Chapter 15: The Morning After the Gala
Hyukjae woke to the faint, persistent throb deep in his body. A soreness that was less an ache and more a brand, a reminder etched into muscle and sinew. Dawn was a grey wash against the high windows, the city’s skyline slowly etching itself out of the dark. He was curled on his side, his back against a solid wall of heat. Donghae’s arm was a heavy, possessive weight across his waist.
And against the back of his thigh, he felt the unmistakable, rigid press of Donghae’s erection.
A tremor, involuntary and profound, ran through him. The memory of the ice, of the brutal claiming that followed, flooded back with a vividness that stole his breath. He was sore, used, filled with the ghost of that invasion, and yet his own body responded instantly, a traitorous heat pooling low in his belly.
Donghae stirred, his lips brushing the knobs of Hyukjae’s spine. “I can feel you thinking,” he murmured, his voice sleep-roughened and intimate. The arm around Hyukjae’s waist tightened, pulling him flush, ensuring he felt every hard inch. “Stop it.”
Hyukjae didn’t speak. He closed his eyes, surrendering to the sensation of being held, being wanted with such uncomplicated intensity. Donghae’s hand began to move, a slow, splayed-palm exploration up his chest, over a nipple that peaked instantly under the touch, then back down the plane of his stomach. The touch was proprietary, mapping familiar territory.
“Good morning, princess,” Donghae rasped, the nickname a velvet-wrapped provocation. In one smooth, effortless motion, he rolled Hyukjae onto his stomach. The sheets were cool against his feverish skin. Donghae straddled his thighs, the weight anchoring, inescapable. Hyukjae turned his head to the side, his fingers clutching at the pillow.
He heard the snick of a cap, the wet, slick sound of Donghae coating his fingers. The anticipation was a live wire. A lubed fingertip traced the seam of his ass, a maddeningly light caress over flesh that was still tender, sensitive from the night before. It circled his entrance, once, twice, a teasing promise. Hyukjae pushed back, a silent plea.
Donghae chuckled, a low, dark sound. “So eager. You’re still so tight from last night.” The tip of his finger pressed, not entering, just applying a steady, perfect pressure. “Feel how you’re clenching for me already. Just from this.”
“Donghae,” Hyukjae growled, the word muffled.
“What do you want?”
“You know.”
“Say it.”
Hyukjae dug his forehead into the pillow. The finger pressed harder, breaching the first tight ring of muscle. A sharp, bright spark of sensation. He exhaled, forcing his body to relax, to open. “Fuck me,” he muttered.
“Was that so hard?” Donghae’s voice was a smirk. He pushed his finger in to the knuckle. The slide was easy, aided by the slickness and the remnants of his own spend from hours before. It was a deeply intimate, filthy feeling. Hyukjae groaned, pushing back, taking it deeper. Donghae worked him slowly, a gentle in-and-out that was more maddening than satisfying. Then he curled his finger, searching.
Hyukjae jolted when he found it, a bright, electric shock that made his toes curl. “There it is,” Donghae murmured, his voice full of dark delight. He pressed against that spot again, a relentless, targeted pressure that had Hyukjae seeing stars behind his closed eyelids. A second finger joined the first, the stretch a familiar burn. Donghae scissored them, opening him with a meticulous, almost clinical care that was its own kind of cruelty. The pads of his fingers rubbed over that bundle of nerves with every movement, until Hyukjae was a writhing, shuddering mess beneath him, his cock hard and leaking onto the sheets.
“Ready?” Donghae whispered, removing his fingers.
Hyukjae could only nod, his body screaming with empty need. He felt Donghae shift, the weight lifting from his thighs. The blunt, slippery head of Donghae’s cock nudged against him, a promise of heat and fullness. Donghae’s hands gripped his hips, fingers digging in. He leaned forward, his chest a warm weight against Hyukjae’s sweat-slicked back, his lips at Hyukjae’s ear.
“I love waking up inside you,” he breathed, the words a hot, damp confession.
Then he pushed.
It was a single, deep, uninterrupted thrust that seated him to the hilt. The invasion was perfect, profound, a completeness that stole the air from Hyukjae’s lungs. He was filled, stretched, owned. A guttural moan was torn from him, half-pain, half-profound relief. Donghae held there, buried deep, letting them both adjust to the exquisite tightness. Hyukjae could feel the frantic pulse of Donghae’s cock inside him.
“So good,” Donghae choked out. “You take me so fucking perfectly.”
He began to move. Not with the frantic, punishing pace of the night before, but with a slow, rolling cadence that was somehow more devastating. Each withdrawal was an agony of loss, each deep, driving return a homecoming. Donghae set a rhythm that was less about friction and more about deep, intimate possession, his hips meeting Hyukjae’s ass with a solid, wet slap that echoed in the quiet room. One of his hands slid beneath Hyukjae, wrapping around his aching cock, his grip firm and sure.
