Chapter 20 — Prove It
Seo-ah couldn't help but doubt the man's intentions.
What kind of interest does a man take in a widow? It wasn't hard to guess. And honestly, even if that were the case, it wouldn't have mattered.
But why now, and not back then? Why, after he'd done so much to put her heart at ease?
"You still haven't answered. Were you really planning to sleep with me?"
Seo-ah asked, a trace of irritation creeping into her voice.
"You saw what I did. You know the answer."
At her reply, Tae-kyung's brow furrowed.
"What the hell is with all these bold virgins?"
For some reason, his expression stayed dark, as if something were genuinely bothering him.
Why are you annoyed? I'm the one who got played.
Seo-ah forced strength into her voice.
"It wasn't because you're the Division Director. It was a job for me, that's all. The fact that Kang Tae-kyung was the Division Director — I only found out once I got there."
"So it wouldn't have mattered if it was any other man? You could have met some other bastard instead of me, and who knows what might have happened to you?"
Seo-ah was dumbfounded.
"And how would it have been different because it was you, Director? I refused you and pushed you away, and yet in the end—"
"I was trying to scare you."
What? Seo-ah couldn't make sense of his answer.
"What are you saying?"
"You came charging in with no idea how the world worked, Jin Seo-ah. I wanted to show you how filthy that industry is — how low and dirty men can be. I was trying to frighten you."
"……"
"So you'd run, or think twice. That's all it was."
Seo-ah's mind went blank.
Every coarse word he'd thrown at her, every high-handed act — all of it had been meant to scare her off? To make her quit the bar job? And that was why he'd finally chased her out?
"Then why did I come back to Korea? Are you really going to write off everything I've done as nothing more than a desire to sleep with you, Jin Seo-ah?"
"Di-Director…"
"Do you honestly believe I took this position for that reason, and that's why I called you here?"
Seo-ah began to replay everything that had happened since she'd met Tae-kyung.
From the moment he'd saved her on the funeral hall stairs, to helping her get hired at Taeyu Motors.
She had assumed it was all thanks to his surprisingly sentimental streak. Of course, she'd also told herself it was because she was useful to him.
Because otherwise, why would he bother keeping her at his side at all?
"Then why… why do you keep me close? Like Manager Ahn said, I majored in music — I have nothing to do with secretarial work."
"Do I still seem like someone trying to do something to you?"
"I don't know. But a man like you wouldn't have any reason to."
"Ha." Tae-kyung let out a hollow laugh and raked a hand through his hair.
From the very beginning until this moment, Seo-ah had dealt with him under a single assumption: that Kang Tae-kyung was a man who liked women.
Feeling that assumption keenly, Tae-kyung bared his teeth.
"Fine. Want to just sleep together?"
"…What?"
"Don't look so shocked. You're already acting on exactly what you assumed about me."
"……"
"So? For your first man, I'm not a bad pick, am I, Jin Seo-ah? Oh wait — I already took your first kiss, so why don't you just roll into bed with me? Then you can forget everything and admit my feelings were fake all along. Is that what you want?"
"What are you even— Director!"
"What."
Tae-kyung's voice was ice-cold.
But Seo-ah could feel it — buried beneath everything he was throwing at her, there was something he truly wanted to say.
No. That's impossible.
She couldn't accept it.
Within all the kindness he extended to her, there were parts she simply couldn't understand. The way he treated her as if he'd known her for years — his attitude, his tone, the look in his eyes. All of it.
And yet, it couldn't be.
Because Tae-kyung might be oblivious to it, but someone in his own family could well be responsible for what happened to Won Electric.
And she was a widow.
"I should… get up now."
Unable to simply sit and listen to him any longer, Seo-ah rose from her seat.
"Sit down."
"What are you… planning to do with me?"
"If I told you to, would you do it?"
Contrary to her hopes, Tae-kyung seemed determined to drag every one of his feelings into the open tonight.
"I don't even understand my own heart, so what gives you the right to size me up and draw your own conclusions?"
"Director. I'm a married woman."
"Is your husband here now? Am I, of all people, making a move on a woman with a husband?"
"That's not what I mean. Why would someone like you want a widow like me—"
"Just what is taking that as my meaning supposed to be."
Where, on earth, did this exhausting argument end?
Why was this man so earnest — and why was he so determined to close the distance between them?
What was she supposed to do?
