Chapter 5: Reclamation
Jazmín wakes first. Morning light slips through the curtains, painting soft stripes across the room. Min-Joon is still asleep beside her, face relaxed, arm heavy around her waist. She watches him for a moment—the way his lips part slightly, the tiny furrow between his brows gone for once. In sleep, he looked younger. The performance was completely stripped away, leaving only the man who had shuddered apart inside her hours before.
Carefully, she slips out of bed. He murmurs something unintelligible but doesn’t wake.
In the kitchen, she moves quietly. Coffee brews, its rich aroma cutting through the sterile air. Eggs sizzle in a pan. She explores, opening his enormous, empty fridge, then the freezer. Her breath catches. Behind stacks of bland frozen meals, she finds a package of arepas. They were store-bought, the kind from an international aisle, but they were there. Unexpected. She warmed them up, the familiar smell of toasted corn masa filling the space. By the time she’s plating everything—eggs, arepas, sliced fruit she’d found wilting in a drawer—she hears footsteps behind her.
Min-Joon appears in the doorway, shirtless, hair a silver-gray disaster, eyes barely open. He stares at the food, then at her. The sleep fled from his expression, replaced by a slow-dawning wonder that was almost painful to see.
“You made breakfast.” His voice was rough with sleep, deeper than usual.
“After last night,” she said, turning back to the counter to hide the flush on her cheeks. “Felt fair.” She slid a plate toward him. “Eat.”
He didn’t move. Just looked at her like she was something he couldn’t quite believe. Then he walked over, his steps silent on the polished concrete. He cupped her face, his thumbs stroking her cheekbones, and kissed her slow and deep. It was a kiss of gratitude, of a stunned, quiet reverence that had nothing to do with lust. He tasted of sleep and something sweetly, uniquely his.
“Thank you,” he whispered against her lips.
She smiled, her heart doing a slow, heavy roll in her chest. “Eat before it gets cold.”
He ate. All of it. Scraped the plate clean with a focus that was almost militant. And he kept looking at her like she’d hung the moon. He was perched on a stool at the island, and she leaned against the counter opposite, sipping her coffee. The morning sun poured in, gliding the edges of everything.
“Where did you get the arepas?” she asked.
He shrugged, a little self-conscious. “Saw them in a market a few months back. Bought them on a whim. Didn’t know how to make them, so they just… sat there.” He pushed the empty plate away. “You made them right.”
“It’s not hard.” She paused. “I could show you. Sometime.”
The word ‘sometime’ hung between them, a fragile bridge to a future they couldn’t map. He nodded, his eyes darkening. “Yeah. Sometime.”
The domestic spell was broken by the vibration of his phone, face-down on the counter. It buzzed once, insistently. He didn’t look at it. It buzzed again. And again.
“They know you’re alive?” she asked.
“They know I’m in the building. That’s all they need for today.” His voice had an edge now. The real world was just a vibration away. He stood, taking his plate and hers to the sink. When he turned back, the vulnerability of the morning was being shuttered away, replaced by a more familiar, intense focus. This focus was now directed entirely at her.
He crossed the space between them in two strides. He didn’t kiss her. He just caged her against the counter, his hands planting on either side of her hips, his body not touching hers but radiating heat.
“You’re in my clothes,” he observed, his gaze trailing over the oversized t-shirt of his she’d pulled on. It hung to her mid-thigh.
“You weren’t using them,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“I am now.” His hands left the counter and found the hem of the shirt, gathering the soft cotton in his fists. In one smooth, deliberate motion, he pulled it up and over her head, leaving her naked in the stream of morning light. He let the shirt drop to the floor. His eyes traveled over her golden skin, her full breasts, the curve of her stomach, the dark thatch of hair between her thighs. His gaze was like a physical touch. “Better.”
He finally leaned in, pressing his body flush against hers. The cool marble of the counter bit into her back. His erection, hard and already demanding, pressed against her stomach through his sweatpants. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, inhaling deeply. “You smell like my bed and my coffee. And you.”
His mouth found the sensitive spot where her neck met her shoulder. He didn’t kiss it. He bit down, not hard enough to break skin, but with enough possessive pressure to make her gasp and arch against him. A dark mark was his intent. A claim.
