“What the h*ll.”

The man’s brows drew together as he stepped into the room, fingers working the buttons of his shirt from the top down. A short, disbelieving breath escaped beneath the sharp line of his nose.

The room reeked of alcohol. In the middle of it, a woman in a white wedding dress lay sprawled across the bed. Her slow, wheezing breaths and slightly parted lips made her look dead to the world.

“Ms. Lee Haein.”

He walked over and nudged her foot where it hung off the edge of the bed.

“Mmm…….”

Even at the sound of her name, Haein couldn’t open her eyes. She only let out a faint groan.

“Unbelievable.”

He had spent the entire day squeezing out smiles that had no business being on his face, and now his jaw ached and his temples throbbed like something was driving a spike through them.

He had wanted to go home, drink himself into the floor, and pass out. But his mother had hounded him about whether he was really going to leave his bride alone on their wedding night without even a honeymoon, and so here he was, standing in a hotel room.

He hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol all day, worn down by parents and guests alike, and now he was staring at a woman who had peacefully drunk herself to sleep. His headache got worse.

If he turned around and walked out, his mother would hear about it. And then the lecture would start at verse one and drag all the way through to verse four. Just imagining it made him shudder.

Haah. Jiho let out a long breath, raked a hand through his hair, and headed for the bathroom. On his way, he stripped off everything that had been strangling him all day and dropped it on the floor.

The last thing to come off, a pair of black boxer briefs, landed at the bathroom entrance. A lean, solid body moved through the empty room with quiet intensity.

Clatter.

The faint sound made Haein’s eyelids twitch. Her carefully curled lashes fluttered, and then the dark eyes hidden beneath them slowly opened.

She rolled onto her side and her breath caught. The corset cinched below her chest made her stomach turn.

“Ugh…….”

She let out a soft groan and pressed her hand to her forehead. Heat radiated against her palm. Sure enough. The breath slipping from her nose was warm. Through her blurred vision, she caught sight of a bottle and a glass sitting alone on the table.

The round ice cubes had long since melted without a trace. Then what was that sound just now? It had sounded exactly like ice clinking together.

Her round eyes drifted across the room in search of the source. Against the window with its dazzling nighttime view, an unfamiliar shadow shifted.

She had just registered that the shadow looked like a person when a pair of sharp eyes met hers. Haein gasped and pushed herself upright.

“…….”

She bit down on the tip of her tongue to hold back the scream. Her heart pounded wildly. There was no mistaking who the man was, standing there in a room she thought she had to herself.

Cold sweat soaked down her back. She felt like an idiot. The real mistake had been pouring herself a drink when she first walked in alone, too tense and too scared to just sit still.

She never touched anything as strong as whiskey under normal circumstances, and yet she had gone and done something reckless. She thought she had only taken one sip, but everything after that was gone.

Her trembling gaze landed on the nightstand clock. 23:21. It had been around eight when she picked up the bottle. She had been asleep for over three hours on her wedding night. When she should have been sitting quietly, waiting for him.

Aside from the occasional clatter, the silence was suffocating. Haein crushed the urge to run and forced herself to lift her head.

Unlike Haein, whose fear showed plainly on her face, the man’s expression was blank. It was as though the smile he had worn throughout the ceremony was a mask he had finally taken off.

His indifferent eyes swept over her reflection in the window, from her head down to her feet. His gaze lingered noticeably on her disheveled hair and the long line of her neck below it.

His eyes alone made her feel pinned in place. Haein gripped the already-crumpled skirt of her dress and held on.

The suite maintained a comfortable temperature, nothing like the cold wind outside, but she felt stripped bare and freezing. Her shoulders hunched against the shivering, and a sharp ache clamped around her ribs.

Haein was still in her wedding dress. Jiho, by contrast, wore nothing but a loose robe.

She wished he would say something. The dense silence made every second stretch into a minute.

“Come sit.”

He finally spoke when cold sweat had begun to bead at Haein’s temples. His low, heavy voice cut through the silence that had filled the room.

The shock sent her bouncing lightly off the bed. Haein gathered the fabric pooling at her feet and made her way hesitantly to the sofa.

“Are you planning to keep wearing that? Or is this some kind of protest to get me to undress you.”

The clear note of exasperation in his voice made Haein press her lips together. She quickly turned toward the dressing room.

Then she stepped on the slippery fabric instead of the floor. She lost her balance in an instant and pitched forward.

“…….”

She squeezed her eyes shut against the coming pain, and a firm pair of arms caught her. The rush of his scent made Haein’s eyelids tremble.

When she cautiously opened her eyes, a broad chest filled her view. The deep, unfamiliar scent that tickled her nose made her throat move on its own.

The solid warmth of a body so different from her own burned her face. They were married now, but counting today, Haein had met this man exactly three times in total.

This was the closest they had ever been. Even walking down the petal-strewn aisle, they had barely linked arms. The heat of his body through nothing but a robe made her breath come short.

“You’re like a newborn fawn.”

Her stomach had been pulling tight with a tension she couldn’t name when the blunt remark came, and she was set back on her feet.

“……I’m sorry.”

She was already falling short when she needed to make a good impression, and she kept making one mistake after another. Haein ducked her head in embarrassment and noticed the state of her dress, hopelessly wrinkled.

She pushed her loose hair back and moved toward the dressing room with small, uncertain steps. A warm gaze followed her from behind.

The dressing room had been stocked in advance with comfortable clothes. Haein took out a dress and reached behind her back.

But her fingers couldn’t quite reach the zipper. She strained until her face flushed, always just barely missing it. By the time her shoulders ached, she heard movement nearby.

“Want me to get it?”

Jiho had come up without her noticing and stood leaning against the doorframe. The ceiling that had seemed high when she passed through now looked much lower with him beneath it.

All she had to do was ask. But the words wouldn’t come. She stood frozen in her flustered state, and Jiho didn’t wait for an answer. He walked into the dressing room in a few easy strides.

Before she could stop him, the zipper slid all the way down. The soft fabric of the dress slipped off her body.

What remained on her curved figure was a corset that cinched her waist and pushed up her chest, lace underwear, stockings that reached halfway up her thighs, and a garter belt.

Haein startled and crossed her arms over herself. The result was that her chest, already pushed high, became even more pronounced.

‘What kind of chest is this big.’

He had sensed it through her clothes, but seeing it now was something else entirely. Jiho frowned and took a step back.

He hadn’t noticed before, but she smelled good too. The soft, faintly sweet scent that had been masked by the alcohol sent a dull heat pooling through his lower abdomen in an instant.

‘But I married this woman today.’

He had been about to step aside without thinking when the thought struck him and he stopped moving entirely. Jiho stood where he was and slowly took in the white skin flushing a pale red.

Her face was clean and girlish, but her body was something else. Desire stirred in him without his permission.