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Jungkook stared at the note.  Jina had endangered herself to save him.  And he had been angry with her for disobeying him.  When all along she had been protecting him.   He glanced up into her eyes.  She had placed herself in an unknown danger to defend him.  Again.

“Why?” he whispered.

Confused, she frowned.  “Why what?”

“Why did you endanger yourself – not once, but twice – to save me?”

He felt tears rising from somewhere in his chest.  Was that his heart that was releasing them?

She simply stared at him.  At a loss for words.  Still afraid to expose all of her heart.  

Finally, she mumbled lamely, “You’re my husband.”

He shook his head.  “That’s not gonna cut it.  I wasn’t your husband the first time you threw yourself into harm’s way for me.  We weren’t even friends.  We had never even spoken to each other.”

His gorgeous, obsidian eyes were boring a hole through to the back of her head.  She swallowed and looked down at the blanket under her hand.   Just to escape the intensity in his gaze.  Her heart was running away with her.  Why was she so scared?

He was watching her emotions play out across her countenance.  Something tender, vulnerable, then replaced by fear.

“Hey,” he whispered softly as he walked towards her, “you don’t have anything to fear in me.  I swear it.”

The tenderness in his tone made her eyes flood with tears.  He watched as she blinked, and one fell to hit her hand.  He arrived at the side of their bed and sat down.  He reached out and picked up that hand.  He bent and brushed a kiss across its tear streak.  She trembled.  And he felt it.  He scooted closer to her.  He reached for her and pulled her into his arms.  Safely up against his chest.

“I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

“Don’t be so kind to me.  I’m not used to it.  Men are brutal.  They aren’t sweet.  You…you’ll change your mind.  You’ll come to hate me.  They always do.”

Her words broke his heart.  Had the men in her life always wanted something from her?  Something she was unwilling to give?

“Who touched you?” he whispered.

She cringed.  So many.  When she was younger.  Before she’d learned how to evade them.  But no one had breached all her defenses.  And none had ever kissed her.

“It doesn’t matter,” she muttered.

Jungkook cringed, and his arms tightened around her.  “It matters to me.  Very much.”

“Too many to count,” she murmured, and then she wept against that strong shoulder again.

His sad eyes grew sadder.  “Jina, have you already been raped by someone?”

She shook her head violently.  “No.  Never!  It never went that far.  But when I was a child, they would touch me.  Until I grew wiser and learned how to evade them.”

He wanted to throw up.  This poor girl.  No wonder she was so afraid of men.

“I really don’t understand,” he voiced his thoughts.  “I still don’t understand why you would place yourself in danger for me.”

He drew back and gazed down at her.  But she wouldn’t meet his eye.  Tears began to stream down her face.  She turned her head away from him.

“Please don’t make me say it.”

“Say what?”

“It’ll make me vulnerable to you.  And then you’ll take whatever you want.  And leave me empty.”

Her words caused an ache to erupt from deep within his heart and spiral through him.  He drew her up against him again.  He just wanted to hold her close.  

No, that wasn’t true.  He wanted to completely obliterate the sorrow in her soul.  He wanted to touch her so tenderly that he wiped out the memory of every other touch she’d ever known.  Most especially, the wicked ones.  He wanted to kiss her lips with a sweetness that made her weep and healed all her wounds.  With a kindness that assured her that she was – and always would be – safe with him.  He wanted to surround Jina with himself and become her strong fortress.

But he recognized that he was going to have to go slowly with this one.  Approach her delicately.  So he began to develop a plan…

To woo her with lovingkindness.