“Maybe we don’t tell him?” one of the wives suggested. “I mean, we can all keep a secret, right? I think we’re all scared enough of Phantom to do that.”
“Great idea,” Jake, the oldest brother, said, taking charge. “Give me a moment to grab our coats, and I’ll drive you home—”
He cut off when Phantom’s grandma waggled her phone and declared something that made everyone but Annie erupt.
“Why, Grandma?” Ryan demanded. “Why did you call him?”
A door slammed in the distance before Phantom’s grandmother could answer.
My heart stopped. And everyone stilled, like a pack of herbivores when they hear the rustle of a predator.
We all waited in that frozen tableau of dread and anticipation as heavy footsteps came directly toward the dining room.
So, of course, I knew who it was even before Phantom filled up the open doorway of the formal dining room and demanded, “What. The. Fuck?”
22
Everyone sat there frozen in response to Phantom’s question. Even his grandmother.
Everyone but me.
It felt surreal, like stepping out of a still life when I alone stood up to face the beast.
“Phantom,” I said softly.
He glanced at me, but his shark eyes didn’t pin me down like they used to before Christmas.
Instead, he quickly looked away and took a step back. As if I was a fire that could burn him alive.
“Why are you here?” he demanded, his voice as vicious as mine was soft.
He had questions.
Well, I had questions too.
So many questions. But only one came out. Two words: “What happened?”
He shook his head, still refusing to look at me. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“What happened?” I asked again. “Why did you do this to me? To us?”
He just kept shaking his head. “You can’t be here. Jake, take her home.”
“I was about to do that when you walked in,” Jake said, hopping up from the still life like a soldier. “Just have to grab my coat.”
But then Phantom’s grandmother also unfroze and erupted with, “Hak-kan!” followed by an angry burst of Cantonese.
“Don’t even try it, Grandma,” Phantom answered over my shoulder, cutting her off. “I’m so done with you right now. You’ll be lucky if I even talk to you before this death you’re so excited for.”
Those words finally unfroze his father too.
“Phantom! You do not talk to your grandmother this way!” his father said, slamming his hand on the table.
“Why the fuck is she here?” Phantom roared back at his father, at the entire table. “It’s not safe. She shouldn’t be here! She shouldn’t—”
“Hak-kan!”
This time the sharp rebuke came from me, not his grandma.
Everyone, including Phantom, turned to stare at me.
Relationships.
They always happened to me, not the other way around.
It had been so easy—so easy for me to believe that he was just done with me. That I had been nothing but a pawn in his game of business.
But for the first time in my life, I pushed aside all that low self-esteem, my fears of not being good enough. I batted away all of my doubts and stepped forward to a man with no idea of how he would receive me.
“Hak-kan, stop yelling at them,” I said to him. “This is between you and me.”
He shook his head, still refusing to meet my eyes. “There’s no you and me. Not anymore. I told you—”
“Stop lying!” I snarled, my voice as vicious as his had been when he demanded to know why I was there. “You said we weren’t that couple.”
“I…” His concrete slab face quaked but then re-hardened. “That wasn’t for real. You knew that from the start.”
Wow.
He wasn’t moving, but he was throwing haymakers. Punching my shaky ego in all the right places. I had to stop for a moment and gather my wind after that direct hit.
But the thing was, he’d made one crucial mistake with me during the month we’d been together.
He’d complimented me and insisted I was worthy. He’d treated me like a goddess, in and out of bed, chipping away at my insecurities until I began to see myself the way he did.
So no, I wasn’t going to let that hit knock me out.
I started toward him with my fist curled at my sides, determined to fight. For him. For us!
The expression on my face must have scared him.
He backed away as if I was the huge mafia villain, not him.
But I kept on advancing, refusing to let him get away this time. And his back hit the wall behind him before he could escape.
Just like mine did that night in my brownstone.
“Let me in!” I demanded, remembering how scared I’d been of everything that night. Of him. Of me. Of the tornado of passion whipping around us.
I remembered, and I reached for his cheek to soothe him. To show him it was okay to let me back in. But he caught my hand with both of his before I could.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” he said, his voice angry and full of threat. “You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t be here.”
He was so strong. I couldn’t move my hand. But that was alright. I had the other one. And I brought it up to the left slab of his concrete face.
“Hak-kan,” I whispered, caressing his cheek. I chased the eyes that refused to meet mine.
“I miss you,” I said when I finally caught them. “I miss you so much.”
He was so big, so much stronger than me. He could have just pushed me away, given another command to his brother to drive me home, and left it there.
But he didn’t do that.
So I said it again.
“Let me in,” I pleaded with everything I had at my avail. My words, my eyes, my entire heart. “I miss you so much.”
He shook his head as stubbornly as he had before I actually managed to lay a physical hand on him.
But then, his face, all that hard concrete…it gave out.
“Fuck, I missed you too,” he said on a rough expulsion of air.
He shoved my hand off his cheek, only so that he could pull me into his arms right before his whole body collapsed around me. He was a resolute monument coming down in an earthquake of emotion.
