He had come out rough before. But not so far beyond the line of restraint like now.
With his lips resting softly on my middle finger and his eyes lowered, I watched his thick lashes—and a sudden curiosity rose. Truthfully, it had been niggling at me since Jane said “a protective instinct toward the Omega you’re ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) bonded with.” I hesitated, worried I’d seem stifling, but the curiosity won.
"If an Omega becomes your lover, is it like that... like you turn into someone else for that person... willing to go through fire and water?"
"......."
Without lifting his lips from my finger, he glanced up at me. He rolled his eyes, studied every corner of my face for a moment, then shook his head firmly, as if giving a verdict.
"It’s not like that. If the person is you, it has nothing to do with instinct. I can’t sit and watch a threat to your happiness and safety—not because of some mere instinct... not because you’re an Omega... but because it’s you."
The last thing he said sounded a little suggestive. Depending on how you read it, it could be heard as him appealing to the feeling beneath what he’d done—that it wasn’t “instinct” triggered because I was an Omega, but his “affection” for me.
If so, that was a needless persuasion for me, a Beta—but that was only one interpretation. It strayed a little from the core of my question, but I didn’t want to badger him. It was just a thought born of petty, light jealousy anyway. A pointless, momentary sentiment about a hypothetical situation, aimed at a rival who didn’t even exist.
Silence pooled between us again. But it was a silence much more relaxed than right after Jane left the room.
With something to say yet hesitating, he lowered his eyes and lightly caught his lower lip between his teeth, then let it go.
"And why would you say that?"
He seemed to be trying not to show it, but his voice was a small complaint, airing hurt and displeasure.
"What...."
"Talk like someone else could be my lover. Even if you’re only imagining it as a what-if, it’s a bit...."
The way he got peevish over something like that was so cute that my own tension finally melted and I laughed. It felt like taking a light hit out of nowhere. A pleasant blow, of course.
In the past, I never would have thought he’d lose his cool in romance over something so trivial.
I don’t know about him, but it’s at moments like this that I feel, yes, I’m “in a relationship” with him.
Maybe it’s only a matter of degree, but like other couples, we get miffed over nothings and ask for a more delicate kind of affection.... Someone who is generous, relaxed, and so-called cool to everyone else will, before one person, become a bit unreasonable, let their solid habits collapse, exposing gaps and imbalance—those moments have been coming to define romance for me.
He bent that big body, pressed his lips to the nape of my neck, and hid his face there.
He rubbed his mouth against my neck like a spoiled child, saying don’t laugh, that he was being serious and I was trying to wave it off with a laugh. When I still didn’t stop, he ended up giving a spiteful little bite.
Holding back my smile, I lowered my head and looked down at him, then stroked his cheek. He reached his free left hand to rub my right arm.
"Just a little. Is that okay?"
To that pitifully careful question, I wordlessly wrapped my arms around his waist and pressed my lips to his eyelid. He straightened up and faced me. He cupped my face in both hands and stroked my cheeks with his thumbs. With my eyes open, the inside of his thumbs grazed my lashes, light as a feather. I laughed at the tickle, and our mouths met.
Soft but dry lips changed angle, slowly taking mine, pressing, tasting with his tongue. His big hand slid from my cheek to my ear and sealed his palm over it, shutting out the sounds of the world.
In a world filled only with the sound of air moving as if we were submerged deep underwater, feeling only his heat, his mouth, his scent—God, that was wonderful.
Instead of the usual bold push to occupy and the hard suction that left me swollen and sore, he rubbed gently, mingled tongues, a slow kiss that stoked heat from deep inside—and in the end a sweet breath escaped me.
It felt dangerous to let the kiss go any further, so I pushed lightly at his chest and lowered my head. Under my palm, his firm chest lifted and fell faster, swelling and deflating with rising excitement. Wrapped in his scent, my whole body ached like it had come down with a fever. Not only the bared skin... but deep inside as well.
