Failure to Match (Bad Billionaire Bosses, #2)

by Kyra Parsi

“We’ve been friends for one day.” “And yet it’s felt like a lifetime, no?”

He was a dom, then. Figured.

“You wanted a list of my kinks? There’s your first one.” My third mistake was asking, “People rejecting your money is a kink for you?” “No, Jamie, you rejecting my money is a kink for me.”

That was my fourth mistake. His hand engulfed mine, sending a buzz over my skin that had nothing to do with the alcohol. Then he did something I wouldn’t have predicted in a million years. Jackson Sinclair guided my hand forward and pressed it to his chest. Over his heart. Over his rapidly beating heart. “Now feel what happens when I do this.” Without warning, he leaned in and brushed a kiss over my cheek. My body went up in flames. His pulse jumped under my palm. “You feel that?” His hot breath grazed my skin, making me shiver. “It likes you.”

“Spread your legs a little wider for me, Jamie. I’d like to tease you properly.”

“Come on. Show me what a good girl you can be.” Fuck me.

Jackson tsked. “Needy little thing. You’d need to be fucked regularly if we got married, wouldn’t you?”

“I’ve been dying to know if your pussy is as pretty as the rest of you.”

“What I’d do to see myself spilling out of you like this… you have no fucking idea. It’s very quickly becoming another one of my kinks.”

He couldn’t do an ever-after, and I couldn’t do without one.

I bit into my lower lip as Toebeans and his one brain cell tried their best to slot the puzzle pieces together. Why did the half-giant crouching in front of him sound like his palace overlord? It made no sense!

I couldn’t decide which was more amusing—my wide-eyed, dumb-struck cat, or the duck-walking half-giant at his mercy.

“Fantastic.” He tossed his phone on the table as I plopped down on the couch beside him. “I have so many questions⁠—” He wasn’t given the chance to finish. The moment my ass hit the cushion, his beautiful face was in my hands and his insufferably pretty mouth was captive against mine.

“I’m quite aware of what lust is, Jamie,” he told my mouth. “I’m suffering through the affliction as we speak.”

“Meaning you can bend me over and fuck me as rough and hard as you want, but you’re not allowed to clean me up afterward.” I slipped his bottom lip between my teeth and softly pulled, then licked. “Meaning, Jackson, that you can tie me to your bed and use me like your own personal fucktoy all night, you can leave your marks and your bruises on my skin, but you’re not allowed to soothe them when you’re finished. Is that more clear?”

“You’ve got a tiny little fuckhole, don’t you?”

That’s how fucking good you taste, Jamie. It made me spill in my pants like a teenager.”

“Do you think she’ll understand, Jamie? That the reason I won’t lick her pussy is because I know she won’t taste like you?”

“Two full loads of my cum and your greedy little fuckhole’s still pulsating for more. Who knew my sweet girl would turn out to be such a needy slut?”

“Spread your thighs,” he commanded. “Show me what a good little slut you are, how badly you need to be fucked again.”

“Do you have any fucking idea how pretty you look with my cum spilling out of you like this, sweet girl?”

“For the last time, you’re not for him. And just so we’re crystal-fucking-clear on this, you won’t be fucking anyone else with my ring on your finger.”

“Every single one of my kinks—all the ones we’ve talked about—are exclusive to you. I don’t want to do any of this with anyone else; never have. Why is that, Jamie? What the fuck did you do to me?”

Hope was such a viciously miserable thing sometimes.

Ria always said it was the innocent-looking ones you had to watch out for.

“You’re a good dude, Bensen,”

“Thank you, Miss Paquin. For what it’s worth, I think you, too, are a good dude.”

“Tell me what it is so I can fix it.”

convince yourself that you’re fine and that everything’s under perfect control when, in reality, you’re barely hanging on by a frayed thread? And then something really small happens, or someone says something seemingly insignificant, and it makes you break in half? Well, I broke in half.

“I bet Daffodil always smells like fish. Occupational hazard. Is that really what you want to be coming home to every day?”

“I can make you sushi all the time.” “You just said you don’t enjoy cooking.” “Hate it. It’s a complete waste of time.” He tossed the towel he’d used to dry his hands and wedged himself between my dangling knees again. “But if it made you happy, I’d do it.”

