Dopamine Addiction - Chapter 89

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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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89.
“!”
Hee-ju’s eyes flew open. She drew a sharp breath and turned her head.
There, at the entrance to the living room, Liam stood with his arms crossed, his shoulder propped against the wall, watching the two of them with quiet intensity.
Their eyes met. Hee-ju’s pupils trembled.
Something hot surged up from deep within her belly. A burning mass kept hammering at her throat.
Hee-ju pulled her lips taut, trying to swallow it down. But the heat that should have traveled down her esophagus rose instead, climbing the wrong way.
Her eyes grew hot. Her nose stung; her cheeks flushed. Her vision blurred.
Liam.
She tried to call his name, but her voice wouldn’t come—as if someone had their hands around her throat.
The hardness in Liam’s gaze softened as he looked at her. But in the next moment, his eyes turned glacial as he regarded his grandfather.
Liam straightened and began walking slowly. He crossed the living room and stopped beside Hee-ju.
Benjamin looked up at him with undisguised displeasure, as if he’d just realized the game was lost.
Liam spoke in a tone dripping with disdain.
“So there comes a day when I’m useful to you, Grandfather.”
“…….”
“You tried to trade on my name to get your hands on the blueprint. Isn’t that rather beneath a Cloph, sir?”
“Your words grate on me. Watch your tongue.”
Benjamin’s lips twisted. The flesh of his cheeks quivered faintly.
“Is there a more accurate explanation you’d care to offer?”
“I intended to purchase it at a fair price.”
“By sweet-talking Hee-ju into it?”
“Liam Cloph.”
Benjamin’s voice took on a stern edge. Liam wasn’t cowed—he laughed instead.
He turned his gaze to Hee-ju, reproaching her.
“Why did you hand it over to Grandfather?”
“…….”
“How did you even get it?”
Hee-ju swallowed slowly, her throat working. She’d expected him to kiss her the moment he saw her, yet here he was, blaming her instead.
No—it wasn’t disappointment. It wasn’t anger, either. It was relief. Relief that he’d come back to her whole and safe.
“Didn’t you say it was the last legacy your father left behind?”
Liam pressed her. Now Hee-ju, too, began to feel a little wronged.
He didn’t know what she’d been thinking. He didn’t know what she’d sacrificed, how far she’d bent.
She bit her lip and shot back in a sharp voice.
“Your happiness matters more to me than the lives of countless others, Liam.”
“…….”
Liam’s mouth snapped shut. He stood there looking dazed, like a man who’d just taken a hammer to the head.
Hee-ju exhaled roughly. Liam’s lips moved soundlessly before he managed to ask, bewildered.
“What did you just……?”
“Do you think I didn’t feel guilty? Do you think I wasn’t tortured by self-loathing? Yet despite all that, I endured it—all of it—because I wanted you to be happy. I wanted to fill that hole in your heart. With these hands of mine!”
“Ah.”
For once, Liam found himself at a loss for words. He stood silent, his dry hand rubbing his mouth repeatedly before he tilted his head back.
He remembered envying Noel once—probably on a day the brat had gotten beaten by girls.
Hee-ju had bought duct tape and cable ties to protect the boy. With her own hands.
‘A woman who’ll bend her principles for those she cares about.’
It seems I’ve fallen deep within that circle too.
After staring up at the ceiling for a long while, Liam let his gaze slip downward. It collided with Hee-ju’s fierce stare.
Yet somehow a suppressed laugh leaked through. But the moment Hee-ju’s eyes grew sharper still, he quickly erased it.
Hee-ju pressed forward in a cutting voice.
“They’ll acknowledge you in public. Not as a spare, but as a member of the Cloph family. They’ll give you a title, lands, businesses.”
“You want that?”
“If it can fill what’s missing in you. If it can make you happy.”
“…….”
“Yes, I want it.”
Liam threw up his hands in surrender, his face full of barely contained laughter.
She didn’t know—couldn’t know—that what truly filled his emptiness wasn’t some title or plot of land. It was her.
The more she desired him, the more the hollow in his chest sealed itself shut.
He wanted to be her one and only.
Irreplaceable by anything else.
That was enough.
