“It’s not entirely one sided,” he countered. “I like a lot of things about you. I’m just a little behind and need some time to catch up.”
He wriggled free and propped his head on his hand so he could look at her. “I like these…” he traced his fingertips over her freckles, “…and these.” His thumb caressed her plump lower lip.
Her breath stuttered.
“I like listening to you speak Korean because you have a slight accent, and I love that you so readily accept the people that I love. You make it easy to fall.”
“Stop it.”
“Stop what?” He quirked his head.
“Being so charming.” She laughed, covering her face with her hands. “I’m weak.”
“Good.” He slipped his hand into hers, pulling it away from her face and pressing it into the bed. “That makes two of us.”
He kissed her then, slow, soft, and deep. She was so utterly doomed. Her free hand carded through his sleek black hair, bringing him closer.
Eventually she had to call a halt to things. “Okay, we’re supposed to be going slow, so I need you to not be so perfect for a little bit.”
“You’re giving me such an ego.” Laughing softly, he kissed her one more time. “Sung Soo will be so unimpressed when we get home. He tries to keep me grounded. You’re undoing his years of hard work.”
“Well, my apologies to him, but this is half your doing, so I’m going to insist he blame both of us.”
“Noted. Now, since we need to do something less tempting than staying in bed, want to work out with me? I feel like I’ve been a slug lately.”
“Does the hotel have a gym downstairs?”
“Mhmm. Come with me?”
“Maybe.” She raised a suspicious eyebrow. “Are you nicer than Sung Soo about workouts?”
“Nope.”
Tessa went anyway, complaining through the vigorous cardio session, and cursing him through the weights until she dropped to the floor, a pile of displeased noodle limbs. They did partner stretches, and it annoyed her all over again that he was so attractive while sweaty.
“My lungs hurt.”
“Your lungs are weak.” He smiled and pulled her deeper into the stretch.
“Excuse you, my lungs are regular. You all are just insane.”
“But consider the many advantages to having a partner with this kind of stamina.”
He let her out of the stretch and slipped into his own.
“Oh my God, you did not.” Tessa got up off the mat and walked to the door on wobbly legs. “I’m leaving. I can’t with you right now.”
He looked so innocent, with his eyes wide and chin cradled in his palms between his outstretched legs. She was already flushed from the workout, and now her cheeks burned for a whole new reason.
Giggling to herself all the way to the elevator, she thumbed the button. He caught up to her by the time the doors pinged open.
“I can’t believe you abandoned me like that. I could have been kidnapped.” He hooked his arm around her waist and moved them both inside, elbowing the number for their floor. “Think of the scandal.”
“World famous K-pop star with unrivalled stamina kidnapped on honeymoon because of wife’s negligence?”
“The world would mourn my loss.”
“I’d mourn it too.”
“Good.” He nudged her against the wall and took advantage of the solitude to press a kiss against the curve of her throat, nipping across her shoulder. Tessa’s fingers dug into his waist.
“This isn’t what elevators are for,” she whispered.
“Do you want me to stop?”
“No.”
His mouth toyed with the stretch of sensitive skin that was interrupted by the strap of her tank top, which he helpfully nudged to the side.
Her stomach growled. Loudly.
“I think there’s a place around here that serves Western-style breakfast,” he said. “Want to go?”
“That sounds perfect.”
Back in the room they rinsed off in the shower separately, then changed into fresh clothes.
“What’s the breakfast thing called that has all the pockets?” He swung their joined hands as they walked.
“Pockets?”
“Yeah, it’s like a sweet bread thing. It has lots of little pockets in it.”
“Uh, waffles?”
“Yes! I love them. I tried them on our last tour.”
They found the restaurant and ended up with two plates of waffles loaded with cream, chocolate, and berries. Ravenous, Tessa cleaned her plate and briefly contemplated licking it, but couldn’t quite bring herself to do so in public.
They wandered around Jeju for the rest of the day, dipping into restaurants whenever they got hungry, but otherwise just enjoying the shops and sunshine. After dinner Tessa’s phone started buzzing frantically. When she retrieved it from her purse she stared at it in shock. Notification after notification poured in.
“What the fuck?”
He turned towards her. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know.”
She scrolled back up. Six hundred notifications in the last five minutes. Her phone rang, a number she didn’t recognize flashing on the screen.
“Hello?”
A voice screamed at her, a barrage of words coming too fast to decipher. She hung up, but another call immediately came through. She didn’t answer that one. Or the next.
Tessa turned it towards him and his eyes flared wide. “Shit.”
She denied every call that came through, trying to sort through the onslaught to see what was going on. Her social media was backlogged, the apps crashed when she tried to open them, and her website wouldn’t load.
“It looks like you’ve been breached. Let me see if they work on my end.” Eun Gi pulled out his own phone. He frowned. “Your account has tweeted dozens of times while we were out. All of it is in Korean, and none of it is very flattering. Your website is down too.”
