For Green, it was truly an incomprehensible situation.

It had clearly started as light drinking to help fall asleep easily.

The whiskey she tasted for the first time was strong and hot as if burning her throat, but the lingering flavor in her mouth was indescribably fragrant.

Like the whiskey advertisement slogan “A temptation you can resist is not a temptation,” Green shuddered with each sip but could not resist the allure of the next glass.

Sun Woo silently watched her from beside.

“Sun Woo, when did you find out that the vice chairman wasn’t your birth mother?”

When she was somewhat tipsy, Green asked the question she had been hesitating to ask all along.

“When I was 9. My father told me.”

“Wow. Your father is really strange. Don’t people usually try to hide it until their child becomes an adult? Sun Woo, you must have been very surprised then.”

“Well, just a little…”

Sun Woo’s nonchalant response made Green’s heart ache even more.

“Do you have any memories of your birth mother?”

“No. We parted when I was three.”

“…Do you know what kind of person she was?”

“She dated my father in college, but they had different thoughts. So they broke up, and my father had an arranged marriage, but he didn’t know about me before that.”

“Ah, so it wasn’t an affair!”

Green looked a bit surprised, and at the same time, apologetic.

She felt ashamed for having prejudice against Jin Young Cheol, and for criticizing him without knowing the facts.

Sun Woo smiled bitterly.

“That’s the one thing my father can be proud of to the vice chairman.”

“Do you know anything about your birth mother? How is she doing now?”

“I heard she remarried soon after giving me up.”

“Don’t you want to meet her?”

“Not particularly.”

Sun Woo, who had been slowly savoring the whiskey aroma and emptying his glass, now asked Green.

“How did you feel when you first heard that I was born out of wedlock?”

“Hmm… When I was about 7, my mom bought me a pretty umbrella. I carried it around even on sunny days, and my friends were very envious. So I said, ‘Ask your moms to buy you one too.’ But one friend didn’t have a mother. I was so shocked when I found out later.”

“Did you feel very sorry for your friend?”

“Yes. Because I had a mom, I thought everyone else did too. I couldn’t even imagine that someone might not have a mother.”

“That’s how it is at that age.”

“So when I found out you were born out of wedlock, it hurt my heart. Thinking about how Sun Woo must have had a huge desert in his heart all his life.”

“…”

“Even now, thinking about 9-year-old Sun Woo makes my heart ache. The moment you learned you didn’t have a mother, it must have felt like the world you were standing on collapsed.”

Perhaps due to the alcohol, her emotions intensified easily, and tears welled up in Green’s eyes. Sun Woo, who had been staring intently at her, gently wiped away her tears with his ring finger.

“It’s all in the past now.”

As Sun Woo’s touch reached her, Green’s already flushed cheeks turned even redder.

Intending to use the alcohol as an excuse, she reached for the bottle, only to find it was already empty.

“What’s this? Did the bottle spring a leak?”

Green turned the bottle upside down and shook it, finally acknowledging that they had finished an entire bottle.

“Wow, we really drank a whole bottle.”

She shook the empty bottle and laughed playfully.

“Not we, you drank most of it.”

While coldly pointing out Green’s error, Sun Woo seemed to enjoy seeing her relaxed after a long time and offered more alcohol.

“Shall we have another bottle?”

It was just a question about having another bottle of alcohol, but Green felt good. It felt as if he valued her opinion very much.

Her father had never asked for her opinion even when proceeding with the marriage, but Sun Woo’s attitude of asking for Green’s thoughts on even the trivial matter of pouring another bottle made her feel grateful.

So she kept smiling at him softly. She couldn’t help but smile. She liked him helplessly.

“Sure. After all, all the alcohol in this house belongs to you, Sun Woo.”

“Is that so?”

“Is it just the alcohol that’s yours? Everything in this house belongs to Jin Sun Woo, so why are you asking me?”

Green laughed as if she found it amusing that he was asking about something so obvious, but Sun Woo didn’t laugh. Instead, he looked at her as if he could devour her.

“If the alcohol is mine, and everything in this house is mine.”

When Green came to her senses, he had already moved close enough to be right in front of her.

“Then is Han Green also mine?”

Green’s lips moved to answer, but strangely, no voice came out.

Sun Woo, who had been staring intently at Green’s small, plump lips as they moved, leaned in even closer.

As their breaths touched each other’s noses and cheeks, his breath and her breath slowly intertwined.

They had clearly drunk the same whiskey, but the scent of her exhalation and his exhalation was different.

Sun Woo, not taking his eyes off Green, tilted his head slightly and moved even closer.

It was a precarious situation where their lips would touch if either of them just breathed a little harder, but neither moved for a while.

“No matter how I look at it, Han Green is Jin Sun Woo’s, but both our fathers say she isn’t. What do you think?”

Sun Woo whispered again in a low voice, his lips close to her ear. The sensation tickled like a butterfly’s wings.

“Is Han Green Jin Sun Woo’s?”

Her heart feeling like it might burst, Green unknowingly swallowed hard.