“Min-Joon…”
“Shhh.” One hand slid down her side, over the pronounced curve of her hip, and dipped between her legs. His fingers found her wet and ready. He let out a ragged breath. “Fuck. Already? Just from me looking at you?”
She could only nod, her head tipping back.
He pushed two fingers inside her, curling them, stroking a deep, intimate spot that made her legs tremble. He worked her with a cruel, expert precision, his eyes locked on her face, watching every flicker of pleasure. His thumb circled her clit, applying just enough pressure to tease, not to satisfy.
“You come on my fingers first,” he ordered, his voice a low growl in her ear. “I want to feel you clamp down. Then I’m going to bend you over this counter and fuck you until you forget your own name.”
The crude command, delivered in that flat, sure tone, sent a new flood of heat through her. She was panting, her hands scrambling for purchase on his bare shoulders. His fingers pistoned in and out, the wet, filthy sound obscene in the sunny kitchen. He sped up his thumb, pressing harder.
“Come on, Jazmín. Give it to me. Let me feel it.”
It crashed over her suddenly, a white-hot detonation that started deep where his fingers were and radiated outward. She cried out, a raw, unfiltered sound, her inner muscles pulsing rhythmically around his thrusting fingers. He held her through it, his arm like an iron bar across her back, his other hand buried inside her, milking every last spasm.
As the waves subsided, she went boneless against him. He withdrew his fingers, glistening, and brought them to his mouth, sucking them clean while holding her gaze. The act was so deliberately lewd it made her clench again.
“Good girl,” he murmured. Then he spun her around, facing the window with its dizzying city view. He leaned her forward until her palms were flat on the cool counter, her ass presented to him. He yanked his sweatpants down, his cock springing free, thick and veined.
He didn’t tease. He guided himself to her slick entrance and pushed in with one long, relentless stroke, filling her completely. The groan that tore from his chest was pure animal relief. She was still sensitive from her climax, and the stretch was overwhelmingly full.
“Fuck, you’re perfect,” he hissed, his hands gripping her hips, fingers digging in. He set a punishing pace from the start, each thrust rocking her whole body forward. The counter shook. The city sprawled beneath them, oblivious.
He leaned over her, his chest pressed to her back, his mouth at her ear. “This is what I thought about. In every fucking interview. In every rehearsal. Bent over my kitchen counter, taking my dick like you were made for it.”
His words were filthy, fueling her own reawakening hunger. She pushed back against him, meeting his thrusts. “Harder,” she panted.
A snarl escaped him. He obliged, slamming into her with a force that stole her breath. One hand left her hip and fisted in her dark hair, pulling her head back. “See that? Out there? None of it matters. Right now, the only thing that exists is my cock in your cunt. You understand?”
“Yes,” she gasped.
“Whose is it?”
“Yours!”
He fucked her with a brutal, possessive rhythm, the slapping of skin echoing off the hard surfaces. She could feel the tension coiling in him, the impending release. He released her hair, his hand sliding around her front, finding her clit again. A few rough circles was all it took. Her second climax hit her, sharper than the first, a bright, shattering pain-pleasure that made her scream into the quiet morning.
The feel of her convulsing around him broke his control. With a guttural shout, he drove deep and held, pulsing hot inside her. He collapsed over her, his weight pinning her to the counter, both of them slick with sweat and breathing in ragged, shattered unison.
Slowly, he softened and slipped out. He turned her around, gathering her against him. They stood there, clinging to each other in the aftermath, the breakfast dishes a mundane witness to the animal scene.
His phone buzzed again, skittering on the countertop.
This time, he looked at it. A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Yuna. They want a remote meeting. Damage control from last night’s after-party. Something about a photo.”
Reality, cold and demanding, seeped back into the room. He rested his forehead against hers. “Three days,” he whispered, but it sounded less like a promise now and more like a plea.
“Three days,” he whispered, but it sounded less like a promise now and more like a plea. He kissed her, a slow, lingering press of his lips that tasted of shared vulnerability and the sharp edge of time running out. Then he moved away to answer the call, his body reluctantly leaving the heat of hers.