“Fucking hell.” The barrage of calls made it extremely difficult to navigate through her phone. Her hands trembled. “I wish I had my laptop. This isn’t working. What do I do?”
“Figure out what’s been compromised and we’ll go from there.” He scrolled through his phone. “We’ll get it handled. I’ll let Kyung Mi know what’s going on.”
Eun Gi scooted closer and tucked her against him while he continued checking her account activity. “It looks like only two of your accounts were breached. Your phone number has obviously been leaked.”
“What is wrong with people?” Her voice shook, panic twisting frantically in her stomach. “This is my career!” Amid the notifications were texts from Kelly, but the calls made it next to impossible to read.
“Here, use my phone. Call whoever you need to.” Eun Gi passed over his device. “Turn yours off for now. It won’t be much use while they’re doing a brute force attack.”
She phoned her assistant first.
“Hello?”
“Amelia!”
“Tessa? It’s three in the morning.”
“The website is down, and my accounts have been hacked. I’m so sorry to wake you. I forgot about the time difference.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“I’m not totally sure what all is happening yet. Can you call the website hosting company and see if they can get things under control?”
“Oh dear. Yes, let me grab a pen, and I’ll make a list.”
Tessa put the phone on speaker.
“Okay. Hosting company, then change my password on every social media account and make sure we have two-factor authentication properly set up. I’m getting too many calls to manage it on my end.” She glanced to Eun Gi. “What else? I’ve never been attacked on this scale before.”
“We’ll get you a new phone number. See about contacting a security firm to investigate the breach. We can do that here, or your assistant can do it from Vancouver. Once you have the passwords changed, we can tighten up all t
he messaging, remove anonymous options, and block anyone involved.”
Tessa nodded. “Contact my agent too so she’s not blindsided by what’s going on. We’ll probably have to do a press release and public apology. I’ll text my parents from Eun Gi’s phone to let them know I’m okay.”
“On it. I’ll handle all that and get back to you when it’s done,” Amelia said.
“You’re an angel.”
When they hung up, Tessa pressed her hands to her face. Panic gripped her throat, and she let out a sound of distress.
“It’ll be okay,” Eun Gi assured.
“Or it’ll be a disaster. I need my social media to sell books. These people are trying to ruin me!”
“Come with me.” Eun Gi ordered a taxi that took them to the main shopping district in Jeju City. It stopped in front of the Samsung store. “Let’s get you a laptop you can use for this until we get back to Seoul.”
Tessa followed in a haze. Eun Gi spoke to the wide-eyed young woman who greeted them and listened to exactly what they needed. She zipped off to get everything prepared. Eun Gi glanced back over to Tessa.
“Take a deep breath.”
She did so.
“They have some that are ready to go for what we need. The staff will meet us at customer service.”
Tessa nodded and let him lead her there. Her vision blurred at the edges, a throb pulsating at the base of her skull.
“Oh, fuck me,” she muttered.
Eun Gi paid while she fished through her purse for her medication. Then she paused. It would knock her out, and she needed to be awake to deal with all of this. But she wouldn’t be able to read anything properly once the auras set in fully.
“Hey.” He scooped her face into his hands. “Look at me for a second.”
Her gaze darted to his, heart pounding.
“Are you getting sick?”
“Migraine.”
“Okay.” He stroked her cheek. “It’s going to be fine. We’ll get you back to the hotel and you can rest.”
“But my accounts.” Tension pulled her shoulders taut, and she winced at the renewed throbbing.
“Do you trust me to handle it?”
She stared at him for a long moment, focusing on the gold ring at the centre of his eyes. “Yes.”
“Good. Then I’ll handle it.”
They picked up a bottle of water for Tessa to take her medication, and then he bundled her into another taxi with their new electronics, and back into their room when they arrived at the hotel. Eun Gi sat next to Tessa on the bed and popped open the laptop, signing into each account in turn.
She texted Kelly with her new number.
Kelly:
I saw the shitshow start up. I’ve asked my followers to report anyone harassing you in your mentions. I’ve got your back.
Tessa:
Have I told you lately that you’re the BEST best friend?
Kelly:
You can never tell me too often :P
I’ll do what I can from my side of things. How’re you feeling?
Tessa:
Migraine is kicking my ass. Eun Gi is handling things.
Kelly:
Go to SLEEP! I’ll communicate with him while you rest. Sweet dreams <3
Tessa watched with blurry eyes as Eun Gi pinned an explanatory tweet and then methodically went through and deleted every one that had been sent during the hack. There were hundreds of messages and even more notifications. She fell asleep when he was altering the settings to stem the flow.
A few hours later Tessa woke from a dead sleep to the sharp ache of gremlins chewing their way out of her uterus. This day couldn’t get any worse. Groaning, she buried her face into the bed.
She shuffled bleary-eyed to the bathroom, searching through the toiletry bag Yuna had provided. There was plenty of obscenely expensive skin care and makeup products from sponsors, but no painkillers.
