Chapter 51
“I didn’t necessarily wait for that side,” Sarin said, gripping the fork tightly.
“There was someone Lee Sarin begged to spare back then,” he continued, touching the end of his sleeve, revealing brown stains. His gaze drifted to the spot she had tried to ignore.
It seemed like the end of this conversation. Owen reached out with a smile, grabbing Sarin’s wrist. He then delicately took the piece of meat from the fork and chewed it with his incisors.
“In the end, he still died. What do you think?”
“Does my opinion matter?”
The Russian Mafia could deduce the cause of the accident from Owen’s words.
Was her initial kindness to spare the man now turning against her? It seemed as if watching Owen kill the man silently was the right thing to do.
“We almost died together because of that kindness. We need to think about these things.”
“But that kindness also saved you. So, what about you?”
Owen chuckled at Sarin’s composed response, his eyes squinting. He knew he couldn’t undo what had already happened. If this was a chain of cause and effect, surely something would come back to him for sparing Owen’s life.
He could feel Sarin’s hand trembling as she held the fork. It was amusing how this small woman, shaking, still managed to say everything.
“What do you wish for me?”
Owen asked slowly, still not releasing her hand.
“I just hope you live well.”
The man’s face already showed the signs of someone accustomed to such incidents. While Sarin shivered at the memory of the accident, Owen accepted major accidents as if they were inevitable.
One had to acknowledge this was his world, just as one had to accept seeing frozen bodies or corpses drugged to death in Eden City.
Owen’s expression vanished at the unexpected response.
“How surprising. You wish for me to live well.”
Owen pondered Sarin’s words silently and responded with a voice devoid of surprise.
One of his nerves twitched. The moment he saw Sarin trembling and collapsing on the ice, he felt the need to uproot this cause somehow. Sarin twisted her wrist, trying to free her hand from his grip.
Only when Owen let go did the fork drop weakly onto the plate, making a loud noise.
As she massaged the wrist he held, Sarin looked at Owen. Even the dogs turned their gaze to where their owner looked.
Instinctively, Sarin shifted her buttocks backward as three pairs of eyes, or rather, three pairs and one person’s, stared at her.
Owen’s lips slowly parted again.
“Miss Lee Sarin is truly…”
Pink approached, perking his ears, and blocked Sarin’s back. Startled, she recoiled as she bumped into the dog while retracting her buttocks.
“She has a talent for driving people crazy.”
He chuckled sharply, resembling a snake filled with venom. She couldn’t fathom why Owen was so enraged. His face now seemed like it had just partaken in a final supper.
Sarin touched her neck area with her hand. Then Owen, habitually, rotated the ring on his index finger again.
And then, as if waiting for something, he stopped speaking and rubbed the smooth part of the ring with the opposite hand.
Tick tock.
Footsteps echoed down the corridor. Curious about who was approaching, Sarin couldn’t tear her gaze away from Owen.
A stranger passed by, placing a neatly folded handkerchief on the table before disappearing.
“Take it.”
Swiftly.
The handkerchief was extended in front of Sarin as Owen spoke in an indifferent tone.
“This is…”
There was no need to ask what it was.
Because there was a finger lying on the handkerchief. Sarin involuntarily shut her eyes tightly at the sight of the severed finger, unseen until now.
“I told you, didn’t I? I don’t really feel much. Whether that guy’s face explodes or a finger gets severed.”
I’m fine.
Owen’s bitterly low words resonated in her ears. They hinted at who the owner of the finger was. Her throat tightened, and she felt like something was about to spill over. Sarin covered her mouth with one hand.
Owen looked at her indifference.
They sent someone separately towards Pavel’s direction. That was the current situation. Although Nikolai was very angry, he couldn’t oppose Pavel’s target being Owen. The first thing he learned was to repay blood with blood.
It was disappointing that they only compromised with one finger for now.
“At least start with that. We’ll settle the rest gradually,” echoed Owen’s promise to pay the price. Only with the finger in front of her did Sarin understand that it wasn’t a command directed at her, but rather Owen taking responsibility.
