He said he wouldn’t forbid it, and yet his expression was still dissatisfied.
Would he really get jealous over something like this? I’d half convinced myself my worry was just self-consciousness in overdrive, and while it reassured me that he wasn’t angry, the way he didn’t bother to ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) hide his jealousy—his disgruntled face—kept making me laugh.
Maybe he took my suppressed laugh as a jeer at his jealousy; scratching his forehead, he offered a defensive excuse.
“I know it’s pathetic... I’m feeling a jealousy I never even had in my teens. Yes, I’m insanely jealous. But since you knew I’d be jealous and considered me, I think I can stop it from getting ugly and keep it at a light jealousy. So... tell me ahead of time like this from now on, about things like that.”
“I... get jealous too, sometimes.”
“......”
His eyes widened. Then a smile full of anticipation spread across his whole face. He folded his arms on the table and leaned toward me like he wanted all the details.
The alcohol helped, and his own admission gave me courage. He wasn’t the only one being the “bad guy,” and I wasn’t the only one who got scorched by the heat of jealousy.
Holding my spoon upright, pointlessly scraping the plate under the melting ice cream, I showed him my childishness this time.
“Yuni and Juhan... I definitely like them, and I know there’s none of that kind of meaning between you....”
“But?”
“I’d rather you didn’t... carry them on your back and stuff like that.”
“......”
Hearing it out loud, it was so immature—a tantrum, really. When he gave Yuni a piggyback, when he was physically casual with Juhan, I felt both envy and an ugly flare of something—but I’d never planned to ask him not to do it. I knew perfectly well how foolish that feeling was.
I stared down at the ice cream as it slackened, then sneaked a look at him, who still hadn’t said anything.
“Just... pretend you didn’t hear that—”
He caught my wrist as I went to set the spoon down. It wasn’t a purely playful grip.
“Are you going to make me the only childish one? Then can I keep carrying Baek Yuni every time he’s drunk?”
Admit it. Even knowing it’s not a reasonable feeling—this ugly urge to wall off the other person for yourself, eyeing even models or friends with suspicion—don’t hide it. Looking at his face, asking me to be childish with him, I slowly shook my head.
Satisfied, he let go of my wrist.
“How’s my face right now? Not hideous?”
He felt over his own cheek and acted with such earnestness I snorted.
“It must be hideous. A twenty-two-year-old is jealous for me and I’m so happy my grin is about to reach my ears, and I’m trying to hold it in... Isn’t that the face I’ve got right now?”
He pushed his face close, telling me to take a good look. I gazed at him blankly, then cupped his cheek with my palm. That took even more courage than his confession a minute ago.
“Just... handsome.”
Maybe he’d heard it so often he should have been numb to it by now, and yet he looked at me like someone hearing they were handsome for the first time in his life—everything in him stopping as he stared.
I looked slowly into his left eye, then his right, and he lightly overlapped his hand on mine. It was embarrassing enough to burn, but for a moment it felt like all the noise and gazes around us were cut off. The illusion that there were only the two of us. Ridiculous as it was, that was where the feeling that this was a date finally hit me.
“The poolside and the garden here are pretty nice—want to walk a little before we head home?”
However much he thought of me as a pure little lamb, I was an adult worldly enough to catch the meaning in his eyes and feel a flutter of expectation.
I met his gaze and nodded.
I felt the curious looks from the next table, but I didn’t care anymore. Because the general volume had suddenly dropped, the fact that they were talking about us stood out even more, and I caught the words alpha and omega here and there.
Maybe they thought he and I were an alpha–omega couple.
Regardless of primary sex, alpha and omega could legally marry. Society was overwhelmingly beta, but in Korea, where emotional resistance to such things ran deep, it had only been the last ten to fifteen years that the legal system had really settled in. And now there was an active push to legally recognize any relationship where pregnancy was possible—not just alpha–omega pairings.
Separate from legality and force of law, public prejudice toward same-sex unions still existed, but among the upper class—who valued interests arising from marriage more than a match of primary sexes—same-sex alpha–omega marriages were already common.
Especially among chaebol families and celebrities, it wasn’t rare at all; and even though same-sex relationships were still shunned in the broader public, dramas and films with same-sex alpha–omega couples were hits, and it was everyday to see alphas or omegas with same-sex partners working as TV personalities.
The curiosity in the next table’s eyes leaned closer to interest than disgust—and that, too, probably owed a lot to images exposed through the media. Maybe one of them was an omega who felt drawn to him. Not that only omegas felt drawn to him.
The society I’d personally moved through was just school and the military, both institutions that ran with everyone’s secondary sex explicitly known; I’d never been mistaken for an alpha or omega. Looking back, that kind of misunderstanding only started once I left my town and began working at Phantom.
Feeling their gaze misreading me as an omega and him as my alpha partner left me awkwardly uncomfortable—and at the same time, in secret, I pictured myself as an omega with him, borrowing imagination to fill in the rest.