The dual stimulation was overwhelming. Donghae’s thumb swept over the leaking slit on every upstroke, his pace on Hyukjae’s cock mirroring the deep, languid thrusts inside him. Hyukjae was trapped in a vortex of sensation, each plunge hitting that perfect spot deep within, each stroke of Donghae’s hand pushing him closer to the edge. He was panting, drooling onto the pillow, reduced to a series of broken sounds.
“You feel that?” Donghae grunted, his own breath coming in harsh bursts. “That’s where you belong. Full of me. Every damn day.” He punctuated his words with a particularly deep thrust. “Gonna keep you like this. Sore and used and mine.”
The words, the relentless, perfect rhythm, the possessive grip on his body—it coalesced into a pressure that gathered low in Hyukjae’s spine, tight and inevitable. His muscles began to clamp down, his breaths coming in short, sharp gasps. “I’m—Donghae, I’m gonna—”
“Come,” Donghae commanded, his voice rough. He sank his teeth into the meat of Hyukjae’s shoulder, a sharp, claiming bite.
It was the final trigger. Hyukjae’s orgasm ripped through him with a silent, searing intensity. His release striped the sheets below him in hot, pulsating waves, his body convulsing around Donghae’s cock, milking him. The brutal clenching was too much. Donghae cried out, his hips stuttering erratically as he drove in one last, deep time, spilling inside with a hot, pulsing flood that Hyukjae felt to his core.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing. Donghae collapsed onto him, his weight a welcome anchor. He nuzzled the bite mark on Hyukjae’s shoulder, a soft, apologistic kiss over the hurt. Slowly, he pulled out, the loss a visceral emptiness. He rolled onto his back, pulling Hyukjae with him, tucking him against his side, a hand splayed possessively over his stomach.
Hyukjae stared at the ceiling, watching the light grow stronger. The reality of the gala, which had been pushed to the edges of his consciousness by sheer physical overload, came seeping back. It sat in the room now, a silent, elegant specter in the morning light.
“We have all day,” Donghae said softly, his fingers tracing idle patterns on Hyukjae’s skin. “And I intend to use every minute.”
Hyukjae closed his eyes. “The gala is in six days.”
“I know.”
“Your mother,” Hyukjae started, the words sticking in his throat.
“Will adore you. She has terrible taste. She likes broody, difficult men.” Donghae’s tone was light, but his fingers stilled on Hyukjae’s stomach. “My father will be… cordial. He’ll be more interested in the corporate donors than in who’s on my arm.”
“And the press?”
“Will see the star forward of Silver Ice Academy with his very attractive, very private partner. It’ll be a two-day story, tops. A grainy photo in the society pages.” Donghae turned his head, his gaze serious. “It’s just a room, Hyukjae. A big, shiny room full of people who don’t matter. We’ll go. We’ll stand together. We’ll leave. That’s it.”
It wasn’t it, and they both knew it. It was a line being drawn in the sand, a declaration. Hyukjae would be moving from the shadows of Donghae’s penthouse into the blazing light of his world. There would be no take-backs.
“Hyohyeon texted me last night,” Hyukjae said, changing the angle. “She’s bringing a friend. Some girl from her design class.”
“Good. She’ll have a buffer.” Donghae propped himself up on an elbow, looking down at him. His expression was unreadable. “You’re scared.”
“I’m not scared,” Hyukjae said, too quickly, the old defiance flickering.
A small, knowing smile touched Donghae’s lips. “You are. It’s okay. I’m scared too.”
That surprised him. “Of what?”
“Of you changing your mind. Of you walking into that room and deciding it’s too much, that I’m too much.” He said it simply, a raw honesty that was more disarming than any grand confession. “This,” he gestured between them, at the tangled sheets, the shared air, “is all I’ve wanted since the first time you tried to slam me into the boards and called me a pretty-boy rich kid. I’m not letting go. But you have to walk into the light with me.”
Hyukjae looked at him—at the soft, sleep-mussed hair, the earnest brown eyes, the mouth that could smirk with such infuriating charm and whisper such devastating truths. The man who had brought him to his knees and made him feel more alive in his surrender than he ever had in control.
He reached up, his hand curling around the back of Donghae’s neck, and pulled him down into a kiss. It was slow, deep, tasting of sleep and salt and them. A promise. An answer.
When they broke apart, Donghae’s eyes were dark. “So?”
“So,” Hyukjae said, his voice steadier than he felt, “you’d better have a damn good tailor.”