Min-Joon’s phone buzes. He picks up without hesitation, not checking the screen first. Jazmín quietly shifts to the side, where the camera won’t catch her—but she can still hear everything. She expects him to move away, to lower his voice. Instead, he stays right where he is, answering calmly. No secrecy. No hiding. Something warm settles in her chest as she listens.
“Yuna-nim.” His voice was flat, professional, devoid of the growl he’d used on her moments before. A pause. Jazmín watched the muscles in his bare back tense. “No, I haven’t seen it. I was asleep.” Another, longer pause. His free hand clenched into a fist on the counter. “It’s Photoshopped. It has to be. I didn’t go anywhere with that reporter. I came straight here.”
He listened, his jaw working. Jazmín could hear the tinny, frantic sound of a woman’s voice screeching from the receiver.
“Run the statement. I don’t care. It’s a lie.” His tone hardened, a sliver of Riven’s defiance breaking through. “My private time is still my time. You don’t own all of it. I’ll do the video call at two. Not before.”
He ended the call and dropped the phone onto the counter with a sharp crack. He stood there, head bowed, breathing slowly through his nose. The afterglow was gone, shattered by the outside world’s sharp, invasive claws.
“Trouble?” Jazmín asked softly.
“A photo. Blurry. Supposedly me leaving a bar with some entertainment reporter. It’s bullshit.” He turned, his eyes dark. “They create the monster, then panic when it acts like one. It’s exhausting.”
He reached for her, pulling her off the counter and into his arms. He held her tightly, his face buried in her hair. “I’m not hiding you,” he said, the words muffled against her skin. “Do you understand? That call. Here. I’m not hiding you.”
The warmth in her chest bloomed into a fierce, protective heat. She understood. In a world of fabricated images, his refusal to lower his voice for her was the only real thing. She nodded against his shoulder.
“Okay,” was all she said.
He pulled back, his hands cradling her face. A new desperation flickered in his eyes, not born of lust, but of a need to erase the intrusion. “I need you again.” It wasn’t a request. It was a declaration of war against everything beyond this room.
He walked them backward, through the living room, into the stark bedroom. The emerald sheets were still tangled from their first sleep. He laid her down, following her onto the bed, his body covering hers. This time, there was no brutal urgency. His movements were deliberate, almost solemn.
He kissed the hollow of her throat. He licked a slow path between her breasts, circling each nipple until they were tight, aching peaks. He moved down her body, his hands spreading her thighs, and put his mouth on her.
The sensation was electric. His tongue was flat and firm against her clit, lapping at the mess they’d made earlier. He ate her with a focused intensity, one hand pinning her hip to the bed, the other sliding two fingers back inside her. He fucked her with his fingers in a slow, deep rhythm while his tongue worked her over.
“Min-Joon…” she gasped, her fingers fisting in his silver hair.
He grunted, the vibration shooting through her. He sucked her clit into his mouth, applying a sweet, unbearable pressure. His fingers curled, rubbing that spot inside her that made stars burst behind her eyelids. The climax built differently this time—a deep, rolling wave rather than a sharp detonation. It pulled her under slowly, completely, wringing a broken, continuous moan from her throat.
Before the last tremor faded, he was moving up her body. He kissed her, letting her taste herself on his lips. He guided his cock to her entrance, slick from his mouth and her release. He pushed in with a low groan, seating himself to the hilt in one smooth, deep stroke.
He stilled, fully buried inside her, his forehead against hers. “Look at me.” His voice was raw. She opened her eyes, meeting his dark, burning gaze. “You see me?”
“Yes.”
“Only you.” He began to move, a slow, grinding roll of his hips that rubbed every nerve inside her. Each thrust was deep, claiming, intimate. It wasn’t about taking. It was about connection, a silent argument against the fake photo and the lies waiting beyond the door.
She wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him deeper. She met his slow rhythm, their bodies moving in a quiet, relentless conversation. His pace gradually increased, the slow grind turning into more urgent drives. Sweat gleamed on his shoulders.
“Tell me you’re mine,” he rasped, his control fraying.
“I’m yours.” The words felt true, anchored in the physical reality of him filling her, again and again.
“Say it like you mean it.”
“I’m yours, Min-Joon. God, please…”
That shattered him. His thrusts became wild, powerful, driving the bed into the wall with a solid thump. He was chasing his release, chasing the oblivion only she could give him. The sound of skin slapping skin filled the room, a raw, honest music. She felt her own end approaching, a tight coil springing free.