I remembered a night where I’d begged him to knot, and the thought—if I had a body that could get pregnant, even for a moment—of what would change in our relationship made an old, queasy discomfort rise.
It wasn’t a pleasant kind of self-denial, so I hurriedly cut the fantasy off and followed him in gathering our things.
We settled the bill and stepped out, then took the escalator down one more level. He mentioned there was a club downstairs so it might be a little noisy, but that wasn’t all it was tonight.
From somewhere out of view came the sounds of screaming and yelling, the barked warnings trying to stop it, the clipped voices on walkies calling for backup—all of it tangled together with a tension that didn’t belong here.
People riding the up escalator craned back toward the source of the commotion, whispering to each other.
As we descended further, a little crowd came into view at the club’s open entrance. Through the gap between club staff and hotel security clustered around a bench by the wall, I caught a glimpse of two or three men and women sprawled on the seat.
They were loudly defending the legitimacy of their sexual arousal, and complaining—using blunt words—about being interfered with. Words like pheromones, heat, sex felt like props someone had placed wrong in the refined interior of a hotel—garishly out of place.
From the radio chatter, it sounded like the hotel had decided to hand them over to the police and was just waiting for officers to arrive. They seemed to be struggling to hush and restrain them, without much success.
“Sometimes alphas or omegas come to places like this on purpose without taking suppressants. If they drink while in heat, they think it substitutes for a drug.”
He seemed to be trying hard to keep personal feelings out of it, but he couldn’t hide a sharp disgust.
Off the escalator, we could see them more clearly.
Security—big men—were stopping them as they pawed at themselves and tried to strip. One of them pressed up against a guard, rubbing their body, eyes blown and slack, spilling filthy lines. Even with hands clapped over mouths, threats hissed, they were unstoppable.
I didn’t want to look, but my eyes went that way.
They were—definitely—different from drunk betas I’d seen.
There was none of that dreamy allure that, as Juhan said of Shushu’s work, could ensnare a person; nothing looked exalted. It was like being forced to watch someone’s intensely private bed-scene in crisp focus... just repulsive.
He wrapped an arm over my shoulders and pulled me in, as if to shield me from something toxic.
“Not exactly the mood for a quiet walk. Should we just... walk home?”
He tried for a smile, but it seemed harder on him than on me.
We turned straight around, took the escalator back up. The farther the clamor receded, the more my mood returned to normal. There was no reason to let strangers ruin the afterglow of a good time with him.
He sent the driver off with the car, and we started walking slowly. Even at an easy pace, it was only ten minutes to his place.
It was warm, but the breeze stirred now and then.
I think it was the first time we’d walked together like this since he came back from Hong Kong.
Maybe it was the sweet buzz of sake—so different from beer, soju, or wine—or maybe it was just being conscious of walking with him; either way, I kept smiling to myself in a way that wasn’t like me, and he kept turning his head to check my face, amused.
We passed a short strip of shops right in front of the hotel—an upscale tailor, an old, humble barbershop—then the street changed entirely. In the high-end residential area walled with tall, long fences, only the rare car drifted by; there wasn’t a soul on foot.
As we walked past an estate with a wall of huge, pale-gray bricks stacked like boulders, I lightly caught his arm where it showed below his short sleeve. My hand slid slowly down, stroking, and found his hand and laced fingers with it.
Walking at night holding his hand, suddenly, felt harder to believe than kissing or sex with him; I lifted our joined hands to shoulder height a few times, just to check with my own eyes.
He glanced back at me and snorted, and floating on a giddy mood, aware of how drunk I was on everything, I pushed at his shoulder.
“Why... do you keep, looking?”
Behind a parked SUV in the marked line in front of that gray-brick estate, he tugged my hand without warning.
He leaned his back on the wall and folded me in, putting a finger to his lips. Then, before I could babble anything, he covered my mouth with his. Not a deep kiss—just lips touching and then parting with soft smacks, playfully, again and again, until I found myself laughing.
“Uh... mm... why. Why are you laughing like that.”
I was clearly drunk—laughing more than him and still asking why he was laughing.
“What am I supposed to do when I’m with someone beautiful and I keep wanting to smile? That’s not on me.”
I smirked at his deadpan, and our lips met again. This time the warmth of his tongue licked at my lips and the nape of my neck scrunched. His tongue tickling my mouth tasted of the sake’s fruit and the sweetness of the ice cream we’d had for dessert.
“You laugh so well when you’re tipsy. If you made a picture out of the word beaming, it would be exactly this face.”
His hands laced at the small of my back as he spoke.
Because his voice dropped low, I felt tense even though no one was passing by. No—that empty quiet made it necessary to drop our voices.
“You like it... when I smile?”
“Very much. You don’t beam like this most of the time.”
He rubbed the tip of his nose against mine.
The sound of a car coming up from below and its headlights made me start and press closer in a reflex. He hugged me tight, hiding me in his arms—even though I wasn’t that small or delicate—and pressed his lips deep to my temple.
