She opens the door wider. The gesture is frigid. My body moves through anyway. The door shuts behind me with a soft click. The room is small, dominated by a bed I refuse to look at, filled with her scent. It's suppressed, and muffled, but still her. Still the bond.
She pivots, chin already lifting before she finishes the turn, jaw set, eyes blazing. "You have ten minutes."
I almost smile. Almost. The shape starts at the corner of my mouth and I shut it down before it forms. Instead, I take a step closer, entering her space, letting her see exactly what she's been avoiding.
"We will take all the time we need," I say. "Because I'm not going anywhere."
Her pupils dilate. The suppressant wavers. Just for a second — the hitch in her breath, the parting of her lips, the instinctual tilt of her head baring her throat. She reins it in. And says...
"I didn't think you could be more of an asshole than you were when you were younger. I was wrong."
Chapter two
Sharma
The latch clicks shut. Metal bites metal, final and sharp as a bankruptcy decree, and the sound reverberates in the room. Roan stands between me and the exit, shoulders blocking the fading light, jaw set with the determination of a man who has never been denied an acquisition he desired.
I last saw him five years ago. And my memory cheated me. Conned me into believing he wasn't that gorgeous. His lips are tulip perfect. His eyes match the blue-green waves outside my door. And when did he get so big? My shoes are off and I barely come to his barrel chest. Even with the fading suppressant my body pitches toward him, every nerve ending voting to close the distance and stay there. The smell of him—rum and fresh salty sea air—invades the bungalow immediately, crowding the humid space until my lungs work harder to draw oxygen. The last of my dose pulses dimly through my bloodstream, a failing firewall against biological code I never consented to install. My nostrils flare despite the lock I've placed on my expression. I makemyself look at the wall past his left shoulder. It doesn't help. My peripheral vision is apparently also a traitor.
"Asshole? Are you going to punish us both for the rest of our lives because of something a dumb kid said?" His voice drops, rough and low, scratching against my composure like sandpaper against raw wood. He shifts his weight, and the linen of his pants pulls tight across the unmistakable ridge of his arousal, thick and demanding against the fabric. "For God's sake, Sharma. I called you chubby. If that's the crime, you've already executed the perfect revenge. All I can think about is holding those curves. My cock is hard as stone right now, aching for you. Raw need. Hungry for it."
My jaw tightens until the bone aches. Anger and arousal twist into each other, a tangled braid I refuse to acknowledge, and my jaw aches with the effort of keeping my face still. The heartbeat in my ears drums a warning rhythm.
"That crudeness proves you haven't matured a bit since you were sixteen." The words clip out, controlled and sharp. "You think this is about a nickname? About 'Chub Chub'?"
I step closer, near enough to catch the muscle twitch under his left eye. Near enough to register his hands flattening at his sides, fingers spreading then closing with the deliberate restraint of a man accustomed to taking what he wants. Near enough that his warmth reaches me before contact does, a full degree of heat radiating off his skin and landing against the front of my dress. His stillness does more damage than shouting would—the pause before a predator springs.
"You made me feel lacking," I say. "I was six years old, Roan. Six. And you were sixteen, grieving your mother, but you chose to grind your pain into me with that nickname. 'Chub Chub.' Atthe dinner table. In front of Viv and your brothers. You taught me that my body was a joke, that my hunger—for food, for attention, for existence—was shameful. I stopped eating when you were home. I stopped speaking. You recalibrated me into something I might never have been, changing my world and my life with your cruelty. You think those were trivial jokes? Well, I didn't laugh then and I'm not laughing now."
His pupils dilate, black swallowing the hazel. Breath changes—deeper, slower. The air conditioning unit clicks on overhead, a mechanical intrusion that does nothing to cool the temperature rising between us. His throat works, the pulse there visibly accelerating, matching the traitorous rhythm tapping at the base of my throat. His eyes drop to that pulse point. One beat. Then back to mine. I almost raise my hand to cover my neck—stop myself before my arm lifts an inch.
"So I built walls," I continue, my voice dropping to match his register, each word a brick mortared into place. "Stone and steel. A career. An identity. Top of my class at Wharton. I built a consulting career from a laptop in a studio apartment. I don't need your approval or respect. And you stand here, cock straining against your pants, speaking about my body like it's your right. A right you claim with a declaration that isn't close to a genuine apology. You expect me to surrender my autonomy because biology demands it? I reject those terms. Rejected them a long time ago."
My pulse hammers at my throat, and my hand twitches, wanting to hide the giveaway. I crush the impulse. Instead, my eyes lock on his, letting the silence stretch like a rubber band pulled to its tensile limit.
"Professional boundaries," I say, enunciating each syllable. "I'm meeting with you because we have to work together when we return."
His brows furrow. He either didn't get the memo or didn't bother to read it. "I'm your new consultant. We'll be working together on the South Asian marketing strategy."
"What? No one told me—wait, are you S. Kinsey?"
"Unbelievable," I say. "You didn't even know my real name?"
Roan matches my scowl. "Of course, I did. I just didn't put it together. You're just a baby. Viv just got her bachelor's degree this year and you—"
"—also graduated, same year. Different schools."
His eyes go to slits, the calculation in them sharpening into offense. "We don't hire untrained consultants for a job this important without a shit ton of experience. Did you—"
"— Viv helped me."
"Oh, Viv's been very helpful. She told me she gave you my brush."
"She did. She's a good friend and she's been a good sister to you."
"Did I say she wasn't? That was a little extreme, wouldn't you agree? And deliberately keeping my mate from me is not something a good sister would do."
"It is if she grew up hearing you say that you never wanted one."
