Author's Note: I'm a little bit surprised by how inactive the CLOY community is on ! Thanks again to my two reviewers 3 lovely to hear from you. I may stop updating here altogether, so find me on the archive (AO3) for more timely updates and engagement.
Three.
Cause I'm fearful of heights and you take me higher
I've always been the kind to contemplate
But you like the kind that don't hesitate
So excuse me while I fall for you
He's subjected to a withering glare that he's almost certain has brought entire boardrooms to their knees. Except Yoon Se-ri, CEO and heiress, is not dressed to the nines in her power-suits and six-inch stilettos. She's not wearing much in fact, and that makes her infinitely more dangerous. Sitting upright on the couch, hands immobile against her black tights, she looks ravished, well-kissed lips red and swollen, hair askew with finger trails, neck and chest deliciously flushed with arousal. Most distractingly, her shirt was cast aside in an indignant fit after he tried to cover her with it. The one small mercy is her black bra – made for fantasies he's sure – is back in place, framing those perfect breasts, just plump enough to fill his hands and his mouth. He looks away, chasing the sunlight from the corner of the coffee table to the kitchen countertop.
"Because," he begins, but his voice is too husky, too telling. He stops, clears his throat and looks straight into her betrayed eyes. "Because anymore and I won't be able to stop." Another touch, another kiss, another sexy little sound from that delectable mouth and whatever is left of his restraint will be vanquished.
Her breath catches, eyes dropping to his bare chest before coming back to his, softer now with want. "We don't have to stop," she says plainly. In the fading daylight, she glows like a goddess, beautiful and untouchable, temptation personified. It's almost more than he can bear.
"Yes we do," Jeong-hyeok counters even as he swallows tightly and diverts her gaze. "It's not right, not like this." He walks around the coffee table to pick up his shirt. He frees the worn white cotton from the bulky turtleneck and pulls it over his head like a shield.
Se-ri crosses her arms below her chest, pushing her breasts up against the struggling cups, and he tries so hard not to look. He focuses instead on the orchids decorating the coffee table because surely, she knows, but she's huffing in oblivious disgruntlement like a child who was promised ice cream and then denied it. "I don't understand."
What doesn't she understand? He has no plans, no future, and he can't promise her anything. There's no going back after this. She shouldn't want him.
In the weighty silence, he finds her scrutinizing him closely. "You want to." It's a statement laden with a question, a sudden insecurity he cannot fathom.
His laugh is incredulous, short and choppy with bruising honesty. "You don't know how much."
She releases her arms and a shaky breath, relieved. He wishes he could spend his life showing her just how much he wants her. "You're a terrible tease," she mutters, voice full of accusation.
"I really am sorry."
When he sits back down on the couch beside her, he knows it's a mistake because Se-ri gives him a daring look, full of renewed purpose. Shuffling closer, she lifts her hand to cup his cheek and turns his face towards her. He raises both eyebrows and exhales in resignation, and from this new angle, that wisp of see-through black fabric pretending to cover her breasts taunts him endlessly. His eyes shut of their own volition when she touches her lips to his in a dreamy, drugging caress that lingers. He's vaguely aware that she slides a hand up his thigh. For a few seconds he lets her do it, lets himself get caught up in this uninhibited whirlwind. She's a woman who takes no prisoners, and God how he loves her, all her crazy wild abandon.
His hand catches hers just before it reaches his distended fly. He brings it to his mouth and kisses her palm tenderly. "Se-ri-ya," he warns, but she only smiles serenely before laying one slender leg across his thighs and sliding into his lap. She straddles him effortlessly, hands braced on his shoulders, the insides of her thighs pressed into his hips, her beautiful face inches from his own. He feels himself grow harder against her, and he wants to say fuck it, peel off these ridiculous black tights and taste her arousal on his tongue. He wants to pleasure her in every carnal way he knows how. And he wants to learn new ways, too. He wants to compose music to the catch of her breath and the needy little sounds she makes when he touches her somewhere that makes colors explode inside of her.
She grinds against him, the slightest movement, but it tears a groan from him that makes her kiss him in earnest, dark fragrant hair falling like a curtain around them. With a strength of will that surprises him, Jeong-hyeok pulls back, grabs her waist and lifts her off his lap. She gasps as he deposits her on the couch and comes to his feet, grateful that the early dusk casts the living room into the relative safety of shadows.
His heart hurts when she pulls her knees to her chest, a gesture so protective it makes her look smaller. She rolls in her lips, purses them tightly and folds her arms around her knees, hiding herself from him. "This is really embarrassing." The brave confession is a mere whisper, but it makes him feel lousy.