The truth was, from a few days before coming to Chicago until now, we hadn’t properly had penetrative sex. He’d been very busy. Two nights before departure, when neither of us could bear it anymore, we cut hours of sex down to thirty minutes and finished fast—that was the only time in the past five days. Even then, there was no time to get to knotting.
What I learned from that thirty minutes under the shower was that I could no longer be fully satisfied with that kind of abbreviated connection.
We hadn’t knotted, true, and yet even though he’d been inside me, rubbing my prostate and making me climax, I still had to suffer through a heat that wouldn’t go out. I hadn’t realized how used I’d gotten to the pleasure sex gives, because he always came to me with that hot gaze and satisfied me to overflowing before I even fully formed the want.
I even had this idea that he simply had a very vigorous appetite, and since I loved him, I usually responded when he came close with that sexy air.
Maybe that was true up to some point in the past—but no longer. Even after I climaxed, the thirst for him remained, and after he left to get back to the rest of his work, I shocked myself, touching my own body, twisting my hips, slipping a hand down, searching for him.
So, frankly, I was in a state of frustration now. Just being in a quiet room, wrapped in his scent and sunk in a kiss with him, made me want to lunge, strip off his shirt, and press bare skin to bare skin. Ending things with only a kiss—crude as the comparison is—was about as hard as stopping a stream mid-flow.
He did pull back from me, but he still held my arms, breathing raggedly with eyes that said he wanted more. Feeling we shouldn’t let the mood tilt that way, I cleared my throat twice and changed the subject.
"My sister... seemed really shaken."
"......."
"I think more than anything... she was overwhelmed by too much at once. I don’t know if it’s my place to say this, but... you’ll talk with her, right?"
When I glanced over and asked carefully, he slid the hand resting on my upper arm down to close around my wrist.
"I will."
Then he bowed his head and kissed me once more.
"I feel like I’m going to die, right now."
Just hearing that pained whisper as he drew back made me feel like I’d die too. My insides trembled just from hearing a voice full of desire for me like that. Skipping past unfamiliar into a disorienting lust, I felt ashamed of myself and clutched at my chest for no reason. It felt less like healthy desire and more like the greed of a lecher, and there was no way I could be honest about that.
"I’ll go out first, so wait five—no, ten minutes and then come out."
"......."
"Your face right now, Seo Ihyeon...."
I understood without asking. He gave an awkward laugh and stood up first.
Only after I slowly drained a glass of water that had long since gone cold did I leave the room. Despite the incident, the party was still in full swing. With the interloper gone, it almost looked livelier. He seemed to be apologizing as people gathered around him. Instead of heading toward his group, I decided to look for my sister.
She was poolside, beyond terrace windows like a glasshouse, talking with Reid Rogers. They follow each other on SNS, but today was their first time meeting in person, and judging by their expressions, they weren’t just making small talk about the world. Best not to interrupt.
I paused awkwardly on the terrace between the hall and the pool, then turned back. He had already returned to his cheerful, easy composure from before the commotion and was mingling with people.
He isn’t the type to lead the talk aggressively, but he always seems to be at the center of a group. A man standing diagonally across from him was telling some story with big gestures. People laughed lightly, and when he smiled, everyone’s laughter flared bigger for a beat. From a little distance, the feel of it was even clearer.
I remembered the first VIP opening I worked, back when we’d just met, when I was there as temporary staff. I was at the reception desk with Juhan hyung, watching him, surrounded by people and smiling. I tried to imagine the desperate part of him, the part that, even if on the surface it looked like he got everything easily, was beneath the waterline, teeth clenched, paddling like mad.
I wanted more fresh air, but I didn’t want to get noticed and disrupt my sister’s time with Reid. I moved deeper onto the terrace, into the shadow behind a lush ornamental tree where the light didn’t reach, and sat quietly on a metal chair.
From there I could see his face even better than from where I’d been standing. Watching him burst out laughing in time with someone’s joke, I realized I was laughing along. As soon as I noticed, the smile froze awkwardly.
