Peerless Perverted Actor Has a Celebrity Harem?!

Park gathered whatever courage he had left and crossed the room.

He went down on one knee in front of her without deciding to — he reached out and took her hand, both of his folding around it, and looked up at her.

"Emmie. What’s wrong?"

She didn’t answer.

She turned her face away instead, toward the windows, and Park watched her eyes go glassy in the late gold light — that specific wet shine like she was one blink away from losing it and she currently spending everything she had on not letting that happen.

Her lower lip shook once, she caught it with her teeth and held it still.

Park shifted closer on his knee, took her other hand too, and held both between his own like keeping hold of them might keep her in the room.

"Look at me, Emmie. The truth is, I didn’t—"

"Didn’t what exactly, Park?"

Her voice was quiet and barely more than a breath but went through him like a blade going through paper.

"That the girl you were flirting with is my biggest enemy? Is that the part?" Her eyes came back to him and they were steady now, which was worse. "Tell me you didn’t know. Go on. Tell me you didn’t know, when I’ve spent almost every single time I’m with you telling you what she did to me. What she keeps doing. What she said. What she made sure people heard." Her voice climbed one small step and cracked on the last of it. "You know all that you had to go on and—."

Park’s mouth opened but nothing came out of it.

He wanted to tell her the truth — that the memories were still full of holes, that the name Kalypso had landed on him about ninety seconds ago with all the meaning of a stranger’s cough. That the woman had fallen and he’d caught her and that was genuinely the entire extent of it.

Except the second the excuse assembled itself in his head, he heard how it would sound out loud:

"I didn’t recognise her."

Which meant one of two things, and Emmeline would only ever hear the second one. Either he was lying to her face right now, on his knees. Or he had genuinely, sincerely forgotten the one person on this earth who had made his sister’s life unliveable — a name she had brought to him every week, unprompted, over and over, for years, because he was the only person she trusted enough to discuss it with.

You didn’t forget that. Not if it mattered. Not if she mattered.

There was no true thing he could say that didn’t cut her open somewhere.

"What, Park?" Her voice rose properly now, wet at the edges. "Cat got your tongue? Come on. Say it. Tell me you didn’t know that was Kalypso you were flirting with. Tell me you didn’t know she’s the same girl who made sure every single person in the Crown District knows I was born with—"

"Don’t."

He shook his head hard, and the word came out of him fast enough to land before hers did.

Not to stop her arguing but to stop her saying it. To keep that sentence out of the air in his own room, where she’d have to hear it in her own voice, where it would sit in the walls afterward.

Emmeline stopped.

Her mouth stayed open around the shape of the word she hadn’t reached.

Something in her face broke very slightly.

Still on one knee, Park came up higher and reached for her face with both hands.

She flinched the second his fingers touched her — her whole head turned away, her shoulder coming up — and something in his chest folded in on itself, because he had known this girl for one day and could already count on one hand the number of things that had ever made her flinch, and now he was on the list.

He didn’t let go. He brought her back gently, thumbs settling just under her cheekbones, palms warm along her jaw. No pressure in it; she could have pulled away at any point.

"Look at me."

She did. Reluctantly, in stages, her eyes coming to his last of all — and they were shining now, red at the rims, wide open and completely unguarded in a way she had spent the whole day making sure nobody saw.

"I’m sorry," Park said. Low. Nothing clever anywhere in it. "I am so sorry, Emmie."

She tore herself out of his hands and walked straight to the window.

For a long stretch she just stood there with her back to him, arms folded tight across her stomach, holding herself together with her own elbows. Her shoulders rose once and came down.

Her head tipped forward:

Outside, the estate was going gold and long-shadowed, the tree line burning at the edges, and Emmeline stood in all of it looking small in a way that Park found genuinely unbearable to watch.

Then she turned around.

Whatever had been in her face at the door was gone and something else had moved into it while she stood there — sharp, hot, and fixed, a decision arriving somewhere behind her eyes that Park could see the shape of and could not read at all.

It scared him considerably more than the crying had.

"Were you that desperate to flirt with someone?" she asked.

"It’s not like that. I just—"

"Oh. Great. I get it now." A small bitter laugh got out of her before she could stop it. "Park saved a damsel in distress. Very noble. Very cinematic." She tilted her head. "Did the knight in shining armour not remember that Kalypso alreadyhurt that ankle two days ago or did you just so desperately wanted to touch her?"

Park’s stomach dropped straight through the floor.

’Two days ago?’

He hadn’t known. Obviously he hadn’t known.

But somewhere behind his ribs a much colder thing was assembling itself, because if the ankle was two days old then the fall in that lounge had been theatre — and he had watched her go down, moved on pure reflex, caught her, held her, checked the joint with his own hands and felt real swelling under his fingers and never once questioned a single second of it.

She hadn’t needed to fake the injury.

’She’d already had one. She’d just needed a reason to use it.’

She picked her moment and picked the floor, and the second Emmeline was fifty feet away putting Jessie into a lift, and Park had walked into it with his chest out like a man auditioning for exactly the part he’d been handed.

He’d thought that was Lucky.

He was beginning to suspect Lucky had nothing to do with it.

’So she came to me and played damsel with an ankle she’d already—’

"Are you that desperate to kiss someone, Park?"

The question landed sideways and knocked the rest of the sentence out of his head.

"It was the back of her hand—"

He didn’t get to finish that either.

She was on him before he’d registered her crossing the room, both hands closing hard on his shoulders, fingers digging in through his shirt, her face suddenly inches from his. Her eyes were wrecked. Furious and wet and full of something underneath both that had nothing whatsoever to do with Kalypso and had probably been sitting in her for considerably longer than one afternoon.

"Why didn’t you tell me you wanted that, huh?" Her voice had gone low and unsteady. "Why didn’t you tell me? Why did it have to be her? Out of everyone in that entire building, why did it have to be her?"

Park’s hands found her waist on nothing but instinct.

He knew it was a mistake before his palms had finished landing.

She was warm — warm and soft and considerably more there than any part of his brain had been prepared for, the shape of her fitting into his hands like the dress had been made with this specific error in mind.

He could feel her breathing, the small unsteady catch in it every time she pulled air in.

The thin fabric of her dress did almost nothing to hide the shape of her underneath — the gentle curve of her waist, the warmth of her skin bleeding through.

He tried to pull away, but the moment he moved she covered his hands with both of hers and pushed them firmly back against her body, keeping him there.

"Kiss me, Park."

Before he could form another word she rose onto her toes and pressed her mouth to his.

The kiss was soft, almost careful.

Just the warm, trembling press of her lips against his for a single heartbeat, and then she pulled back only far enough that her breath still touched his mouth.

"Kiss me."

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!