The Boss’s Runaway (Possessive Kingpins)

It was nearly lunchtime when the door to the bedroom swung open. I tensed. I was wearing the bedsheet, having wrapped it around myself.

Jae Han stood in the doorway, his eyes landing on me. He immediately stiffened as he took me in. “You’re awake.”

I slid to my knees on the bed. “Yeah, and showered too.”

“So I see.” His eyes tracked over me, lingering on my bare shoulders, sending heat trailing across my skin. “Your name?”

“Kat,” I answered shortly, cutting myself off before I could go further. “You?”

“Song Jae Han. Call me Jae. Are you hungry?”

“Starving,” I said, jumping off the bed and tucking my bedsheet around me. His eyes lingered on it. “I don’t have any clothes, and we should burn the ones I was wearing.”

His mouth quirked as he nodded and then turned away. “Follow me.”

He didn’t need to tell me twice.

I padded barefoot after him, glancing around at his beautiful house as I went. There were antiques everywhere, Asian and European, and I got the impression he was a man who valued history. He took me to a huge kitchen and stepped back. I almost brushed passed him, in a hurry to fall on the food crowding the table. There were all sorts. Rice and side dishes, plus a soup that was so spicy it made my eyes water. I fell on it like a starving woman, and he watched me.

“You’re not eating?”

He shook his head.

“So, all of this is for me?” I asked, oddly touched. In my life, providing food is a meaningful gesture.

“I figured you must be hungry. I confess I don’t know what to do with you. I’ve never been in this situation before.” He took a seat across from me.

“What, having a house guest?”

“Saving someone instead of harming them,” he corrected.

Okay, that was a bit of a conversation stopper.

Instead of answering, I gobbled down the food on the table. The soup was so spicy it made me cough, and it took a good few hacking coughs to sort my rebelling windpipe. I became aware that Jae Han was watching me.

“What?” I asked, merely curious, not defensive. This man was my hero. He could watch as I shoved food down my starving gullet if he wanted.

“I’ve never seen someone eat like you before.”

“You’ve never been around poor people then.”

He shook his head a fraction. “That’s not it. You eat like it’s going out of style. You eat like you might not be allowed to finish.”

Yikes, that was a little close to the bone.

I shrugged. “Like I said. Poor people.”

He studied me a moment longer. “Where are you from?”

“Originally, or where was I when I came here?”

“Both.”

“I’m from Belarus, a small, shitty town that would be a waste of map space. I was in Shanghai before I came here to your, erm, place of business.”

“Do you know who I am and what I do?” Jae Han asked steadily.

I put my spoon down slowly. This felt like a test. I sipped my water—even that was in a pretty glass with lemon in it. “You’re mafia. Jopok? Korean America, if I recognized the slang of some of your men. You’re the boss.”

He inclined his head, agreeing with everything I’d said. “Despite knowing that, you didn’t think twice about begging me to keep you?”

His words did something strange to my belly. Begging me to keep you. It was surprisingly sexy in a way I hadn’t imagined. “I—”

I didn’t get to say whatever hare-brained comment was coming next. Instead, a light and airy voice cut through the air, and Jae Han tensed. He swore in Korean and pushed himself back from the table as a woman came into the kitchen, with another trailing behind her. They stopped when they saw us sitting at the table.

The eldest one, his mother, I’d guess, by the resemblance, raked eyes across me like claws. I winced and fought the urge to check for blood after her inspection.

“Song Jae Han, what are you doing?” she snapped. Her voice was like a whip.

“Eating brunch, what does it look like?” Jae Han said, settling himself back in his chair and looking completely unperturbed by being caught sitting in the kitchen with a girl in a bed sheet.

The younger girl was looking excitedly between us. She stepped forward. “Hi, I’m Hana, Jae’s sister, and this is our mother, Dami.” She smiled at me.

“Hi Hana, I’m Kat,” I said, deciding to ignore his mother’s dramatic reaction as Jae Han clearly was.

“And why is she wearing a sheet?” the mother continued.

“Her clothes got too dirty to put back on,” Jae Han said, raising his coffee and sipping it like his mother wasn’t about to throw a fit.

“Who is this?”

“A woman who spent the night here.” His evasion game was top-class.

‘Are you going to send her away?” Dami asked, her voice becoming shrill.

Jae Han shrugged. “No, I don’t think I am. Not right now. I think I’ll keep her around for a good few more nights.”

She watched him, her color rising, and then all hell broke loose.

She started shouting at him in Korean, and he responded with artic-sounding one-word answers. The man was unruffled, and I was impressed.

I stood up awkwardly. I was grateful to this man, and now, I was the cause of a mid-morning familial meltdown. I figured sneaking away and leaving the family to it would be the best course of action.

 I pushed back my chair and wondered whether it would be better to army crawl out the door to avoid the crossfire between livid mother and uncaring son. I was still trying to make up my mind when Jae Han’s hand touched mine. It was a shock, and I nearly leaped out of my seat. He didn’t like to be touched, yet something had made him reach out.

“What’s up?” I whispered to him.

His mother looked between our joined hands and us before turning and fuming up the corridor, groping for her cell phone in her Chanel bag.

“Dami is throwing a fit over not getting her way. Ignore her,” he said flatly. “More importantly, I’ve thought about what I need from you.”

“What? Now?” I panicked. I couldn’t keep up this morning. I hadn’t even had coffee yet.

Jae Han frowned at my hesitation. “You said you’d do anything to stay, anything I wanted if I helped you.” A muscle ticked in his defined jaw.

“I will! I’ll keep my word,” I rushed to reassure him.

The slight air of tension eased, and his grip on my hand softened. He nearly smiled but didn’t quite manage it. “Good girl. As far as Dami is concerned, I want her to think we hooked up last night and you’re crazy about me. I want her to think we’re a couple.”

“Oh, so you want to kill her then?”

This time his smirk did materialize. “Let me worry about that.”

Dami breezed back into the room with Hana trailing behind her, looking like she wished she had a bowl of popcorn for the show.

“Song Jae Han, I’ve canceled your date tonight. The Kims are most displeased, but I won’t let you embarrass the Song name further. You are thirty-four and unmarried, and I come here to find you parading a barely legal one-night stand in front of me.”

“I’m twenty-two!” I protested.

“She’s not a one-night stand, Mother.” Jae Han spoke at the same time.

He stood, sliding his cold, elegant fingers through mine and forcing me to stand too. I gripped my bedsheet for dear life. He walked a distance from the table and pulled me to his side. His mother and sister were watching him, one aghast, the other like she wished she was videoing this.

He looked down at me and brought a hand up to cup my jaw like it was something precious. His touch soothed a place deep inside me that had been empty and afraid for a long time. Since Shanghai and before that, in Moscow, with the men I’d met there and run from.

I leaned into him, drawn by his strength. This was a powerful man, and I felt protected by the look in his clear, dark eyes. He had the power to draw me in and make me feel like we were standing in a tiny bubble of peace and serenity.

Then he spoke, and all hell broke loose. “She’s my fiancée.”