Page 21 of Damian & Jun, Episodes 5-8 (The Residency Boys #7)

Damian caught him from behind. Jun screamed. He lashed out, jamming back with his elbows. Damian had him around the waist. He picked him up from the ground, moving him toward a tree. Jun kicked. Damian spun him around.

Jun slammed his lips against Damian’s. Cold skin, then warm breath. Tongue. Frigid nose. Warm caress. He forgot to fight, startled by the sensation.

A tree hit his back, large and broad.

He threw his arms around Damian’s neck. “You caught me.”

Damian pressed his thigh between Jun’s legs, forcing him up on his toes, pressing him into the bark. “You made me work for it.”

Jun laughed, short and quick, through fast breaths. He nuzzled Damian’s throat and bit, rolled his hips against Damian’s groin.

Damian threaded his fingers under Jun’s hat, tangling them in his hair, and turned his head to the side. He nuzzled the arch of Jun’s neck and sank blunt teeth into him, sucking hard enough to leave a mark. “Mine.”

Mine. Just one fucking word, and he wanted to melt. To cry, to scream. He clawed at Damian, pulling him in farther, if that was even possible.

Damian bit his way up Jun’s neck to his ear, sucking and licking at the lobe and up the curve. He kissed across his jaw, sucking and nipping his way to Jun’s lips. His hands made their way inside Damian’s coat, gripping and clawing at his shirts.Jun writhed and whimpered.

“Mine,” Damian breathed. And carefully bit Jun’s lower lip.

Jun groaned into the sting. Raw yet careful. Powerful but tempered. His eyes closed. His body went heavy in Damian’s grasp.

Damian drew back.

Jun blinked back his vision. He felt drunk. Blood pumped through his body with a steady quick thump-thump of recent exertion, yet he was as relaxed as if he were about to sleep. “Tell me this won’t end.”

Damian dragged in a breath, lips parted. He looked like he was about to say something sane or rational.

Neither had a place here.

Jun dug his nails into Damian’s back beneath his coat. “Don’t be good, DaSu. Be the wolf. Bite me, bleed me, have me. Promise me you can be the monster.

“Jun.” Damian breathed out his name like a prayer and curse.

Jun growled. “Promise me.” He lifted himself up, pressing back on the tree, and wrapped his thighs around Damian’s waist. Damian grabbed Jun’s ass, holding him in place. “Promise me,” Jun ordered, dragging nails over Damian’s shirts and into his skin. “Promise me the wolf.”

Damian pulled back, getting his arms better under Jun, and surged against him, slamming him into the tree once more, ripping the hat from his head and bending his neck to show the unmarked side. He bit hard, sucked, and dragged his teeth up the tendons to his jaw. “Do you love the wolf?”

Jun trembled, clutching at Damian through the assault. He tried to turn his face away. Damian grabbed him by his hair and forced his face forward, licked across the front of his throat, and bit along his jaw to his chin. “Why do you love the wolf, Jun?”

“A wolf will stay. A wolf will understand.”

So simple. So real. Such utter stark truth under dark trees and wildland silence.He was always going to associate winter with clarity.

“I will stay.” Damian pressed his lips to Jun’s collarbone.

“Really, truly stay?” Jun’s heart beat for reasons other than the run. He pulled his hands free of Damian’s clothes and wrapped his palms around the dome of Damian’s head, turning his face upward so he could look down into it. “My world is burning, and I don’t want to put out the flames.”

“I like where the flames take you.” Heaven and hell, Damian looked like he meant it. No fear, only fierceness, possession. Desire.

He had to know. He needed to know how far the insanity went. “I want to fuck in a ruined church, rip off my shirt, show them the scars. I want them to see, DaSu.”

“See what, wolfling?”

“How insane they made me.”

“You’re not insane.”

No, he was drowning in it. He hadn’t known until right at that moment, but he was. He was drowning in the desire to scream. He wanted to burn with cold and dance like he was outside their world. He wanted to scream in their faces and fuck the consequences.

“Not by your law, no. But for them, sane is tame . I’m not tame, DaSu.”

“Never, ever”—Damian punctuated each word with kisses against Jun’s chest—“be tame. Not for me, not for anyone.”

“I’ll stain you, Alpha.” They’ll destroy you with me. They have to. They can’t abide the unbroken, the natural, the uncontrolled.

“I don’t care.”

“If you screamed, if you tore down the walls of your father’s house because it wasn’t a home, what would they call you?”

“What they called me the first time, a criminal.”

The first time. How could he have forgotten? No, he hadn’t forgotten.

