Soft Launch

Free with Kindle Unlimited

Two women at a dumpster-fire startup make a “stress relief only” pact. The sex is incredible. The feelings are inconvenient. The Slack DMs are unhinged.

Maya Rao is a control freak with perfect wireframes and an apartment so clean it has an energetic alarm. She left a prestigious design agency for a chaotic startup because she wanted to build something that was hers — and she’s watching it implode in real time. She hasn’t let anyone past her walls since her ex called her a showroom: beautiful, but empty.

Tessa Brooks is the startup’s emotional glue — running customer support on three people and pure caffeine, absorbing everyone’s problems because being needed feels like being loved. She hasn’t let anyone take care of her since her ex couldn’t remember her favorite color after eighteen months together.

When a product launch disaster throws them together — late-night Slack DMs, a guest room that becomes a crash pad, and a wine-fueled game of truth or dare that detonates every professional boundary — they make a pact: stress relief only. No feelings. No weirdness at work.

The rules last approximately one elevator ride.

What follows is a slow, devastating fall told through Slack messages and kitchen counters, through a supply closet quickie with a security guard walking past, through a shower fantasy that proves nothing about this is casual, through a strap-on that requires more courage to ask for than anything Maya has ever designed. Through a dashboard built at 2 AM to save Tessa’s team. Through a dal cooked from a YouTube tutorial for parents who say the important things in Gujarati.

Through the terrifying, exhilarating process of two women who were built to complement each other — precision and chaos, order and warmth — learning that the best things they’ll ever build are the ones they build together.

You’ll love this if you enjoy:

✓ Coworkers to lovers with filthy Slack DMs during all-hands meetings
✓ Forced proximity (crash pad → roommates → “this is our apartment now”)
✓ A “stress relief only” pact that lasts exactly as long as you’d expect
✓ Praise kink tied to professional competence (“you’re so hot when you’re competent”)
✓ A truth-or-dare game that opens the book and closes it
✓ Opposites attract: control freak × chaos whisperer
✓ A succulent named Gerald who witnesses everything
✓ 10 explicit heat beats escalating from impulsive to tantric
✓ Found family at a startup that’s falling apart
✓ Two women who build a company and a life at the same time
✓ A guaranteed HEA earned on a couch, in an elevator, and on every surface of a new apartment