The Last Chance
Lee-gang opened his mouth without a shred of hesitation, as if he'd never once wavered.
"You think an illegal ring hands out weekly wages? Over here, it runs on a win purse. Meaning you only get paid if you win."
"Oh..."
At his words, Harin furrowed her brow in dismay.
"So whatever you need right now—money for living expenses, all of it—I'll lend you for the time being."
Harin's eyes wavered as she looked up at him.
"Pay back the principal out of your winnings."
He said it flatly, but even now he was hoping she'd refuse him one more time. This was the last chance he had to offer her a way out.
"...Alright."
But the tension drained from her clenched fists, and her face relaxed with relief as she accepted the offer.
"Oh, and what about interest?"
She even had to go and ask for more.
Lee-gang's eyes narrowed. A breath of incredulous laughter tugged at the corner of his mouth.
In the chill silence, the cold fluorescent light pressed down on the air between them.
With hollow eyes, Lee-gang took a step toward Harin. As the distance closed, he could feel her swallow hard.
"You'll pay the interest with your body."
Lee-gang said it slowly, lowering his head.
Harin froze stiff as a log, unable to move a muscle.
She knew perfectly well that *pay with your body* didn't mean another sparring session like last time.
His feverish hand slid slowly down her face. Her pulse went sprinting.
She felt his gaze trail over her lips. The instant his fingers, still brushing her cheek, touched them, her breath caught.
Lee-gang, who had been lowering his head inch by inch, whispered against her ear.
"If you don't want this, run."
"..."
"Because this really is your last chance."
Harin squeezed her eyes shut. She had a fair idea of what would be waiting the next moment if she didn't run.
"Three."
With the countdown, his breathing—so close, so near—became vividly, unmistakably real.
"Two."
Harin briefly considered bolting even now, but the faces of her grandmother and Ha-yul rose behind her closed eyes, and she steadied herself.
"One."
When Harin opened her eyes, he was already looking back at her, waiting, and his mouth came down on hers.
For a heartbeat it seemed he would devour her greedily—but the moment their lips actually touched, it was strangely careful. Tender, almost.
Harin let the stiffness drain from her hands and laid them gently against his chest.
At this point, all she could do was please him.
She was that desperate.
At some point the soft touch of lips gave way to tongue, tangling deep enough to steal her breath, and Harin hurriedly swallowed back the sounds threatening to escape her.
The car was filled with him and his scent. It was sweet and heavy all at once, like a swamp of unknowable depth—once you sank in, there was no easy way out. *This* was why she hadn't wanted to get in the car.
The hand braced against her back drifted slowly along her side. The instant his fingertips grazed her chest, Harin's breath heaved.
"Hah."
A ticklish moan slipped out between their stacked lips. As if that sound had goaded him on, Lee-gang gathered her upper body firmly into his arms.
Half-reclined against the backseat, Harin felt herself float weightless under his kneading grip.
She couldn't think of anything. Not her grandmother, not Ha-yul, not the bleak reality—everything was buried beneath the heavy air inside the car and the slick, clinging sounds of it.
Rather than dodge every responsibility and watch everyone drown in misery together, it was better to come apart alone like this.
"Mmnh."
His hand loosened, then clamped down again, pressing harder.
The pleasure he offered pulled her free of her thoughts, and a dizzying heat arched through her spine. She pulled her head back from the kiss and, without meaning to, writhed against him.
Lee-gang chuckled low in his throat and drew back, licking the slick sheen from his lips as he looked down at her.
Harin gasped for air as she looked up at him, her eyes red and wet with the aftershocks of arousal still lingering like an echo.
He stared at her for a long moment, then—faintly irritably—undid a few buttons of his shirt and rolled up his sleeves.
"Should I stop?"
Harin's brow creased. She wanted him to want more, to take more, until there was no room left for thought. She had only just resolved to push reality away and give herself over to this feeling.
Shooting him a glare, she stripped off the cardigan he'd already half peeled from her shoulders. It was as much as to say *keep going*—a confession that, just for now, this hunger was more desperate than reality.
