Bound to the Billionaire Boss

Chapter 1

Here's an idiomatic English translation:

"Get closer."

"Like this?"

"Bring your hips in... yes. Good girl."

His palm pressed against the small of her back, and the tightening of his fingers made her gasp softly. She'd lost count of how many times he'd kissed her by now — her lips, her collarbone, behind her ear — she only knew that every time his mouth landed somewhere new, a current shot beneath her skin, racing up her spine and out to her fingertips. Her fingers tangled in his hair, searching for something to grip. Her dress had been torn open most of the way, the emerald silk sliding down to her waist; the instant the cool air touched her skin, his body heat covered it again. Her hair ribbon had fallen to the floor — she'd long since stopped caring where it landed. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears, drowning out the faint hum of traffic outside. She heard herself let out a soft moan, and he swallowed it with another kiss.

Outside, the moon had just slipped behind a cloud.

...

When morning came, Ivy woke first. She lay curled under the blanket, staring at the ceiling, her mind unexpectedly clear. She'd done her homework — checked the research, even had a private doctor she trusted look into the dosage — but no one had warned her that at this dose, a person could go on and on, seemingly without end.

Damn it.

The sheets beneath her were still damp, wrinkled as if they'd been wrung out by hand. Ivy stiffened her neck and glanced down, and last night's memories came flooding back all at once. Beside her lay a stranger — or more precisely, someone she'd known for eight years but was meeting face-to-face for the very first time. They'd agreed to wear masks to this meeting; it was the only way she could talk herself into showing up, given how guilty she felt about it. As for his looks — well, it went without saying he was good-looking, or she wouldn't have agreed to the date at all. The mask covered the upper half of his face, cut from thin silver, mother-of-pearl inlaid around the eyes in the shape of a sun; when the light hit it, it gave off a faint rainbow shimmer. With half his face hidden, the other half stood out all the more.

Ivy looked at the man's sleeping face, and most of her irritation faded. Fine. Business had been thoroughly taken care of; now for the real business. She climbed out of bed, glanced down, and sucked in a breath — last night had left this presidential suite looking like it had been ransacked. She started digging through the wreckage on the floor, hoping to find her clothes. That dress had been custom-made from a now-discontinued batch of emerald silk; she'd agonized over the cost for ages. All she found was a pile of shredded scraps, a few stains of unidentified liquid on them. Remembering exactly how that dress had met its end last night, her face went hot all over again — one old score barely settled, and already a new one added to the ledger.

"Mm... Poppy..." The man on the bed frowned, a low groan escaping him in his sleep, as if he'd sensed her displeasure.

Poppy.

Eight years, and he still called her that. Her throat tightened, then went cold again — as if.

Ivy dug briskly through her bag and pulled out a pair of handcuffs — real police-issue chain cuffs, which had taken some effort to get her hands on. Two clicks, and the man's wrists were locked to the headboard. His arm tensed for a moment, his eyelashes twitching beneath the mask, before he sank back into sleep. Ivy let out a breath of relief. Just in case he was strong enough to drag the whole bed along with him, she thoughtfully cuffed one of his ankles too, so he lay pinned diagonally across the mattress, thoroughly secured.

Once that was done, she leaned in close to study his face, her fingers hovering at the edge of the mask — but in the end, she pulled her hand back.

"Forget it," she murmured, her eyes darkening even as the corner of her mouth curved upward. "We're even now."

A feeling she'd buried at sixteen, she had finally laid to rest herself, eight years later, on this very night. A fitting end, all things considered. This man was sharper than she'd expected, though — her dress was in shreds, while his shirt, suit pants, and coat, aside from being wrinkled and rumpled, had come through more or less intact. Perfect. They were all hers now.

She pulled on his shirt and headed for the door, then paused to glance back. The man lay with his back to her, the cuffs pulling his shoulders wide, baring the full expanse of his broad back — several scratch marks ran from his shoulder blades down to his waist before disappearing under the blanket. Ivy pressed a hand to her chest; her conscience gave a small twinge. She'd originally planned to humiliate him further, but she changed her mind, and instead of tossing the handcuff key, she set it down on the nightstand — a small silver key, barely noticeable against the cream-colored surface.

Nobody carried pen and paper these days. She rummaged through her whole bag and came up with nothing but an eyeliner pencil — it would have to do. She thought it over, crouched down, and drew a giant arrow across his well-defined abs, and, worried he might not notice it, went over it again with lipstick to make the arrow thicker and redder. Beside it she scrawled a few crooked words, looking for all the world like they'd been spelled out with caterpillars. The overall effect made him look exactly like one of those doodled-on rag dolls from a horror movie. Ivy looked at her handiwork and couldn't help a small laugh.

He'd once told her: Poppy, don't be afraid. I'll always be here.

Liar.

She stood at the door for a long while, her eyes slowly reddening. In the end, the door closed behind her anyway. The plan had gone off without a hitch. He hadn't woken up. And yet she didn't feel nearly as pleased as she'd expected to.

Back home, she didn't even have the energy to change out of her clothes. She slid down the wall to the floor, little by little, like a puddle of mush. Ivy stared at her blurred reflection in the glass door and gave a self-mocking little laugh. She closed her eyes, and her mind filled entirely with the image of the man cuffed to that bed. Before tonight, she had never once seen his face — and still, she hadn't been able to stop herself. Was it dependency? Was it love? Or something else entirely? She couldn't tell, and didn't want to try.

They'd met back in high school, in an online game. His username was Ash. From then on, one of them in New York and the other studying thousands of miles away, they'd become the kind of confidants who could talk about anything. He taught her how to handle being excluded at school; taught her — the daughter from her father's first marriage, shipped off by her stepmother to boarding school overseas — how to ask her own father for living expenses; taught her how to make the most of a limited allowance in the stock market; taught her how to find the cheapest, best ingredients in a foreign country; taught her how to cook a decent dinner using nothing but a microwave. From the smallest trivial things to the biggest turning points in her life, he seemed to understand everything, and he was always willing to listen.

She used to naively believe that all the hardships she'd been through were just trials fate had set for her, and that Ash was the reward she'd earned for clearing them — a bond the heavens themselves had arranged specially for her.

The year she was a junior in college, Ash suddenly vanished. He stopped replying to texts, stopped logging into the game. That was when it finally hit her — what she'd thought was a destined connection had been nothing but an illusion built on a network connection, fragile enough to shatter at the first real test. That same year, her father died, and left the entire family fortune to her stepmother's son. Right after that, someone falsely accused her of plagiarizing her thesis, and she was dragged through round after round of academic review. She later learned it had all been orchestrated by her own father — he'd been afraid that if she came home, she'd fight his precious son for the inheritance. So much for a father's love running deep as mountains — that was just something people said to comfort children. In his eyes, the only one who ever counted as "family" had been his son.

After all of that had blown over, Ash came back as if nothing had happened, still just as caring in his messages, as if the whole disappearance had simply never occurred. Ivy just felt suffocated by it — like the wilted lettuce leaf stuck in the middle of a sandwich: no flavor, no crunch left, you could still swallow it down, but that was all you could do with it. She had more important things to focus on anyway, didn't she? No reason to let someone who could vanish without a word hold her back.

Ivy had always been proud. Him disappearing without so much as a goodbye, all those years ago, should have been more than enough to make her let go of Ash for good. Last night had simply been a birthday present to herself — eight years overdue. A long-held obsession, finally put to rest in one night. She had no intention of looking back.

Now, it was time to reclaim, piece by piece, everything that belonged to her.