“I missed you too,” he told me again, kissing my neck, my ear, the back of my jaw—any piece of skin he could get while keeping me wrapped up in his tight hug.
Meeting parents had always been a thing for me. I get embarrassed so easily, and the relationship milestone always made me self-conscious.
But here we were, two people, holding on to each other as we waited for the storm to pass. And yes, his family was probably staring, but for once, I didn’t care about what anyone else thought of me.
I was exactly where I’d been longing to be for all those terrible weeks since Christmas.
Back in Hak-kan’s arms.
23
So Jake didn’t drive me home.
Instead, Hak-kan and I ended up with plates of food balanced on our laps in his childhood bedroom—which had been preserved in all of its turn-of-the-century glory as a shrine to the Wu-Tang Clan, Biggie Smalls, Black Star, DMX, and…well, individual members of the Wu-Tang Clan.
Apparently, a room chock full of the rap group’s swag, figurines, and posters just hadn’t been enough for the dedicated teenage fan he’d been back then. He’d also had to worship RZA, Method Man, Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, and GZA as separate deities.
There was so much to talk about. But I took my time eating most of my food before I began with the relatively simple stuff.
“So your family…I can see you in your father. But your twin, brothers, and mom don’t look anything like you.”
“Yeah, our situation ain’t as formal as yours,” Phantom set his plate aside on the desk just next to the bed.
“Dad was old school mafia. He had a wife and a mistress. He
probably would’ve just kept his side woman and me a secret like any mafia guy would have, Chinese or not. But my birth mom died a few days after pushing me out. So no more girlfriends after that for Dad. He gave up all side activity when his Japanese wife agreed to take his bastard in and raise him as her own. According to Jake, I just showed up a few weeks after Annie brought Ryan home from the hospital. He was legit scared when Mike was born that another phantom baby would show up.”
He chuckled at the memory. “That’s why everybody calls me Phantom.”
Hak-kan didn’t appear all that torn up about his origin story. But a few puzzle pieces fell into place for me.
He was the product of an extramarital affair—no wonder he’d accepted my condition about him not cheating so quickly.
“You all seemed to have adjusted to the situation quite admirably,” I observed. “I mean, your family’s just amazing.”
Phantom shrugged. “Yeah, as far as everyone is concerned, I’m one of them, no questions asked—even if my twin and me don’t look anything alike. Mom’s a saint. She’s never made me feel any kind of way about not being her birth son—but I can’t say she was happy when I chose Dad’s family business over going to college and becoming a doctor like my brothers.”
My mind boggled, but I arranged all this new information to realize out loud, “Is that what you told my dad during your big conversation on the golf course? Why he thought we had so much in common?”
“Yeah, pretty much,” Hak-kan answered. “He had some concerns about my intentions toward you. He said he’d already watched you get hurt by one guy who wasn’t good enough for you. He didn’t want to see it happen again.”
“Is that why you called off the engagement?” I asked. “Because you didn’t think you were good enough?”
“No, I’ve known I’m not good enough for you from the start, O,” he answered with a coarse laugh. “I called off the engagement because of this last war with the 24K.”
With that, he launched into the tale of what had happened to Victor and Han and how his fellow Dragons had both come close—“too damn close” to losing their significant others.
“The state I found Han in when I went to Hawaii…it was like he was half dead. Lucky it all worked out in the end. But all I could think about was how if that had been me—if someone had faked your death to retaliate against me, I never would have figured it out. Because I would have eaten my gun the moment I thought you were dead. That’s what the guilt would’ve done to me. And that’s why I broke off our engagement, even after we nullified the threat. I couldn’t stand the thought of anything happening to you because of me. Still can’t.”
My heart squeezed with a weird mix of sympathy and resentment as I considered his explanation. “I understand now, and thank you for sharing that with me. But don’t you think that should have been my decision? You know, give me some options. Don’t just ghost me.”
Hak-kan shook his head. “Thing is, I’m still not one-hundred percent sure about any of this. I’m fully out of the Triad side now. I’ve pretty much moved to the city, and Victor and Han put me in charge of handling all our legitimate shit. But I can’t be sure…I can’t be sure one of our old enemies won’t ever come through and try to hurt you. That’s why I thought it would be better if I just let you go, no matter how much it ripped up my chest.”
I set the delicious plate of food aside, suddenly no longer hungry.
“I was in a relationship with zero stakes for six years,” I explained to him. “Garrett pretty much ghosted me too. It’s just that he left his shell behind, so I didn’t know he was fully checked out. I get that you’re scared. I’m scared too. But I think we can both agree that I deserve a guy who doesn’t do that to me. Who doesn’t just check out or run when we enter scary relationship waters.”
He looked away and swallowed, his Adam’s apple visibly moving up and down. “Yeah, I know you deserve that.”
“So be that guy, Hak-kan. Be that guy who holds my hand, holds on to me—even when things get scary. If you had let me talk the day you called, I would have told you that my dad gave me the final decision. He wants to keep Glendaver in the family, and he wants us to be married before the final paperwork goes through.”
“He wants us to get married?” Hak-kan repeated. He regarded me with an unreadable expression. “Would you be willing to do that? To take it that far with me?”