“You think I’m easy to fall in love with?” His voice was husky, quiet.

“I want you sucking me off before your date, and I want you swallowing every last fucking drop so if he tries to kiss you, you can let him know exactly what he’ll be tasting.”

“It’s not him,” he whispered against my lips. “It’s not him. Come back to me, Jamie.” And it broke my brain in half.

“It’s the least you could do after sneaking in here twice without my knowledge or permission, don’t you think?” he said bitterly. “The first time I could excuse. I’m fully aware of how cunning the Harrison sisters can be. They look homey and innocent, and they’re clever enough to utilize it to their full advantage. When I say that Molly couldn’t take the guilt, I mean she planned this all out and then pretended like she couldn’t take the guilt. She knew full well I’d never bring you in here, and that you’d never confess to your crime, so she forced our hands.” Somehow, I was both surprised and not surprised by that. The sisters had to be cunning to get away with years of hiding everything they had from Richard—all of it regarding his only child, no less.

Mabel had promised me that they’d buried him a few feet deeper than needed, ensuring a smoother, shorter trip down to hell. He fucking deserved it.

“I fucking hate it when you cry.”

“And I also think... with all that going on, it’s probably best if we stop sleeping together right away. We should go back to being just friends.” “We were never just friends,”

“I mean I’ll never be able to find a job at a matchmaking firm again.” “That would never happen.” “I don’t think you understand just how taboo⁠—” “Let me rephrase,” he interrupted. “I would never allow that to happen.”

I wished I’d never met him, but I was so fucking glad I had, you know?

his Jamie?”

“I hate to break it to you, Jamie Paquin, the prettiest little matchmaker with the prettiest smile and the prettiest heart he’s ever seen, but this idiot is your man.”

Selfishly, I didn’t want him to be with anyone else. Illogically, I hated her. Unreasonably, I wanted to march up to their table and politely ask Miray to take her hands off my man.

Wow, what the hell? Frowning, I threw open the bathroom door... and immediately attempted to close it again. But Jackson’s hand shot out just in time.

“I am not worth your tears, Jamie.”

“Stop. Just... stop.” His voice was gruff with exasperation as he stepped forward. “Does this feel right to you? Does seeing me with someone else feel right? Because I’m losing my fucking mind over here, Jamie. It’s fucking horrible.”

“How can you stand it?” His voice was raw, anguished. “How is it fair that you’re only halfway there, but I can’t fucking breathe anymore, Jamie?”

“I have a bone to pick with you,” Jackson’s slurred, gruff voice said on the speaker. “I was fine before her. I was fine, but nobody wanted to believe it. Not you, not Molly, not Mabel, not Bensen or Mikey or Rahul or anybody else. But I was fucking fine! And now? Now I’m… She fucking broke me, Minerva. I’ve well and truly lost my mind. When I go to bed, it’s her. When I wake up, it’s her. When I blink or breathe or dare to merely exist, it’s her, and… and I never understood how Beatrice managed to sink her claws so deep into Richard’s skin. It never made sense to me. She turned a god into her fucking lapdog and put him on an electric leash, and he fucking let her. “It was a disease with the two of them. He could only see what she wanted him to see, believed every lie she told him, and whenever she did something to piss him off, he took it out on me. That’s how fucking terrified he was that she’d leave him—he couldn’t even properly confront her about any of her affairs. She thought she’d trapped him by giving birth to me, but to him, it was always the other way around. “He was fucking pathetic. Even as a kid, I could see it. And I swore—I swore—it was never going to be me. If that was love, then the whole world was being lied to. But it wasn’t, was it? That was a cancerous mix of deceit, and manipulation, and greed, and whatever the fuck else, but it wasn’t love. You know how I know? Because my Jamie would never manipulate me like that for anything, and I would never—could...

“I love you, Jamie.” My heart burst. I couldn’t… wow that was a rush. A wicked smile spread over Jackson’s lips as he took in my reaction. “I don’t remember how or when it happened, exactly, but I’ve developed an unacceptable amount of love for you and I very much plan on holding you accountable for it.”

“You broke me,” he chided. “It’s been a very traumatic experience. Do you know butterflies in your stomach refer to actual butterflies in your actual stomach? And my heart’s been very dramatic about you. It’s unsettling, to say the least, knowing how many years you’ve shaved off my life.”