Page 55 of Shark 2

He was here to ruin my plans to talk about becoming mates!

“We invited him for dinner because he is here alone and because of some other things we’ll discuss shortly,” Jong-min explained.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

The three looked at each other, realizing they hadn’t officially introduced him to us yet.

“I am Jong-kyu,” he said and tried to smile, but it was so forced I almost laughed.

“It’s nice to officially meet you, Jong-kyu. I’m Kassidy.”

“You know us,” Reed grunted, arms folded across his chest, clearly not happy with Jong-kyu being here.

Jong-hyun grabbed a chair and set it at the table, grabbing a plate as well.

“Let’s eat before it gets cold. Kass put a lot of work into this,” Jong-min said. He grabbed my plate and filled it up, set it back in front of me, and then filled up his own plate.

Jong-kyu watched it happen with his eyes narrowed, but instead of commenting, filled up his plate as well.

I had planned to take less food since there was an additional person that I hadn’t accounted for, but Jong-min had prevented that. Instead, the three brothers split up their food between them.

We ate in silence, but it was happy silence for me as I could tell everyone genuinely liked the food.

As soon as everyone was done, Grant and Reed stood, stacked all the dirty dishes, and took them to the sink.

“I got dessert,” I announced.

“Cake?” Jong-hyun asked hopefully.

“Chocolate,” I said with a nod.

His eyes sparkled and he quickly went to the cupboard for plates.

“Dinner was really good. Your cooking has definitely improved,” Jong-min praised and slipped an arm around my waist.

Tilting my head back to look up at him, I smiled and raised on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “Thank you.” Leaning into his hold, I relished the rare moment of affection and praise from the notoriously grumpy male.

“Let’s take the cake to the living room so we can talk,” Jong-min said.

Grant and Reed helped carry the plates while Jong-min steered me out of the kitchen and to the living room.

“You’ve helped enough for today, darling,” he whispered in my ear.

“I can just sit and look pretty now?” I teased.

He kissed the tip of my nose. “Yes.”

The high level of sweetness worried me a bit. Was he buttering me up for bad news?

He sat down on the couch first and instead of sitting next to him, I sat on his lap, turned sideways with my legs draped over the arm of the couch. I rested the side of my head against his shoulder, my nose near his throat to draw in his scent better.

At first he tensed, but once I was comfortable and still, he wrapped his arms around me and stroked his fingers along the skin he had access to, which was mainly my forearm and leg.

Jong-kyu, who had followed us into the room, didn’t like it judging by his thinned lips, but he smartly kept quiet and sat on the couch opposite us.

The others joined us and while I knew this was an important meeting, I let my eyes close and relished the moment with Jong-min as he explained to the others about my parents leaving and the restaurant now being theirs … ours.

“So, we can quit the aquarium?” Reed asked.

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