She slipped back into the room and peeled open the curtains to let in enough light to see her suitcase. Digging through it, she grew more frustrated. None of the available underwear was well suited to her situation, but it was better than nothing. There were no hygiene products anywhere.
“Super.”
Grumbling her way to the bathroom, Tessa fashioned a pad from toilet paper to tide her over before climbing miserably back to bed. She curled into a ball and slipped into an uncomfortable half-sleep; too exhausted to stay awake, but in too much pain to truly sleep.
Eun Gi jostled her shoulder lightly. “What’s wrong?”
Tessa peeled open the eye not currently pressed to the pillow. “I’m fine.”
“You’re clearly not fine.” He flipped on the bedside lamp and sat up, hair spiked in every direction. “What’s going on?”
“It’s just that time. I’ll be okay.”
“That time?” He stared at her, confused. “It’s four a.m.”
“No, it’s that time.”
“Oh. Oh. What can I do?”
She rolled over to lie face-first into the pillow and mumbled, “Schedule me a hysterectomy?”
“I don’t think I heard that.”
She lifted her head. “That’s probably for the best.”
“I didn’t know it hurt so much,” he murmured awkwardly.
“Well, it wouldn’t if I had any painkillers to deal with it.”
“I’ll go to the store. There’s a twenty-four-hour one close by. What do you need?”
“All of it. Yuna somehow forgot I have a functional uterus, and I want to smother her with a pillow.” She wrapped her arms around her stomach and groaned.
Eun Gi got out of bed, grabbed the small notepad provided by the hotel, and brought it back with a pen. “Give me a list so I can get what you need.”
She rattled off what she could think of and closed her eyes, willing away the pain while Eun Gi got dressed to venture into the pre-dawn glow.
He returned a while later with two bags in tow. “I wasn’t sure about the specifics from your list, so I got some of everything. The man at the store took pity on me and helped me find it all.”
Eun Gi chattered away as he deposited bits and pieces from the bags around the room. Tessa sat up as he shook a couple pills from a container and handed them to her with a bottle of juice. She downed the painkillers and shuffled off to the bathroom without a word. Despite the pain, she cracked a smile when she noticed the three sizes of pads neatly lined up on the vanity.
When she came back out, there were enough treats on her nightstand to put an elephant into a diabetic coma.
“I didn’t know which you’d like best when you said chocolate, so I got a bunch of options.”
“I want to eat, but I might throw up right now.”
He frowned. “Is this normal, or should I be worried?”
She sank onto the bed. “Normal. For me anyway. I’m down to three or four times a year with the IUD, but it still kicks my ass.”
Tessa sipped at the chocolate milk he opened for her, and Eun Gi fussed with a sock and a bunch of hand warmers he’d stuffed inside, before offering her the makeshift hot pack.
“I looked up what might be helpful.”
She curled around the warmth and settled against the pillows.
He set his elbows on the bed.
She blinked, confused. “What?”
“What should I do? Do you want to be alone? Should I stay quietly in your general proximity? Do you want to cuddle? Something else my five-in-the-morning brain hasn’t thought of?”
“Cuddling is nice.”
He climbed back in and sprawled out, letting her shift and adjust so he could lay along her back.
“Any news on the breach?”
“Not much yet. I cleaned out what I could. Blocked about eighty troll accounts. We’ll keep managing it in the morning.”
“Thank you for being such a good husband,” she mumbled.
“I do what I can.” He pressed a kiss to her shoulder. “I just want to be what you deserve.”
The morning disappeared while Tessa slept, head on his lap. He worked on his phone and waited for Amelia to update him. Tessa let out a soft sound of distress and curled up tighter. He stroked a soothing hand over her hair until she relaxed again, content. His heart squeezed uncomfortably. He was entirely too protective of her.
He made the mistake of checking on the fan forums. A small pocket were calling for his removal from 24/7, which was nothing new but still pissed him off. Sprinkled in amongst the ire against him were comments about Tessa that set his blood boiling. The words they used to describe her churned his stomach.
He shouldn’t have looked. Kyung Mi was always telling him not to, but sometimes he was a slow learner. Most people were fairly supportive of him, but there would always be those who thought of him as property.
Tessa groaned and opened her eyes.
“Are you hungry?”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry I’m ruining our time in Jeju.”
“You don’t have to apologize. None of this is your fault. I’m happy to stay here and let you rest for as long as you need.”
Tears beaded on her lashes, and panic jolted his chest.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she whispered.
“Hey.” He pulled her into his arms. “Talk to me.”
“I’m scared for my career, and everything hurts. I get overwhelmed so easily when I’m in pain, and you’re being so nice. It’s hard to process it all right now.”
“What can I do?”
“You’ve already done so much.”
He smoothed a hand over her hair and tugged the blanket up to cover them. “You need to rest. We’re doing all we can.”
She hiccupped through another sob. “What will I do if I can’t get it all back?”
Heart and Seoul (The Seoul Series Book 1) Page 21