Present 

21| " A terror so real "

A few minutes later.

"Today is my parent's wedding anniversary party in our mansion, be my date." 

Silence. Pin Drop silence. Panicked silence. 

Those words circled Nina's head in a never-ending loop, clamping every cord of her brain. She didn't expect that. The unwanted memories broke free from the darkest corner of her head, only she knew how difficult it was for her to move on from it. An ugly shudder skated down the length of her body when an unwelcome piece of recollection burned and scattered around her nerves like wasted, dusky ashes. 

Nina's heart was punching her battered rib cage in sheer terror, crackling with a new pang. Nina wanted to run and run and run until the terror couldn't chase her, couldn't devastate her. 

Kim Mansion wasn't your typical, opulent mansion of rich and stuck-up snobbish nobles. The late-night brandish celebrations, the patronizing giggles and laughter of posh visitors, their grandstand wealth, everything was a lie to dazzle the world. The walls and corners of Kim Mansion reeked of abominable intentions and filthy, foul motives with repellent evilness. Returning means stepping in the depth of her nightmare, Nina had turned her back away from her icky past. She didn't want to occur again, not for a transitory moment.

"You are thinking too hard, just say yes already. You are wasting both of our time." The hissing remark blew her reverie, the smooth edge of Taehyung's voice rolled in her ears like a ripe liquid. Her shocking, globular eyes latched onto him, meeting those golden hues which were encasing with dark lashes as her own lashes flickered. 

"Why are you trembling?" Taehyung questioned, his gaze bent at her shrinking hands. A soft gasp tussled between her lips when his huge, strangely warm hand grabbed hers. Nina was aghast at how his touch calmed her down. His fingertips pressed against her flesh, she could feel the pulse around her hand beating against him. It was a soft clutch, but it blazed her entire being as if the sun itself had skimmed over her flesh. 

"Your hands are beautiful " Taehyung mumbled, the golden of his iris spiked with a glint that proved unreadable for the red-haired beauty. Nina stared at him, staring at her hands.

Nina's was pale head to toe, the green veins under her skin zigzagged on the smooth surface. Her wrist was thick, subtly bony and winded with thick veins around it. Her fingers were long, dainty, delicate with rings embellished. 

Taehyung wondered how they would look flexing around his cock, or while fisting his hair in a tight clutch under her fist or splayed around his chest where his black, black heart was rooted. He traced her fairly long oval nails, the red polish pulled the corner of his lips for a short smile, the colour had never abandoned her, it was always her comfort and of course, Taehyung's consolation. 

Taehyung unwantedly adored his Red world.

Taehyung would love to again feel Nina's nails jabbing and clawing his back to create claiming marks, holding and sliding over the hardy groove of his muscles when she would writhe under him, breaking and moaning and dripping. 

"Leave my hand before I snap your neck." Nina growled out, yanking her hand back. The tingles were tangible, it was all over her body, under her skin, chest, even fingertips. "You are weird." She grumbled, her eyes taking the organizing around the kitchen as if looking away from him would wipe out the sheepish blush occupying her cheeks. 

"Am I really weird?" Taehyung mushed, squinting his eyes in a way that indicated he was thinking something. "Then maybe it's weird to think but I want to bite onto this sharp tongue of yours and every part of your figure that is not bare to me right now." Nina's mouth fell open by that shameless statement of his, her ears buzzed as she subtly clenched her thighs. 

"Not so fast, princess." Taehyung husked, his big hand rested on top of her clothed thighs as he parted them in one swift mo and stood between them— close, so fucking close. 

Taehyung couldn't stop touching her, appropriately or inappropriately. He needed to stay close to her, he needed to stay in her space to feel her warmth, to hear the rushing of her breaths. It seemed like the nearness with Nina was the source of Taehyung's lifeline. 

Nina's lips parted then shut with vanishing words. A cocky smirk caressed Taehyung's lips as his eyebrows hoisted to his forehead until they touched his lazy, falling locks. His haughty look was challenging her to be mouthy with him again, Nina could tell that a vulgar comeback must have been curled up in the tip of his tongue already.

"Was kidding, calm down princess.  I won't bite you." Suave, silken Taehyung's voice was. "But I can't promise that I won't pounce on you." He winked, looking so hot doing that. He shouldn't sound this awesome and sultry and seductive. She shouldn't feel a tight ache in the tip of her nipples, she shouldn't have the urge to wrap her legs around the narrow shape of his waist to haul him closer.

"Shut up." Nina rolled her eyes, muttering 'you shameless prick' under her breath. Her cheeks, neck and ears flared the similar colour of her hair, pure red. 

Taehyung handed Nina a cup of coffee that he prepared in front of her hawk-like eyes. Clearly, Nina didn't trust Taehyung a bit, what if he slipped some drugs in it and the next day when she woke up only to find herself legally married to him. This man could cross the depths of hell to reach his destination, he didn't care about precepts, ethics or human decency. 

Damn, that was a full-blown fear trickling in her stomach, her ruin could knock on her door any moment. 

"You kidnapped me for this?" Nina blows the coffee, her red curls dangling around her face as her long lashes lowered down to her cheekbones. Taehyung was so close that he could count her lashes, it would indeed take some time but he was sure he could count it. 

"Yes, If I ask you like a gentleman you will smash your boring, repetitive answer on my face that you feel immense pleasure using every fucking time to get on my damn nerves. A no. You know how annoying you sound whenever you open your pretty mouth." Taehyung snorted a mocking cackle under his breath. His brows were arched, a wolfish grin coiling his ruddy lips and an arrogant whiff in his undertone was enough to scratch her temper. Nina tossed him a long, intense I'll-slaughter-you stare, a lethal sneer curled her upper lips.

