The dress was still a problem.
Objectively, it was within guidelines. Technically appropriate. Not short enough to raise a flag, not tight enough to warrant HR intervention, not low-cut enough for anyone to start whispering about workplace decorum.
But it was also Hana.
And Hana, in that dress, was distracting as hell.
Not that she was doing anything. She wasn't parading around or leaning across desks or flipping her hair unnecessarily. She was working. Talking. Existing. But every time she walked past his glass wall or stood too close to a window with sunlight catching the slope of her neck—Katsuki felt like the dress was mocking him.
She'd worn it knowing what it would do. That was the worst part. She hadn't even looked smug. Just… effortlessly, devastatingly normal.
Even Naomi had commented that morning.
"You're a walking scandal," she'd muttered, glancing up from a quarterly report. "I looked like that when I was younger."
A joke, sure. But not really. Naomi didn't bother with praise unless it was deserved. And lately, her version of favoritism had gotten less subtle. Hana could walk into a meeting five minutes late with coffee on her sleeve and Naomi would still defend her like a prize student.
Katsuki didn't say anything. Just sipped his coffee and kept pretending the neckline of Hana's dress wasn't rerouting blood flow to all the wrong places.
He'd spent most of the day quietly watching her. Tracking her, if he was being honest. Which he wasn't. She'd been perfectly normal—editing a contract for the Osaka team, fighting with Procurement over invoicing protocols, sending him her usual one-liner updates that made it seem like she wasn't single-handedly managing half the office's workload.
And now, she was at her desk again, one hand on her hip, voice sharp and fast as she argued with someone in Mandarin. She didn't even notice him watching. But she never did. That was the problem.
Kai walked into his office without knocking. Smug. Disheveled. More stressed than usual but still walking like he owned every room he entered.
"I need to leave early," he said, dropping into the chair across from him. "Going to Tokyo tomorrow for that meeting with the investment firm. And I had to convince Yuna to come with me, which took an argument, two bribes, and a promise of pancakes."
Katsuki nodded. Didn't absorb a word.
His gaze shifted back toward Hana.
Still talking. Still pacing. That dress. Those heels. The fact that she hadn't even looked at him since the elevator.
"Does the dress look inappropriate to you?" he asked.
Kai tilted his head, glanced toward her.
"No," he said. "I think it's fine. She looks good, actually."
Of course she did. That wasn't the point.
Then Kai added, casually, "You know she hid in my office yesterday and declared herself a potato?"
Katsuki's head snapped around. "Why?"
Kai shrugged. "No reason. She said her brain is going haywire and just needed a reset. She got the fluffy blanket from my closet—yes, I keep one, don't judge—and hid under it on my couch."
A long pause.
"She said she didn't want to bother you". Kai continued.
Katsuki looked out through the glass again.
She was still arguing. Calm now. Resolute. Probably over something trivial like shipping costs or contract clauses—but she sounded like she was ready to take someone apart.
He exhaled through his nose. Steady. Quiet.
She does break sometimes.
Not often. Not publicly. But it happened. She just didn't let him see it.
Kai stood. Smoothed his blazer. Then stopped like something just occurred to him. "Oh. Yuna mentioned she set Hana up on another blind date tonight. An F1 racer. Someone she met at a sports magazine party."
Katsuki's eyes narrowed. Slowly. Precisely
He didn't speak for a long moment. Then, dryly, "Can you tell Yuna to stop pimping her best friend?"
Kai grinned. "She's single, Hasegawa. You should've made your claim weeks ago." He tapped Katsuki's shoulder like he was congratulating a dog who almost won a race. "But you're too slow."
And then he walked out.
Katsuki didn't move.
Just stared through the glass wall.
At her.
At the goddamn dress.
At the blind date he hadn't known about until ten seconds ago.
He did not press the emergency stop button this morning.
But now he was wondering if he should've.
-----
Hana hadn't even reached his desk yet and she was already composing her resignation letter in her head. Bold font. Passive-aggressive bullet points. Maybe even a dramatic sign-off like Respectfully, I hope your coffee always burns your tongue—something tasteful.
