She never meant to start sleeping with the lights on.

It began the night the fever took her—sudden, violent, the kind that left her skin burning and her sheets soaked.

Lisa had curled into herself on the mattress, shivering even as sweat slicked every inch of her, when the darkness behind her eyelids shifted.

He was already there.

Jungkook stood at the foot of the bed as if he had always belonged in the space between her ribs and her next breath.

No longer the cold, distant best friend of her older brother who barely spared her more than a nod in the hallway.

No longer the man who looked through her at family dinners like she was furniture. Here, in the fever-dream, his eyes were dark and endless, and his voice was low enough to vibrate through bone.

“Did you miss me, love?”

He rasped it while hovering over her, planting wet, open-mouthed kisses along the column of her throat. The heat of his mouth made her arch, a helpless sound spilling from her lips.

“Jungkook, please don’t tease…”

She moaned it, already aching, already wet. The dream never wasted time with pretense. His hands—large, sure, slightly calloused—slid under the thin sleep shirt she hadn’t remembered putting on and pushed it up, baring her breasts to the cool air of the dreamscape. His mouth followed, hot and insistent, sucking one nipple until it peaked hard against his tongue while his fingers rolled the other.

“I want you... so much it hurts.”

The confession tore out of her without permission. His answering chuckle was dark, almost fond.

“Shh, baby girl. I’ve got you... Always. Just relax and let me take care of you…”

He settled between her thighs as if he owned the space. One hand pressed her knee outward.

“Spread your legs wider… Breathe… Breathe with me, my love…”

His seductive, purring whispers did something to her—enchanting her, pulling her deeper into the bottomless depth of his dark eyes with every slow thrust and soft kiss. He rocked his hips with gentle insistence, making her feel every thick inch as he sank into her, stretching her open until the burn melted into pure, devastating pleasure.

He didn’t rush.

He never rushed.

Each roll of his hips was deliberate, deep, grinding against that place inside her that made stars burst behind her eyelids.

His gentle insistence was what drove her crazy with lust, stripping away every lingering shred of shyness until she surrendered completely.

She clung to his shoulders, nails digging into muscle, legs locked around his waist as he fucked her through one climax and straight into the next. The wet sound of their bodies meeting filled the dream, filthy and intimate. He murmured praise against her mouth between kisses—how good she took him, how pretty she looked when she came, how he would never let her go...

***

She woke gasping, sheets twisted around her legs, thighs slick, heart hammering. The fever was gone by morning, but the dreams were not.

They returned every night.

Sometimes he took her slow, almost reverent, pinning her wrists above her head while he rolled his hips in deep, grinding circles that made her sob his name.

Other nights he was ravenous—flipping her onto her stomach, hauling her hips up, and driving into her so hard the dream-bedframe rattled.

He would reach around to rub her clit in tight circles until she shattered, then keep going until she was oversensitive and shaking, begging him to stop and never stop in the same breath.

She started going to bed earlier.

Started leaving the window open even in winter, as if the cold air might somehow invite him faster. Started touching herself in the shower while replaying the way his voice dropped when he called her *baby girl*, the way his teeth scraped her shoulder when he came.

In the waking world, Jungkook remained unreachable.

He still came by the house sometimes—tall, quiet, dressed in black, answering her brother’s jokes with the barest curve of his mouth.

He never looked at her longer than necessary.

When their hands brushed reaching for the same glass in the kitchen, he pulled away as if burned.

Cold. Off-limits.

The best friend who had known her since she was fourteen and still treated her like a child who should stay out of adult conversations.

She hated him for it.

She needed him more than air.

***

The addiction grew teeth. She began to dread mornings. Reality felt thin, washed-out, compared to the vivid heat of the dreams. She would linger in bed long after the alarm, eyes closed, trying to chase the fading echo of his body over hers.

Once she almost missed a university lecture because she had stayed under the covers, fingers between her legs, whispering his name like a prayer until she came with a broken sound.

She didn’t know she was being watched.

Didn’t know that the man who appeared in her fever dreams was not a figment at all.

Jungkook had been assigned as her guardian the day her bloodline awakened—forgotten magic that had slept in her veins for generations until the fever cracked it open. He was bound to her by old oaths older than either of them. In the waking world he kept his distance because proximity was dangerous; the magic responded to him, and if he touched her while she was conscious the seal would begin to fray too soon.

But in the dreamscape the rules bent.

There... he could touch.

There... he could claim.

There he could pour enough of himself into her that the magic stayed quiet a little longer.

He told himself it was duty.

He told himself the way she moaned his name, the way she spread for him so eagerly, the way she clung and begged and came apart under him—none of that was supposed to matter.

It mattered.

Every night he stepped into her dreams and found her already reaching for him.

Every night he took her apart with the same devastating patience, and every night she fell a little deeper.

He watched the addiction take root and did nothing to stop it. If anything, he fed it—whispering filth against her throat while he fucked her through another orgasm, promising he would always be there, always take care of her, always keep her safe.

“Mine,” he would growl against her ear as he spilled inside her, hips stuttering. “Even when you wake up. Even when you hate me for looking through you. You’re still mine.”

She never remembered those words in the morning.

She only remembered the pleasure. The heat. The way he made her feel wanted in a way the real world never did.

One night she tried to stay under longer.

She felt the edges of the dream thinning, felt the pull of waking, and she clung to him harder, legs locked around his waist, face buried in his neck.

“Don’t let me go,” she begged, voice cracked. “Please... Jungkook, I don’t want to wake up. I never want to wake up.”

His rhythm faltered for half a second. Something raw and almost human flickered across his face before the dream-mask slid back into place.

He kissed her like he was drowning, rolled them so she was astride him, and guided her hips down until he was buried to the hilt.

“Then don’t,” he murmured against her mouth. “Stay with me a little longer, love. Take what you need.”

She rode him until her thighs burned and her vision whited out. When she finally collapsed against his chest, he held her through the aftershocks, one hand stroking down her spine, the other still buried in her hair.

...Outside the dream, in the quiet dark of her real bedroom, Jungkook stood at the foot of her bed—solid, breathing, eyes glowing faintly with the same magic that lived in her blood.

He watched her sleep, lips parted, cheeks flushed from the dream he had just left.

He reached out, almost touched her cheek, then curled his fingers into a fist and stepped back into the shadows.

Soon the seal would break completely. Soon she would know what she was—and what he was to her.

Until then, he would keep coming to her every night.

And she would keep choosing the dream over the cold, distant man who was already hers in every way that mattered.