between our narrow space,
this tension gets higher

Not a moment after my lips met Minhyuk's, I was ripped away from him like a piece of paper tearing in half.

My mind went blank, whether it was from shock or bliss, I didn't know. I didn't understand what was happening to me, but every emotion was blurring together and bleeding into each other, becoming a pinwheel that spun fast and hard and left me gasping for air.

Taeyong stood next to me, his gaze dark, lips lifted in a half-sneer and half-snarl. I squirmed under his iron-clad grip on my shoulder, but he paid no attention, his eyes darting between a speechless Minhyuk and a shocked Seulgi with a vengeance.

"What the fuck is happening here?" He growled, voice deepening with anger and something else, something much more sinister. When no one answered, he turned to me, looking at me but not looking at me at the same time. He scrutinized my face, eyes searching mine, his grasp on me tightening even more.

I stared back, confused, not sure if I was supposed to be afraid. Seulgi had gone white around the mouth, but her face was set and held an expressionless calm. Taeyong's head came closer to mine, brow furrowing as if he was trying to search for something—and apparently he found it, because his expression became even more dangerous. "What did you give her?" He whipped around to stare down the girl on one of the barstools, voice growing louder and filling with rage, attracting the attention of everyone around us.

Silence.

His jaw tightened as I looked at the side of his face, cold fear washing over me. Everything became sharper, clearer—he was pissed. Really pissed. Which meant someone had done something to piss him off.

Taeyong's fingers dug deeper into my shoulder, and I winced.

His eyes flickered to mine, and his whole face softened. Pursing his lips, he somewhat loosened his grip on me, whirling on the others with the same undiminished fire as he had a second ago.

"Ecstasy," he whispered, swallowing thickly. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" His upper lip curled back in hatred, and his hand slid down my shoulder to my bicep, and it almost felt like he was supporting me instead of trapping me in my place.

Minhyuk stood pale, rigid with shock that registered on his face. "I—I—"

"Stay away from her," Taeyong snarled at him, stepping backwards, taking me with him. "Both of you."

I drew in a startled breath as he pulled me along, turning on his heel and power-walking out of the place. His hand did not leave my arm even for a second, and his eyes stayed resolutely in front of him, as if to stare down anyone who dared look at us.

It was only when we were out of the building that his facial muscles relaxed, the taut skin of his face loosening into a still worried but less angry expression. His grip never left me, though, even as he walked me to his car and sat me down in the back of the car, taking the wheel himself a moment later.

My eyes were wide the whole time, something too close to anxiety taking hold of me and pinning me to my state. Lips pressed into a thin line, knuckles white as I gripped the sides of my seat, I stared sideways at him as he drove.

I sat in the backseat, pressed against the left door to prevent myself from shaking as much as I already was. He was partly visible, the side of his face set and jaw clenched, looking equal parts enraged and lost.

He was trembling, maybe because of the car, veins protruding against his neck and the backs of his hands, but he didn't look away once as he drove to somewhere I didn't know, not even bothering to brush away the bloodred hair that fell into his eyes.

It was raining, I realised, as the car sped along the streets onto an elevated road, water falling in sheets on either side of us. Drops clung to the windows and windshield, and I realized I was shaking, too—and not just from the cold.

Only when we drove past a familiar spot of trees did I realize that he was probably taking me to the same spot at the cliff as he had what seemed like an eternity ago. The place looked completely different now, dark and terrible, with the rain making it seem even more uninviting and unsafe.

Instead of taking the car to the cliff side, Taeyong took it into a part in the thick treeline, hurtling straight into a clearing in the woods. The ride was bumpier, with more traction than careless speed, and I clutched my seat until my nails dug into the soft leather.

He drove carelessly. It was rash speed, speed that would probably get us killed on a full road, but here, it was much worse. Dangerous, racing, and not just to win.

At that moment, he scared me. Too much. The look on his face, the car, the place in general—it was terrifying, and it was exciting. Exciting, in more ways than one.

The clearing wasn't big, a roughly circular patch where blades of grass twisted between twigs, strangling them and choking slightly stilted tree roots all looking flattened by the almost torrential rain. The Stingray stopped right in the centre of it, but he Taeyong didn't move after that, staying in his seat like an invisible force was trapping him there.