“Do you know what it means to be acknowledged in public? To inherit a title? It means being dragged to evening galas every night, smiling like an idiot for the cameras. Could you handle that?”
“Me?”
Hee-ju looked bewildered—as if to say: why would you ask me instead of yourself?
Liam added without a trace of shame.
“Those things usually require both spouses to attend.”
“…….”
While Hee-ju scrambled for a response, he shrugged lightly.
“I’m not confident I could do it. So.”
He bent down and grabbed the USB from the table. Then he seized Hee-ju’s wrist and pulled her along.
“Come on.”
“Where?”
“The wound’s healing well. Let’s forget about this and go do what needs to be done.”
“What do you……”
She never finished the question, her mouth closing instead. She was dragged away, glancing back. Benjamin watched the two of them go, the look of a fisherman who’d lost his catch right at the edge of the boat—but there was no anger in his expression. Benjamin himself called his grandson to a halt with an deliberately stern voice.
Yet strangely, he didn’t seem angry at all. Benjamin raised his voice formally to stop his grandson.
“Liam Cloph.”
“Since when did you start calling my name so often? You entrusted the business to Father and my brother—trust them, then. Step back. The family will run just fine without you. It has for centuries.”
“Hah.”
Benjamin’s dry chuckle was swallowed by the door slamming shut with a bang. Liam pressed the elevator button without a word. It wasn’t heading to the lobby.
“Exactly where……”
When the elevator doors opened, Liam pulled a card key from his pocket and opened a guest room door.
“I thought you wouldn’t like sharing a room with Grandfather.”
Then he grabbed Hee-ju’s arm and pulled her in, kissing her before the door had even fully closed. Bang—the guest room door shut behind them.
He shed his earlier playfulness like it had been an illusion, falling on her with raw hunger. There was no finesse, no restraint.
Liam kissed her mouth desperately, like a starving beast barely sating its hunger after an eternity without food.
Hee-ju gasped and swept her hands across his back. Her fingers slipped beneath his jacket. Under the thin t-shirt, firm muscle met her touch.
Every time her fingertips passed over him, the taut muscles quivered and tensed.
“Hah.”
Liam exhaled roughly. He gripped her buttocks and hoisted her up, carrying her forward even as his hunger for her continued unabated.
Liam tilted his head back; Hee-ju wrapped her legs around his waist and dipped her head down. Their lips tangled together once more.
The urgency wasn’t one-sided. Hee-ju shrugged off his jacket, and Liam raised his arms to help her slip free from her own clothes.
Hee-ju tossed her coat aside as well. The two of them tumbled onto the bed with a soft thud.
“…….”
Liam smiled faintly and kissed the hollow of her throat.
A sharp pleasure cascaded down her spine. Hee-ju’s back arched, jerking upward.
She thrashed her arms like someone drowning, clinging to Liam with the desperate grip of someone clutching a lifeline.
Liam began unfastening her shirt buttons.
“Some genuine advice here.”
“What?”
“How about you wear t-shirts instead of shirts?”
She remembered something similar happening before. She remembered the buttons of her shirt getting torn off.
Hee-ju pulled his head down to her chest, pressing a kiss to the crown of his head. Liam’s irritation vanished instantly, as if he’d never been annoyed at all.
She never would have thought that this madman—this dirty, disgusting madman—could feel so precious. Hee-ju must be just as mad, she thought, and frowned at herself.
Well, they did make a fitting pair.
Liam’s touch, once clumsy and hurried, began to grow deliberate and tender. His large palm brushed her bare skin, fingers sliding gradually beneath her open shirt.
“!”
Goosebumps erupted across her body. She couldn’t tell if it was from the cold of his hand or the intimacy of his touch.
Liam succeeded in unfastening every last button with patient care. He pushed her shirt aside, kissed her bare shoulder, then tore off his own t-shirt in one fluid motion.
The scrap of fabric flew through the air and landed beneath the bed. And in that same instant, their bodies came together seamlessly.
“Ah……!”
That alone drew a soft cry from between Hee-ju’s lips.
She’d never imagined spending her whole life in such intimate closeness with another person. She’d always been the third party, the distant observer, watching them from outside.
Never closer than necessary, never farther than necessary.
But this madman had shattered that distance. He’d trampled in with muddy feet and torn down the final wall.

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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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