"How are you going to compensate me this time?"
The gravelly resonance of his words echoed in the room, saturated with the arrogance of a man accustomed to seeing women kneel at his feet. The distance between them was already negligible, but Rin Tae-min decided to erase it entirely.
His large hand slid from the bedpost with a predatory slowness, suddenly clamping down on her slender waist. Emma let out a sharp, audible gasp as the heat of his powerful palm pierced through the thin fabric of her uniform. He gave her no chance to think or retreat; with one fluid, controlled motion, he jerked her toward him, slamming her body flush against his bare, wet chest.
"Ah!"
A muffled cry escaped her lips as she felt the unyielding hardness of his muscles beneath her hands, which she had instinctively raised to push him away. But the texture of his hot skin, slick with water droplets, made her fingertips sear as if she had touched burning coals. His body was a wall of heated marble, pulsing with a raw vitality that scrambled her every sense.
The scent... My God, the scent was suffocating in its intensity. The sharp masculine musk, the sandalwood, and the heat of the shower still radiating from his pores invaded her lungs, numbing a mind that was already screaming in warning.
"Let me go..." Emma whispered, her voice fractured as she tried to shove against his chest. But the hand on her waist was like a band of iron. It wasn't a painful grip, but it exerted an absolute dominance, claiming her entirely in that moment.
Tae-min's jaw tightened, but his dark eyes flared with a different kind of fire. He believed she was playing the role of the "hard-to-get" prey—a role he was well-acquainted with from obsessive fans. His thumb moved with agonizing slowness, tracing the curve of her waist with a boldness that sent a violent shiver racing down her spine.
"Let you go?" he rasped, leaning his face even closer until his lips brushed the shell of her ear. His scorching breath seared her sensitive skin. "Didn't you bypass hotel security and sneak into my suite just to be this close? You're trembling in my hands like a small bird... Is this from fear, or from excitement, konbini girl?"
Emma was in the throes of a lethal internal war. The shadows of her black past tried to claw into her mind—the fear of male dominance, the terror of an unwanted touch. But her body was a traitor. This wasn't the monster she knew from her past. This man carried a lethal magnetism. The heat of his body pressed against hers, with only a single towel separating their lower halves, created a friction that sent blood rushing to her face with a heat she had never known. She felt every contour of his athletic frame pressing into her, awakening desires that were as terrifying as they were buried.
Tae-min's lips slid from her ear to trace the line of her jaw with agonizing slowness—a touch that was almost a kiss, a trail of fire left on her pale skin. Emma squeezed her eyes shut, her breathing accelerating, her chest heaving against his bare chest in a motion that only fueled the madness of the moment.
"I swear... I work here..." she struggled to force the words through her trembling lips, her fingers clutching his chest, unsure if she was pushing him away or clinging to him to keep from collapsing. "Please... move back."
Tae-min paused. He lifted his head to look into her eyes. Her amber gaze was shimmering with unshed tears, a cocktail of genuine terror and vulnerability. For the first time, his mocking smirk vanished, replaced by a flicker of doubt. Was she actually telling the truth? The way her body shuddered beneath his hands wasn't the practiced shyness of a fan; it was something deeper.
But before he could loosen his grip on her waist, and before she could catch her scattered breath, the unthinkable happened.
Click! Flash!
A violent, brilliant white light flooded the room like a lightning strike, blinding them both for a split second.
Emma recoiled in horror, while Tae-min turned with lightning speed, instinctively yanking her behind his back to shield her from the camera, his hand tightening on her waist even further.
Standing at the suite door—which had been left accidentally ajar—was a girl in her early twenties. She wore a black hat pulled low over her eyes and held a massive professional camera with a telephoto lens pointed directly at them.
"Oppa..." the girl whispered, her voice trembling with shock and a hint of insanity. Her eyes widened as she looked at the half-naked Tae-min and the foreign girl who had just been in his arms. "How... how could you do this to me? Who is this foreign whore?!"
Click! Click! Click!
The flashes continued frantically, capturing shot after shot of Tae-min with his arm around Emma's waist, the towel nearly slipping, and Emma's terrified features partially hidden behind him.
"Stop it, you bitch!" Tae-min roared with blind fury, releasing Emma to lunge toward the girl.
But the girl was faster. She spun around and sprinted down the hallway like a maniac, vanishing in seconds.
Tae-min stood at the door, cursing loudly in Korean and Japanese, slamming his bare fist into the doorframe until his knuckles were raw. The disaster had struck. His image—the top star of Asia—half-naked in his hotel suite, embracing a foreign maid... it would be on every tabloid and social media site within hours.
He turned slowly toward Emma. She was curled into herself by the bed, breathing raggedly, her mind unable to process the chaos.
He approached her with heavy strides, his eyes burning with a rage she had never seen before. He was no longer the arrogant star trying to seduce her; he was a man seeing his future crumble before his eyes because of her.
"You've destroyed everything," he growled in a low, terrifying voice, pinning her with a lethal glare. "I swear to you... you will pay for this dearly."