Lisa
The woman was a mercenary. And that mercenary was merrily making herself a cup of coffee while I read through her blasphemous contract.
The contract that gave Jennie Kim fifty percent of Alpha Group.
I'd lost the bet. I'd guaranteed her the IPO, and instead she'd be losing everything in another—I glanced at the clock on the console table—four hours.
I'd failed her. She'd lost. And yet…
I watched her wander back in from the kitchen. She sank down on the end of the couch and pulled her feet up under her. I didn't see grief or fear in those eyes that haunted my soul. Denim and platinum.
I saw fire.
"Well?" She arched a slim eyebrow.
Wordlessly, I reached for the pen.
This contract would bind me to her and vice versa. There was nothing that would stop me from making that happen. I'd fight my way back into her heart, her bed. And this partnership gave me a foothold. She couldn't just walk away now. The contract was my hope, and she'd handed it to me.
If this was what it took to prove my loyalty, my heart, then she could have everything I owned.
"Wait," she said, stilling my hand with hers. "There's something you need to know first. Those headlines about my twenty-first birthday. They're true."
"I find that hard to believe," I rasped.
She pulled back. "It's important to me that you know the truth first."
"And it's important to me that I sign this without knowing the truth. You're stepping all over my grand gesture here."
"How can you have a sense of humor at a time like this?"
"It's part of my considerable charm," I said, scrawling my signature across the first page.
"Dammit, Lisa," she sighed. "You can't perform a grand gesture when you don't know everything. This might make you change your mind."
A part of her expected it to.
I kept signing. "Tell me your secret," I said.
"Irene wanted to go out for my twenty-first. She didn't like that I was planning to stay in. 'You deserve to have a little fun, Lady Kim.'"
I winced, recognizing the button pushed.
"'He's cute,' she told me. 'Go be a normal human being. Get drunk. Have a one-night stand with a stranger.' I was young. Drunk. And entirely too easily influenced by my friend." Jennie said the word bitterly.
"I didn't do that sort of thing. And for good reason. But that night, I felt more like being a Irene Bae than an Jennie Kim. And for good reason. I was getting into his car when a female bartender had hauled me back out of it. 'Trust me, sweetie, you won't like yourself when you wake up in the morning.'"
She scrubbed her palms over her knees.
"The bartender tried to talk him into taking a cab home. There was a struggle for keys, but in the end, he drove off. I found Irene inside. She'd seemed almost angry that I hadn't gone with him. 'You're just too good for your own good,' she'd complained. I felt like I'd let her down, so I bought her another round. That's how I usually made things up to Irene. I bought her things. She liked presents. And I liked having a friend."
My heart broke a little more for the lonely girl in the lab coat.
"By the time I was home throwing up while Irene watched, I couldn't even remember what he looked like. To my mother's horror, a few pictures had ended up in gossip rags. The worst of which showed me dancing on a bar at a drag club in South Beach. But the bigger scandal never became public knowledge. Until now," she said, leveling me with her gaze.
"I didn't find out until days later that the guy I didn't go home with died. He'd driven through a DUI checkpoint, led police on a chase, and lost control of his car. He crashed into a concrete embankment and died on impact."
"Jesus, Jennie. You could have been with him," I breathed.
"That's what Irene said. Only now, with hindsight, I know she said it wistfully. She showed me the article. I didn't even recognize his name at first. She knew him. And I think she arranged for us to meet. Maybe she was playing this game even back then."
Irene had been. I was sure of it. I hated her. I hated her hatred and jealousy and greed. I hated that she'd hurt the woman I loved.
"But she never told anyone. She kept that secret. I thought it meant that I could trust her."
"Instead, it meant she was waiting for the right time to use it," I guessed. "You're not responsible, you know. For what happened to him."
"I know now. Maybe for the first time," Jennie whispered. "So now you know."
"Do you see me running for the door?"
"You're too hungover to run."
She slid closer until our legs brushed. I had to fist my hands at my side to not touch her. Setting her coffee down, she took the pen from me and repeated the signature process. She had shadows under her eyes. Given that it was five in the morning, I assumed she hadn't slept at all.
But there was an energy crackling off her, and I needed to reach out and touch it. Touch her.
Desire lanced through me like a lightning bolt. She was what I wanted, and I just needed to know the game we were playing so I could devise a way to win.
"Excellent," she said primly. "Now, on to the next one."
Another contract? Was it a restraining order? A buyout offer? A prenup?
Everything I needed to know about our future would be coldly sketched out in legalese.
She handed me the papers and then rubbed her palms on her knees again.
I frowned at the first page, wondering if I needed a stronger glasses prescription.
"What…" But the question never fully materialized.
"Sign it." Jennie gripped my wrist firmly.
"I can't sign this," I argued.
"Why the hell not? You just gave me half of your company."
"Jesus, Jennie. I thought—" I grabbed her instead and hauled her into my lap. I buried my face in her chest and locked my arms around her waist.
I could hear the soft rumble of her laughter, and then she was kissing the top of my head and hugging me back. The pieces of my stupid, shattered heart melded back together at the touch. Not wanting to be left out, my cock stirred to life.
"I thought you stupidly thought you could get away with breaking up with me and stealing my company," I said, holding her tighter to me.
She laughed again. "I stupidly thought about it for about ten seconds. But I'm a very smart woman, Lisa. You weren't at fault for anything besides stupidly keeping me in the dark again."
"Go back to the part where you know I wasn't at fault."
