The world shrank around them.
No more rain behind the windows.
No more night.
No more walls.
Just their mixed breaths, their burning skin, their hearts pounding like two beasts locked in the same cage.
Sion grabbed her face with both hands, forced her to look at him, his forehead pressed to hers, their noses brushing, their breaths colliding.
— You're mine.
His voice vibrated, deep, rough, almost shaking.
— Say it.
Nari felt her legs give out beneath her despite the bed.
She felt like he was holding her at the edge of a cliff — the one she had feared and desired since the first day.
— Sion…
She knew she was going to fall.
She knew she wanted to fall.
He shifted her body against the mattress in one fluid, controlled, powerful motion — his muscular chest pressing against her breasts, his hips anchored between hers, his hot breath sliding down her throat.
He bit her collarbone.
Not softly.
Not brutally either.
Just hard enough for her to lose all sense of reality for an instant.
— Say it, he repeated, his lips gliding over her skin.
She moaned, a muffled, torn, uncontrolled sound.
Her hips lifted on their own.
Her heart raced.
Her whole body screamed yes even as her mouth tried to hold the truth back.
She slid a trembling hand behind his neck, her fingers running over his warm skin, to the base of his hair still damp from the shower.
She pulled him toward her.
Begged him with her lips without forming the words.
— Take me.
Sion froze.
Just for a second.
His golden eyes widened, a raw, almost wild flash crossing his gaze.
— Say. The. Word.
She took a deep breath, her stomach tightening, her hips arching, and finally:
— I'm yours.
Sion lost control.
A guttural sound escaped him — a kind of muffled growl that had nothing human in it — and he kissed her like she had torn a piece of his heart out.
His hands slid under her thighs, lifted her abruptly.
She released a cry of surprise.
He pulled her against him, his hard length pressing against the wet heat between her legs.
A jolt shot through her from her throat to her lower belly.
He entered her.
In one thrust.
Deep.
Total.
She cried out.
Not from pain.
From shock.
From need.
From an overload she had held back for far too long.
He stayed still for a few seconds, breath caught, his forehead against her cheek, his fingers digging into the flesh of her thighs.
— Fuck, Nari…
His voice broke.
— You feel so…
He couldn't even finish the sentence.
Then he moved.
Slowly at first.
As if he wanted to carve every second into stone.
Every sensation.
Every shiver she let escape despite herself.
His hips moved — in, out — a perfect rhythm, deep, controlled.
Nari clung to his shoulders, her nails sinking into his skin, her moans mixing with his ragged breaths.
— Stop… you're… you're gonna…
— No. Not yet.
He pinned her hands above her head, his fingers intertwined with hers.
— You come when I tell you.
She gasped, unable to resist.
Unable to fight.
Her body vibrated under each thrust.
Then he sped up.
A little.
Then more.
Again.
His rhythm grew deeper, hungrier, more desperate.
Their bodies snapped against each other.
The bed creaked.
Their breaths broke into moans, sighs, choked cries.
— Look at me.
He lifted her face with his fingers.
She obeyed.
Her eyes filled with tears — not from sadness, but from intensity, pleasure, too-much-everything.
— Sion… I…
— Now.
She exploded.
Her stomach tightened violently.
Her thighs trembled around his hips.
Her head fell back, her mouth opening in a cry she couldn't hold back.
He followed her.
One deeper, rougher, instinctive thrust — and he came inside her, his hands shaking against hers, his whole body tensed like he was holding himself back from collapsing.
He stayed inside her for a long time, panting, his head buried in her neck, their breaths mixing into one broken exhale.
Silence returned.
Slowly.
Like a wave after chaos.
Nari got up abruptly, without thinking, as if her muscles had moved before her mind — breath still shattered, skin burning, heart pounding too fast, too hard, too close to breaking — she grabbed the bedsheet with trembling hands, wrapped it around her naked body, and fled into the bathroom like someone escaping a fire, the door slamming behind her with a sharp sound that echoed through the entire apartment.
As soon as the lock clicked, her body gave out.
She slid down the cold wall, the sheet loosened, her knees buckled, and she collapsed onto the floor, back against the freezing tiles that bit into her skin, her hands trembling, her breath too short, too chopped.
And suddenly, without warning, the tears burst.
Not small discreet tears.
Not pretty, controlled sobs.
No.
A raw pain.
Ancient.
A faultline cracking open.
She cried without sound, but her body shook under the violence of the shock, as if every emotion she had held back for years — the shame, the guilt, the fear, the emptiness, the need — had chosen this tiny bathroom to gut her all at once.
She buried her face in her hands, her fingers sliding over her wet cheeks, unable to understand what she was feeling — nor why she was shaking so much, nor why her heart hurt so badly, nor why this night, which should have been forbidden, immoral, impossible, had at the same time freed her and shattered her.
She thought of her boyfriend.
Her mother.
Sion.
Herself.
Everything mixed in a thick chaos crushing her chest.
With shame.
With relief.
With desire.
With fear.
With truth.
She cried until she no longer felt her own body.
On the other side of the door, Sion stayed still.
He didn't try to enter.
He didn't try to speak.
He simply listened.
Every sob.
Every broken breath.
Every muffled tremor.
And something — a tiny shard — cracked inside him.
A pinch.
There.
In his chest.
Violent.
Incomprehensible.
Unacceptable.
He clenched his fists, muscles tight, jaw locked, unable to label what he felt — a mix of rage, frustration, possessiveness, tenderness, hatred, fear — a mix he had never experienced for anyone.
He hated hearing her cry.
He hated that he was the one who had put her in this state.
He hated… how badly he wanted to hold her.
When the door finally opened, Nari reappeared, the sheet clutched around her body, hair stuck to her face, eyes red, swollen, broken, and yet… strangely beautiful in their vulnerability.
She didn't dare raise her eyes.
She froze in the doorway, ready to flee again.
Sion looked at her for a long time.
Silent.
Still.
Burning.
Then, without a word, he approached.
He gently grabbed her wrist, as if afraid she would break under his fingers.
He pulled her against him, a firm gesture but trembling with tension he couldn't control.
She tried to protest, to open her mouth, to step back — but he placed a finger on her lips.
A whisper.
A breath.
An admission he should never have spoken:
— Stay.
She shook her head, ready to say no, ready to run again.
But he added, lower, truer, almost fragile:
— Not for me. For you.
And that was perhaps the only thing that could have made her give in.
He wrapped her in the sheet the way one covers something precious, erasing the cold of the bathroom, erasing the tremble in her shoulders, erasing everything except that strange truth vibrating between them.
He pulled her against him, against his chest still warm from the chaos before, one hand sliding into her hair, the other on her waist, as if he were afraid she would disappear if he loosened his grip even for a second.
Nari rested her head against him.
And for the first time, it wasn't desire.
Nor sex.
Nor escape.
Nor lying.
Just… a need.
A visceral need not to be alone in a world that had just fallen apart.
They fell asleep like that, entwined, in a fragile, almost sacred silence where every breath felt like a confession neither was ready to say out loud.
And that night, without realizing it,
something was born between them.
Not a healthy love.
Not a gentle love.
No.
Something darker.
More violent.
More dangerous.
A bond that would save no one.
A bond that would heal nothing.
A bond born from suffering, desire, need, fear.
A bond that would consume them.
Slowly.
Completely.
Inevitably.