Page 94 of A World Apart
“After that, I just got too busy with uni and work. Dating wasn’t a priority for me.” I shrugged.
Jihoon was quiet for a while, his hand moving in a steady rhythm as he rubbed my back.
“And none of them ever touched you?” he asked, sounding so puzzled, like he couldn’t wrap his head around it.
I giggled. “I mean, my long-term boyfriend was very fond of grabbing my boobs whenever the opportunity arose.”
Jihoon grumbled and dragged his hand down to my waist, pulling me harder against him.
“But what about you?” I tilted my head up to look at him.
“I’ve never had a boyfriend.”
I laughed, and lightly smacked his chest, enjoying the way his dimples appeared when he smiled down at me.
“Funny man. I meant, when did you ever find the time to have girlfriends?” I kept my tone light, but the words stung my throat on the way up, tasting bitter.
“No girlfriends,” he answered, his mouth still quirked in a smile, before he gave me a brief peck on my forehead.
“None? But…”
“There were girls,” he admitted with a sigh, saying the words slowly, like he was making sure they were the right ones. “Other trainees. But always brief, and always secret. Nothing real.”
I let the words sink in for a moment, hating the sharp spike of jealousy that twisted in my gut, before asking, “Did you never want a relationship with any of them?”
“Once.” He looked down at me, holding my gaze when I might have looked away. “But if we’d have been found out, we would have been kicked out of the company.”
“She’s at ENT as well?” I didn’t mean to ask the question − it just kind of fell out.
Jihoon nodded, but didn’t offer up her name, or if she debuted, and I didn’t ask.
“Do you mind?” Jihoon asked quietly. The question surprised me because his expression told me my answer mattered to him.
I frowned, “Why would I mind?”
“Some people do.” His mouth turned down, even as his hand tightened around my waist.
“Jihoon, you’re a grown man. Frankly, out of the two us and our combined sexual history, I’m the weirdo.”
He laughed, his breath warm as he pressed another kiss to my forehead, as I lay there contemplating all that we could be.
Some time later, my body decided we were done lying around when it loudly gurgled its disapproval at not being fed. I froze, trying to decide if I could ignore it or not.
Jihoon chuckled, mid-way down my sternum, where he had been laying a trail of kisses from my throat downwards.
“Hungry?” He looked up at me from underneath those shadowy eyelashes, his lips tickling against my skin. It would be so easy to make a femme-fatale joke here, seductively bite my lip… were it not for my insistent, apparently empty stomach making its displeasure known with another unhappy gurgle.
“Hey,” Jihoon said, directing this at my stomach, “we’re going, you must be patient.” He kissed just above my belly button, and I laughed, both from the tickle and the tummy pep-talk.
He raised up onto his arms and crawled up my body.
“You’re not making it easier to get out of bed,” I murmured as he towered over me.
He grinned and leaned down to press a soft kiss to my nose before he rolled off me and the bed, rising to his feet in one, fluid movement. I would have complained, but it afforded me a front row seat to the way his muscles flexed, the way his back tapered to his narrow waist and, let’s be real, the way his shorts hung off those hips was a treat for the eyes.
I rolled onto my back and sighed. “I do not know what I did to deserve this,” I muttered under my breath, “but I must have been very, very good.”
Not long later.
