Chapter Eleven
The apartment is quiet except for the low murmur of the TV and the occasional soft snore from Kal, whose heavy head has been parked on my thigh for the last forty minutes.
I’m slouched into the corner of the couch with my feet tucked under Machete’s warm body at the other end, her side rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm against my ankles.
Some variety show is playing and I’m only half paying attention, scrolling through my phone with one hand while the other rests on the curve of my belly.
Five months. The bump is impossible to hide now, a firm round swell that pushes out from beneath my ribs and forces me to sit differently than I used to.
I can’t just flop down anymore without thinking about it.
I have to angle my hips, lean back, make room for the extra weight that shifts my center of gravity forward.
My back aches if I sit too long in one position, and I’ve taken to stuffing one of Hyunwoo’s expensive throw pillows behind my lower spine for support.
Tonight I’ve got two of them wedged behind me, and my sweatpants are riding low under the bump.
Hyunwoo’s out late tonight. Some business dinner with potential investors for the resort—the project has been gaining real traction over the past couple of months, and he’s been meeting with developers and financiers more frequently, coming home with his phone full of architectural revisions and spreadsheets that he shows me over dinner with animated enthusiasm.
I don’t understand half the financial words he throws around, but I like watching him talk about it.
It’s one of the few things I’ve ever seen him genuinely care about building from scratch, and the focus looks good on him.
He’s been gone since six, and it’s almost eleven now.
I texted him an hour ago asking if he wanted me to save him some of the leftover japchae the cook made, and he replied with a thumbs up and a “heading out soon.”
I yawn and let my phone drop onto my chest, my eyes drifting back to the TV.
One of the hosts is screaming about something while the audience laughs, and the noise is comfortable background filler that makes the apartment feel less empty.
I scratch behind Kal’s ear absently, and he lets out a contented grumble, pressing his head harder into my thigh.
Both dogs perk up at the same time. Machete’s head lifts from where she’d been dozing against my feet, her ears swiveling forward, and Kal raises his head off my lap with a soft, alert whine, his nostrils flaring.
I hear the electronic beep of the front door lock a second later, followed by the click of the deadbolt turning.
I sit up straighter, shifting Kal’s head off my lap with a gentle push, and twist toward the entryway. “Hey,” I call out as I hear the door swing open and the familiar sound of Hyunwoo’s shoes on the hardwood. “The new episode of Outlaw Hunter dropped tonight, do you want to—”
I stop mid-sentence.
Hyunwoo stands in the mouth of the hallway, and something about him is off.
His hair is disheveled, pushed back from his forehead in messy furrows like he’s been dragging his fingers through it over and over.
His tie hangs loose and crooked around his neck, the top three buttons of his dress shirt undone instead of his usual two, and his face is flushed a deep, blotchy pink that runs all the way down his throat and disappears beneath his open collar.
His eyes are the worst part—glassy and unfocused, not tracking right, like he’s looking at me through water.
He reaches for the coat hook on the wall to hang up his jacket and misses it entirely on the first try, his fingers fumbling against the wall before he finds the hook on the second attempt. The jacket slides off anyway and crumples on the floor. He doesn’t pick it up.
I push myself off the couch, one hand bracing against the armrest to lever my weight up, and cross toward him. “Were you drinking at the dinner?”
Hyunwoo shakes his head slowly, the motion loose and heavy.
“No. Just—feeling a little off.” His voice comes out rougher than normal, the words slightly thick.
He tugs at his tie with clumsy fingers, pulling it over his head instead of unknotting it, and mumbles something about taking a shower.
He turns toward the bedroom hallway and nearly trips over Kal, who has followed me from the couch and is now circling Hyunwoo’s legs with his nose low to the ground, sniffing at his ankles and calves intensely.
Machete is hanging back by the couch, her body rigid, ears flat against her skull.
I frown, watching Hyunwoo shuffle down the hall with that wrong, heavy gait—no trace of his usual loose-limbed confidence, just a man trying to get from point A to point B without falling over.
And then I inhale.
