Page 144 of Whistle

“Point is they asked. I said no,” Ryan told Rory. “I have no interest in spending time with anyone but you.”

Rory’s demeanor softened. “Ry.”

He smiled and opened his arms, and she went right into them.

Max turned to Madison. “You’re okay with this?”

“Wes, bro, you better get your man. He’s trying to shit stir,” Jamie said, gesturing to Max.

Max rolled his eyes. “I don’t have a big enough spoon for all the shit you create.”

Madison stepped between them. “Of course I’m okay with this.”

“Gotta be honest, I don’t think I would be,” Win put in.

“Same.” Rush chimed in.

Jamie sighed. “Maddie knows where my loyalty is. I wouldn’t even touch another woman with Kruger’s hands.”

Kruger held up his phone. “The village called. They want their idiot back. Better get going.”

“I’m going to bid on him,” Madison announced as if she was exhausted and wanted to get the conversation over with.

I mean, I kinda was too. These people were a whole circus.

“There’s this thing that couples do,” Jamie told the group. “It’s called talking. Not nearly as good as kissing, but sometimes it’s necessary.”

The ringing of a cell phone erupted, and everyone looked around.

Ryan pulled his iPhone out of his jacket and glanced at the screen. “It’s Vargas,” he told everyone. “Be right back.”

Jamie kept talking. “So yeah, I asked Maddie if she was cool with me doing the auction ‘cause, you know, it’s for a good cause, and she said she’d bid on me.”

“What if someone outbids you?” Lars asked.

“I won’t let them. I’ll just keep matching,” Madison replied like it was that simple. I guess when you had money, it was.

“Probably gonna be the only bid anyway,” Max quipped.

“After all the texts we’ve shared,” Jamie said, shaking his head.

They continued bickering, and I turned away. The song the string quartette was playing drifted into a new one, something that seemed vaguely familiar but not enough for me to recall its name. And as the tune shifted, so did the air, everything becoming mere background noise to the new vibe charging the atmosphere and lifting my eyes to search for the source.

My gaze floated over everything and everyone, dismissing them almost carelessly, barely even acknowledging them before moving on. What I sought was specific, so finite I would know the very second I found it. Frustration built inside me, swelling my impatience and making my hands curl into fists.

My body rotated, no longer just my eyes searching but the rest of me too. Every single atom making up my body anticipated something…

And then he was there.

A face in a sea of the faceless. The one thing in focus in the blurred room. It was as if reality parted and out stepped a dream, a dream so enticing that reality ceased to exist.

I’d spent every night this week burrowed in the blankets of his bed. Sleeping in the cocoon of his arms. I’d seen every inch of him naked, admired him wet, dry, in daylight and the dark.

All of those versions of him were incredible, but this might have been my favorite.

The man filled out a tuxedo like no one else I’d ever seen. And being from a monied family, I’d seen a lot. But somehow, Emmett made it seem exclusive. As if no one else could do it like him. He wasn’t a man wearing a suit. The suit was a mere decoration for the man. His very presence commanded time and space in a way that made me wonder if he was superhuman.

Black trousers molded to his long, lean legs, magnifying the way the muscles in his thighs shifted with every confident stride, and the way his narrow hips swiveled gave the impression he was one of two men:

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