Chapter 1: The Temple at Midnight
The courtyard held its breath. Min’s sneakers whispered over cracked marble, the sound swallowed by the humid night and the distant, rhythmic chant from the main hall. He came here to disappear, to sink into the quiet dark between the crumbling lanterns where the jasmine grew too thick. The temple was supposed to be empty.
Voices. Low, guttural.
He froze, pressed against the cool, rough stone of a prayer wall, peering around its edge. Three men stood in the halo of flickering votive candles. Two were hulking shadows, shoulders tense. The third, the one they faced, made the air tighten.
Jung.
Even from twenty feet, Min recognized the controlled stillness of him. The way he stood, a pillar of immovable suit and sharp jawline, listening. One of the other men gestured wildly, his voice a hissed stream of Thai. “...the shipment from the river was intercepted. The police didn’t find it. He did. He’s mocking you.”
Jung didn’t move. “And?”
“We cut his hands off. Send them back in a box.”
A flicker of a smirk touched Jung’s lips, but it held no warmth. “No. You find where he sleeps. You take the girl he thinks he hid. You bring her to the warehouse on the pier. Then he learns what it costs to touch what’s mine.”
The finality in his voice was absolute. A verdict. Min’s heart hammered against his ribs. He shouldn’t be hearing this. He took a step back, and his ankle turned on a loose piece of marble. The skittering sound was like a gunshot in the silence.
Six eyes snapped to the shadows where he stood.
Min didn’t even breathe. The two bodyguards moved, but Jung’s hand, a simple lift of a finger, stopped them cold. He stared at Min, his gaze slicing through the dim light. Min felt seen, flayed open.
“Leave us,” Jung said, not looking at his men.
They vanished into the dark without a sound. Now it was just the two of them, the stone Buddha with its mossy smile, the cloying jasmine, and the tremble starting deep in Min’s bones.
Jung walked toward him, not hurried, each step a measured click on the stone. Min wanted to run, but his legs were water. He shrank back until the cold, pitted surface of the Buddha’s base hit his spine.
“Little mouse,” Jung murmured, his voice a dark rumble. He stopped a foot away, his proximity an assault. Min could smell him—expensive cologne, iron, and the faint, smoky hint of whiskey. “What do you think you’re doing in my garden?”
“I… I didn’t know. I was just—” Min’s voice was a reed-thin whisper.
“You were just hiding.” Jung’s hand came up, and Min flinched, a full-body recoil that was pure instinct. Jung’s fingers didn’t strike him. They hovered, then brushed a stray lock of jet-black hair from Min’s eyes. The touch was shockingly gentle. Min’s breath hitched. “From what, I wonder?”
Min couldn’t answer. His history was a silent scream behind his teeth—a father’s raised hand, a mother’s contemptuous neglect. Touch was never gentle. It was a prelude to pain. This careful caress was worse. It confused him, made his knees weaker.
Jung’s thumb stroked Min’s cheekbone, tracing the delicate arch. “Such a pretty thing. All alone.” His eyes dropped to Min’s lips, then lower, down the line of his thin, university-issued shirt, to the tremble in his hands. “You’re shaking.”
Before Min could form a thought, Jung’s other hand shot out, grasping Min’s hip and spinning him around. His front slammed into the weathered stone of the Buddha’s leg, the cold biting through his shirt. A gasp tore from his throat.
“Shhh,” Jung breathed against his ear, his big body caging Min in. One hand pinned Min’s shoulder to the stone. The other went to the waistband of his cheap jeans. The button popped. The zipper rasped down, a vulgar sound in the sacred space.
“No, please—,” Min choked out, struggling, but it was pathetic. Jung was a wall of pure muscle.
“This is a holy place,” Jung whispered, his lips brushing the shell of Min’s ear. “It’s seen devotion. Sacrifice. Now it will see this.”
The hand on his hip yanked, dragging his jeans and boxers down to his thighs in one brutal motion. The night air was cool on his exposed skin. Humiliation burned through him, hot and sharp.
He heard the slick sound of saliva, felt Jung spit twice, wetly, against his entrance. Then a blunt pressure. Not his cock. His fingers.
