Page 57 of Fallen Starboy

“Iamrelaxed,” I hissed, rolling my eyes even though my heart was doing flips. For seven years, I’d yearned to feel this way with him again. Mourned the loss of something I thought I stood no chance of repairing. And now, here we were, mending something I’d broken out of fear, out of a misguided belief thatthey’d be safer if I was out of the picture. After all, a kpop star could very well still have a career with a hidden kid. But a kpop star whose affections were with a specific someone? A star who’d admitted that he wanted to leave the kpop scene behind and start a family?

I was more dangerous to the idea of a perfect pop star than the illicit kid.

Or so I’d thought.

While Jun settled Yejin in the adjoining room, I took a moment to check the exits and viewpoints. I knew it was Pujin’s job to deal with security, but after everything, I wanted to be sure. Now that I was here, I wanted to see that we were safe with my own two eyes.

Jun found me minutes later checking the sturdiness of the locks on the balcony doors, my face screwed up into a moue of concentration and frustration.

“What are you up to?” he asked casually, hands in his pockets as he watched me tug on the handle again.

I huffed in annoyance. “I could slip through this lock with a credit card and motivation. That’s not safe.” I motioned one of Pujin’s men over. “Let Pujin know the balcony locks need to be addressed. I want this placesafe,notsort of safe.”

Before I had a chance to keep testing locks, Jun’s hands were on my shoulders, steering me into the bedroom I’d seen him point out to the guy carrying the bags earlier. “You need to chill the fuck out before you work yourself up,” he growled, shutting the door quietly behind him. “Sit down.”

It was almost instinct to cross my arms over my chest in an act of self-protection. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not,” he pointed out, his eyes narrowed. “Your forehead is wrinkled from all the frowning you’ve done this week, your eyes are tired, and you look like someone ran you over with a tour bus.”

“Gee, thanks, Jun. As if I needed a reminder that I’m not a flawless idol.” I patted my hair self-consciously, fighting to resist the urge to check myself in the mirror. “You’re no prize yourself, either.” I pretended to look him up and down with disdain, but then I was actually looking him up and down, andoh, would you look at that, he was sporting a fucking stiffie behind the fabric of his pants?—

“My eyes are up here, Ari.”

He snorted as I blushed and turned around, facing the bed. “Who’s looking at you?”

His footsteps on the floor echoed in the silence of the room, setting my skin to crawling in a good way. I could hear him getting closer, but like a deer in the headlights, I was frozen, anticipating my eventual capture.

His lips grazed the shell of my ear as he leaned in next to me from over my shoulder, a smile in his words as visible as if I were looking at him eye to eye. “I like it when you look at me like you’re starving and I’m a snack on the buffet table.”

As if compelled by his words, I licked my lips, clenching my thighs together with a little whimper of need. Nevermind that we’d literally just fucked like the world was ending in my apartment an hour ago. Nevermind that our daughter was in the next room, that Pujin and a whole host of security guards were right there, as well.

I wanted him. I wanted this, wanted us. And I was well past denying it, because he could feel it, too.

“But you’re tired,” I heard him whisper as visions of the things we could do to each other, things I’d only read about, things I wished for years I could try out, faded from my mind. “Why don’t we lay down for a bit, grab some rest while Yejin is napping?”

I couldn’t hide the whole-body pout that washed over me. His laughter said he hadn’t missed it, either.

“I’m not tired,” I argued, though it was pointless. He knew me, still knew me, as if we’d never been apart. Nothing about me had changed in all that time, though I tried my damndest to become a whole new person.

“Liar,” he said simply, lifting me off my feet as if I weighed nothing. “Don’t argue just to argue.”

The three million and one tasks I had to complete, work I could be doing, raced through my mind like rabbits on speed. “I have to wor?—”

“Let me have this, Ari. Work can wait.”

The words were simple, but said with such emotion, such longing, I couldn’t fight him anymore. Iwantedto give in to him, wanted to make him happy again. We’d been at each others’ throats for so long, the idea of playing nice was . . . strange. But with him in this moment, it felt . . . right.

“Work can wait,” I echoed, letting him arrange us in the center of the hotel bed. “For now.”

I passed out in his arms, content, safe, and warm from the inside out.

It felt good to not feel so fucking empty for once.

Chapter

Twenty-Four

JUN

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