Ji-hye lay on her side, the thin towel barely covering her hips, chest pressing lightly into the massage table. Her legs, long and toned from years of volleyball, twitched slightly under Joon-ho's firm touch. The soft hum of the air conditioner, the distant city noise through the window, and the wet sound of oil spreading between Joon-ho's palms filled the quiet space.
His fingers dug in—not cruelly, but with expert purpose. Her glutes, her lower back, her thighs… each knot released like a trap unclenching. She grunted once, and then gasped as he pressed into her inner thigh.
"Breathe," Joon-ho said gently, his voice low, professional… but there was an edge to it. A knowing tone, like he'd heard this kind of gasp a hundred times before.
Ji-hye's breath shuddered.
His thumbs traced up toward her hips, rotating in deep, maddening circles. The pain had turned into something else—heat, tension, a tingling tightness building low in her belly.
Every pass of his hand was deliberate. Not overt. Not yet.
Harin sat nearby, her arms folded, eyes sharp but unreadable. She'd seen this dance before—the slow unraveling of pride, the confusion between injury relief and molten arousal. Ji-hye wasn't the first, and wouldn't be the last.
Ji-hye whimpered again.
Joon-ho moved up her back, pressing into the space just under her shoulder blades, his palm sliding lower again without warning, grazing the curve of her breast. Her nipple, already stiff, grazed the towel, sending a shock through her.
She bit her lip.
Her thighs clenched.
She hated how wet she felt. Hated how much she didn't want him to stop.
"You're tight here too," Joon-ho said, fingers brushing under the towel just enough to knead the top of her inner thigh, dangerously close to where she was throbbing. "All that explosive movement on court—no wonder the muscle's locking up."
Ji-hye groaned, turning her face to the side, her hair sticking to her temple with sweat.
He was everywhere. Inside her pain. Inside her thoughts. And now—
Now he was stroking a part of her body that wasn't technically the injury… but it felt so damn good.
She couldn't stop the moan.
It slipped out of her mouth raw and needy, and she immediately covered it with a cough, her cheeks burning.
But Joon-ho didn't comment. Didn't smirk. He just kept going, inch by inch, working her body like an instrument, like he knew it better than she did.
And then, as he pressed two fingers deep into her upper thigh, just shy of her slick heat—
Her hips jerked.
Her eyes flew wide open.
"Oh—" Ji-hye gasped, her body convulsing against the table. It wasn't from pain. It was a sharp, breathtaking flood that coursed from her spine down to her toes and snapped the last thread of resistance in her chest.
She came.
Without touch to the place that throbbed.
Just pressure. Tension. The slow torture of being handled without mercy or shame.
Joon-ho let her ride it, never saying a word.
Harin looked up from her seat, smirking faintly.
"Told you," she whispered to herself.
Ji-hye lay there, dazed and panting, her pride a puddle on the table, her legs damp with proof of her surrender.
And she hadn't even touched herself.