Lee-gang narrowed his eyes, but the corner of his mouth curled as though he'd found something amusing. He pressed a brief kiss to her mouth, reached down, and lifted her bodily onto his lap.
Straddling him, Harin felt with perfect clarity the soft warmth of his tongue gliding over the tender flesh inside her mouth.
At the same moment, something hard pressed up against her from below. There was no pretending she didn't know what it was.
Embarrassed and flustered, the tiniest shift of her hips only made it rear up more brazenly against the thin fabric of her pajama pants, insistent and unmistakable.
"You're doing that on purpose, aren't you?"
Flushing, Lee-gang gripped her hips and waist and pulled them tight against him. As if the answer didn't matter at all, he buried his face without hesitation in the swell of her chest where it rose above her low-cut tank top, and slid his hand beneath the fabric along her skin.
The shirt rode up in an instant, baring pale skin. Just as she opened her mouth in mortified protest, he took her flesh into his mouth.
The instant that soft, scalding heat of lips and tongue made contact, Harin's mind went blinding white. The scene unfolding before her eyes was too explicit, too obscene, somehow indecent.
He held her gaze stubbornly, unblinking, as he tormented her with deliberate thoroughness.
Watching her face come apart with desire, his hand drifted slowly down over her hips, then slid along her thigh until his fingertips burrowed into the loose leg of her shorts.
Harin flinched and tried to clamp her legs shut, but every movement only pressed the hard length of him beneath her more vividly against her.
"Harin, why do you walk around half-naked like this?"
He muttered it like a lament, face still buried against her chest, and his breath brushed her skin with every word, maddeningly.
"When did I ever—"
"You're strolling around in pajamas, thin enough to see right through."
She felt his slender fingers, wedged beneath the thin fabric, tease her in slow, unhurried strokes. The hands gripping his shoulders tightened.
"Ah... wait, just—"
Harin shuddered, curling her upper body into herself.
"Ah..."
At her small moan, Lee-gang lifted his head, looked at her trembling eyes, and smirked.
"You're soaked."
The low murmur made her head swim. Harin met his shameless black gaze. Heat was spreading through her core, and a nervous sweat broke out for no reason at all.
That single phrase seemed to quietly brand into her who held the power in this relationship—and who, in the end, would be the first to beg.
"S-stop tormenting me already."
Harin avoided his eyes and buried her face in his shoulder. His sweet, warm scent seeped in with every breath, scattering her thoughts. She could neither stop her body from burning nor deny that it was.
Watching her bare feet twitch with tension, Lee-gang nipped at her ear with his lips, and his long fingers, having teased her to the edge, drifted deeper inward.
"Keep moving your hips like that and you're going to rock the car."
At the crude voice thrust against her ear, Harin swallowed hard and lifted her head—and froze, speechless.
A car had glided smoothly into the empty space beside them.
And in the same instant, his fingers slid into her, driving deep.
"Ah—w-wait, just—"
Her words kept breaking apart. The sounds beyond the window sharpened every one of her senses at once. Afraid her voice might carry, she bit down on her lip, but even that didn't last long.
"Ah, Yoon Lee-gang... please... hah..."
His movements quickened. Harin clung to him, burying herself deeper into his chest.
Her ragged breaths tangled with his own, which had grown just as rough. He flicked a sidelong glance at the car now parked beside them.
"Shh."
Watching the driver's and passenger's doors swing open, Lee-gang breathed the whisper short and sharp against Harin's ear.
The pleasure swelling inside her rose and broke like a wave about to crest over the breakwater, and Harin bit her lips again and again—but she couldn't hold it.
Just as a moan was about to burst through the gaps in her breath, Lee-gang gave a short laugh and sealed her mouth with his.
Voices of the people climbing out of the other car drifted over. Eyes squeezed shut, Harin could endure no more—her whole body shuddered.
The pressure that had been building from somewhere deep inside spread through her in a single blazing instant, and a breath-stealing release and pleasure burst through her like a broken dam.