When we were together—in the living room, his bedroom, the kitchen, even the studio downstairs—there were never any constraints on affection, so this felt different.
Even away from home, he was someone who could produce a completely private space wherever he wanted, and in truth, we were only five minutes from his house; there was no need to hide in the shadow behind a parked car, keep our voices down, steal quick kisses and embraces that might get caught any second.
But I didn’t mind.
I looked up at his face, thinking this was probably like the way most people our age dated: lingering in front of the door, reluctant to part, slipping off to a quiet corner and whispering.
Our eyes met and I laughed again for no reason. I started to hide my face, conscious of how drunk I was, then remembered he liked it when I laughed, and didn’t look away. He was looking at me as if his gaze were smoothing a hand across every corner of my face.
“I have to... keep you smiling like this.”
As if he were moving between the small joys of romance (at least ones like his) and the anxieties it brought, I wanted to wipe the shadow that momentarily dimmed his eyes.
“Mm, then... a peck... would, do it....”
I don’t know what part of my brain that came from—let’s just blame the alcohol.
Seeing his blue eyes widen, an almost lethal embarrassment and regret pushed up through the gaps in my tipsiness. If I was going to say things like that, I should have had more to drink.
“If that’s all it takes, I’ll do it all day.”
His eyes softened as he cinched my waist tighter. I set a hand on his chest and leaned in, and he angled his jaw and pressed our mouths together, deep.
We opened and closed, taking the other’s lips between ours and letting them go, again and again. Under half-lowered lashes, we didn’t lose each other’s gaze.
My hand, tracing the broad, solid swell of his chest in a gentle curve, slid up over his shoulder and neck and caged his cheeks between both palms. He caught my wrists and turned his head, rubbing his lips against my palms. I felt the hardness of his arousal pressed to my pelvis.
I wanted more contact too. The way his scent teased at the tip of my nose, then drifted away, made me anxious in a flash.
“Tonight... I want to sleep together without having sex.”
“......”
He whispered it calmly, rubbing his cheek and mouth into my palms.
At first I didn’t understand. I stared up, eyebrows a question, and he laughed and flicked my forehead with a finger.
“Ah.”
He pulled my hand down from my forehead and kissed that spot, chuckling low.
“When did you get so used to sex.”
He teased me for taking it for granted that a mood like this would lead there—but it was fair; lately we were... having sex almost every day.
Right after getting to his house, sometimes we would stop at petting and caresses; but recently, kisses after dinner had turned into sex like a rule.
That shift had clearly started after the barbecue party and the lace lingerie night, and I’d understood it as us deciding to stop hiding our seriousness for each other—crossing a line we’d only circled before. The more time passed, the more I was sure he wasn’t different from me.
Painting alone during the day was fine, but once we ate dinner and talked, once I was exposed to his eyes that wanted me and the heavy, provocative scent of him, self-control was impossible. These days it wasn’t even clear who started things.
So I didn’t immediately understand what he meant. He was hard and hot right now. It wasn’t that he didn’t want sex.
He rubbed my forehead for me, tipped his chin, and murmured in a teasing voice toward the air:
“Once we start, not penetrating is impossible... and if I penetrate, I end up knotting, and then it’s rough on your body.”
“Mm, but... lately we’ve pretty much knotted every time... and we’ve even knotted twice in one night....”
“......”
I didn’t mean it as a guilt trip about knotting, but he looked down at me with a complicated face. It wasn’t like he was the only one who wanted it.
“Even that often... my body’s been fine. I mean that....”
He cupped the back of my head and drew me in. Closer to his nape, “that scent” grew clearer among the few notes of cologne.
He was holding me so tight my torso ached, but it wasn’t uncomfortable, and I didn’t dislike it. My ear, where his lips touched, grew warm.
“I want you so much too, Ihyeon. Always. I always want you. But... just once. I want to know what it’s like to wake up with you still beside me when I open my eyes in the morning.... I won’t ask for much. Just this once....”
I still didn’t entirely understand what not having penetrative sex—or not knotting—had to do with staying together till morning. But thinking about it, even after the passionate nights we’d had, we’d actually never fallen asleep together.
I like sex with him... a lot—but I was just as interested in what it would feel like to go to bed together without sex and wake up together in the morning.
“I will.”
Because he was leaning on the wall, I couldn’t get my arms all the way around his back; I held carefully to the backs of his arms and whispered against his nape.
I wanted to ask whether sleeping together after sex was off the table, but the alcohol made clear thought hard. Thoughts took shape and then, before long, melted. Melted into the dense heat of his scent.
“Ihyeon.”
His voice whispering my name at my ear overlapped with the voice that had called me when I was searching for him. Even if I lost him, I wanted him to find me and call me like that. And I wanted to be able to do the same for him.
I answered his call by burrowing closer into his neck and quietly felt the beat of his chest where it met mine.
