Chapter Forty-Four: Possessive Instincts
AUTHOR'S POV
Psychology building, same time — Professor Kim Taehyun's lecture hall
Taehyun's hand hovered over the whiteboard, mid-sentence, when his eyes flickered to the door of the auditorium across the hallway. Something shifted in him. He didn't know why yet, but he knew. A primal instinct, a tightening in his chest.
He adjusted the mic clipped to his collar, his voice a smooth, academic baritone. "Now, what do we call the phenomenon when a subject redirects emotional impulses from a primary target to a secondary one?"
The students murmured answers.
But he was distracted. His gaze had sharpened, fixed on the glass panel beside his door. It offered a distorted reflection of the hallway—and of the classroom opposite. Your classroom.
He saw you. Slouched in your seat, arms crossed defensively over your chest. Your head was tilted down, your beautiful hair—the hair he loved to braid in the quiet mornings—tugged forward like a curtain, shielding your neck.
He knew that move. That was your shield. Your body screaming unseen.
His jaw clenched subtly. The marker in his hand pressed hard enough to squeak against the board.
"Defense mechanisms," he continued, his voice deceptively calm, "often manifest as unconscious protection. You may not recognize the threat, but your body… your body always knows when it feels unsafe."
A few students chuckled at his dramatic delivery. They thought it was part of the lesson.
It wasn't.
His mind was a thousand miles from the textbook. It was laser-focused on the boy sitting a seat too close to you. On the way you'd subtly shrunk away.
He saw everything.
He pressed his tongue to the inside of his cheek, a dark fire igniting behind his obsidian eyes.
"Class dismissed ten minutes early," he announced, casual as a summer breeze.
A ripple of surprise went through the room. "Professor?"
But he was already unplugging his mic. Already walking. Already plotting.
Because no one made you feel unsafe. No one made you hide.
And if someone dared to make you cover the skin he'd marked—the skin that belonged to him—like it was something to be ashamed of?
They had just become his newest problem.
---
The corridor was a river of noise—shouting, laughter, clattering footsteps. I kept my head down, bag clutched like a lifeline, just wanting to dissolve into the crowd and escape.
A hand caught my wrist.
Not harsh, but firm. Unmistakable. Possessive.
Before I could gasp, I was pulled—swift, efficient, effortless—into the empty, echoing space of a darkened lecture hall. The door thudded shut, sealing us in sudden, heavy quiet.
He stood before me. Taehyun.
His jaw was a hard line, his shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows, a vein ticking at his temple. His tie was loose, his hair slightly disheveled, as if he'd been driving his hands through it. He looked less like a professor and more like a storm barely contained.
"Why were you hiding your neck?"
His voice was low, quiet. Too quiet. It was the calm before the quake.
I blinked, thrown. "What?"
He took a step closer, invading my space. The air grew thinner. "I saw you. Tucking your hair forward like a curtain. Making yourself small." His gaze dropped, searing a path over my collarbone, exposed by my loose shirt. My hand, as if on a string, rose again to cover it. "You only do that when someone's looking at you the wrong way."
I swallowed, the truth sticking in my throat. "I… I didn't really notice at first. I forgot my scarf. There was a guy next to me, he was just… staring."
It was all the confirmation he needed.
His jaw tightened audibly. He closed the remaining distance, his presence a wall of controlled fury. "Did he speak to you?"
"No. Just stared."
Taehyun took a slow, deep breath through his nose, but it did nothing to soften the deadly intent in his eyes. "I'll have the entire seating chart for that building rearranged," he muttered, the words a dark promise. "I don't care if he studies psychology, poetry, or fucking astrophysics. He will never sit within a mile of you again."
I opened my mouth to protest, but he wasn't finished.
"Don't hide it," he whispered, the command softening into something dangerously tender. His fingers rose, brushing my hair back over my shoulder with a gentleness that belied the tension in his frame. His touch on my neck made me shiver.
"Don't cover what's mine like it's something shameful."
Heat flooded my cheeks, a mix of outrage and something else I refused to name. "Yours? Are you a caveman now? Going around grunting and claiming territory?"
A smug, infuriating smirk touched his lips. "You bit me first, sunshine. You marked the territory."
I gasped, shoving at his solid chest. "Out of fury!"
