Owning You - A Na Jaemin Fanfic

36. The Edge

When I eventually dream, it's about Jaemin sitting on the edge of the bed, watching me sleep. When I jolt awake, there is a strange man bending over me. A man I've never seen before. I flail and whimper like an injured monkey.

"Calm down," Jaemin says into my ear. I scramble into his lap and press my face into his chest. He smells of wool and lavendar.

I'm about to be taken to a scary medical facility, away from the safety of these arms.

"Don't let them, Jaemin! I'll get better!"

"He's a doctor, baby," Jaemin says soothingly.

The strange man takes my temperature, and clucks his tongue when he sees my bruises. "It's not Jaemin, it's the paintball, I swear," I garble. They ignore me, and talk to each other.

"Possibly food poisoning," the doctor says, and he makes me swallow two white pills, and I close my eyes, because I'm sleepy again.

Jaemin's cool fingers stroke my skin. "Poor baby," he says in my ear. "Go to sleep," he whispers. I close my eyes and drift off again.

I stir awake. A wet compress falls into my lap. I jerk in fright at the weight on the bed next to me.

"It's me," Jaemin says. He's sitting against the headboard, and stroking my head. He's got no shoes on and his bare feet are casually crossed at the ankles.

The mattress depresses heavily beside me and his hand is on my forehead. "Your fever broke," he says. He gets off the bed, and pads quietly to the side table. He returns and puts a glass of water to my lips. "Drink," he says. I gulp down the water thirstily. He takes the glass and eases me back down against the pillows with his arm behind my shoulders. He puts his hand back on my forehead, his fingertips ghosting my sweaty brow.

"That's nice," I sigh, leaning into his hand like a love-starved little kitten.

His hand feels like the sort of temperature I should be striving for. I decide to return the favour, so I raise my hands up and put them on his forehead.

"Okay." He is amused.

I'm touching Na Jaemin on the face. I'm dreaming. I'll wake up with him sneering at the trail of drool on my chin. But a minute ticks by, and I don't.

I slide my hands down, over sandpaper grit on his jaw, remembering how he cradled my face in the moonlight. No one has ever held me like that. I open my eyes and I could swear he shivers. I touch his pulse. It touches me back.

I have my hands on his throat now, and I want to strangle him, just once. I spread my hands lightly around his neck, just to check the fit, and he narrows one eye.

"Go ahead," he tells me. "Kill me."

His throat is way too big for my tiny hands. I feel a tension shimmering through him, a tightening in his body. There's a sound in his throat.

I'm hurting him. Maybe I'm strangling him to death right now. Colour is sweeping up his neck. When he pins me with his eyes, I know something's coming.

The world explodes apart as he begins to laugh.

His face crinkles, and dissolves into smile lines, light radiates from him, making his colours glow like stained glass. Brown, gold, silver, white. He is dazzling. His mouth is in an easy curve, perfect teeth and moist, pillow-soft lips.

Each laugh gusts from him in a husky, breathless rush, it ripples through him, and the mattress shakes, and I cannot get enough of it, I drink it in greedily, like the taste of his mouth and the smell of his skin.