A lot had changed since that first VIP opening, and someone who’d seemed from another world had come to feel as close as a second self standing outside my body... but standing here now, in a foreign city on another continent after a thirteen-hour flight from Seoul, looking at him through a sheet of glass, I felt like a viewer laughing and crying at a TV figure who had nothing to do with me.
The heat from our kiss felt already evaporated into the past; I touched my lips. I pinched hard, the way he always does, but there was no pleasure in it.
From the terrace shade, the moon over Chicago, wrapped in heavy fog, looked blurred—like a mirror too clouded to reflect anything.
■ ■ ■
The party went on until two in the morning. Most guests left between midnight and one, but the last of us—ourselves included—were seen off by Jane and Connor and scattered into Chicago’s night in our respective sedans around two.
He, who’d said his goodbyes noisily like an old friend to everyone, got in the car and immediately raked his fingers through his hair and put a cigarette to his lips. When the man in the front seat lowered the window, damp, cold night air brushed my face. It felt good.
"The New York branch. Don’t you have anything to say to me?"
Sitting behind the driver’s seat, my sister couldn’t wait any longer and spoke first.
"You know it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Do you have to act like you’ve never heard of it and be shocked?"
He answered while blowing a long stream of smoke toward the window. His voice was heavy with fatigue, roughened and cracked.
"You used to say, someday we’ll open a branch overseas. Over drinks, over lunch, over coffee—you’d toss it out like a dream you wanted to realize one day in the far future. But then one day I hear it’s all happening for real, and we’re going to New York right now—how am I not supposed to be shocked?"
Her tone wasn’t quick or accusatory. She seemed to be trying her best not to be emotional. With her arms folded, she clutched her own arms tight.
"With the Chicago exhibition and the joint fall show prep stacking up, I was... we all were... the whole gallery was flat-out. If I brought up New York then, it would only have rattled you. I kept my mouth shut on purpose. I was going to talk when we got back to Seoul. I’m sorry you found out like this... Yuni."
He turned his body to meet my sister’s eyes.
"Let’s not load too much meaning onto the timing of when I brought it up. Okay?"
From my side I couldn’t see his face head-on, but even the rough outline of his profile was enough to tell how hard this day had been on him.
But my sister was probably the same. I don’t know whether she’d heard about the scene with the blond man and him, and this isn’t about weighing whose night was worse... but it felt unavoidable that, for him, for her, and for me, this wasn’t a purely pleasant evening, and the chill in the air made me sad.
"Does the chief know?"
She asked. He turned back to face forward and drew on his cigarette.
"He says it’s too soon and he’s against it. Once we get back and talk through the results we posted this time, I expect he’ll respond differently. I’ll convince him one way or another."
"Why are you in such a rush all of a sudden?"
"......."
We waited through a beat, but my sister didn’t get an answer to that one.
"First you say you’ll do the interview, then you throw a party at a scale that pushes it, even pulling in your own money.... I knew something was off. You’ve never brought your personal funds into a business matter before."
She paused, then blew out a long breath and raked her hair. Old Town to the hotel wasn’t far. The city was still wrapped in fog, but I could see the destination drawing near at the end of the straight road ahead.
"The big-name gallery people invited from New York—flights and lodging, you covered all that yourself, didn’t you?"
He hooked his right arm over the window frame and pressed his fingers to his temple. Even from the back seat I could hear how deep his pulls on the cigarette were.
"It’s not that I was drawing a bright line between personal funds and Phantom’s funds. I simply didn’t invest where I didn’t feel it was necessary."
"I’ve worked with you for years—do you think I’ll buy that?"
"......."
He lifted his back from the seat and crushed out the cigarette in the car’s ashtray.
"I knew you weren’t from an ordinary background. But... I also know that since Phantom opened, you’ve never once used that background. So... to go so far as to put that family background you’ve kept hidden on the table as leverage... why has your desire for a branch suddenly spiked that much?"
Her voice sounded more confused than accusing. His behavior today had puzzled me too; for my sister who’d spent years at his side, it must have been even more so. It didn’t take any great imagination.
When the smoke was fully gone and he still hadn’t raised the window, he answered in a dry voice.