"And what makes you think that after getting separated from my children." Taehyung flashed her a quizzical stare. "I mean to say my cats and getting kidnapped from my own house I'll accept to be your date? Stop being funny, Taehyung. I'm not going to the Kim mansion." Nina spoke in her frosty tone, she quelled the urge to splash the hot coffee nestling in her palms over his face. 

Brutal thought, heartless even— but she couldn't seem to care. The fear had honed, dwelling in her head, establishing weird ideas. Avoiding the irritating jitteriness, she calmly sipped the coffee—  a long sip, as she moaned out by the taste. 

The moan wasn't necessary. She did to taunt him. The moan was made of honey and sin, Taehyung's downfall. Another sip, another moan followed and Taehyung's dick stirred excitedly.

"I'm not a kidnapper." A growl rattled in the back of his throat, his one palm flatted on the counter and one gripped her thigh, bunching the chunk of her culotte pants under his fist but all she felt was like her skin throbbing under his hand. Nina coolly eyed his rock-hard fist than his unyielding triceps flexing and outlining around his T-shirt. The sight was drool-worthy, her fingers yearned to trace the roped muscles yet she resisted it. 

"Sounds like something a kidnapper would say." Nina snapped her gaze back at him, a wolfish smirk pressed against the rim of the cup. A smug sip. A teasing moan and it was enough to make Taehyung groan by the tight hardening pulsation between his legs.

"You just love to get under my skin, huh?" Taehyung snatched the coffee cup from her hands, his fingers were desperate to sneak down to adjust his pants. Nina slapped his biceps, a frown veiling her gorgeous face. It earned an irked scoff from the man who suffered by her not so innocent actions.

"No coffee for a cock-tease like you." Taehyung puckered his lips and blew a kiss that Nina pretended to catch under her palm and ripped it into pieces like some paper and tossed it behind her back with a cold grin on her mouth.

Taehyung chuckled, pulling his lower lip between his teeth, appearing smug and walking-talking trouble— hot trouble.

"Your mere sight sickened me, that's how much I loathe you, rich guy." Nina rained him with her dreadful sneers, she gulped the surging emotions spiking her tongue. 

Big, hurtful words, she hoped that it would hurt him the way she was hurt over these 7 years. She hoped that Taehyung's amusing mask would fall off and he would get angry, just the way she was angry but all he did was smirk— a void smirk that was as demoniac as his witchery eyes. Something glimmered in those pools which Nina couldn't pinpoint, It fidgeted her steady nerves.

"Why is it so easy for people to hate but not to understand? Why can't you understand Red?" The sobriety in his gruff tone hitched her throat, a delicacy tremor shot down her spine as she straightened her limbs. 

Taehyung leaned closer to Nina, his tall-ish, wide-body surrounding her in ease as his palms closed around the groove of her waist. Nina's lips parted, feeling embarrassed that now she was breathing from her mouth. Feeling odd that her whole body was reacting for him, even redding as if blushing. Her back delicately arched and her chest went flushed with his, her nipples twisted against him. Taehyung was satisfied by the fact that he wasn't the only one who was suffering. 

Nina sensed it so clearly, his maddening heartbeats engrossing with her hectic beats. It was rhythmic, it was enthralling, it was everything that she shouldn't focus on like this. Nina felt his crude heart under her chest, rotating and swatting her rib cage. This always happened, the tiny bit of closeness with him settled a four-stage hurricane in her body, it swirled, swirled and swirled recklessly to wreck her insides. 

"What do you want me to understand?" The whisper on her mouth grazed a sensitive part within him, and the curious sparkle erecting beneath those lush lashes would be the death of him, she would be the death of Taehyung— Nina dazed him, pained him, she was killing him and she had no idea about it. 

"Let it be for now, Red. When the right time comes I'll make you understand. Trust me, I will make you understand so well that I'll be the only one you would want close to taking care of you." Taehyung grunted as if he was controlling something shatter-free within him. His whisper brushed against her parted mouth, his deliciously hot breath tickling the thin muscles of her lips. Every word oozed sexual and sinful appeal, not to forget to add that nickname left Nina a shivering muscle of heap. 

Do all enemies whisper things to each other like that, so freaking intimately? Is it normal to be this close to that person who you hated so much? Nina wondered, gaping at him and all Taehyung wanted to pull her hair back and kiss her or fuck her on the counter according to the position that was inhabiting his head, it was outright lewd.

"Seesh, leave me alone." Nina hissed with a skewer glare, a pout adorning her lips as she checked her nails to avoid his gaze that was as fiery as the flames of hell. 

"Do you wanna go home?" Taehyung questioned, his fingers digging the fine line of her waist to attain her attention. Nina nodded, her eyes were wide, vast and luminous, twisting the beat of his heart.

"Do you want me not to show my face?" Nina nodded with a smile, Taehyung was captivated by it. That radiant reaction, he engraved it in his memory.

"Do you want me not to bother you again?"

"Yes, oh my god, yes. That's what I want!" Nina laughed, a smattering of mirth lingering in her voice. Her hands heaved to clutch his shoulders, she was too excited to notice that tiny action. "Oh, sorry." The realisation struck the breaths out of her lungs, Nina quickly removed her hands away.  

"Don't say sorry for wanting me close to you, princess." Taehyung tapped his index under her chin, a dazzling smirk coiling his lips as Nina shook her head. She was done with him and had no desire to waste her energy on him.

"Let's play a game. If you win, I'll leave you alone for good and never show you my face but if I win, you will be my date tonight." Taehyung's smirk widened upon seeing a curious expression uncoiling her face.

"What game?"

"You know that chilly eating game."