Contract Marriage with a Male Friend - Chapter 22

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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#22

A touch.
Lip met lip.
It was brief and light, but enough to set the stage.
“Did you know?”
Beom-jin’s warm breath spilled into Su-i’s slightly parted lips.
“Your family has Watchers here in the Underground Parking Lot too.”
Su-i started to glance around at the mention of Watchers, but Beom-jin cradled her cheek and fixed her gaze back on him.
“You trying to tip them off that we’re putting on an act?”
“Oh, I just…….”
“I’ll give you whatever you want. Anything.”
So help me out.
It was Beom-jin who was pleading, asking permission.
Yet somehow it felt like she was the one being consumed.
“You know how you hate even making eye contact with any other woman, let alone getting close to one.”
Of course she knew.
She’d taken so much misunderstanding because of it.
Each time she protested that it wasn’t true, there was a secret joy in knowing that Beom-jin kept only her at his side.
That there was someone who needed her, and only her.
For Su-i, nothing held greater meaning than that.
“Until now, I’ve tried to stand at your side through my own strength.”
His fingers, which had been grinding against her lower lip, trailed upward and gently circled her earlobe.
“Ah…….”
Su-i let out an involuntary gasp.
A delicious sensation rippled down her spine.
“If you’ll have me, I’d like to ask a favor.”
“What…… kind of favor…… ah…….”
“Your father’s whereabouts.”
Su-i’s eyes widened as her breathing grew increasingly warm.
“Grandfather believes in Give and Take. No matter that I’m his grandson, he won’t easily grant a favor to someone who won’t listen to him.”
Beom-jin tilted his head and covered her parted lips with his own.
His tongue pushed forward immediately, searching for hers, coiling around it, drawing it in.
He licked her mouth as if savoring sweet fruit juice, exploring every corner with his tongue.
“Ah, ah…….”
A thread of saliva stretched long between their slightly parted lips.
“What Grandfather desires most is my marriage.”
Beom-jin spoke without taking his eyes from Su-i’s glistening lips.
“But what he desires even more is a child.”
Su-i stared back at him, uncomprehending.
“A child……?”
“Yes, a child. He’s desperate for me to marry as soon as possible and for my wife to become pregnant.”
Marriage alone felt like too much to bear.
And now children? Pregnancy?
Wasn’t he skipping steps entirely?
It was all so surreal that it didn’t feel real.
Though, come to think of it…….
Just two weeks ago, she’d known nothing of this.
Nothing of exchanging breath with Beom-jin in his car.
And that was without being drunk or under cover of darkness.
“I need to look like a man desperate to get you pregnant.”
“You and your words…….”
“You need to look like you’re ready to accept me whenever that happens.”
Smack. Click.
Beom-jin gently bit and released her lower lip.
“We have to act like we can’t keep our hands off each other every time our eyes meet.”
His broad, wet tongue slowly withdrew from her mouth, trailing across it.
“Starting from right now.”
Beom-jin’s gaze held her captive, refusing to let go.
Su-i saw the childhood friend she’d known—a man gasping for breath, seeking her answer.
A man…… God, did any of this even make sense?
And yet she had already answered, in her way.
The moment she accepted his kiss—sober, in daylight, in a place that wasn’t home.
“Su-i.”
But Beom-jin wanted to hear it from her lips, clearly and unambiguously.
“If you truly hate this. If you’d rather die than do it…….”
He narrowed his brow and spoke with reluctance.
“Then I’ll ask someone else.”
Su-i blinked.
Someone else?
“I want to be at your side. For life. But if you won’t have it, that’s the only way.”
“You’d…… make a…… contract with someone else?”
“I have no choice.”
Thump.
At the sound of her own heart sinking, Su-i drew a sharp breath.
Beom-jin doing this with another woman?
This heated, indecent, intoxicating kiss?
All of it—the way they’d shared breath and warmth until the moon rose that night?
‘What is wrong with me?’
She hated it. She hated it so much.
The thought of Beom-jin kissing another woman, and…… sex…….
The mere idea that he might do such things with someone else made her throat clench with revulsion.
“Is there really no way?”
Beom-jin asked carefully, rubbing his cheek against her palm.
“Just one year?”
“……Just one year.”
At Su-i’s answer, Beom-jin’s dark eyes flew wide open.
“Just one year. After that, we go back to being real friends. Got it?”
His face brightened as he pulled her into his arms.
“Thank you. Thank you, Su-i. Or rather…… Wife.”
“Hey!”
Su-i pounded his back with her small fists, and Beom-jin’s shoulders shook as he chuckled.
“What do you mean, wife!”
“Wife is wife in English. Husband is husband in——”
“That’s not what I——!”
As Su-i flushed red and protested, Beom-jin couldn’t stop laughing.
He cupped her soft cheeks in both hands and pressed his lips to hers with a loud smack.
“I’ll do well. Well enough to please my darling.”
Dar……!
God, really. Su-i turned her gaze away.
She couldn’t bear to look directly at Beom-jin’s face, eyes crinkled as he smiled.
“Even when you’re embarrassed, you’re cute.”
“Mmph.”
“And that pouty fish mouth is cute too.”
Smack. Smooch. Kiss-kiss.
His repeated kissing was……somehow.
Like a man in love.
The way he gazed at her—as though he were already a groom looking at the woman who would become his wife—was unbearable.
“Let’s go now. I think that’s enough.”
“No, it’s not.”
Beom-jin toyed with her cheek and curved his lips upward.
“My bride-to-be still looks at me with such a barren gaze. So cold.”
He pulled her close and whispered against the delicate curve of her neck.
“That makes me sad, Su-i.”
“Ah, that tickles.”
At that, Beom-jin lifted his head and immediately yanked down his Necktie, popping the buttons of his Shirt one by one.
“What are you…… what are you doing?”
“Then do it to me.”
He laughed.
“I’ll take it. You do it to me today.”
Beom-jin was insane.
Everything she’d thought she knew about him had been a lie.
She’d taken him for a stubborn, dense bear.
But the reality was the complete opposite.
“How can you say things like that so casually…….”
“I’m not. I’m embarrassed too. I’m just holding it in.”
Embarrassed, sure.
If she could see his face right now, she’d know how absurd that claim was.
“If you don’t want to because we’re outside, would it be okay at home?”
Su-i hadn’t even answered before Beom-jin nodded.
“Right, it’s our first practice day. We should go somewhere it’s just us.”
“Wait, what do you——”
“Let the Watchers see us going into the same house. The rest we’ll practice at night.”
Practice what at night?
And why the same house?
“Stop joking around.”
“Haven’t you eaten dinner yet?”
“I already have.”
The fever between them cooled instantly.
“……Ah. I see.”
“No, wait——”
“So you’ve already eaten with the man who was supposed to abandon you and see me, that’s what you’re saying, my dear.”
“Can you not use that phrasing? Who’s abandoning——!”
“Then tonight I’m choosing what I want to eat.”
Beom-jin fastened the Seatbelt around Su-i.
“Understood?”

***

Click.
The moment the door closed, Beom-jin kissed her.
As his large hand grasped her jaw and pulled it open, his thick tongue invaded her mouth.
“Wait……!”
Beom-jin gently but firmly held her small hands as she tried to push him away.
“You gave your permission, darling.”
Thud.
He dropped her Jacket to the floor and whispered.
“You said I could have what I want to eat.”
Su-i’s body lifted off the ground.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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