Dominate Showbiz: Media Tycoon Discovered My Talent-Chapter 117: But You Were There, After All

"Tch, so those bastards actually slapped you, huh?" Juho muttered.

His fingers brushed against the soft skin of the blonde girl sitting unconscious in the back seat of his car, her head resting against the headrest.

He’d thought he might have seen it wrong earlier under the golden light of the lounge, but now, beneath the stark white light inside his car, he could tell for sure.

A furious punch slammed into the front seat, accompanied by a sharp, irritated shout. His knuckles flashed from white to red within seconds.

Maybe he should’ve landed a few more punches and kicks on those two guards before knocking them out completely.

He reached up to switch the light off, then turned back to Kaija, fastening the seat belt across her chest.

"Wait a minute," he murmured, his gaze dropping to the puncture on her thigh.

Now that he was looking more closely, the injection site, though red and slightly swollen as skin usually became after a needle, looked strangely clean. Either the guards had somehow managed to keep her perfectly still during the shot, which he doubted, or she had deliberately stayed still the entire time.

His green eyes narrowed as his gaze lifted to her elegant face. She was just inches away from him now, her slow, steady breathing brushing faintly against his own breath.

"What the hell did you do in that room, Kaija Sepala?" he muttered, brow furrowing.

His eyes traced the lines of her face, lingering on her closed eyelids, before drifting down to the soft curve of her lips.

A quiet sigh slipped from him.

He still remembered how those peachy lips had tasted on his, how she had responded to him so clumsily, yet so eagerly that day.

"Turns out you kissed me back because you had feelings for me?" he murmured, his lips curling into a faint, bitter smile.

His fingers traced absently along her jaw where he’d kissed her, before he caught himself and withdrew his hand back.

"How foolish of you," he said quietly.

The back-seat door opened briefly, then closed shut as Juho moved into the front seat.

The black car rolled silently out of the hotel garage, and headed toward the KE campus.

When Kaija finally opened her eyes again, the car had already come to a stop.

"You’re awake?" Juho asked, drawing a cigarette from a fresh pack.

He had dropped himself back into the rear seat beside her, his gaze lingering in the rearview mirror as he watched her head lift slowly before settling back once more against the headrest.

"If I were you," he said, lighting the cigarette, "I’d stay down for a few more minutes, until your brain reconnects with your body properly."

"Good idea," she managed in a few mumbled words, eyes squeezing shut again. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

Her throat felt bone-dry, her tongue too big for her mouth.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"KE campus," he said, taking a drag and exhaling it out the open window. "But it looks like you’ve got quite a few people waiting for you at the gates, so I stopped a few turns away."

"Hm, so they still haven’t left," she said, blinking slowly.

Then her hazy gaze shifted to Juho, who was casually releasing smoke out the window beside her, and her voice dropped. "Never saw you smoke before."

"I usually don’t," he said, hissing through another drag, "but today hasn’t been a good day."

Her lips curved slightly. "Because you had to save me again?"

"No," he replied. "Because I’ve had to deal with enough scum for one day. And I don’t mean you, so don’t let whatever silly thoughts you’ve got start wandering."

A small giggle slipped from her, the sound as silly as how his words felt to her right now. "I hadn’t even thought that yet."

"I’m just being careful," he said lightly, flicking ash out the window. "You girls tend to overthink all the time."

Then his tone tightened as his gaze dropped once more to the puncture on her thigh. "You let those bastards inject you?"

Her brow curved up slightly. "You could tell?"

"How could I not?" he said, brow lifting in return. "I’ve seen enough punctures to know which ones are clean and which aren’t. Yours is very clean."

"Well..." she drawled, "you did offer to help, didn’t you?

"Considering how Max Kosonen looked ready to break my neck at that moment, and how his two men seemed more than capable of overpowering me, I didn’t see the point in fighting back.

"I’d probably have ended up with ugly scars on my arm, maybe a few more hits on my face, or worse, which I really couldn’t afford with my debut coming up.

"I figured it was better to get it over with as painlessly and cleanly as possible, while buying myself a bit more time for you to come rescue me."

He stared at her, his face stunned with disbelief. "Have you lost your mind, Kaija Sepala? How could you possibly stay that calm in a situation like that, let alone think about those things?"

"Hmmm," she hummed slowly, then lifted her shoulders in a small shrug. "I don’t know, actually. I guess performing in front of a few thousand people does things to you. My nerves are probably made of titanium by now."

"Kaija, I’m fucking serious," his voice rose. "Do you even have the slightest idea what Max Kosonen intended to do to you after he got you out of that lounge?"

"What?"

"He had a suite a few floors down, set up with all sorts of kinky bondage stuff and cameras to film whatever he planned to do to you with it," he snapped. "What would’ve happened if I hadn’t been there, and it was just you alone in that room with him and his men, huh?"

Kaija’s brow twitched faintly now, her stomach twisting. So that was what Max had meant by breaking her thoroughly and giving her a lesson?

A long exhale escaped her. "If I were there all alone, of course I would’ve come up with some other plan to escape, rather than pissing that dude off, or letting them have it their way," she said, shifting uncomfortably under the tight seat belt.

Then her gaze turned to his, still unfocused from the lingering haze. "But you were there, after all, weren’t you?"

Juho fell silent at her words.

White smoke kept drifting slowly out the window from the burning tip of the cigarette between his fingers, its pale wisps a stark contrast against the night sky.

First, she let him hide in her place. Then, she agreed to be his shield. Now, she risked her own fate, and left it in his hands?

The more she trusted him with herself like this, the more he felt his effort to keep himself from her slipping away, dissolving along with the smoke in the cold air outside.

He pressed the cigarette into the metal ashtray in the front seat, stubbed it out, and shoved it closed.

Then he leaned toward her, his fingers reaching out to unbuckle the seat belt strapped tightly across her chest.

"Oh, thanks... I was wondering what was pressing against my lungs," she said absently, relieved that the pressure she couldn’t pinpoint had finally eased away.

"You’re welcome," he said, though he still hadn’t pulled away. "Before I drive you back to campus, I need to ask you something."

Her gaze returned to him, blinking slowly, as if urging him to go on.

Through the haze still lingering over her senses, she couldn’t tell whether his bright, green eyes were truly that close, or if it was just her sluggish perception.

Those eyes were trembling faintly now, no longer confident, sure, or scarily intense, like she’d always seen of them.

At last, his lips parted, and the question slipped out under a soft breath.

"What does it feel like to have feelings for someone?"