Because this man, this absolute menace of a managing partner, had dumped three contracts, two compliance drafts, and a policy revision on her desk this morning before her coffee had even cooled. Like he knew she had plans. Like he'd sniffed it out. Like somewhere, in the depths of his controlling cyborg brain, he could sense her calendar clearing at 9 p.m. and thought, Time to ruin her life.
Joke's on him. She was done. All of it. Emailed, signed, backed up on the firm server and printed for that one associate who still didn't understand PDFs.
She smoothed her dress—form-fitting, dangerously backless under her blazer, thank you very much—and breezed into his office like a woman who wasn't seething beneath the surface.
"I'm done with everything," she announced sweetly, standing just in front of his desk. "Can I leave early?"
Then, without waiting for the theatrics: "Actually, scratch that. I'm leaving now. I'll see you Monday."
She turned on her heel.
Katsuki looked up, and the universe punished her for speaking too soon.
"Sukehiro."
God. "What now?"
He held up one of the contracts she'd just filed, one hand in his pocket, the other waving vaguely toward a paragraph like it personally offended him. "You messed up a clause here."
Her jaw dropped. "I don't make mistakes."
"Why don't you check it out?" he said, already rising from his desk and walking toward her with the casual menace of a panther that hadn't eaten in days.
She groaned—groaned—and stalked over to the table, scanning the page.
"It's perfectly written," she muttered, eyes flying over the paragraph. Clause 14, liability exemptions, airtight, Katsuki-grade brutal. "I really have to go—"
When she looked up, he was no longer beside the desk.
He was by the door.
Blocking it.
Her pulse did a little chaotic pirouette.
He didn't say anything at first. Just stared. That look he gave when he was turning something over in his mind and hadn't yet decided whether it would be filed under tolerable or disaster.
"Where are you going?" he asked finally.
Her throat tightened. "Yuna set me up on a blind date."
He moved.
Not dramatically. Not threateningly. Just—forward. One step. Then another.
"And who said you can go?"
Her spine straightened instinctively. "No one."
His gaze dropped to her mouth. "And if I said you can't go?"
Oh. Oh, this game.
She lifted her chin, defiant. "You don't own me, Hasegawa."
His smirk was slow. Arrogant. Dangerous.
"We'll see about that."
Before she could blink, his hand slid to her back—firm, unrelenting—and pulled her toward him.
And then—God help her—he leaned in.
-----
His mouth found hers like it had every right to be there—and maybe it did, maybe it always had, because the second his lips touched hers, Hana stopped thinking.
Stopped breathing.
Stopped resisting.
Stopped pretending this wasn't exactly what she wanted.
The kiss wasn't gentle. It was possessive. Hungry. The kind that said mine without ever bothering to ask. His hands were already at her waist, sliding over her hips, dragging her impossibly close as he kissed her like the answer to every bad day he never acknowledged.
She barely registered the moment her back hit the edge of his desk—just that he lifted her with ease, like she weighed nothing, like her being up there was inevitable.
Paperwork scattered. Something clattered. She didn't care.
Her legs wrapped around his waist, and his body met hers—solid, hot, hard, right there beneath expensive suit pants and professionalism. She felt every inch of him, and it lit her up like fire.
He didn't give her time to recover. His mouth moved to her neck, trailing heat along the skin just beneath her ear, down to the place where her pulse beat like a warning. She gasped when he sucked there, hard, deep—branding her, again, like she belonged to him and they both knew it.
She was panting now. One hand fisting in his tie, the other scrabbling for balance, like the desk wasn't already tilting dangerously beneath the weight of what he was doing to her.
He pulled back just slightly. Smirked against her throat.
"Apparently I own you now," he said, voice low and smug and entirely too pleased with himself.
She shoved at his chest—half-hearted at best—and slid off the desk in a daze, legs barely working, lungs trying to recalibrate.
"Oh my god," she hissed, stumbling toward the window, cupping her neck like she could will away the inevitable hickey she already felt forming.
She yanked open the blinds, checking her reflection in the glass.
"You absolute—emotionally constipated capitalist demon with a superiority complex and the libido of a vengeful Greek god."
Katsuki leaned back against the desk, tie crooked, shirt rumpled, lips still faintly pink from her mouth.
Smirking.
Calm.
"I'll add more," he said smoothly, "if you don't behave."