Chapter 6: A Kiss, Requested

Gong Si left, and only Gong Shiwen and Gong Zheng remained in the office.

Gong Shiwen walked over slowly and reached out, stroking the sharp line of Gong Zheng's cheek with unexpected tenderness. "There's a client from Southeast Asia today, cross-border finance, mainly. I hadn't planned to have you receive him. But what a coincidence—you came back today..."

The meaning left no room for doubt. Gong Zheng's eyes, black as polished glass, fixed on him and studied him in silence for a few seconds.

Then he braced both hands on the sofa to rise—and a pair of strong hands pressed his shoulders back down. In the next instant Gong Shiwen bent one leg in between Gong Zheng's, lowered his head, and murmured close: "I wasn't finished. What's the hurry?"

The crisp, cool fragrance of cigar smoke threaded into Gong Zheng's nose and mouth, twined with the pheromones the Alpha was deliberately releasing, and for a moment the room tilted.

"I'm saying... if you stay tonight, there'll be no need to go serve anyone else."

Gong Zheng laughed.

He shoved Gong Shiwen off him in one motion, stood, and did up his buttons without looking back. "Forget it. Serving others at least comes with a vested cut. What would you give me? If you can't give me anything, why would I work for you for free?"

With that, indifferent to whatever face Gong Shiwen was making behind him, Gong Zheng walked straight to the door, took the handle, and still found time to wave over his shoulder. "Bye." Then, with open audacity, he swept his gaze down Gong Shiwen's body, letting it come to rest somewhere unprintable, grinned, and offered a kind-hearted reminder: "If you really can't help yourself, I can find you another one of their altered freaks."

The words were salt ground into his own wound—a thousand cuts to the enemy, eight hundred to himself. He had dressed Gong Shiwen's desire for him as a taste for every botched alteration the organization produced. He was disgusted by himself, and more disgusted still by anyone who lusted after what they had made of him—an Alpha turned Omega.

It didn't matter. He had been revolted for this long already; a little deeper wouldn't kill him. And if it stung Gong Shiwen, then the disgust hadn't gone to waste.

Click——

The door had barely shut behind him when he turned and found Gong Si leaning against the wall, lazily scrolling his phone.

"Why haven't you left?" Gong Zheng's brow lifted, mildly surprised.

At that, Gong Si killed the screen, tucked the phone away, and turned to face him, smiling. "Wanted to see whether you'd stay tonight."

Gong Zheng's eyes narrowed. "You were eavesdropping?"

"Ah..." Gong Si made a show of thinking it over. "Not exactly eavesdropping. You two didn't close the door properly."

Gong Zheng very much wanted to roll his eyes, but he swallowed it and sighed instead. "Young master, you heard what there was to hear. Even if I don't keep your father company tonight, I'll be keeping someone else's..."

Gong Si went "Huh?" and asked, genuinely startled, "How did you know I wanted to invite you out?"

Gong Zheng had the odd sensation of babysitting. He managed a strained smile and looked at the boy the way one looks at an idiot. "I'm not blind, young master."

Every word and twitch of the boy's face broadcast I want to ask you out tonight. Gong Zheng sighed inwardly. A kid through and through—couldn't hide a thing. Set against Gong Shiwen, that deep-water old fox, the son was still hopelessly naive.

Gong Si mulled that over, rubbing his chin, and muttered, ".........Is it that obvious?"

Gong Zheng ignored the idiot, made to move straight past him—and the moment they crossed, a grip closed on his wrist. The boy's relentless clinging was starting to grate. "Again, you—"

"Where to? I'll drive you." Gong Si shamelessly closed in, grinning.

Gong Zheng studied him for two seconds. The boy's face made refusal impossible, so he gave in with a mental shrug. Fine, fine—a free chauffeur, what was there to complain about? He slackened his wrist and said, "All right."

Gong Si drove him back to his villa in the outskirts. In fairness, after all this time under Gong Shiwen—shared beds, dirty work—a commune mule had never been worked this hard, and Gong Shiwen was hardly the man to shortchange him materially. But none of it was charity, either. Gong Shiwen was a businessman; profit and loss were his native language, and he never ran a losing trade. Every yuan Gong Zheng had was payment rendered, task by task.

Maybe it was just the homing instinct bred into Hua people's bones—the longing to put down roots, to live steady and quiet. Even sunk in mire this deep, Gong Zheng could not stop wanting a plain, settled life.

So once he had enough money saved, he had moved out of Gong Shiwen's place without a backward glance. Gong Shiwen had been displeased, but said nothing—after all, what would it look like, word getting out that the Chairman had begged a lowly altered plaything to stay? And his pride told him he could not afford to be the one at a disadvantage.

So he had let Gong Zheng go.

From then on, Gong Zheng had a home that belonged to him and no one else.

When the car stopped, the boy just sat there, gazing hopefully at Gong Zheng in the passenger seat. That look would have moved a heart of stone—a little......... but only a very little.

Gong Zheng elected not to see it. He undid his seatbelt as if nothing were happening, pushed the door open to get out—and heard the mutter of complaint from behind him: "Says he's not blind... suddenly he can't see a thing..."

Gong Zheng's hand paused on the door. The moment he registered what he'd heard, he snorted, turned, and sat back down in the passenger seat, pulling the door shut, looking at Gong Si with something like amusement. "Even if I took you up, what then? I'm leaving to see a client soon. Were you planning to sit alone in my house?"

Realizing that was indeed the case, Gong Si pressed his lips together and went quiet, a faint, childish restlessness crossing his face that he couldn't quite hide. Gong Zheng watched him at leisure. After a long moment, the boy forced out: "I did drive you back, at least... so shouldn't you..."

It seemed hard for him to say. Gong Zheng truly couldn't remember the last time he'd seen the boy look so awkwardly, youthfully unguarded—and suddenly he felt a few years younger himself. Watching him hover on the edge of words he didn't dare release, Gong Zheng felt something like a kitten's scratch across his heart. Ticklish.

"Shouldn't I what?" Gong Zheng took over the sentence, arms crossed.

".........shouldn't you... give me something?" The tips of Gong Si's ears had gone visibly red.

Gong Zheng found it entertaining. When they'd first met, Gong Si had been a genuine piece of work—a seasoned menace who'd come on to him within minutes. But the longer they'd spent together, the purer he'd turned out to be than Gong Zheng had imagined. Though there was another possibility: maybe this side of him only ever showed itself in front of Gong Zheng.

So what exactly had made Gong Si drop the menace act toward him?

The answer sat right on the surface. Gong Zheng preferred not to look at it.

"What do you want?"

"You... a kiss."