Chapter 3

                                                                     Jungkook

Just to be clear, this is all I'll allow.

Surface talk. Nothing deeper. Nothing more.

These random debates we engage in keep my mind off the white-hot lust that's camped out in my chest.

Shooting the breeze in a bar won't get under my skin.

Well, no more than anything with him does. No more than any talk.

any moment.

Any night with my client, the sexy-as-sin rock star to who I hate being attracted.

The guy with the long, lean body.

I have seen him with his shirt off. The whole world has. It's his thing. He rips off his T-shirt at the end of the occasional show and tosses it into the audience.

I've seen those damn shirts go up for sale online for a thousand bucks or more. I've told him he should donate them to charity. He says they're for the fans, and he wants the fans to be happy.

It's yet another topic we don't see eye to eye on. We disagree on nearly everything.

That helps my keep-my-hands-off-him cause.

So, when he tosses the Beatles versus Stones, mustard versus ketchup, and California versus New York questions back at me, I deliberately pick the opposites.

"Beatles, ketchup, New York," I say, and take a drink of the seltzer.

He huffs as if mortally wounded by my different tastes. "The next thing I know You are going to tell me you prefer Santana's cover of 'Black Magic Woman' to the Fleetwood Mac classic," Tae says.

I give my most serious stare. "Everyone does. That's up to there on the list of cover songs that are better than the original.

He curses. "Dammit."

I grin. "I'm right and you know it."

His eyes narrow---those intense brown eyes that are so gorgeous, that I hate that I love looking at them. "You're right," he grumbles.

I wag a finger. "Don't make me prove you wrong, man. Maybe you want to try another music debate."

"I'm always game for a musical debate."

"Hit me up, then," I say. I'm a glutton for punishment.

"Fine, how's this?" Tae sets his empty glass on the table at Speakeasy and pierces me with those eyes.

"You can't possibly count Imagine Dragons as alt."

I shrug with a smirk. "I can, and I do."

He stabs the table with his finger. "That's sacrilege, man. That's what my teenage sister listens to."

I laugh. Like he thinks I don't know that's a big fat lie.

"Tae, come on. What do you take me for? You don't have a teenage sister."

"Exactly. That's my point." He leans back in the booth, stretching his long legs in front of him.

I narrow my brows. "You invented a sister to make a point? That makes zero sense."

"That's who listens to Imagine Dragons. Teenage girls. I'm not saying they aren't a cool band. I'm not saying their music isn't dope. But my point is they're not alt-rock, even if they started on college stations. Teens love them. alt-rock isn't for teens. Ergo..."

That's my opening, my way to needle him, since needling Tae is how I handle the gallons of lust I feel for him. I nod like I'm absorbing his point. "What you're saying is you don't like music that teenagers enjoy. You're saying that if a teenager likes it, it's not quality music," I say, having fun winding him up.

It takes my mind off this absolutely inconvenient attraction.

His voice rises, full of conversation fury. "That's not what I said at all, and you know it. you're just twisting my words to suit yourself."

I crack up. "You think that's what I'm doing? I'm twisting everything the great Kim Taehyung says to win my argument?"

"Maybe you are. Does it suit your agenda?" He finishes that question by edging up on the last word like it means something else.

Maybe it does. That's the crux of my problem.

Determined to overcome this weakness, I focus on the subject of music, only music. " Seems you're the only twisting logic to support your argument that teens don't have a musical taste. Did you know I have a sixteen-year-old sister?"

I wait for his answer. I'm confident he doesn't know this detail about me because I don't share shit with him and my life is not lived on the internet. I'm not the open book he is. the book of me is closed, and there is no social media to scroll through.

For reasons. for necessary reasons--namely self-preservation.

He huffs. "No. Thanks a lot for trusting me with your innermost secrets about your siblings."

I laugh. "Thanks for never asking." "Would you have answered if I had?

I cross my arms over my chest. "Why don't you ask and find out?"

He takes a deep breath like he's settling himself.

"Jeon Jungkook, do you have a sixteen-year-old sister? And while we are doing the family tree thing, do you have any other siblings?"

I grin. " I have a twenty-six-year-old sister who's a high school teacher. She's also good at chess, and she and her boyfriend do competitive couples kayaking together. My sixteen-year-old sister likes all kinds of music. She likes Imagine Dragons and Nirvana, the Beatles and Alanis Morissette, show tunes and Greyson Chance. she also likes Beethoven. her taste is wide and varied and electric. Also, Imagine Dragons 'Radioactive' was first released on alt radio before major labels picked it up.

