#2. Instinct's Warning: A Dangerous Man

#2. Instinct's Warning: A Dangerous Man

This man.

If he were an enemy, she was in irreversible, deep trouble. His strikingly beautiful face, wearing a relaxed yet twisted smile, was brutally cold, radiating a dark, heavy energy that sent a visceral, hot shiver straight down her spine. With his jet-black hair, bottomless dark eyes, and tailored black suit, he gleamed like a starving jaguar hunting in the dead of night.

In that split second, the man lunged, his large hand reaching out to catch the back of Hyeon-sin’s hair. Barely managing to intercept his heavy wrist and halt the assault, she dragged a ragged breath into her lungs. He twisted, attempting to throw her off balance, but she countered instantly—kicking his ankle and driving a heavy, solid fist straight into his flat abdomen.

Swish!

But in the next heartbeat—Thud!—a disastrous turn of leverage sent Hyeon-sin’s temple slamming hard against the polished surface of the desk.

Terrified that her mask might slip off in the struggle, and realizing his raw, physical strength was so overwhelmingly dominant that resisting was entirely futile, Hyeon-sin forced her body to go completely limp. Feeling with every fiber of her being that this was no ordinary man, a creeping sense of sweet, terrifying despair began to crawl up her spine.

Then, a deep, quiet bass—so pleasing it sent a sudden, tingling sensation straight to her lower abdomen—brushed intimately against her ear.

"Let's see if you've actually got some skill."

A languid voice. A low, vibrating pitch. A dominant, masculine energy. It felt as if that voice alone was physically wrapping around the back of her head, pulling her in. It was a voice that commanded a dangerous tension, yet it was so magnetically sharp she found herself instinctively straining to hear more.

Keeping a firm, crushing grip on her temple with one hand, the man slowly ran his other hand down from her shoulder to her waist.

Oh, no.

Brushing past her shoulder and shoulder blade, his broad palm slid down her flank. As his hand traveled slowly, meticulously over her hips and right between her thighs, a piercing, electric shiver rippled through her entire body.

Moreover, the moment his hand swept down over her chest, deliberately feeling her up, her hypersensitive nerves registered every single touch—regardless of how brutally flat she had bound herself. A sudden, fierce heat spiked from the core of her thighs, racing upward and causing her toes to curl involuntarily inside her boots.

The man tightened his hold as if to choke the very breath from her, but what truly suffocated her was the mysterious, highly sensual dominance lurking right behind his sharp gaze.

"No proper weapon... nothing but reckless pride and bravado. Tsk."

The man spoke languidly, as if he belonged to an entirely different world of absolute authority. Clicking his tongue in soft dismissal, he began to slowly ease the pressure of the hand pinning her head down.

She placed her final bet. Letting her body go completely dead to use his own leverage against him, she kicked off the floor with one foot, twisting her frame to slip cleanly out of his embrace. In a flash, the dagger hidden against her chest caught the faint light, aiming straight for the warm vein in his neck.

"Boss, sorry for the late greeting. The mission is complete, and I do have a weapon."

She forced her voice low to sound masculine, but an unhideable, youthful melody slipped through, sending a faint, vulnerable vibration through the dark space.

For a fleeting second, she heard him chuckle softly in the darkness.

"Not bad. For a kid."

Watching Hyeon-sin escape his iron grasp, a genuinely amused expression washed over the man’s face. As he casually raised a single hand, a creaking sound echoed from the darkness out of nowhere.

The back door slid open, and a single shadow slithered into the room. Then three, four... more dark silhouettes gathered, gliding effortlessly like vipers.

"Do you think you can survive here?"

The voice pierced the darkness like a cold blade, stabbing straight into Hyeon-sin.

Her mind swirled into a vortex, desperately calculating an exit. A fight where she was vastly outnumbered, the lack of heavy weaponry, the sheer drop outside the window—everything locked around her like iron bars.

'Even if I use a smoke bomb... damn it...'