“That’s what they want me to be.”

Damian’s eyes glittered, and his teeth showed. “I won’t let them, wolfling, Jun. You’re good. You’re everything they’re not, and I won’t let them fucking win. I won’t let you let them win.”

This was the wildness in Damian that called to Jun. The fierceness and firmness that came from being an outcast that had survived. The blood in Damian’s veins held the wisdom Jun longed to drink. This man was precious beyond measure, the center of his world, a rock in a hurricane.

“I’m not good, Alpha.” Jun let his forehead rest against Damian’s.

“I’ve been good so long my wings lost all their feathers.

They burned. All that’s left is a demon.

” He raised his head so he could look into Damian’s face and stroked his cheek.

“They’ll hate you when they hate me. When I show them who I am. ”

Damian stared back, unwavering, then kissed him hard, pulling him lower down the tree so they were face-to-face and wrapping Jun up against him.

“You’re mine. So burn their edicts. Scream.

Curse them. But your blood is mine. Your sanity is mine.

Your body is mine. You don’t have permission to harm what is mine.

” He wrapped his fist in the front of Jun’s shirt.

“What if I burn up, DaSu? What if I burn out?” He had to ask, had to be clear. “I don’t know how far this demon in me can go. What if that’s all I’m fit to be—what I’ve been—their slave? What if this is the end, my explosion, before I’m over?”

Damian pressed his forehead to Jun’s, speaking into his face, sharing his breath.

“All your strength, you gave it to them. Dancing for them. Bowing for them. Bridling your own brilliance for them. That’s over.

That strength is yours. All that power that you bent to their will, that power is yours; it belongs to you. ”

Jun’s air caught in his lungs. Damian pulled back so their eyes met.

“All that power, all that brilliance and energy you offered, that is yours. Claim it.”

Tears . That was what was on his face. Jun blinked at them. “There are so many things I don’t know. So many things they made sure I did not know. I don’t know if what’s in my mind is mine or theirs. I only know I’m angry.”

“Then tell me, and I’ll tell you if it’s worth believing.”

Could he? Was he truly willing? Would Damian hold the storm inside him and pull out the threads that mattered?

“There are so many lies. The butterfly of my soul doesn’t care if it's a man or an insect anymore. It just wants to know the color of the sky.”

Damian grinned, his teeth showing in the dim space between them. “It’s midnight blue and brilliant white.”

Jun laughed through his tears. “All week, all week, I’ve been writing and practicing and pretending.

It almost feels real, but right here, with everything I’m afraid of, with all the danger, this feels more real.

We were running, and you were chasing, and I could smell the cold, and this, this feels horrible and real and beautiful. Tell me it’s real.”

Damian forced Jun back against the tree again until the bark marked ridges in his back through his hoodie. “It’s real.”

Jun groaned into the brutality of Damian’s force.

His eyes slid closed, and his mouth kept moving as if Damian were pushing everything out of him that was too much to keep inside.

“Mi Hi keeps talking about keeping the fans happy. And Yohei is focused on being professional and planning a solid fresh start. Jaewoong worries about staying respectable in K-pop. Su-jin is being the perfect maknae online. And I…”

He put his head down, gasping a little, trying to speak the things clawing at his insides.

“I want to burn it down. I want to sing like I sang at the restaurant but so, so much worse. I don’t want to be good, DaSu.

Being good feels like a curse. I was good for my mom when I went to my dad, and I was good for my dad when he left me with Bak, and then I was good for Bak.

I’ve been good, and good, and good, and he sold me.

He fucking sold me. And now people imply that I should have been good then too.

“Being good is going to kill me. Good people are going to kill me. People will tell you to be good until all the blood in your body is gone. And then they’ll tell you to die good.

They’ll write about it in history books, whether you died with dignity, whether you met your fate resigned and calm. I want to fucking scream.”

The rage went out of him. He sagged in Damian’s grip. “I’m sorry, you came for something fun, and I…”

Damian pressed his lips to Jun’s forehead. “And you showed me something real. Something dark. Something beautiful. Entrancing rage.”

“This rage—” Jun shuddered. Fear was trying to take his voice. “What if it drives you away?”

“It won’t. And if it starts to consume you—consume us—I’ll bind it up or tie it down and spank it out of you or wring it from you.

I’ll fuck it out of you. Or I’ll turn you loose and watch you burn them down.

Scream, Jun. Scream as loud as you need.

You can’t scream louder than I’ve wanted to scream.

You can’t use words uglier than I’ve uttered.

You can’t be angrier than I’ve been angry. ”