Chapter 3

“Why do I have to go into the bathroom with you?”

Gayeon said it while desperately bracing herself, grabbing the wrist of the man who had yanked open the bathroom door and gone inside, trying with all her might to resist.

Kiril, who had been about to pull her in as well, turned to look at her with one eyebrow raised.

“You seem to have forgotten…”

At some point, even his lips had turned pale.

The sight of him smiling as he lifted the corners of those pale lips made her hair stand on end.

“…but I never, ever let prey I’ve caught out of my sight.”

Perhaps this man was someone who thought in very straightforward terms.

That thought flashed through Gayeon’s mind.

By this man’s standards, she had run away, and the man who had chased after her had caught her and brought her back.

Hunter and prey.

That was the term that described the relationship between the two of them right now.

His gray eyes gleamed strangely.

At the look in them, as if warning that if she said one more word, something would happen that she would surely regret, she shut her mouth.

In the spacious bathroom, he stripped off his clothes without hesitation.

The moment he took off the black suit, a lean but firm n*ked body was revealed at once.

Gayeon did not know where to rest her eyes, so she looked up at the ceiling.

Ssshhhhh.

When the man stepped into the shower booth and turned on the shower, water came pouring down.

Only then did Gayeon finally lower her gaze.

Only after his gaze had fallen away for a while did the things that had happened today begin little by little to feel real.

Even more shocking than the armed intruders who had suddenly stormed the mansion was the sight of him killing a bear with his bare hands, which kept floating through her mind again and again.

Among animals that could be hunted, bears were the most difficult kind of beast.

Usually, people tried however they could to avoid ever coming across one, or if they had no choice but to face one, they had to think of it as giving up half their life already.

And usually, one killed them with a gun, not a knife.

“How does it even make sense to k*ll a bear with a knife in the first place?”

The sound of the water quickly swallowed Gayeon’s question.

In any case, it had only been a small murmur to herself.

She buried her face in her palms.

Even though she had seen it with her own eyes, she still could not believe it.

As she thought of the man rushing straight into the bear’s embrace, she reflexively scratched at the goosebumps risen on her forearm through her sleeve.

At some point, the sound of water ceased, and silence settled over the bathroom.

By the time Gayeon realized that and lifted her head, the man had already come right up before her without a sound.

Water droplets rolled down from his hair, soaked flat and clinging to his cheeks.

He looked down at her, his mouth smiling but his eyes not smiling at all.

“Wash.”

He said it, jerking his chin toward the shower booth.

“……What?”

So flustered that her tongue nearly tangled, she barely managed to answer in the form of a question, and he parted his lips.

“I said wash.”

“Why should I?”

As his hand came toward her face, Gayeon flinched in surprise and leaned her upper body back.

Right behind her was the cold tiled wall.

There was nowhere left to retreat.

His hand came on without hesitation and rubbed her cheek with his thumb.

“Because there’s blood on you.”

At his words, the vividness of that moment replayed itself automatically in her head once more.

The blood that had burst forth like a fountain.

Naturally, some of it must have splashed onto her too, being so close.

“Whether I wash is up to me.”

The man showed no sign of leaving.

Once she thought about the blood having splashed onto her, she did want to wash too, but as long as this man stood his ground here, she had no intention of taking off her clothes.

At her reply, Kiril, still pale-faced, smiled in a dangerous way.

“When you walk around with a face smeared in blood, it excites me.”

His wet fingers slowly rubbed at Gayeon’s face.

When he scraped at her with his nail as if wiping away the trace of blood, her cheek burned.

“I’ve been holding back for hours now, so should I keep holding back even longer?”

What exactly was he saying he was holding back?

The man smiled brightly.

The sunlight-like smile that had dazzled her when he first presented her with the exile papers and pressed her to sign them made her feel dizzy again.

And also, afraid.

That smile from then and this smile now were the same.

This did not mean anything good.

Quick-witted, Gayeon grasped that this man smiled like this when he was restraining something.

“I’m telling you that when I see blood, my c*ck stays hard, and that makes things troublesome.”

The sinister words spilled from Kiril’s mouth plainly and without concealment.

She should not have looked, but reflexively Gayeon’s gaze dropped to his lower body pressing in on her.

The moment she saw it standing fiercely, jutting upward as though it could stab all the way to above his navel, she stopped breathing.

A reddish p*nis, ridged with vivid blue veins, twitched there, rigid with force.

Both its thickness and size were intimidating enough to freeze her just by looking at it.

After the death of the bear, this was a second shock to her.

“M-Mr. Belov.”

She had received more than enough s*xual advances in her life.

But this kind of blatant display was a first, and any ability to respond smoothly vanished white from Gayeon’s head.

Below, he was standing in a frightening way, at a size no human being ought to be walking around with, while his face above was pale and drained.

There was something unbalanced about him.

From the start, her mind had been telling her that it was impossible to understand this man, but even so, she did not think he was about to do anything to her immediately.

“So…… are you saying I should wash because seeing blood excites you?”

She wanted to ask whether that meant he had been aroused the entire time since barging into her house and beating down the guards, but in any case, the last thread of reason she had left made her swallow that word back with her saliva.

“It’s nice that you catch on quickly.”

Even while saying that, Kiril’s fingers kept rubbing Gayeon’s cheek.

“So stop glancing down there like that. I can take care of my own d*ck.”

There was no way he had not noticed that her gaze kept wanting to fall downward.

Smiling like a flower just beginning to bloom, he did not seem inclined to pretend not to notice where she was looking.

“Or were you thinking of taking care of it for me?”

“No. I absolutely have no intention of……”

“I’d pound into you all day. Would you be alright with that?”

She could not tell whether he was joking or serious.

For now, since Kiril and she were not on terms to exchange jokes, Gayeon decided to take it as serious, and quickly shook her head.

Since olden times, the best course with a madman had always been to get far away from him.

Reminding herself that her own life, too, had survived until now only by narrow escapes, she pressed down on her chest, where it felt as though her heart might burst out.

“My stamina is poor.”

As if Gayeon’s words were laughable, he let out a breathy sound through his teeth.

The droplets clinging to Kiril’s hair fell one by one onto her white shirt, more precisely onto Gayeon’s chest.

“If you can’t handle it, then wash. That’s all.”

The fingers that had been rubbing her cheek moved past her collarbone and headed beneath the two or so opened shirt buttons.

He twisted his fingers and undid the buttons.

The breath coming from the man was sweet as though steeped in poison, just like his smile.