As the literal shadow of death loomed right in front of her face, Hyeon-sin’s eyelids grew heavy.

The man stepped even closer to her. Leaning his face right into hers, he roughly forced her chin up with his long fingers.

"Sending a mere kid into a slaughterhouse... those Hanbidan bastards are out of their fucking minds."

His rough murmur overflowed with the absolute arrogance of an apex predator at the top of the pyramid, and his piercing dark eyes were thick with a raw, intoxicating masculinity that made her entire body stiffen.

"You want to live, don't you?"

"..."

For a moment, she couldn't answer.

Her lips merely trembled. Caught between the basic instinct to survive and the crushing skepticism of 'Is it even worth living like this?', the words died in her throat. Even in this split second, the sheer weight of her existence suffocated her, and the will to fight tooth and nail for survival failed to ignite. As an emptiness echoed through her mind like a tolling bell, her focus vanished, leaving her utterly speechless.

Then, Hyeon-sin felt the man flinch slightly the moment he looked closely into her eyes.

Though it was too dark to be certain, a bizarre sense of kinship brushed past them—as if he intimately understood the exact, hollow despair she was feeling.

"Hey, brat. What's with that look...?"

Speechless, Hyeon-sin could only stare back at him. A strange, heavy silence hung between them.

Breaking the gaze, he waved a dismissive hand and let out a sigh. "Forget it. Why am I bothering with a kid... Hand over the USB. I need to pass it to the prosecution."

"...Ah!"

Only then did reality snap back for Hyeon-sin; she was in the middle of a mission. At the man's gesture, someone behind him revealed several thick stacks of 100-dollar bills.

"Code name 'S', right? I am your real client."

The moment she saw the cash, Hyeon-sin noticed his murderous aura vanish entirely. Without a second thought, she instantly stepped right into his personal space.

"What? Oh, thank goodness you're the client! Haha!"

In a flash, she whipped the USB out of her pocket, leaned in close to hand it over, and offered a bright, beaming smile. At her sudden proximity, the man flinched again, visibly taken aback, his brows furrowing in confusion at the sudden, sweet scent radiating from her.

"Listen, brat. Don't do dangerous work like this anymore. If I catch you out here again, you won't get off easy."

The man spoke with stern authority, thrusting the stack of dollars forward.

'If you won't let me off easy, what are you gonna do?'

Justice was important, but cash was far more urgent for Hyeon-sin. She quickly and deftly snatched up the money he offered.

Is this guy... actually a good man?

Gazing into his eyes, she pondered for a brief second. Then, flashing a brilliant smile, she spun around.

"It was great meeting you, Boss!"

= = =

"Ah... hah...! Ah..."

A luxury hotel suite somewhere in Japan.

The wanton, breathless cries of an Asian woman echoed heavily throughout the dim room, thick with heat and the scent of sweat.

A European man with a powerfully built, tanned physique and breathtaking silver hair that caught a faint hint of violet in the moonlight... He had forced a pale-skinned woman with a short brown bob to rest her hands against the headboard, taking her ruthlessly from behind.

"Haa... ah..."

In response to the woman's feverish, desperate whimpers, the man remained entirely silent. A wide, predatory grin was plastered across his handsome face as he gripped her slender hips, driving his lower body into her with a bruising intensity.

Her eyes were completely unfocused, her body entirely helpless under his absolute weight as her breath came in ragged, frantic gasps.

But his mind was not here.

The man stared down at her bare back, his mysterious violet eyes darkening with a frustrating hunger. Even as the wet friction of their bodies filled the bedroom, a deep, unsatisfied emptiness clawed at his chest.

She had the same short hair, the same petite frame, but she was not the one. She lacked that fierce, untamed gaze that had haunted his dreams.

His hands clamped tightly around her breasts, pinning and bruising them as he toyed with her, but his touch was cold, driven only by a desperate need to erase the ghost of another.

He leaned down, whispering languidly in German against her hot skin, his voice dripping with a dangerous, obsessive longing:

"I need to find her. I need to find S quickly."