Feeling her lips drying up, Green slowly moistened them with her tongue and barely managed to answer.

“Yes. And…”

“And?”

“Jin Sun Woo is mine too.”

As soon as Green finished speaking, Sun Woo fiercely devoured her lips.

As if a taut rein had snapped, he grabbed both her cheeks and pressed on, not giving the surprised Green a moment’s chance to escape.

Cornered like a hunted rabbit, Green had no choice but to hit his shoulders hard as she struggled to breathe.

After a long while, Sun Woo finally released her lips, but instead, he relentlessly nuzzled her earlobe and nape. As if he couldn’t bear not having his lips touch her body for even a moment.

Even while catching her breath, Green’s body trembled involuntarily from the unfamiliar stimulation every time Sun Woo’s lips touched her.

“Sun, Sun Woo, wait a moment.”

As she tried to push him away, her hand inadvertently touched Sun Woo’s firm bare chest. The heartbeat transmitted to her palm was beating wildly.

Thinking that her own heart must be just as out of control, Green felt dizzy.

Sun Woo firmly grasped Green’s hand that was touching near his heart.

“Are you trying to provoke me?”

“No, that’s not it…”

It was one mountain after another. As Green hurriedly tried to pull her hand away from Sun Woo’s grasp, she accidentally touched the belt of his robe.

The belt, which was already on the verge of coming undone from their intense kiss earlier, fell helplessly at Green’s touch.

As his upper body was exposed defensively in front of Green, Sun Woo’s eyes narrowed. Seeing that ominously shining gaze, Green felt like a rabbit thrown before a tiger.

“Even now, you’re not trying to provoke me?”

Green, feeling wronged, shook her head vigorously. For every step he took forward, she took one step back.

“Why are you avoiding me? Didn’t you say I was yours?”

“That’s right, isn’t it?”

Whether it was stubbornness or intoxication, Green stopped backing away. The rabbit even bravely took a step towards the predator.

“Because you’re mine.”

As if playing piano keys, Green stroked Sun Woo’s chest with her slender fingers.

As the well-developed muscles swelled tautly under her fingertips, Green’s eyes widened in wonder.

When her mischievous hand moved down from his chest to his perfectly sculpted abs, Sun Woo growled as he grabbed her hand. By now, Sun Woo’s robe had fallen to the floor.

“Don’t tell me I have to hold a knife between my teeth and endure here?”

For a moment, Green hesitated to answer. She was honestly curious about how he would react if she said yes.

But she was a million times more curious about the depth of pleasure he would lead her to if she said no.

Green stood on her tiptoes and wrapped her arms around Sun Woo’s neck. Then she pressed her body tightly against his upper body.

“No.”

She kissed him. It was clumsy but passionate, a kiss that felt more desperate because of its awkwardness.

Sun Woo unknowingly let out a moan and strongly pulled Green’s waist into an embrace.

As if having thrown away his last bit of self-control, Sun Woo’s lips urgently devoured Green’s, and his hands pulled her nightgown over her head and threw it far away.

Though embarrassed, Green did not avoid Sun Woo’s intense affectionate assault.

Just before losing reason to their fierce greed for each other, Green barely managed to cling to him and say,

“Take me to the bedroom.”

Sun Woo, who didn’t even have the leisure to go to the master bedroom, carried Green to the room closest to the kitchen. It was the guest room that Green had once claimed, saying she would use it as her own room.

The two who went to the bed sought each other’s lips again and again like starved people.

At this moment, it didn’t matter at all whether he was born out of wedlock, or whether their fathers were urging them to divorce.

Only the fact that she was his, and he was hers, mattered.

When they first met, they had already instinctively recognized each other’s loneliness and deficiency.

Because their hearts had paired before their bodies, when they finally became one, they experienced an indescribable thrill and sense of unity with complete fulfillment.

At that unfamiliar and overwhelming emotion, Green ended up shedding tears.

“Don’t cry, Green.”

He tenderly licked away Green’s tears, kissing her eyes, nose, and mouth without pause.

Seeing Sun Woo’s eyes still filled with heat, Green suddenly felt embarrassed. In her embarrassment, she turned her back to him and curled up into a ball.

Sun Woo, silently laughing at such a Green, stretched out his thick arm and held her tightly from behind. Then he lay down next to her in the same position.

As his strong arm perfectly enclosed Green in his embrace, she felt as comfortable as if lying in a cradle.

She had never imagined that this man’s body, so much larger than hers, would fit her body so perfectly.

Just as Green was finally regaining her composure from his comfortable and relaxed breathing tickling her nape, Sun Woo’s lips traveling down her spine gradually became more sensual.

“Sun Woo, why…”

“I’m still hot, how about you?”

Though he was asking for Green’s opinion while tormenting her spine, Sun Woo’s eyes were already wavering with desire as if he wouldn’t accept a refusal.

“I…”

Green was flustered seeing Sun Woo reignited, but as his lips and touch persistently delved into her body, a secret heat began to bubble up inside her as well.

Finally turning towards Sun Woo, Green embraced his neck and bravely plunged into a world of unfamiliar sensations.