Page 115 of Lethal in Pink

“That’s it,” he growls, his voice rough against my neck. “Come on my cock. Scream my name. Let me hear you, jagiya.”

I scream. I sob. I come a third time with his fingers on my clit and his cock buried deep, and somewhere in the haze I hear him groan, his rhythm breaking as he empties himself inside me with a low, ragged sound.

We collapse together onto the couch, a tangled mess of sweat and trembling limbs, his chest pressed against my back, his arm heavy across my waist. The lights cast our shadows across the wall—two shapes merged into one, breathing in unison.

We don’t worry about condoms because I’m on birth control and we both got tested for all that we could to put mainly my mind at ease.

In my ear, Penelope has been producing a series of sounds for the past fifteen minutes ranging from scandalized to deeply personally offended. She did not disconnect. She is, after all, a professional.

The line is finally silent now.

I can feel the absence of her presence like an empty socket, knowing she heard every second of this and is currently reevaluating every life choice that brought her here.

The twins were never called. The kill window has passed. The compact sits on the coffee table, its rhinestones catching the fairy light glow, and I haven't moved to pick it up.

Eventually, we make it to the bed. Jae climbs in, pulling me against his chest, and within minutes his breathing evens out, deep and steady, his arm heavy across my ribs, his face buried in my hair.

I lie on my back staring at the ceiling, completely still, completely awake, entirely aware of what I did and didn't do tonight.

The compact sits on the nightstand. Penelope’s line is dead. The underground is waiting for a report I have no intention of filing. Law school resumes in fourteen hours, and the bar exam looms like a cliff I’m supposed to jump off without a parachute.

And beside me, warm and solid and devastatingly alive, Jae sleeps with his hand curled against my stomach, his pulse steady against my spine.

I ask myself, not for the first time and with considerably less detachment than I would like, whether this cycle is ever going to fucking end.

Chapter forty-one

Jae

The morning light cuts through my blinds in slanted, dusty bars, turning the hardwood floor into something that belongs in a catalogue I would never buy from. My bed is a disaster zone—sheets kicked into a twisted pile at the footboard, pillow mashed into the shape of my skull, one sneaker lying on its side where I kicked it off last night. The other one is MIA, probably under the bed or in the kitchen, casualties of a man who came home at two in the morning with the particular, dazed energy of someone who’d just been electrocuted by his girlfriend during what was otherwise the best sex of his life.

I sit on the edge of the mattress, bare feet planted on the cold floor, and reach for the mug on my nightstand. The coffee is still steaming—fresh enough that the first sip burns the roof of my mouth in a way that feels almost deserved. I swallow, wincing, and scroll through my phone with my thumb.

My thumb is already hitting Kiho’s contact before my brain fully catches up to what I’m doing.

The call connects through a crackle of static—the particular digital fuzz of an international line bridging Seoul and Los Angeles at eight in the morning. I hold the phone to my ear, listening to the ring, and somewhere in the back of my skull I’m still not entirely sure what version of this story I’m about to tell.

Second ring. He picks up.

“야, 이 새끼,” Kiho’s voice comes through, thick with sleep and the particular affectionate annoyance he reserves for calls that wake him. “Do you know what time it is here?”

“Morning,” I say, leaning back against the headboard. “Or afternoon. Depending on how you want to count.”

“I want to count it as the middle of the night, because that’s what it feels like when you call me before my alarm.”

“You don’t set an alarm.”

“I set intentions.”

I laugh into the mug. The coffee has cooled just enough that the next sip goes down smooth, carrying the particular acidic bite of the cheap beans I keep buying because the good stuff feels like a performance. “Sorry. I needed to tell you something.”

There’s a rustle on his end—sheets, probably, the sound of him shifting in bed. Kiho lives in a high-rise near Gangnam that his parents bought him as a graduation gift, and I can picture the exact layout: the floor-to-ceiling windows, the minimalist furniture he never uses, the gaming setup in the corner that costs more than most people’s cars. “This better be good. I was having a dream about a beach.”

“Was I in it?”

“You were getting eaten by a shark.”

“Nice.”