Then his eyes met mine in the rearview mirror, and what I saw shook me to the very core—there was pain in his eyes, real and raw, so achingly unfamiliar and personal that I looked away at once. My hands crept to my sides, hugging myself in what was supposed to be comforting but fell far too short.

With a sudden jerk, he threw open the door and climbed out. I watched, still pressed to the door, as he got into the backseat next to me, the door shutting with a bang behind him.

His leather jacket looked fine because of the darkness of its color, but when he leaned forward, the neck slid aside to reveal the slightly damp parts of his white t-shirt. At his temples, some of his hair was darkened and wet, but I suspected it was more because of the sweat than the rain.

He pressed his forehead against the back of the driver's seat, eyes closed, his close to mournful expression giving off the impression that he was praying. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse, tired, with none of the fire it had held back in the club.

"What do you want from me?" He asked, eyes shut tight, not looking at me once. His tone had dropped to the same low note as the pain his eyes had held when they had met mine. Bare. Revealed.

Ecstasy. The drug, wasn't it? They had drugged me, right?

But with the quantity of the liquid, it shouldn't have been too much. And I didn't even know how much time had passed since then.

Maybe the effects hadn't worn off completely. Maybe some of it was still in my system, my racing pulse, the heat like a thin layer over my skin. But I knew, that in a sober state, I would probably not reply in the same way as I did then.

"I want you," I whispered back, voice so small it barely carried despite the small space in between us, "to want me."

I could've sworn I didn't realize what happened when it did.

For a split second—or for hours, I couldn't tell—he had turned his head to look at me, face carefully blank. And then he was upon me, and our bodies molded together like clay, so I could feel every line of him against me, the heat of him pressed against mine.

His head tipped towards mine, lips barely brushing mine, so tantalizingly close that I yearned to kiss them, but his hands pinned me to my position.

"You have no idea," he said, voice dropping another octave, "how much I already do."

And then we were kissing, my hair tangled in his fingers, my hands grasping the thin material of his t-shirt. His mouth slanted onto mine, hungry and invading, as if he's held back for millennia, as if all he had wanted, for all his years, was to have a taste.

"I have wanted—" he broke off with a groan, outlining the shape of my collarbone. "For so long—"

It was hasty, messy, it was inexperienced, but it burned between us and inside us, like a white-hot fire. Every touch, every moan, every whispered word engraved itself in my mind and on my skin. His kisses, like him, and his racing, were hard and fast, careless yet carefull, filled with so much passion and so much heat.

There it was, a low growl in his throat, an almost animalistic cry of desire welded with pain. The heat of his lips like molten lead against my skin, kissing down my jawline, my neck, the hollow of my throat. In that moment, all I wanted was to be with him, to be him, to crush our bodies together, our mingling breaths, everything.

"We shouldn't," he gasped, between kisses, but my arms looped around his neck and pulled him in again. Underneath my touch, it was like he turned to putty, but so was the case with me. Somehow, when I hadn't even realized, he had gotten me with my back against the seat, just under him, and heat radiated through the thinness of his t-shirt—his jacket was suddenly off. "Y/N—"

"Shh." My teeth nipped at his earlobe, and he groaned low into the crook of my neck, palm coming up to press itself to the slope of my back, so I could feel the outline of it through my clothes.

Again. My shirt had ridden halfway up my stomach, and his hand brushed against the sensitive skin there, making me arch up against him like the crest of a wave before it crashed. It was like, lava, like ecstasy, every kiss, his touches leaving me melting against him and into him.

"You're not in your senses," he whispered against my neck, his lips and his tongue working on my skin so that a dark patchwork of violet and blue and gold bloomed against my skin, like a mark, like a claim. "We shouldn't—I shouldn't."

Despite every word, I was left wanting more but his arms came around me to trap myself into him and his self, his chest against mine and our heartbeats pulsing and racing with each other. His lips traced my jaw still, as if he couldn't bear to stop, couldn't bear to let go no matter what he thought.

"Not now," he said, gently, and I closed my eyes and pressed my face into him, mouth pursing against the base of his throat, just where his pulse was. "Not yet."

And right there, with the rain beating against the glass outside, and all of him against all of me, I didn't know when I fell asleep, tangled up in him in the cramped backseat of the car. But I dreamed, of wild eyes and a dance of lips, and I dreamed of drowning in a sea of fiery red, drunk on ecstasy, drunk on his kisses, drunk on every look, every whisper of his mouth against my bare skin.