SHINKI
The air conditioner in this VIP lounge is unapologetic in its duty. I think the goal is to freeze every occupant to death before the hostile takeover can be finalized. It's a sterile, cold box overlooking a sea of chaos.
Jiro is not back from the main club area. He muttered something about a "security sweep" twenty minutes ago. The silence up here is becoming oppressive, punctuated only by the dull, thudding bass from below.
This is inefficient. I decide to go find him myself.
I step out of the refrigerated lounge and the wall of sound and heat hits me like a physical force. The blue and red lights are blinding, strobing across a dense, moving mass of bodies. The fucking crowd. It's a hive, loud and senseless.
I scan the room, my eyes trying to pick out Jiro's solid, unmoving form in the chaos. Nothing. He has vanished into the human soup.
The least crowded and most accessible location is the bar. It's a strategic point. I can see the entrances, the exits, and anyone approaching. I make my way there, my posture rigid, my distaste for the environment a palpable forcefield around me.
I find a small gap at the long, glowing bar and signal the bartender.
"Yamazaki.Neat," I say. Another occasional, intentional bad decision. The glass is placed before me. I pick it up, the weight familiar now.
As I bring the glass to my lips, a voice cuts through the drone of the music and the crowd. A familiar, laughing voice that acts like a shard of glass dragged down my spine.
I look over to the side where the sound came from.
And I see her.
Maisie Rory.
She looks… different. The fiery hair is slicked back, severe and sleek, not its usual wild cascade. She's not in a CEO's power blouse and trousers. She's in a black bodysuit and a skirt so short it's barely a suggestion. The heels are weapons. The fishnets are a detail my brain catalogues with ruthless efficiency.
She is leaning against the bar, a cocktail glass in her hand, and she is…
She is…
The thought forms, unbidden and brutally clinical. That dress, that entire… presentation, is engineered to make every red-blooded man in a five-mile radius want to fuck her. It is a simple, biological fact. A statement of intent.
She's just…
Fucking hell.
The whisky burns in my mouth, but I don't taste it. All I can do is stare, my usual calculations short-circuiting, replaced by a single, static, profoundly irritating observation.
She is fucking breathtaking.
I am a man who appreciates fine things. A perfectly balanced portfolio. A flawlessly tailored suit. A rare whisky. I admire excellence and precision. It is a logical appreciation for superior quality.
But right now, the supposedly "good thing" monopolizing my attention has violent red hair and is dressed like a weapon designed solely to send blood rushing south, directly to my dick.
How am I sexually attracted to such a woman? The thought is an insult to my own standards. She is chaos. She is sentiment. She is a lawsuit waiting to happen. My type is… non-existent, because entanglement is inefficient. Yet here I am, my body reacting with a primitive, frustrating insistence.
I forcibly tear my gaze from her, a physical effort. I need to find Jiro. I scan the room again, and this time, I see what I usually ignore.
The stares. The women.
One, a blonde in a silver dress, lets her eyes drag down my body with no attempt at subtlety, her tongue tracing her bottom lip. It's an open invitation, lazy and entitled.
Another, near the dance floor, whispers to her friend while pointing directly at me, her gaze a possessive calculation, as if I'm a piece of art she's decided to bid on.
A third simply stares, her eyes dark and unblinking, a predator's gaze from across the room. No restraint. No decorum. Just raw, un-filtered want.
My eyes shift, inevitably, to the men looking at her. At Maisie.
One, a brute in a too-tight shirt, is openly devouring her, his eyes glued to the sweep of her hips, a slow, crude smile spreading across his face as he mentally undresses her.
Another, leaning against a pillar, licks his lips, his gaze a blatant, physical caress from her heels to the nape of her neck. He looks hungry.
A third, all slicked-back hair and a cheap suit, just stares with a dumbfounded, slack-jawed awe, completely captured.
It's all so… base. So lacking in any kind of intellectual finesse. It's just biology. Loud, messy, and irritating.
And then my gaze lands back on her. And I see it.
The man she was talking to. He's moved closer. Too close. His hand is on her waist. A casual, possessive grip that makes my own hand tighten around my whisky glass. He leans in, his mouth entirely too close to her ear, whispering something. I see the way his fingers press into the black fabric of her bodysuit, claiming a territory that isn't his.
A cold, sharp spike of something entirely irrational and wholly possessive lances through me. The clean, analytical fury I felt reading her lawsuit is nothing compared to this sudden, violent urge to walk over there and break his fucking hand.
The ice in my glass cracks audibly under the pressure of my grip.
– – –
MAISIE
There is no fucking way this guy just asked me to leave with him. To "get out of here." His name is Brad or Chad or something equally bland, and his entire personality is a cheap watch and too much cologne.
And why is he looking at me like he owns me? Like I'm a prize he's already won because he bought me a drink I didn't ask for? This is one hundred percent Lena's fault for abandoning me.
He needs to get the fuck away from me. He's boring. He talks about his trust fund and his boat, and I can just tell, with a deep, cellular certainty, that he would deliver the most boring, missionary-only, no-spice-whatsoever sex of all time. The thought alone is depressing.
"I'm not going home with you," I say, my voice flat and final. I try to turn back toward the bar, to find Lena, to find an escape.
But he's insistent. His hand, which was hovering near my waist, slides down. It lands on my ass with a possessive squeeze.
That's it.
My body goes rigid. A cold, clear fury washes over me. I place my cocktail glass down on the bar with a sharp, deliberate click. My fingers curl into a fist. I'm about to shove him so hard he stumbles into the couple behind us.
I open my mouth to tell him exactly where he can shove his boat.
But a voice cuts through the music and his drunken murmuring. A voice that is cold, sharp, and horribly, infuriatingly familiar. It slices through the noise like a razor blade.
"Is this how you spend your time when you're not filing frivolous lawsuits and building glorified nannies?"
My head whips around so fast my sleek ponytail swings.
No.
No fucking way.
Standing there, looking utterly out of place in what is probably a ten-thousand-dollar Kiton suit, is Shinki Soma. His expression is one of detached amusement, but his eyes are like blue ice, focused on the hand that is still on my ass.
The world narrows to this impossible, ridiculous point.