Lucy and Elena are running your crime syndicate now?”

“No,” he shook his head, then finished the last of his drink. “They’re running my entirely legal corporation of investments in property and stocks. I promised you I was cleaning the organization up, drag?, and I meant it.”

Speechless, I finished off my own drink and then placed the empty glass back on the table. “So... Lucy and Elena, huh? Bet your men would love that if they ever found out.”

“Exactly,” he chuckled, trailing his fingertips across my back. “Hence the figurehead. Another?” He nodded to our empty glasses, and when I accepted, slid out of the booth to order them for us.

While he was gone, I considered this new development and found I was really happy for Lucy. She got bored so damn quickly, and without me needing her help on Fox jobs anymore, she was going a little bit crazy. This was actually just the perfect task for her, and I was really impressed that Vali had thought of it.

“So,” I said as Vali returned with fresh drinks. “Do you dance?”

“Dance?” he repeated, settling back into the booth beside me, close enough that our thighs were pressed together. “Like that?” He nodded to the dance floor where sweaty, half-naked girls writhed and rubbed up against equally sweaty guys.

“Yeah, I suppose. Why not?” I wasn’t really a big one for dancing either, but the combination of an information and emotion overload, three long island iced teas, and Vali’s intoxicating nearness was making me want to grind up on him too.

Damn dragon must have been tapping his gypsy powers because he seemed to read my mind as he leaned in close. “You don’t need the excuse of a dance floor to grope me, you know.” As he spoke, his lips brushed my ear, and I needed to stifle a moan.

Under any normal circumstances, I might have been concerned at how fast my mood had shifted from hurt to angry to exhausted and finally settled on turned all the way on. But these were far from normal circumstances, and I had six boyfriends. Could anyone really blame me for wanting to jump Vali right then and there?