Jeju Temptation

The door to my office clicked shut, and the sound of it echoed through the room like a gunshot. Jiyeon stood with her back to me, her shoulders trembling, her small hands balled into fists at her sides. I could see the way her body shook, the way she tried to hide it from me, and something inside my chest tightened.

"Jiyeon-ah," I said, stepping closer. "Look at me."

She didn't move. Just stood there in her cream-colored blouse and tailored slacks, her dark hair falling like a curtain over her face. I could hear her breathing, shallow and uneven. The kind of breathing that came before the crying started again.

"Please," I said. "Turn around."

"I saw the photos, Sehun." Her voice cracked on my name. "She was touching your arm. Laughing at something you said. You had that look on your face, the one you get when you're... when you're happy."

I reached for her then, my fingers brushing her elbow. She flinched but didn't pull away. That was something. A small victory I'd take.

"Those photos were from the hotel opening last month," I said. "You know this. I told you about the event. Yoona is the brand ambassador. She was doing her job."

"Her job." Jiyeon finally turned, and there they were, the tears she'd been trying to hide, tracking down her cheeks and leaving dark streaks of mascara in their wake. "Her job is to touch you? To laugh with you like you're still hers?"

The accusation hit me somewhere low in my gut. Not because it was true, but because I understood why she thought it was. I'd been careless. I'd let old habits slip through, the easy familiarity of someone I'd once known intimately. A hand on my arm meant nothing to me. But to Jiyeon, watching from the outside, it meant everything.

I took her face in my hands. Her skin was damp, warm from the tears. She tried to look away, but I held her there, my thumbs tracing the curve of her cheekbones.

"Look at me," I said again, softer this time. "I need you to hear what I'm about to say."

"I don't want to hear it."

"Too bad." I almost smiled when her eyes flashed with irritation. Good. Anger was better than tears. "Yoona and I ended three years ago. You know this. You know why."

She did know. Everyone knew. The breakup had been messy, public in ways I still regretted. Yoona had wanted a life I couldn't give her, and I'd wanted something she couldn't understand. We'd burned hot and fast and left nothing but ash behind.

"She's still beautiful," Jiyeon whispered. "She's still... she's Yoona. Everyone wants her."

"And I want you." I said it plain, without decoration. "Only you."

"Words," she said. "Just words."

I let go of her face and stepped back. The distance between us felt like miles. She wrapped her arms around herself, and I watched her try to rebuild the walls I'd spent months tearing down.

"You think I'd lie to you?" I asked.

"I think you'd say anything to make this easier."

The truth of that stung. Not because I was lying, but because she knew me well enough to know I hated conflict. I'd spent my whole life smoothing things over, making problems disappear with a smile and a well-placed word. She'd seen through that from the beginning.

"You're right," I said. "I would. But I'm not."

I walked to my desk and pulled open the bottom drawer. The file was there, where I'd left it, thick with documents and contracts. I dropped it on the desk between us.

"What's this?" she asked.

"Open it."

She hesitated, then reached for it. Her fingers trembled as she flipped through the pages. Photos. Emails. A timeline of every interaction I'd had with Yoona since the day I'd met Jiyeon. Every meeting, every event, every phone call. All documented, all professional.

"You kept records?" She looked up at me, confusion cutting through the hurt.

"I keep records of everything," I said. "You know this about me. I don't leave things to chance."

"This is..." She shook her head. "This is obsessive."

"This is me proving I have nothing to hide." I moved closer again, close enough to smell her perfume, something floral and soft. "Yoona is a business partner. Nothing more. The hotel needs her name, her face. She brings in guests from all over Asia. But that's all she is to me now."

Jiyeon set the file down. Her hands were still shaking.

"Why didn't you tell me about the photos?" she asked. "Before I saw them?"

"Because I didn't think about them. They were meaningless to me." I reached for her hand, and this time she let me take it. "That's the problem, isn't it? I don't think about how things look. I only think about how they are."

"That's not a good excuse."

"No," I agreed. "It's not."

She was quiet for a long moment. I watched her process, watched the wheels turn behind her eyes. Jiyeon was smart, smarter than most people gave her credit for. She'd grown up in a family that dismissed her, treated her like decoration. But I'd seen her mind at work. I'd seen her tear apart business proposals and rebuild them better. She wasn't someone who could be fooled for long.

"I hate this," she said finally. "I hate feeling like this. Like I'm competing with a ghost."

"You're not competing with anyone." I pulled her closer, and she came, her body fitting against mine like it was made for it. "Yoona is the past. You're everything else."

"That's a lot of pressure," she murmured against my chest.

"I know." I pressed my lips to her hair. "But I mean it."

She tilted her head up, and I saw the question in her eyes before she asked it. "Why me? Out of everyone, why me?"

I could have given her the easy answer. The one about her beauty, her grace, the way she lit up a room. All true. But not the truth.

"Because you're the only person who's ever looked at me and seen someone worth fighting for," I said. "Not the CEO. Not the heir. Just... me."

Her breath caught. I felt it against my neck, warm and uneven.

"That's not fair," she whispered.

"What isn't?"

"Say things like that when I'm trying to be angry with you."

I laughed, a low sound that rumbled through my chest. "I'll say whatever it takes to keep you here."

She pulled back just enough to look at me. Her eyes were still red, still wet, but something had shifted. The hurt was still there, but underneath it, something else. Something hungry.

"You're impossible," she said.

"And you're mine." I said it like a fact, because it was. "Say it."

She swallowed hard. I watched her throat move, watched the pulse beat at the base of her neck.

"I'm yours," she said.

The words went through me like electricity. I kissed her then, not gentle, not soft. I kissed her like I was trying to prove something, and maybe I was. My hands found her waist, pulling her flush against me, and she gasped into my mouth.

"Sehun," she breathed.

"Again," I said against her lips. "Say it again."

"I'm yours."

I walked her backward until her back hit the wall. She made a sound, half surprise, half want. Her fingers curled into my shirt, pulling me closer.

"You drive me insane," I told her. "Do you know that? The way you cry, the way you fight me, the way you look at me like I'm the only thing in the world."

"You are," she said. "That's the problem."

I kissed her neck, felt her shiver. "There's no problem. There's only us."

Her head fell back against the wall, her eyes closing. I watched her surrender to it, to me, and something primal stirred in my chest. This woman. This impossible, beautiful, infuriating woman. She had no idea what she did to me.

"I want you," I said. "Right now. Right here."

She opened her eyes. "Someone could walk in."

"Let them."

"Sehun..."

I pulled back just enough to look at her. "Do you want me to stop?"

She didn't answer. She didn't have to. I could see it in her face, the same hunger I felt. The same need.

"I didn't think so," I said.