Within Five Minutes
"What are you staring at me like that for?"
Nine full days gone, and he asked it as if none of it had mattered at all. The casual tone was so brazen it left her dumbfounded. Jiyeon did not loosen the guard she kept around her heart. The toothbrush hidden in her sleeve felt, for no good reason, suddenly heavy.
"It's been a while, sir."
"......I was busy."
Lie or not, Louis looked far more worn than usual. Dark stubble had risen over a face that was always immaculate, and rather than spoiling those fine looks, it lent him a different cast entirely.
"You hardly need to go about advertising how busy you've been. It rather looks as though you'd like someone to notice."
Jiyeon could not help the sarcasm. For nearly seven days her mind had been honed to a killing edge. She had nursed an intent sharp enough to cut down, without a moment's hesitation, whatever stood in her way—the same mind she carried in the breath before an operation. She had hidden it as well as she could, but there was no chance Louis would fail to read a presence like that.
"There's no one left to notice. Everyone's too busy losing their minds."
Even so, he answered evenly, rubbing a hand over his stubble. Just as he had marked the change in her, Jiyeon could sense the change in him with equal sharpness. She could not pin it down in words, but something was different.
"Tomorrow the 5th Battalion deploys to wipe out the rebels based in Sector 12."
Jiyeon held her breath, then let a faint smile surface.
"You'll be rid of one nuisance, and collect a commendation fit for a promotion while you're at it."
Jiyeon's leash had already passed from the rebels into Louis's hand. If they had meant to steer her by holding Ella over her, Louis was doing the same now—binding her in place with Ella set out before her. The former master who had lost that leash was no longer her concern.
"Lieutenant Jiyeon Yu. You are a very intelligent woman."
The remark came out of nowhere, and her brow creased. Louis preferred to call her by her real name, Jiyeon Yu, rather than the English name Sophia, and she hated that as well. Quick as he was, he had to know perfectly well that she disliked it, and still he went on invoking her true name without a shred of shame.
The man slipped a hand into the inner pocket of his uniform. Jiyeon gave nothing away on the surface, but every sense in her body drew taut, and she ran once more through the places where she had hidden her weapons.
What came out with his hand, to hollow anticlimax, was not a gun or a knife but a scrap of white paper. He pushed it slowly across to her. Jiyeon only looked down at it.
A brief standoff followed. She could not read his intent. Still, the reason he had suddenly broken his pattern had to lie inside that scrap. Slowly she lifted the paper and looked within. Words were lined up there that she could not grasp at a glance.
October 15. 0400 — 5th Battalion sortie. 0500 — rebel ambush.
Shift change at 0440. Movement possible. In front of Guard Post 7. Within five minutes.
Perhaps her mind really was as clever as Louis claimed. They had moved in step through countless operations, and she understood at once. If the 5th Battalion sortied at four in the morning, the rebels would ambush them at five. And in the interval—around four-forty, when the watch changed—this man wanted to make contact with her in front of Guard Post 7, and to do it within five minutes.
She could not yet see exactly what scheme the operation served. Were they laying a trap to catch the rebels, or was there some reason they were deliberately sending the 5th Battalion out on the very day of an ambush?
Either way, he clearly meant to use that chaos to move her somewhere else. Jiyeon had no choice but to comply. It was also the change she had been waiting for. Once she was moved, gaps would open in the watch kept on her, and she might at last have room to read the situation for herself.
Louis gave her time enough to commit the note to memory, then came around the table toward her. He took the scrap, set it alight with a lighter, and went into the bathroom to drop the burning paper into the toilet.
There had to be a reason he had written down a plan he could simply have spoken. Was the room wired? Was someone watching? Jiyeon swept the space with a sharp eye. She had searched every corner of the cell whenever she could, and she had never found a wiretap.
Louis came toward her, shedding his uniform. There had been many days he arrived in nothing but a shirt; today he was in full dress from collar to boots.
"Can they hear?"
She whispered it as he bent slightly and set his mouth to the corner of hers. There was no subject and no explanation, and Louis understood with uncanny precision.
"Yes. They can't see. They can hear."
So someone was listening. Today was the only day she had failed to check the room, which meant the bug had been planted today. Had battalion command come down with a fit of suspicion on the eve of the operation, or was it merely an ugly curiosity?
"So concentrate."
Dark blue eyes caught her and held. He still carried no scent at all, and his movements remained spare and disciplined, leaving no signature behind—but by now Jiyeon knew Louis's style better than anyone.
A hot hand closed around the nape of her neck and drew her in, and in the same instant his mouth took hers. For some reason the kiss felt aching, almost tender. Soft and sweet, it wound around her tongue, moving and caressing her as carefully as if he were handling something precious.
She steadied herself so she would not dig too deeply into what the note meant. Why he was acting this way, why he meant to let her out—it left her in confusion. This might not be an escape at all. It might be nothing more than an operation to move her into protective custody. And yet her instinct kept insisting otherwise.
An operation she could not understand, and conduct she could not read. Confusion washed over her, and she set her teeth against it.
Think only of staying alive. There's someone you still have to meet.
In this moment, the words of the man who had made her that contemptible offer proved rather useful.
Her body was pushed back onto the bed. He pressed his mouth into the nape of her neck, dragged her T-shirt up, buried his nose in the soft swell of her breast, and drew a breath. It was something he always did. Warm lips slid down over her skin. Jiyeon went rigid and let a low moan escape.
Today the major was too gentle, and far too slow. The pace only threw every caress into sharper relief. A body grown used to his answered on its own; the mere weight of him bearing down on her was enough to stir her.
Slowly, Louis's hand slipped inside her pants.
"Nh—!"
Jiyeon locked tight. Once he had confirmed she was wet enough, Louis rose. It was a far quicker, more urgent progression than usual. Matching his haste, she lifted her hips and shed her pants. Their eyes met.
Even that small act made Louis clench his teeth, his eyes gone a different color—the beast's eyes from the moment just before he lost his reason. He did not delay. Swallowing her mouth, he pushed deep inside her. It had been a long time, and there was pain.
Moans and cries vanished entirely into his mouth. Through a blurred field of vision she saw that his brow was furrowed too. The tightness seemed to pain him. Louis moved very slowly, drawing out by degrees and pressing back in just as slowly.
The pain thinned, and in its place a familiar pleasure bloomed. Each time he moved, a simmering heat welled low in her belly. Louis swallowed every moan that escaped her. Their tongues tangled and drew at each other without pause.
She understood it, dimly. Major Louis did not want her sounds given to anyone else. The long absence had Jiyeon writhing in pleasure as much as him, but he never once turned rough.
She had no choice but to feel it, slow and bare—the way he withdrew like a wave and surged back in deep. Pleasure boiled and rose by degrees, then broke like fireworks when he drove into her again.
Jiyeon squirmed and gasped. He held that body tight and kissed her again and again, and she drew on Louis's tongue the way an infant nurses. He would not leave still the body that flinched through the aftershock of climax. She felt him drive into her depths over and over.
Gasps, moans, the sound of skin meeting skin—all of it spread more muffled than usual. Her swollen breasts were crushed again and again against his chest, sending a dizzy sensation through her. As if he found her lovely in the moment she came, he caught her lip between his teeth and teased her.
He bore down on her like a man who wanted to sink deeper still. In the glances that met only now and then, some unreadable emotion wavered.