My body locks up. Every muscle goes rigid at once, my fingers curling into fists at my sides, my breath catching hard in my throat.
Pheromones—thick, potent, rolling off Hyunwoo in a flood that fills the apartment like smoke pouring through an open door.
Not the carefully metered trace amounts he normally allows around me, not the moderate release during sex.
This is unfiltered. Unrestrained. Alpha pheromones at full, uncontrolled strength, saturating the air so completely that I can taste them on the back of my tongue—dark and rich and overwhelming, sandalwood and musk and animal and urgent that makes every hair on my body stand up.
My reaction is instantaneous. Slick rushes from my hole in a sudden hot flood that soaks through my underwear and dampens the inside of my joggers.
My cock goes hard so fast the blood rush makes me dizzy, straining against the soft fabric, and my nipples tighten into stiff peaks beneath my shirt, the tender swollen tissue sending sharp sparks of sensation through my chest. My knees feel weak.
My hole clenches on nothing, aching, and my belly cramps low and deep, primal demand screaming through every nerve in my body.
There’s no mistaking that scent. No mistaking my body’s violent, immediate response to it.
Hyunwoo’s appearance makes perfect sense now.
He’s going into rut.
I grab the remote and turn off the TV with shaky hands.
Then I retreat—quickly, before I can talk myself out of it—down the hall to my bedroom, stepping inside and closing the door firmly behind me.
I press my back against it and stand there for a moment, breathing through my mouth to avoid pulling in more of his scent, my heart slamming against my ribs.
This is the right call. Distance. A wall, a locked door, space for the pheromones to thin out and dissipate.
Hyunwoo can handle a rut on his own. He’s done it before, presumably, in all the years before I moved in.
He’s a grown man, he’s managed his own body’s needs for twenty-six years without my help.
And in this state—with me five months pregnant, my body primed and hypersensitive and responding to his pheromones like a match dropped in gasoline—it’s safer for both of us to have a barrier between us. For the baby’s sake, if nothing else.
I peel off my slick-soaked joggers and underwear, grimacing at the mess, and change into a pair of sleep shorts and a soft t-shirt.
The shorts are already damp by the time I pull them up, fresh slick leaking between my thighs in a slow, maddening trickle that I can’t seem to stop.
My cock throbs insistently against the fabric, half-hard and refusing to settle down.
I grit my teeth and ignore it. I grab my gym bag from the corner and start sorting through it—pulling out tomorrow’s work clothes, checking that I have a clean pair of the absorbent underwear I’ll need, finding my water bottle and setting it on the nightstand.
Mundane tasks. Anchoring tasks. Something to focus on besides the pull of Hyunwoo’s scent that’s already seeping under the crack of my door, curling into the room like fingers reaching for me.
I’m crouched over the bag, folding a shirt, when arms wrap around my waist from behind.
I jump so hard my gym bag falls from my hands and hits the floor with a thud, clothes scattering.
I never heard the door open. Never heard a single footstep on the hardwood, not a creak, not a whisper of movement.
But Hyunwoo is here—his body curving around mine from behind, his broad chest flush against my back, and the heat pouring off him is staggering, soaking through my thin shirt like I’m pressed against a furnace.
His arms lock around my waist just above the swell of my belly, pulling me back against him, and he buries his face in the curve of my neck.
His nose presses directly against my scent gland and he inhales—a long, shuddering breath that expands his entire chest against my spine.
“Fuck,” he groans. “You smell so good, Yuggie. So fucking sweet.” His lips drag against the side of my throat, hot and damp. “It’s making me—I can’t—”
His voice breaks off into another groan, his arms tightening around me, and his pheromones hit me point-blank.
The full concentrated force of them, released directly against my skin from inches away, pouring from the glands at his throat and wrists and flooding my senses so completely that my vision goes fuzzy.
They’re thick and heavy and so overwhelmingly, devastatingly good that my hole clenches hard and gushes fresh slick, a wet rush that soaks through my shorts and drips down the inside of my thigh.
My cock jerks to full hardness, straining against the damp fabric, and a moan slips out of me.