The Boss’s Runaway (Possessive Kingpins)

I sat in the plush seating area of the boutique, waiting for Kat to leave the changing room again. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. Waiting around to watch a stranger shop wasn’t my thing. I didn’t take dates shopping. Not even women I’d been seeing regularly for years. Maybe I was having an early mid-life crisis.

I tapped out a message on my phone, keeping up to date with a family lawyer currently trying to get a few of my men out of jail and another official trying to push through the paperwork for port entry.

Every single thing I did lately was boring. Since my eldest sister had married Vincenzo Luciano, business was booming. The strategic alliance between the Songs and Lucianos was a genius move, not to mention the family of brothers had become the closest thing I had to friends lately. Despite profit being at an all-time high, I felt nothing. Life had become a blood-splattered trudge through grayness. Until her.

Kat wasn’t boring. She didn’t seem capable of something so ordinary. In my world of muted monotones and darkness, she was a vivid slash of color. She wasn’t sunshine. The circumstances we’d met in would have broken her if she had been, but she was alive like no one else I’d ever met. She took up all the air in every room she was in, and I craved to be by her side as soon as I saw her. I wanted her teasing words. I wanted to shield her petite body. I wanted to be the focus of her darkly amused eyes.

I wanted her.

It was surprising to realize after experiencing apathy and boredom toward the opposite sex for so long. I’d been hit on by supermodels and beauty queens, yet I wanted a woman who had barely resembled a human only a day ago.

She pulled back the curtain with a dramatic flourish and strutted out. There was no false modesty or shyness from this woman.

“What do you think?” she asked, twirling in front of me.

Fuck. She was wearing a skin-tight, blood-red bandage dress that revealed every curve and hollow of her body.

“No,” I muttered and looked back at my phone. My body was already hard as hell at the idea of her changing only a few steps away, but now, my hard-on threatened to punch through my pants.

Kat crossed her arms and tapped her foot. “No? Why not?”

“Too short,” I said in a bored tone that was entirely affected. Too right, it was too fucking short. I didn’t want anyone but me to see the soft skin of her upper thighs.

She sighed and strutted back toward the changing room. “Maybe that’s a good thing? I have to secure my next place to stay after you and I part ways. It pays to plan ahead.”

I’d sent the assistants away. I couldn’t stand their lingering presence. Kat’s words sent a white-hot bolt of anger through me. I found myself on my feet and stalking toward the dressing room before I could think better of it. I drew the curtain back.

She had been looking in the mirror, and she spun, her hands on her hips. “What a fright—”

I cut her off by stepping into the changing room and pulling the curtain closed behind me. “Are you already thinking about leaving me, Kat? My mother will be devastated.”

She backed against the mirror as I advanced, frowning as if trying to work out what I’d said. Her mouth dropped open in mock horror. “Did you make a joke? Is that what just happened?” she teased dramatically.

I smiled. Damn, I’d smiled more around this woman than I had in years. My face ached. “Just following your cue. And the reason that this dress is too short is because of how you look in it. When you draw every man’s eye, which you will, it would be too tempting not to slip their hand around your hip and down to the hem.”

I bracketed an arm over her, leaning on the mirror. I let my hand fall to her hip and lower. Kat’s eyes darkened and filled with excitement. I felt the same. Touching her was electric. She leaned back against the mirror and shivered as my fingers reached the hem of the dress. I inched my hand under it, caressing the skin in circles.

“And then?” Kat asked. Her eyes closed, and she leaned her head against the mirror as I worked my way inch by inch up her short skirt.

“And then, I’d have to kill them.” My words sent her eyes flying open as one of my fingers brushed the fabric of her underwear. It felt odd. “What are you wearing?”

She burst into a wide grin. “It’s yours. They don’t sell lingerie here.”

I couldn’t help it. I leaned my forehead against hers and laughed—a hearty, booming sound. I was glad my men couldn’t see me, or they might think I’d been replaced by a secret twin. Kat grinned, and I thought it would be nice to see that smile every day for the rest of my life.

“I guess I know where we’re going next. A woman like you deserves lace.”

“Jae—” she breathed, and as I turned, her hand touched my face.

I could count on one hand the number of times someone had touched my face in the last few years. When I brought home some faceless, meaningless one-night encounter, I fucked exclusively from behind. I didn’t do kissing, facing each other, or a second meeting. Ever.

Kat wiped her finger under my eye, and my skin burned in the wake of her gentle touch. “Eyelash,” she explained as she held it up to me. “Make a wish.”

I blew softly on the eyelash, a childhood superstition I hadn’t thought of in years. My body was hard as hell, aching to touch her, and my hands could barely stay by my side as I left the changing room. The want inside me roared.

I sat down and went back to my phone, staring at it unseeing. This was dangerous. I didn’t know Kat, and I had no idea where she’d come from or who she was fleeing. She could be an assassin. She could be the daughter of a competitor, come to fuck my life up. She could be an undercover cop. I ran a hand through my hair, feeling scattered and horny as hell.

It didn’t matter, I realized as I watched her step out the curtain in another dress.

I already knew I wasn’t letting her go.

I’d found her, and I was keeping her.