That musical debate mic drop leaves Tae speechless for a minute. He drags a hand through his hair, lingering through the strands, making me think of the briefest pf seconds what it would feel like to run my hands through those strands.

How it would be to tighten a fist around it. Tug it.

Yank his head back.

I tell myself to settle down. What I really ought to be telling myself is to walk away. I should not sit here at this bar with him where we're simply talking.

Talking leads to feelings.

I have to stop believing this kind of talking is okay at its surface level.

None of these feelings for him is okay. Especially not tonight.

Especially knowing he was in a suite with Lexi and Jimin, her bodyguard. That's what's driving me crazy---the thought of what he might have been doing in there with everyone.

But maybe especially with Jimin. Especially with another guy.

My muscles tense all over at the reminder, like someone turned the crank inside me.

Tae sets his elbow on the table. "But why do I have to ask? Why don't you ever share?"

His question pierces me as if he can poke through the protective layer I wear when I'm around him. The one to keep him away because I can't stand how I feel.

I pick up my glass, drain the rest of the drink, and set it down. Then sidestep the messy truth. I don't share, because I don't want to let him in. It's easier to make him think he's keeping me out.

I give a casual shrug. "Because you don't really talk about anything besides yourself."

Tae points at me, incensed. "That's not true. You know that's a bald-faced lie. We talk all the time. We talk as we walk. I don't walk ten feet in front of you. I walk next to you all the time, brother," he says, his words piling on top of each other. The man is worked up, and it's kind of hot, kind of sexy.

Wait. Better revise that to all hot, all sexy.

"Yeah, you do?" I ask, just to keep him going, to hear him talk because I'm a masochist.

"I walk next to you every day and we discuss restaurants, clubs, the cities we go to...We talk about shit all the time.

He's not wrong. But tonight is different. the late hour possesses its own kind of energy, and so does this place, this bar, this conversation. It all feels dangerously close to not work. It feels too personal. And I'm simmering with my own latent jealousy, an emotion that's starting to make its way to the front burner. Nighttime tempts you to cross lines you shouldn't cross. So, once more, I deflect. "And yet I know you have a little brother and you didn't know I had any sisters."

He slams a palm against the table. "That does not count. None of that counts. You do not get to say that about me, because the world knows about Soobin. The world knows I have a little brother. Hell, he joined me on a concert tour a few years ago, doing the lights. Everyone knows everything about me. I am all over the internet. and you? You're nowhere. You exist in this bubble of no one knows anything about."

I lean across the table, closer to him, in his space. Maybe a sick part of me likes doling out crumbs. Maybe that part likes it because it gives me some semblance of control over this desire. "Fine. So, since we supposedly talk, do you any idea where I grew up?"

He pauses like he's cycling through options on a multiple-choice question.

I laugh. "I guess that's a no."

"Just tell me, man---where did you grow up? Don't play these little information games."

But games are a necessity with him. "I bet you'd like to know."

"Oh, so that's how we're doing it? You giveth, then you taketh away."

And I crack up. The man makes me crazy. He makes me laugh, and he makes me feel sometimes like this isn't a job. Hell, he makes me feel that way often.

I toss his a bone. "I'm from Maine."

The grin that crosses Tae's face is epic. "Jeon Jungkook is from Maine. It's all coming together. I'm picturing you at a lake house. Some gorgeous views. Your dad was a fisherman. am I right? Tell me I'm right. I know I'm right."

I stare at him straight. "My dad is a firefighter." "That tracks."

I look at my watch. My shift ends soon.

I need to cut this conversation off; it's too much fun.

This can't last all night. his friends went back to their suite, and that's my reminder that he has places to be. That this attraction I feel for him is going nowhere. time is put in not just on the back burner, but in the ice chest.

"Don't you need to return to your private party?" I bite out.

"No," he says, all casual. "I'm done there."

 I see the inside, black tar roiling through my veins. I try, I try so damn hard not to picture him at his private party, not to see what he might have been doing a few hours ago.

"Where do you want to go, then?" I ask, aiming to keep my tone even.

But failing miserably.

I can hear the jealousy in it.

All I can do is hope he doesn't pick up on it.

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