He felt her inner muscles begin to flutter and lost the last of his rhythm. “Come with me,” he demanded, a final, broken order.
She did. Her body clamped down around his, milking him as he drove in one last, brutal time and shouted, pouring himself into her. His whole body shook with the force of it. He collapsed, careful to keep his weight on his elbows, his face hidden in the pillow beside her head. They lay there, fused together, spent and silent except for their ragged breaths.
Minutes passed. The sun climbed higher. His phone, forgotten on the kitchen counter, began to buzz again. He didn’t move. The buzzing stopped. Started again. It was a tiny, angry insect of a sound, trying to bore its way into their sanctuary.
He finally lifted his head. He didn’t look at the phone. He looked at her, at the mark on her shoulder, at the peace on her face. “They’ll keep calling,” he said, his voice hollow.
“I know,” she whispered.
He nodded, a deep resignation settling in his eyes. The three days stretched before them, but they were no longer a blank canvas. They were a countdown, each hour already being carved into by the world outside. He brushed a thumb over her cheekbone, a gesture so tender it hurt.
“I have to take that video call.”
He said it like a prisoner stating his sentence. The warmth of their bodies, the slick heat where they were still joined, it all cooled by degrees. Jazmín just nodded, her fingers tracing the tense line of his jaw. He kissed her palm, a fleeting touch, then withdrew from her body.
The loss felt physical. He swung his legs off the bed and walked naked to the ensuite, shoulders slumped. She heard the shower. She lay there, staring at the ceiling, the smell of sex and sweat slowly being overtaken by the sterile lemon scent from his air filters. The city’s hum, ever-present, felt louder now.
He emerged twenty minutes later transformed. His silver hair was blow-dried into its artfully chaotic style. He wore black jeans and a tight black henley, the fabric straining over his arms. His face was closed, a mask of remote intensity. He was Riven again. Only the faint redness of his eyes, and the darkening love bite on her shoulder, betrayed the man who had been inside her.
He picked up the buzzing phone from the kitchen counter. He glanced at her, still naked in his rumpled bed. “Stay there,” he said, his voice softer than his appearance suggested. “Please.”
He walked to the living room, to the sleek desk with the monitor. He didn’t close the door. He sat, squared his shoulders, and tapped a key.
“Yuna-nim.” His voice was perfectly, professionally flat.
Jazmín pulled the emerald sheet around herself and padded silently to the doorway. She leaned against the frame, watching his back. On the large monitor, she could see a woman with a sharp, anxious face and two other men in crisp suits. Their voices were tinny but clear.
“—absolute madness, Riven-ssi. The forums are on fire. ‘D.A.R.K’s Rebel Idol in Secret Rendezvous.’ Do you have any idea the damage?”
“It’s a fake,” Min-Joon stated, his tone leaving no room for argument. “The timestamp is wrong. The jacket in the photo is with my stylist. I was here. Alone.”
“Alone? Your biometrics show you entered the garage at 3:17 AM. The showcase ended at 11:30. Explain the gap.”
A heavy pause. Min-Joon’s back was rigid. “I went for a drive. To clear my head. I didn’t get out of the car.”
“A drive,” the woman, Yuna, repeated, skepticism dripping from the word. “For four hours.”
“The city is big. My head was loud.” He shifted slightly, a minuscule betraying movement. “I’m not a machine you can switch off after a performance. You want the edge? This is the edge. Sometimes I need to drive.”
One of the suits spoke. “The narrative is already shifting. They’re calling it a publicity stunt for the comeback. A rebellious act. We can lean into that. But we need you compliant for the next wave. The fan sign, the variety show appearance. No more ‘drives.’ Your location data stays on. Understood?”
Min-Joon’s head gave the faintest nod. “Understood.”
“And that lyric sheet Jiho mentioned you were revising? The one with the ‘poison’ metaphor? Management wants it shelved. Too dark. Too real. Give them angst, not despair.”
His fingers, resting on the desk, curled into fists so tight his knuckles blanched. Jazmín saw the tremor in his forearm. He said nothing.
“Riven? Do you acknowledge?”