She laughed again, and the sound of it was lighter than it should have been given the circumstances. "What about Flawless? What about the board and the IPO?"
"It ends today. This is what I want."
"I know it is," I said.
"Shut up. You do not," she argued, playfully slapping me in the chest.
I caught her hand in mine and pressed a kiss to her fingers.
"You're a bloody brilliant genius," I told her.
"Did you know you say 'bloody' when you're drunk?" she pointed out.
"I'm hungover now, not drunk, darling."
"So what do you say?" she asked, bringing her hands to rest on my shoulders.
"Partners?" I pressed.
"All the way around." Her fingers toyed with the ends of my hair.
"I know it's not exactly worth much right now," she said. "And it might not seem like an even trade or even a good investment. But I promise you—"
"Shut up, love. You're Jennie Fucking Kim, and that's all I want."
She cupped my face in her hands tenderly. "I was hoping you'd say that." Her lips danced over mine softly. But I couldn't take soft or tender. Not with relief and hope burning so bright.
I took over the kiss, demanding her surrender. But Jennie never surrendered without a fight.
It was aggressive and wild. No holds barred. Just the way I loved her.
Her tongue swept into my mouth. It tangled with mine, making me forget about the hangover and the heartache.
I loved this woman fiercely. And I'd do anything she asked.
"You should have told me about Irene."
"I should have tried harder to tell you about Irene," I countered.
"You can't protect me from things by keeping me in the dark," she said.
When I made a move to speak, she pressed her palm to my mouth. "Let's skip the part where you remind me that I wasn't open to any critical truths and focus on how to get even."
I tugged her hand away from my mouth.
"I need you to know that nothing happened between Irene and me. I know how those photos look. But they were staged. I didn't… I wouldn't…"
The realization hit me. If Jennie believed that I'd come on to Irene, she'd have kicked me in the balls and kneed me in the face. There wouldn't be any early morning break-in and coffee.
"You already believe me," I said.
She made a "duh" face. "Of course I believe you. I had to fight my way through the initial mad. But you've made it very clear how you feel about me."
"I have?" I kissed her again.
"Tell me again anyway," she said, pulling back.
"I find your mind endlessly fascinating," I said, nipping at her neck.
"Mmm."
"Your body is my perfection, my playground," I breathed, darting my tongue under the scoop neck of her shirt to taste the curve of her breast.
"Gah."
"As for your time, I'm not willing to settle for anything less than all the days of your life." I slid my hand up under the hem of her shirt, coasting my palm over her warm, flat stomach and higher until my fingers brushed the edge of her bra.
"Is there anything else you want?" she asked breathlessly.
"I want to feed Steve."
"Only residents feed Steve," she whispered with the ghost of a smile playing on her swollen lips.
"That doesn't sound like a problem to me. Wouldn't Cristoff enjoy cooking for two?"
"Are you sure?" she asked, her eyes hopeful.
"Positive."
Contorting herself, she bowed back and snatched the second contract off the table and slapped it to my chest. "Then sign this."
"Are you sure this is what you want?" I asked. She'd built it. She'd continue to build it.
"I want you to have fifty percent of AHA. That includes the building and the equipment, which isn't really anything right now. But there are future patents. And before you accept, you should know that I have plans for—"
I cut her off and pressed the contract to her breasts, signing with a flourish of the pen. It needed to be signed now before I heard whatever brilliant plan she had for her new path in life. She needed to know that I trusted her implicitly. That I loved her without a fortune or a company.
She was too quiet.
I met her gaze.
"And now we're partners," I said quietly.
She nodded and bit her lower lip. "Fifty-fifty."
"You and me."
She nodded again.
"How are your intestines holding up?"
She shook her head and laughed ruefully. "Nothing gets past you."
"Nothing."
"Surprisingly well for a woman about to lose her billion-dollar company and the last fifteen years of her every waking minute."
"Eh. Win some, lose some."
She threw her head back and laughed. The motion had her sliding down my thighs to settle against me.
"You should do that every day for the rest of your life," I told her, stroking my hands up her waist under her shoulder.
"What? Laugh? Or this?" She rolled her hips against my groin.
I gritted my teeth as my dick throbbed.
"Take your fucking pants off now, Jennie, and let's make a real commitment."
"Oh, because signing over fifty percent of our companies wasn't enough?" she teased.
But I was yanking her shirt over her head and pressing my face to her breasts. "Show me how much you want to be with me," I demanded.
Together, we wrestled her pants off. They landed over the lampshade. Probably a fire hazard, but she was gripping my shaft and freeing it from my sweatpants. And I didn't care if we burnt down Miami.
I held my breath and her hips as she guided the crown to the apex of her thighs. Wet. Heat. Love.
The sky was getting lighter through the windows. A new day was dawning. Full of possibilities. And then Jennie was taking me inside her on a low moan. I held her to me, my mouth fastening on one pert, pink nipple. This was right. This was terrifying. This was real.
"Show me, Jennie. Show me how you feel. What you want." My voice was broken glass. "Show me while I tell you."
"Lisa," she gasped as she began to move.
"I love you," I said. "I love you."
I told her over and over again as she rode me fast, hard, until we were both lost. Until she came and dragged me over the edge with her. I erupted, my release hollowing me out even as it filled her.
All our broken pieces. They melded together, forming something new. Something unbreakable.
"I love you, Jennie," I whispered again against her breast, damp with sweat.
She was quiet for a long moment. Still trembling with aftershocks from her release. "I know."
I growled, squeezing her hips hard, and she laughed.
"I love you, Lisa."