“Hold still.” It was a command, soft and absolute.
One thick finger pressed, breached, shoved its way inside. Min cried out, a sharp, animal sound. It burned, a dry, shocking invasion. He clenched down instinctively, which only made it worse.
“Tight,” Jung grunted, his voice rough with approval. He worked the finger in to the knuckle, a ruthless, steady push. Then he curled it, crooking it inside him, and Min saw stars. A bolt of something that wasn’t pain, something electric and shameful, shot up his spine. He muffled a sob against the stone.
A second finger joined the first, stretching him brutally. Jung scissored them, his breathing becoming heavier in Min’s ear. The stretch was agonizing, too much, but buried in the burn was a terrible, building friction. Min’s body, traitorously, began to give, to soften, to welcome the invasion. A low, broken moan escaped him.
Jung heard it. He chuckled, a dark, possessive sound. “There’s my good boy. Taking it so well.”
The words good boy did something to Min. They unspooled a thread of warmth in the cold pit of his terror. He hated it. He craved it.
The fingers slid out. He heard the clink of a belt buckle, the rustle of fabric. Then the hot, heavy drag of the head of Jung’s cock against him. It was huge. Terrifying.
“This,” Jung growled, his voice stripped of all pretense, raw with hunger, “is what happens to things I find. They become mine.”
He thrust home.
Min screamed. The sound was torn from him, raw and shattered, echoing off the temple walls. It was a brutal, full-depth possession, a splitting, burning fill that shattered every buried thought. Jung didn’t wait, didn’t allow a moment to adjust. He withdrew and slammed back in, setting a devastating, rhythmic pace.
The pain was a living thing, but with every brutal drive, it melted, transmuting into a searing, overwhelming fullness. Jung fucked him with a focused, relentless power, his hips pistoning, his grip on Min’s shoulder the only anchor in a whirlpool of sensation. The cool stone abraded Min’s cheek. The scent of jasmine and sex and sweat filled his nose. Jung’s groans, guttural and hot against his neck, were the only prayers offered here now.
“You feel that?” Jung snarled, pounding into him. “You feel how deep I am? This cunt is mine now. Every fucking inch.”
Min could only sob, tears streaming down his face, his body rocking violently with each thrust. A pressure was coiling deep in his gut, obscene and undeniable. His own cock, trapped and ignored, was hard and leaking against the cold stone.
“Jung—,” he whimpered, a plea for mercy, for more, he didn’t know.
“Say it,” Jung demanded, his pace turning frantic, animalistic. His hand slid from Min’s shoulder to wrap around his throat, not squeezing, just holding, claiming. “Whose are you?”
The orgasm ripped through Min, sudden and cataclysmic, wrenched from him without a touch. He came desperately, stripes of white painting the grey stone, his body clenching wildly around the cock destroying him.
The violent clenching seemed to tip Jung over the edge. With a final, grinding thrust, he buried himself to the hilt and stilled. A hot, liquid flood pulsed deep inside Min, mark and claim. Jung trembled against him, his forehead dropping to Min’s shoulder, his breath scorching.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing, the distant chant, the wind in the trees.
Slowly, Jung softened and slipped out of him. Min whimpered at the loss, the sudden, shocking emptiness. He felt used, ruined, hollowed out. And yet, the ghost of those words—good boy—echoed in the hollow space.
Jung turned him around, his movements now surprisingly deliberate. He looked into Min’s wrecked face, his own expression unreadable in the candlelight. With a tenderness that felt more violating than the violence, he pulled Min’s pants back up, fastened them. He used his own thumbs to wipe the tears from Min’s cheeks.
“You’ll come with me,” Jung stated. It wasn’t a question.
Min, broken and trembling, his body throbbing with the echoes of the assault, could only stare. The world had narrowed to this man, this stone Buddha, and the wet, aching truth between his legs. He gave a single, tiny, shivering nod.
Jung’s lips curved. He took Min’s hand, his grip engulfing and firm, and led him away from the courtyard, away from the shadows, into a deeper, more permanent dark.