"I'm sorry," he says again. He's starting to sound like a broken record. "We should talk." He runs a hand through his hair and looks down at himself. His erection makes his slacks feel uncomfortably tight. "But first, I need a shower," he admits. "A very cold one."
It's a small triumph that her lips break into a tiny smile at that. "The bathroom is inside."
He nods, gives her one last apologetic look, and walks into her bedroom.
He came out of the shower in the same white t-shirt and black slacks, but his feet were bare and his towel-dried hair fell across his forehead boyishly. It made her nostalgic for the days at the outpost village. "All yours," he'd said politely, his voice an even pitch, no longer gruff with stark need.
She'd brushed past him, fully dressed, and quietly shut the bedroom door.
Standing now under the scalding shower spray, she replays the last couple of hours over and over again. We should talk. Maybe he's married. She physically aches at the thought, but no, it can't be that. Ri Jeong-hyeok would never cheat, even if he was in a loveless marriage. Once he's made that kind of commitment, he's in it for life. Maybe he's come all the way here to close the door they'd left open three years ago, to set her and himself free. It's just like him to make the effort to do it in person, to make sure she'll be okay and happy. She feels a lump in her throat and turns her face into the shower spray. That has to be it: another goodbye that she's completely misconstrued. Not only did she misread it, she also managed to embarrass herself enough for a lifetime. She's not sure she'll ever live that down. When the knot in her throat becomes overwhelming, she cries softly into the running water. Tears and water bleed into each other, and she stands there until the tears stop coming and her skin is raw from the heat.
She plans her script as she goes through her post-bath motions. Dry off, moisturize. You're right, this could never work. Hair dryer, hair serum. I don't know what I was thinking. Aloe Vera and avocado-based eye cream. It's great to see you again. I'm sorry about earlier I got carried away. Scratch that. She won't mention earlier. The sooner they forget about it the better. What we went through was crazy. I'll always remember it fondly. She likes that better, warm but detached. She rifles through her things for sensible underwear but finds nothing that isn't flimsy and lacy. She settles for a modest pair of white panties with lace trimmings, her most kosher bra and the only drab long-sleeved beige loungewear she has.
Steeling herself against the inevitable, she tucks her feet into the hotel slippers and steps into the living room like a solemn soldier, reporting to duty.
Ri Jeong-hyeok is sitting on the couch with an array of covered plates on the coffee table before him, waiting patiently. He looks up at her when she walks in, his warm gaze turning amused as he takes in her long johns. "I didn't know you owned such an outfit."
She doesn't, really. They gave it to her on the plane, and it was two sizes too big. That's not something she's about to admit. "It's what I usually wear to bed."
He lifts a single disbelieving eyebrow, a tickled smile still playing against his lips, that damn dimple weakening her resolve. "Hmm," he hums finally. "I ordered room service. I thought you'd be hungry." He gestures towards the table invitingly, and her stomach grumbles in response.
She notices the bottle of red wine breathing on the table and realizes she's famished. Without preamble, she walks towards the proffered food. "Thank you. You must be hungry, too." She sits on the other end of the couch, ridiculously far from him. Two people could fit between them.
He shrugs and starts uncovering the dishes, revealing steak, pasta, braised vegetables and an array of mouthwatering cheeses. "You were in there for a long time," he says quietly as he spoons food into her plate. He pours two fingers of wine into her stemmed glass. "I was getting worried."
"I'm fine."
They eat and drink in silence for a few minutes, cutlery clattering politely against glassware. He watches her between bites like he's tracking her food intake, and for the most part he's satisfied. The food warms her belly; the wine calms her, and she feels her frazzled nerves untangle at the edges, like live wires that have been grounded.
"I don't know how often I'll be able to come here," he says. Her guard comes up immediately, and she keeps her eyes trained on the food in her plate, listening, rehearsing. "Things can be unpredictable, and traveling is always tricky." He sets his plate away, appetite eradicated. "I can probably come for this program every year," he reasons, but then shakes his head at himself. "What am I saying? When I saw you today, it felt like I could breathe for the first time since I left you at the border. For the past three years, I've thought of nothing but this day, today, and now I'm here, I realize I don't have a plan. How could I be so stupid?" he berates himself, and then his tortured gaze finds hers. "I want everything with you, Se-ri-ya." The raw admission strips away all her defenses, and her rehearsed lines are forgotten.
The tears she thought were spent come back with a vengeance, burning at her eyes. "You're not stupid. We'll figure it out together."
He ignores her, still hell-bent on his self-directed admonishment. "Do you understand now?" he asks. "I have nothing to give. How could you want me? I can't hurt you. I'd rather die."
It's an honest sentiment that she knows to be true. Her heart twists painfully against her ribs. "This hurts, too." She brushes away the single tear that slides down her cheek.