“I acknowledge,” he bit out, the words stripped and cold.
The call ended. The screen went black. He didn’t move. He just sat there, head bowed, in the silence they’d left behind. The facade was gone, leaving only a hollowed-out man in a chair.
Jazmín walked into the room. The polished concrete floor was cold under her bare feet. She stopped behind him, her hands hovering, unsure where to land on all that armoured tension.
“They own my sleep schedule, my diet, my face, my words,” he said to the blank screen, his voice a low, wrecked thing. “They want to own my thoughts now, too. The only ones that are actually mine.”
Her hands settled on his shoulders. He flinched, then melted back into her touch. He turned the chair, pulling her onto his lap, burying his face in the sheet-covered curve of her breast. He didn’t cry. He just breathed, deep and shuddering.
“I’m so tired, Jazmín.”
She held him, her fingers in his hair. “I know.”
They sat like that for a long time. The sun shifted. Finally, he lifted his head. His eyes were clear again, but a new kind of fire burned in them—not passion, but a furious, defiant will. He looked at her, really looked, his gaze traveling over the sheet, the marks on her skin, her face.
“They get the next sixteen hours,” he said, his voice regaining its gravel. “They don’t get you. They don’t get this.”
He stood, lifting her with him. The sheet fell away. He carried her back to the bedroom, not to the bed, but to the floor-to-ceiling window. The vast panorama of Seoul sprawled beneath them, a kingdom of glass and light. He pressed her front against the cool, unforgiving glass.
“See it all?” he murmured, his mouth at her ear. His hands slid around her waist, pulling her back against the hard ridge of his erection. “Every single light. Every person. They all think they know me. They have no fucking idea.”
His fingers dug into her hips. He was already hard, relentless. He didn’t bother with preliminaries. He guided himself into her from behind, a slow, conquering invasion that made her gasp and her palms slap flat against the window. The city shimmered, a dizzying abstraction below.
“This is real,” he snarled, thrusting deep, setting a pace that was less about pleasure than about possession, about imprinting himself on her against the backdrop of everything he was supposed to be. “This heat. This tight, wet cunt gripping my dick. This is the only true thing.”
He fucked her against the window with a brutal, punctuating rhythm. Each drive was a declaration. Her cheek was pressed to the glass, fogging it with her breath. The sheer exposure, the vulnerability of being so brazenly displayed yet utterly unseen, sent a shocking bolt of arousal through her. She was full of him, pinned between his rigid body and the endless city.
“Tell me you feel it,” he demanded, one hand snaking around to claw at her clit.
“I feel it,” she choked out.
“Who does this belong to?”
“You! God, Min-Joon, you!”
He pistoned into her, his grunts harsh in her ear. The world outside was silent, distant. The only sounds were their skin slapping, their ragged breaths, the soft thud of her body against the glass. He was chasing something, exorcising the phone call, the orders, the falseness, with each raw, driving thrust.
His fingers worked her clit ruthlessly, and the climax tore through her with violent suddenness, a silent scream tightening her throat as her vision whited out at the edges. Her internal muscles clamped around him in rhythmic, helpless spasms.
The sensation broke him. With a final, deep lunge, he emptied into her, a guttural cry ripped from his chest that seemed to echo in the silent, vast room. He stayed there, lodged inside her, his forehead pressed between her shoulder blades, his body trembling with more than release.
Slowly, he softened. He turned her, gathering her against him, both of them slick and spent. He looked over her shoulder, out at his city. His expression was unreadable.
“Tomorrow,” he said, his voice raw, “the schedule starts again. Breakfast interviews at six.”
The words landed like stones. The three days were over. The ghost’s time was up.
Jazmín leaned back, searching his face. “So this is goodbye?”
He cupped her face, his thumb stroking her cheek. “No,” he said, and the word was a vow. “This is ‘see you later.’ However I can. Whenever I can.” He kissed her, slow and deep, pouring every unsaid thing into it. “They own a lot. But they don’t own my want. And I want you, Jazmín Torres. This isn’t finished.”
He answered the call. The one from his manager, from the world. He put the mask back on. But he left a part of himself, raw and real, here with her against the glass. The promise hung between them, fragile and defiant as a spider’s web in a storm, as he slowly let her go.