Fallen Crown

Chapter 9

Eun Sang could barely breathe as Young Do's form blurred into hers. Her hands slid up the expanse of his back, fingers spreading across his shoulder blades. She could feel the tension of his muscles beneath the soft fabric of his sweater. He was a man in every sense of the word. A man whose lips scorched her mouth with unrelenting passion. A man whose heart beat crazily next to her own. She crossed the line between logic and madness with no remorse. She had never known a person could feel as indispensable as air until Young Do breathed life into her. The confusion which had once tangled her thoughts came undone to reveal the truth for what it was.

She could never see Young Do as anything but a man. As much as she had wanted to fool herself into believing that their strange relationship was amicable, Eun Sang knew deep down that it wasn't. She couldn't be indifferent to his touch, to his presence, to the way he looked at her. He would always make her feel as though she were falling.
Because I'm going to trip you again and again.

Young Do pushed her against the wall and pulled away leaving her completely breathless. Eun Sang held herself as dizziness washed over her. He too was out of breath, and his swollen lips quivered. She had made him that way. She had provoked the same passion in him which he had awoken in her. Eun Sang kissed him the way a woman kissed a man, leaving no room to call the exchange a mistake. There was no possibility of denial.

Young Do's eyes pierced hers. He was so close that she could feel every ragged inhalation of his breath against her lips. He was so captivating in the fine details; the slight curve of his lips, the thickness of expressive brows, the depth of his brown eyes.

Eun Sang had once experienced a transient summer dream with a boy named Kim Tan. A dream which had, at one point, made her heart flutter. The experience had been like the waves that crashed intrepidly toward shore only to return to the ocean as quickly as they had come. Those memories faded easily until they were nothing more than hazy fragments.

The boy in front of her wasn't as forgettable. The sharpness of his features were as cutting as his words. He had once been a nightmare which she could not pull herself from. He had made her feel alive in the most terrifying way. Where Tan had made her heart flutter, Young Do had made it feel as if an earthquake had pulled it asunder.

When had her sentiments changed? When had her feelings become passionate? At what point had she seen the crack in his armor to glimpse the bleeding heart beneath? When had she ceased feeling annoyance by the cruelty of his actions, or his cadence, or even the sight of the frightening crown he wore?

When did I start to care when I had been indifferent?

Did he know? Was he aware of the precise moment in which her heart had changed into the mess he had made of it? "Young Do."

He closed his eyes, placing the palm of his hands flat against the wall. He buried his face into the groove of her neck, eliciting a shiver. The words burned her skin, "Don't say my name like that."

But she wanted to say his name. Over and over. Until it lost all meaning. It was a name she had never wanted to see on her telephone, or call out with her mouth. It was a name which had made her cringe, made her uneasy. It was a name that plagued her dreams as tauntingly as his voice.

"Young Do."

He looked at her. "Have some fear, Cha Eun Sang. Don't misunderstand and think you've made me tame. You don't understand what it means—"

A knock at the door made his sentence fall away. He pulled himself from her and leaned against the opposite wall. He glanced toward the door.

"Who is close enough to you to come at this hour?" Eun Sang blinked. Was he being jealous?