"I know, but being with you like that will hurt worse. We can't go back from that."
She hears her laugh before she registers the fact that she's laughing. The sound seems to surprise him too. He looks at her cautiously like she's about to break. "And there's going back from this?" she scoffs, gesturing between them with meaning. "Jeong-hyeok, the way you take care of me is one of the things I love most about you, but you have to trust me sometimes. We're too far in to go back now."
He rubs the back of his neck and closes his eyes, weighing her words, and the tension seems to ebb out of him. "You've had a few relationships," he recalls, and the change in tone is so abrupt, she frowns into a healthy sip of wine. He's not judgmental, just reflective. "I've only ever had one girlfriend." He pauses. "And one fiancée," he adds. "And then you."
"My, I mean those relationships weren't – ah – that kind of…" she trails off, fortifies herself with more wine. He reaches over and replenishes her glass with liquid courage. "I haven't had what people would consider experience, in that sense."
She's managed to shock him, and whatever emotion she's hit roughens his voice. "You haven't?"
She shakes her head. "I guess I was a bit of a prude," she muses. "I romanticized things, and then when I stopped romanticizing and decided I was okay with it, I just couldn't let anyone get close enough. I was damaged goods at that point." She traces the rim of her wineglass absently, and she loves how his attentive stillness creates room for her to just be. "There was one boyfriend not too long before the accident... I considered it, but we broke up before we did."
"Why did you stop romanticizing?"
Of course, he would ask this. She smiles at him through her lashes. "I was disillusioned for a while. I think it's a rite of passage."
"For a while?" he prods.
She meets his mellow gaze with hers. "Well then I met this dashing soldier, who moved heaven and earth to save me, even though it upended his world, and it made me soft again."
The dimpled smile she loves curves his lips. He looks down into his glass, swirls the wine thoughtfully. "You're wrong," he says finally, and she hums in question. "You're the one who saved me."
He gives her a melting look that she feels in the pit of her belly, a scratching need. "Maybe we saved each other," she concedes, lets a beat of silence elapse and then: "Can we rewind to the part about the girlfriend?"
He chuckles, places his glass on the table and gets up to clear the dishes. "I had a girlfriend when I lived here. Anna, she was a classmate," he tells her as he neatly rinses, stacks the used, empty plates in the sink and puts away the remaining food.
How did she not know that? "Weren't you engaged?"
Drying his hands on the dishtowel, he comes back to the couch and takes his corner. "Not the first couple of years." He retrieves his wine glass. "We broke up before I left for home that second summer. It didn't feel fair to either of us. We had no future."
"Did you love her?" It's none of her business, but she's unable to check the impulse, the unprecedented need to learn about a man's previous lovers.
"I was young. I thought I did at the time, but it didn't feel anything like love as I know it now." His words are slow and heavy. Hesitantly, he reaches for her with an outstretched hand, an unspoken question in his eyes.
Se-ri goes into his arms freely, thinking that maybe he's right. With him, she seems to throw all caution to the wind. She lays her head against his shoulder with a soft sigh, reeling with all this new insight into Ri Jeong-hyeok's life and thoughts. His warm hand rubs her arm in a soothing gesture. "I promise not to jump you again," she says earnestly, and she feels his laugh vibrate in his chest, a larger-than-life sound that she wishes she could capture in a vial. She's sure it has healing powers.
"I'm disappointed," he retorts, only half-joking as he presses a kiss to her forehead.
Her playful punch hits a hard wall of muscle in his abdomen, and her booze-addled brain tries not to dwell on that.
"I'm a bit drunk."
They spent three hours cuddled together on her couch, whispering secrets and sharing snippets of candid dreams. She expertly circled back to Anna a few times, until she was satisfied that she'd pulled the entire story out of him. When she started dozing off, he lifted her into his arms and started towards the bedroom, but she protested about brushing her teeth. He set her on her feet in front of her sink, kept a steadying arm wrapped around her waist as she brushed, attempted to floss and then gave up, slacking against him drowsily. He'd picked her up again and this time he tucked her snugly into her king-size bed, lifting the thick blanket to her shoulders. She mewled incoherently and sank into a deep sleep.
Sprawled on her couch with a plush throw, he stares at the ceiling, and he listens to her breathe in the next room, lulled by the even rhythm. It occurs to him that Se-ri is right. There's no going back anyway. Their lives are hopelessly intertwined, and she's no more capable of moving on than he is.
He considers his options, charts them out in his mind and comes up with a couple that aren't terrible. He turns them over and over in his mind, argues against and for them, stress testing them.
Eventually, sleep claims him too, and he drifts off into a dreamless, peaceful slumber.
A/N: Thanks for reading. Reviews are love x