He laughed, a low, dark sound of pure amusement, catching my wrist before I could retreat. His thumb stroked the frantic pulse point. "You still chose me. Even when you say you hate me. Even when you bite me 'out of fury'…" He leaned in, his breath a warm caress against my ear. "You keep choosing me. Every time."
I hated the way my heart stammered in response.
"And I'll keep making sure you do," he vowed, his voice dropping to a possessive murmur. "Every single day."
---
The mansion door hadn't fully closed behind me before I stormed down the hall, fury a hot coal in my stomach.
He followed at a leisurely pace, as if he hadn't just committed a public spectacle of possession, as if he wasn't two seconds from declaring war on a hapless undergraduate.
"Don't follow me," I spat without turning.
"Then don't run." His voice was infuriatingly placid.
I whirled around in the bedroom doorway. "You are unbelievable!"
He tilted his head, a picture of arrogant calm. "That's not what you said last night."
With a sound of pure frustration, I snatched a cushion from the settee and hurled it at him.
He caught it one-handed, not even flinching, the smirk still in place. "You left a mark. Can't blame me for wanting to display the masterpiece."
"I didn't leave it on purpose!"
"You bit me," he stated, advancing with predatory grace. "My shoulder. My neck. If I recall, you even growled. Sounded quite feral. I loved it."
I pressed my hands to my burning face. "I swear to God, I will strangle you in your sleep."
He chuckled, the sound vibrating in the quiet room as he closed the final distance. "Can't sleep without you beside me."
Ugh. This man.
I turned to leave, but his hand shot out, circling my wrist. Always the wrist. His anchor.
"Let go," I demanded, my back to him.
"Don't wear shirts like that outside again." His voice lost all its playful edge, dropping into a tone of pure, dark possession. "You forgot your scarf. And every man in that room looked."
"That is not my problem."
"It's mine."
I spun, glaring up at him. "You're the one parading around with evidence! Are you proud? Do you want every girl on campus to sigh and wonder what the professor's love life is like?"
He didn't blink. "We are married."
"Secretly married!"
"So?"
I opened my mouth, but no retort came. Just furious, flustered silence.
His intense gaze softened a fraction, a new, teasing light entering his eyes. "Are you… jealous?"
I scoffed, looking away. "You wish."
He stepped forward, his hands sliding up my arms, fingertips whispering over the fabric. "You're adorable when you lie."
I hated the traitorous spark that traveled from his touch straight to my core. "I'm not lying."
"Then why were you glaring daggers at those girls in the library today? The ones sighing over my 'professor aesthetic'?"
I scowled, the memory fresh and irritating. "Because they're ridiculous! Giggling like children, as if you're some character from a drama who's going to rescue them from a boring lecture—"
He leaned in, his nose brushing mine, cutting off my tirade. "I only rescue you," he murmured, his lips a breath away. "I only want you."
"Shameless."
"You love it."
"I'm sleeping on the couch."
"No," he said, simple and absolute. "You're not."
In one fluid motion, he bent and scooped me up, cradling me against his chest. I kicked, I writhed, I cursed his name, but he just carried me to the bed as if I weighed nothing and deposited me on the cool sheets, following me down, his body a delicious, inescapable weight.
"Move," I hissed, squirming beneath him.
"No." The word was final. He buried his face in the curve of my neck, inhaling deeply. "This," he whispered, his lips moving against my skin, "belongs to me." His hand came up, fingers tracing the spot where his mark had once been. "And this. All of it. Mine."
My entire body lit up, a surge of heat that melted my anger into something molten and weak.
"You're impossible," I breathed, my defiance crumbling.
He laughed, the sound warm and muffled against me. "You're the only one I'm impossible for."
His arms tightened, binding me to him. "Jealous," he murmured, kissing my jaw. "Possessive." A kiss to my temple. "Fiery." His lips found mine, a soft, claiming press. "Mine."
He pulled back just enough to look into my eyes. All teasing was gone, replaced by a terrifying, beautiful sincerity. "God, I'm so in love with you it's a physical pain."
I froze.
He'd never said it like that. Not so starkly. Not so… undeniably.
"Say it again," I whispered, the command barely audible.
He held my gaze, his own dark and unguarded. "I am in love with you, Angel. Madly. Completely. Irrevocably."
And just like that, in the quiet fortress of our bedroom, I forgot how to be furious.