His face remained neutral, but it felt like the air was pulsing around us in anticipation of my answer.
“I don’t know,” I answered.
Okay, that was a lie. I knew.
While we’d been together, he’d made me laugh, communicate, feel sexy and cherished. I’d love that. I’d loved that so much. Instead of lingering at the clinic as I usually did, I couldn’t get back to his place fast enough. I’d been living on a cloud.
But that was before Christmas.
And just yesterday, I was walking around in misery because he’d ghosted me without any real explanation.
I knew what my heart was telling me, why it had led me to his grandma’s door. But I was a doctor. A woman of science. I could only follow unproven feelings so far.
So instead of telling him yes, I was all in, I asked, “When do you think the paperwork will be ready?”
“At this rate? May… June at the latest.”
“Okay, that’s a few months from now, and I don’t know how any of this will turn out. But I like you. A lot. And I want to find out….”
I took his huge mitt in my hand. “So let’s do this until I have to make a final decision. Let’s both be brave and try to make this work.”
“Be brave,” he repeated, hunger and a very uncharacteristic hesitation warred inside his shark eyes.
And I knew which emotion I wanted to win.
“Yes, brave.” I placed his hand on my breast. “Can you do that? Can you be brave with me?”
He shuddered. Then he pulled me into his lap with what appeared to be little to no exertion, and he…
He kissed me in a way that was both reverent and afraid.
There he went again, making me feel like the most powerful woman on earth. I shuddered myself as he slowly reclaimed my mouth.
But it had been too long. I didn’t want to be worshiped like a goddess.
“More,” I murmured against his lips. “I want more.”
He pulled back, shook his head. “This is my childhood bedroom. My whole family’s downstairs.”
Propriety—my kryptonite. The one sure thing that would get me to back down in most situations.
But he’d done too good of a job, chipping away at all my edges until I emerged an entitled goddess.
I jerked my chin back and asked him in a voice that was almost as tough as his, “You think I won’t fuck you in your childhood bedroom with your family downstairs?”
Before he could answer that, I climbed out of his lap and kneeled on the floor between his legs.
One kiss. We’d only shared one kiss of reunion. But apparently, that had been enough to get him excited. There was now a very distinct bulge underneath the zipper of his suit pants.
“What are you doing?” Hak-kan asked above me, his voice rough and a little choked.
In answer, I unzipped his trousers and pulled him out. I found his cock rigid and pulsing and already dripping pre-cum from its broad head.
The sight was so lewd, so counter to the gentle and thoughtful conversation we’d been having just a few moments ago. But every feminine part of me tingled in anticipation.
I was such a good girl, so polite and southern.
But this time, there were no shy looks or asking for permission.
I swallowed him down, and that was it. No more arguing with me. No more cajoling or questions.
He just threw back his head with a harsh, drawn out, “Fuck!”
I smiled around his dick, loving the powerful feeling in my chest as I worked my head up and down his thick shaft. As hard as the last few sexless weeks had be
en without him, I didn’t care about my own needs. All I wanted was his pleasure in my mouth. And I happily sucked on him, determined to get it.
But before I could, he pulled me off his cock.
“No, no,” he said, his voice a rusty bone saw above my head. “It’s been too long. All I want is you on this dick. C’mon, beautiful, get up here.”
I didn’t move quickly enough to obey his command. He hauled me up his body until I crashed into his mouth.
He kissed me wild and rough as he slipped on a condom. Then he did one of those “you weigh nothing” lifts. And he was so hard.…so hard. He didn’t even have to line me up to seat me on top of his dick.
But he should have let me suck on him longer. I didn’t slide the way I used to, and I let out a pained whimper when the tip pushed into me.
“It’s been too long,” he crooned in my ear, his tone low and regretful. “Now your body’s thinking twice about letting me into this tight little hole. Just breathe, beautiful, like I taught you.”
It had been a heady rush to play the goddess with him. But he was back in charge now, and I gratefully ceded control as he drove my hips down, breaching my sex inch by inch until I was all the way seated.
It still hurt, though, and I squirmed, my body’s natural response to the monster invader.
“Don’t squirm. Don’t squirm,” he warned. “You’re so tight around me. You’ll make me bust this nut before I have a chance to make it all better. You remember me. I know you do. Rub your clit on this big dick. Make your body remember too. Ride it, beautiful, come on.”
I’d always been such a good little student. Compliant to a T. And this situation was no different. I did as he said. Instead of running away, I rode the thick, monstrous thing planted deep inside of me, stretching me so wide—I rubbed myself against it until my whimpers turned into moans as my hips move faster and faster. So fast, the only other sound in the room was the mad slapping of my body against his.
“Yeah, you remember. Ride, ride, ride.” His voice was a rough whisper in my ear, and he began to bounce me to the rhythm of his chant. “Make me so fucking sorry, I never try to pull that shit on you again. Come all over this dick—ah, fuck.”
Phantom: Her Ruthless Fiancé: 50 Loving States, Kentucky (Ruthless Triad) Page 16
