Page 117 of Hamartia
“What of? Tell me. I bet it’s not that scary.”
“Of everything,” he says. “Of having you and losing you, of having you and losing everything else.” He buries his head in my neck and breathes deep, like the very scent of me is comforting to him.
“You know, before that night in New York…I think I was more terrified than I’ve ever been in my life.”
He pulls back, studying me. “Really?”
“Yeah, really. I threw up before I came to your place.” I wasn’t ever going to tell him this, but it feels important right now that I do. It feels like something he might understand. Might get comfort from.
“And you still came?”
“Twice as I remember it? Or was it three times?” I smile and he hits me playfully on the shoulder. “I was terrified, Jae, but I’d never been more certain of what I wanted than I was sitting on the bathroom floor of that hotel room with the taste of vomit in my mouth. I was scared of losing everything too. But when I thought about what I might gain from it…” I squeeze him tighter then, meaningfully. “It was so fucking worth it.”
“I wasn’t scared then,” he admits. “But I am now.”
“I can’t control everything else, but I can promise you that I won’t hurt you, Jaehyun.”
It’s the one thing, the only thing, I know for certain. I’d never ever hurt him. And if he wants it, I’ll give him everything. He can have every single part of me: the talent, the lack of it, the daddy issues, the successes, the failures.
“If you want this, with me, then we’re doing it together. And I’ll be right fucking here beside you as long as you want me to be, however you want me to be.”
He stares back at me a long time without saying anything, then says: “And if I tell you that I want you as a friend, that I cannot offer you any more than that?”
The ground falls away and my breath catches in my throat. Jae as a friend. One I can look at but never touch. One I can talk to and listen to, but not have. Would I seriously be okay with that?
“Is that what you want?” I ask.
Those ten seconds he takes to think about it are the longest of my life. But in them I decide that yes, I’ll take that. I said I would and I meant it. I’ll take whatever he’s willing to give me.
“No, it is not,” he replies. “I want more, Raphael. I want to love you.”
I almost sag with relief as he reaches for the button of my jeans, undoing them to pull me out. I do the same, then maneuver him closer so that our cocks are lined up, hot smooth skin against hot smooth skin. It’s dry but it still feels like fireworks going off under my skin. Sparks of pure white pleasure across my thighs and balls.
I kiss him hot and hard, my hips fucking up into his fist as I try to jerk him off at the same time. I come quick and without warning, my orgasm rushing out of my body like a fucking geyser. He spreads it over the head of his own cock and arches his body backwards, resting on one hand, to fuck up into his own fist now. When he’s about to come, I lean in and catch the spill of him on my tongue, chin and cheek. Hot streaks of white that taste of him.
When he’s done, he buries himself against me again, wrapping his arms tight around my neck. His breaths are soft and hot and quick from his orgasm. Moments later, long after they’ve slowed, he speaks, “Thank you for the song. It was very beautiful.”
I press my lips to his hair and whisper, “You’re welcome.”
We arrive back in Seoul in the afternoon of the 27th. I’d have been happy to stay in the mountains—avoid the fuck out of this dinner tonight—but these are his friends (and his ex) and I’ve already decided that what’s important to him is important to me. So I’ll go. I’ll be fucking charming too. Not give this guy any reason not to like me.
Jae had won my mom over. She’d called late on Christmas day and asked—demanded—I put him on the phone.
This was after he’d given me his last gift, which I can’t think too much about or my head will explode. Because it was lingerie.Fucking lingerie.After he’d made me open the last gift, he’d disappeared into the bedroom to change into them. Lace white panties and thigh-highs which he’d let me bend him over the couch and fuck him in, after we’d showered and changed into pajamas.
With mom he’d been overly polite and nervous, smiling his high-cheeked smile (still pink from the shower) and nodding at everything she said. Even when she invited him to her birthday dinner in February. I’d told him later he didn’t have to make it, but he said that he didn’t have his schedule yet but that he would do everything he could to make it there. If that’s what I wanted.
Tonight for Kai’s dinner, I’m wearing the Gucci shirt Jae bought me in New York and a pair of black jeans, my favorite pair of well-worn black boots and half my hair pulled back into a knot. He’d looped some silver around my neck from his jewelry collection; a long necklace with a cross on it and two shorter ones which sat higher up. He appraises me with a warm look which I think might be about the shirt but which I hope is about more than that.
“Very sexy,” he says, fixing one of the earrings I gave him for Christmas to his right ear.
He’s wearing the tightest pair of jeans I’ve ever seen—so tight I’m seriously concerned for his cock and balls—and another of his Chanel sweaters, both black. The glint of the earring against his styled silver hair makes him look sleek and expensive.
“I knew that shirt would look good on you.”
“I knew those earrings would look good on you.”
He smiles as he finishes putting on the other one. I’d watched him put make-up on earlier. A dab of something under his eye, a flick of mascara over his lashes and a tint of pink cream on his cheeks and lips. He smells incredible too. The cologne I’d always thought reminded me of chocolate and Christmas I see comes in a small golden orb-shaped bottle with a Korean name. He’d looked shocked when I told him I didn’t really wear cologne. Then offered me something ‘manly’ from his collection.