Diving Deep (UK Crush #2)

Chapter 10

The crush of cars and people outside the club was crazy, and I realized for the first time that it was Friday night. Our car pulled up, and though no one knew who was in it, the phalanx of cameras turned to us, hoping for someone noteworthy.

"Matthew? Can you get on the other side of her? Only I don't want her to fall in those heels. The ground's pretty uneven out there, and those paps can be godawful rude, you know?" Teddy sounded concerned as we pulled up.

"Yeah. Yeah, no problem." Matty's voice echoed Teddy's, and he grasped my elbow before the car had even stopped.

The bouncers stepped up to open the doors, and a roar went up from bystanders and people waiting to get into the club when they saw who was in the car. Photographers pressed in to get pictures as Teddy stepped out and reached back to help me. I grasped his hand and stepped out, the flashes of the cameras nearly blinding me. I felt his arm go around my waist and carefully place me on the ground as Matty followed me, and a secondary roar erupted as he exited the car. Then he, too, put his arm around me, from the other side, much as Gethin and Teddy had at the hotel in Japan, and we followed the bouncers into the club, flashes going off nonstop all around us. The rope had already been unfastened by the time we got to the entrance, and we swept in, ignoring the numerous questions being hurled at them from all sides, the most often heard among them as far as I could hear being, "Who is she? Theo? Matty? What's her name?"

It wasn't any quieter in the club. The music was loud, with insane bass being pushed through huge subwoofers somewhere farther inside. There was a place to pay, but apparently my boys were beyond anything like that, and we were led straight to a table in a central location, a huge booth that would seat at least eight people.

It was packed, and easily one in every five people knew Teddy and Matthew. We couldn't get more than ten feet without someone calling out a greeting to the boys. The dance floor was huge, the bar long, the whole place glittering and beautiful. I had never been in such a place before in my life. It was gorgeous. Drinks and food appeared before us as if by magic, and friends of the boys filled the table in the same way. I was seated in between them, and was introduced to many people, but I couldn't really hear most of their names.

After about half an hour, Matty asked me if I wanted to dance. I nodded, kissed Teddy, and stepped out. We had danced for barely fifteen minutes when I felt someone behind me, touching me. I stepped away from the contact and turned around to see who it was, only to find Teddy smiling and reaching for me. He pulled me close so he could speak directly into my ear.

"You need to be more aggressive than that when a stranger touches you, Birdie, please! Don't just step away so he can do it again, you have to grab his hand and bite it or something, okay?" He looked at me and nodded. "Or at least tell the person you're with, so he can do something about it," he continued, nodding toward Matthew, who was watching and trying to listen.

"Bite him? Are you kidding?" I yelled back. "I'm not going to bite anyone!" I shook my head. "Come on, let's dance!" I continued, grabbing his hand.

So the three of us danced, so fun, getting so hot and sweaty. So many girls came and tried to join us, tried to intrude between the boys and me; I guess they figured that I couldn't be dancing with both of them. But they were wrong, I was, and time after time the boys just turned away from them, excluding them from our little triangle. Finally I needed a break, and signaled to the boys that I had to have a drink. We left the floor and returned to our table, which had been completely taken over. The three people in our seats vacated them when we returned, and we sat down, signaling a passing waiter for fresh water and more champagne for the table.

The seat on the other side of Teddy had been filled by a stick thin girl with perfect bones and perfect breasts, who was, of course, a model. Her full name was Jennifer Jordan, though she went by JenniJ. She was famous the world over, one of the most photographed women on the planet, known equally for her partying and thigh gap. Those thighs were on full display tonight, long legs gleaming under a barely there silver dress. She immediately began moving in on him, hitching her body closer, ostensibly because she couldn't hear what he was saying. Next, she began putting her hand on his arm to emphasize her words. I remembered then that this was one of the women Teddy had been linked to in the past, and felt a weird flutter in my stomach. It took me a moment to realize that I was jealous. And I didn't have any kind of gap between my thighs, either.