Contract Marriage 18+ [A Hopekook Fanfiction] ✓

3.3🥀

She remained seated, swivelling her desk chair every so often to keep him within sight. He eventually stopped his restless pacing to come to a standstill directly in front of her. She lowered her eyes to his expensive size eleven Korean loafers and fidgeted with the pencil she had picked up again.

She nearly leaped out of her skin and dropped the pencil with a muffled yelp when he captured her chin between his thumb and forefinger and gently tilted her face up until she raised her vulnerable gaze up to his unfathomable chocolate brown eyes. He let go of her chin to stroke the back of his hand down her soft cheek and she tried her best not to cringe from his touch but she wasn't quite successful in masking her reaction because his eyes iced over and his hand dropped heavily back to his side.

"What other secrets are you keeping from me, I wonder?" He mused beneath his breath.

"I have no secrets," she responded.

"What would you call this?" He indicated the room with a sweeping gesture and she laughed but there was absolutely no humour in the harsh and abrasive sound.

"This was hardly a secret," she shook her head bitterly. "If you'd come here at any time over the past year and a half, you would have known about this. I never lock the door... you were free to enter at any time."

"Why would I have had any reason to come up here?" He asked in his most maddeningly pragmatic voice. "It's hardly the most logical place for a workshop."

"It's also the one place I spend most of my time so of course you've never bothered to come up here," she responded sarcastically. "You've never willingly sought me out before, Jeon... and I believe that the only reason you're doing so now is because things aren't going according to whatever Master Plan you have devised for this so-called marriage of ours. Pretending an interest in me is your latest way of trying to keep me compliant, isn't it?"

"Stop trying to second guess me, hobie," he admonished gently. "You have no idea what makes me tick or what's going on in my head."

"Oh, I think I could definitely say the same about you. In fact I think I know you a lot better than you do me!"

"I doubt that," he dismissed, dropping his hands into the trouser pockets of his tailor-made, expensive suit, half-reclining against her work table and crossing one long leg over the other in a pose of sartorial, casual elegance.

"Fine..." she tilted her head as she ran a contemptuous gaze over him. "How do I take my coffee?" He frowned at the question before shrugging carelessly.

"Black..." he stated with the utmost authority.

"No, you take yours black, I don't drink coffee."

"This is pointless," he dismissed. "And juvenile..."

"Everything about me, or to do with me, is pointless to you," she observed bitterly.

"That's hardly..." he began but she interrupted him again, barely able to credit her own daring. She had never once stood up to him this way before but she was done being a doormat and just because she was trapped in this marriage at the moment did not mean she would to allow them to walk all over her anymore.

"Everything except my womb of course..." she laughed half-hysterically. "You have a lot of use for that! That's all I am to you, a womb on legs!"

"You're being ridiculous," he scoffed.

"What about my birthday?" She asked suddenly, still ignoring him. "When's my birthday?" His jaw clenched and he remained mute, keeping his eyes glued to hers.

"I see no need to prove myself in this way..."

"You can't answer it, can you?" She challenged. "Yours is on the twenty-fifth of February. You have four older sisters, Hyuna, Muhobie, Hawasa and Somi, and a large extended family, you dislike spinach and are allergic to bees, you like..."

"Enough!" He sliced an impatient hand through the air in front of his face, cutting her off abruptly. "This is bordering on stalkerish and it proves nothing other than you possess a creepy excess of information about me, which I must admit, I am more than a little uncomfortable with."

"Hardly stalkerish," she shook her head. "I have been living with you for more than eighteen months and I loved you when I married you, I was interested in knowing you. These are the kinds of mundane facts married couples know about each other. Everything I know about you, I had to learn for myself, none of it was ever volunteered. You didn't know about my hobby, or how I take my coffee, or birthday, is not because I've been secretive... I mean those things are hardly secrets, it's because you were just not interested enough in getting to know me. That's how it's been for the last eighteen months and that's how it still is, despite your sudden feigned interest in me." He started to say something but she raised her hand to quieten him and was amazed when he actually shut his mouth.

"I know now that I wasn't the bride you would have chosen for yourself," she managed to say it despite the huge lump in her throat but she couldn't meet his eyes as she acknowledged that painful fact. "You made that pretty clear on our wedding night and every day since then. But I think that at the very least, I deserved to be treated with some show of respect..." She bit her lower lip to stop its trembling and wrapped her arms around herself. He said nothing in response, just kept staring at her thoughtfully.

"I don't really know what you want me to say," he finally admitted and she smiled sadly.

"I know," she acknowledged with a dip of the head. "That's a major part of the problem."

He unexpectedly shoved himself away from the table and took the couple of steps it required to bring him standing directly in front of her. He hovered threateningly above where she sat and Hobie tried her best not to cower beneath his brooding regard. He then surprised her even further by dropping to his haunches in front of her, placing his hands on the arms of her chair and trapping her in her seat.

"I may not know these things you asked of me, Hobie," his sexy accent thickened as his voice dropped a few notches. "But I do know you..." She shook her head mutely; disconcerted by both his proximity and his direct stare. He was definitely not avoiding her eyes this time, his gaze just a frank and unflinching regard. She felt like a deer trapped in the headlights and she wanted to look away, she wanted to escape but she could barely breathe, much less avert her gaze.