She didn’t want to know that the “rest” Owen mentioned excluded everything of Pavel except for the finger, but she found out anyway.
“I-it’s… it’s fine,” Sarin replied, covering her mouth with her palm.
She was confessing again that Owen didn’t feel any emotions she had experienced when losing her sister.
Seeing Sarin’s face looking like she was about to vomit, Owen finally wrapped the finger back in the handkerchief and casually tossed it onto the plate where the steak had just been carved, juice still flowing.
Feeling dizzy, Sarin staggered to her feet and tried to return to her room.
“Lee Sarin, wait,” Owen called from behind.
Just as she was about to take a few steps, he also stood up. Owen’s steps led to his door. Turning the handle and stepping back, he gestured.
“It’ll be this way now,” he said.
Her eyes widened unbelievably.
Pink nudged her thigh with his snout, urging her with silent gestures to enter the open door. She felt like she could barely hold back her vomit. Owen was still waiting for Sarin in the same place.
They couldn’t simply dismiss what happened at his villa as just sex that happened when their eyes met. Initiating such a conversation with this man was something you had to be prepared for, apart from the fact that it would deprive you of sleep.
“Can’t we use the rooms separately as before?” Owen smirked. He seemed to be asking if she would just use it as a deal room.
“Ah, you’re just going to use it as a deal room?”
Realizing that her words might have been interpreted differently than intended, and unsure if Owen would find it satisfactory that she walked to him on her own, Sarin eventually headed towards Owen. Her head was bowed towards the ground.
Squeezing through a gap barely wide enough for one person, Sarin swiftly entered Owen’s room. There was no time to admire the man’s room for the first time. The room, with thick blackout curtains drawn, was silent and still.
The door closed behind her. Even without turning around, she knew Owen was standing there. The dogs’ footsteps echoed from outside, indicating they hadn’t followed.
“Oh.”
His warmth wrapped around her waist. As she was pulled into his embrace, Sarin’s breath quickened. With his face buried against her slender neck, Owen’s breath sent shivers down her spine with each inhale.
Trembling like prey caught by a predator in his rough breath, she felt his desire, firmly gripping her waist, growing more palpable behind her. His hands, exploring her body feverishly and urgently, were not the Owen she had known until now but seemed hungry, eager, as if confirming something.
“Wait, just… slowly… let’s… shower…”
She hadn’t properly showered since returning from the hospital.
“Do you know I actually prefer the smell of sweat before washing?”
With no other body wash scent or artificial fragrance, only Sarin’s natural scent lingering, Owen was even more aroused.
“Owen, h-hmm.”
“Must be the kid. I catch whiffs of baby scent.”
The smell was sweet and somehow appetizing. Owen could distinctly smell the flesh that lingered after everything else had been washed away.
“Ahh, it must be your mood.”
“Really? My mood is this sweet?”
His fangs set and he nipped at the nape of Sarin’s neck. The woman, who must have read him well enough to know his mood, punishes him for pulling back at a time like this.
Tsk. Tsk.
He sucked on the nape of her neck like an animal, gulping down her saliva. Sarin’s head snapped to the side, unable to break free of Owen. A hand cradling her under her breasts and another sliding lasciviously between her legs distracted her.
“Hmph.”
A tongue lapped at the bite. Saliva tingled where it left off. Starting at the nape of her neck, his wet lips clung tenaciously to the base of her earlobe as he slid his tongue promiscuously into the opening of her ear.
“Ah!”
For a moment, she almost falters.
The sound his tongue made as it entered the narrow opening of her ear was too close.
“You know what? Ms. Lee Sarin, you smell even worse between your legs now.”
The tongue that was trying to force its way into the narrow, unopened hole finally spat out the truth. He pressed his lips to Sarin’s ear and whispered that the smell on her skin was different from the smell between her legs.
Neither was satisfactory to Owen.