A man who might be the second son of her family's enemies, and the widowed daughter of the family that suffered for it.
They were two people who should never have let feelings grow in the first place.
"You already know where we first met."
"So what?"
"……"
"I just… like you. That's all."
His voice, low and heavy, finally spilled the confession it had been steeping in all along.
"Trying to lecture me about my own feelings like you've lived a whole lifetime already — you're still just a kid."
Why was he handing her a heart she couldn't possibly carry?
She couldn't even run away now — not when, only just, she'd finally gained the backing to fight the people who had thrown her father to his death.
"What's the hurry? What are you so afraid of, that you're already drawing the line?"
"Director…"
Her eyes, swaying helplessly, chased the shadow of his silhouette.
Then Seo-ah squeezed them shut.
She simply felt pathetic.
Pathetic for being stuck like this, unable to move in either direction — and pathetic for being in a position where, without Kang Tae-kyung, she could do nothing at all anymore.
But the most pathetic thing of all was something else entirely.
How was she supposed to explain a heart that started pounding all on its own, right in the middle of all this?
She could barely bear the feelings he'd so helplessly thrown at her — and now she had no idea how to soothe her own body for reacting so suddenly. It was all too much.
That was when it happened. Tae-kyung rose abruptly and closed the distance between them.
"Stop agonizing. There's no right answer here."
Then he cupped her face and said quietly,
"Let's find out. Whether my heart is fake."
Before Seo-ah could reach any judgment, there was the faintest touch — and his face was on hers, then gone. Just when she thought it was over, another soft press came, light brushes of the lips that met and parted again and again. Then came a deep, lingering kiss, and her breath stopped.
Her whole body had gone rigid with tension, and the fine trembling that rippled through it like a shudder traveled straight into Tae-kyung.
His soft laugh ghosted across her face, tickling her skin, and in the instant his lips drifted lazily away and left a small space between them, Seo-ah finally released the breath she'd been holding in a long haa.
In that moment, when their eyes met and something sticky and strange and half-strangled tangled in the air between them,
worry and fear flashed across her flushed crimson face at the same time.
But as if none of it mattered, Tae-kyung gently stroked her cheek, carefully tilted her chin up, and gazed into her dark eyes.
"You don't dislike it either, do you."
"……"
Hypnotized by the sound of his voice, she slowly closed her eyes and opened them again. And then—
"Then this time, a real kiss."
The moment that roughened voice brushed her ear, a prickle of chill shot down the back of her neck and along her spine.
One eye fluttered shut on its own, and she bit down on her lip against the sensation gathering, unwelcome, below her navel.
Tae-kyung pressed his thumb against her lower lip, parted it, and sealed his mouth over hers.
"Ah…"
For a moment she was startled by the little moan that escaped her without permission — but then the strange sensation she'd never felt before flooded through her, so good it raised gooseflesh.
Is this… is this normal?
Just months ago, she had told him everything was clumsy for her because it was her first time.
Proving her right, Seo-ah let ragged breaths spill out in broken gasps each time the man sucked at her lips, slow and thorough.
Every gasping breath she drew carried a rich, sweet scent, and even the beads of sweat gathered on her tension-tight brow were maddeningly, unbearably sensual.
God, what is with all of this…
The faint sweetness of her shattering little sighs scorched his ears and stoked him higher.
Unable to hold back any longer, Tae-kyung pushed his tongue deep between her parted lips.
"Hng—!"
Startled, Seo-ah grabbed his shoulders.
Tae-kyung swept his tongue through every soft corner of her mouth, hunting down the small tongue that had hidden from him until the very end, and sucked it hard, all the way to the root, until it ached.
"Ah, hah—"
Her lips panted out the breath she couldn't finish through the gap of her parted teeth; the soft skin trembling under his fingertips was impossibly, indescribably supple.
Tae-kyung's lips burrowed into her with a thirst, and every one of Seo-ah's responses swelled his desire higher and higher.
Seo-ah, by contrast, had reached her limit.
She couldn't hold back her ragged, irregular breathing a second longer. She tried to push at his chest, but their bodies were pressed so seamlessly together that no gap would open.
I can't— I can't breathe.
Unable to push him away this time, she wrenched her head aside with all her strength and barely managed to tear her lips free.
"St… stop, Director, please stop."
At the urgency in Seo-ah's voice, Tae-kyung pressed his lips to her shoulder instead.
Exhaling rough breaths still damp with heat.