Chapter 28: Paddy Fields and Potent Spice
The morning of the third day dawned with a different texture. The previous night’s ruthless reclamation had settled into a deep, muscular ache, a satisfied fatigue that made Hyukjae move with a slower, more deliberate grace. Donghae watched him from the bed, his gaze a tangible weight.
“We’re leaving the villa,” Donghae announced. “I want to see something that isn’t you sweating on sheets.”
“Charming.”
“It’s a fact. Get dressed. We’re hiking.”
It wasn’t a hike in any traditional sense. It was a slow amble along ancient dirt paths that wound like brown threads through a tapestry of impossible green. The rice terraces of Tegallalang stepped down the hillsides in luminous, water-logged tiers, each ledge a perfect mirror for the hard blue sky. The air vibrated with a humid, fecund smell—wet earth, green growth, and the faint, sweet decay of blossoms.
Hyukjae walked slightly ahead, his shoulders loose. The physical memory of the night before was a live wire under his skin, a constant hum that made the sunlight feel like a touch. He could feel Donghae’s eyes on the back of his neck.
“You’re walking funny,” Donghae called, his voice singsong.
“You’re the reason,” Hyukjae shot back without turning.
“I know. I like it.”
They reached a small cluster of buildings—a warung, its thatched roof sagging with a comfortable weariness. Vibrant sarongs served as tablecloths over rough-hewn wooden tables. The owner, a wizened man with eyes that crinkled at the corners, waved them over with a toothy grin.
“Newlyweds,” he said in accented English, not a question. His gaze flickered between them, missing nothing: the matching bands, the specific space they occupied, charged and private. “Sit. I make you special lunch.”
They sat under the shade of the roof. Donghae’s knee pressed against Hyukjae’s beneath the table. A constant, grounding pressure.
The old man brought two sweating glasses of lemongrass tea, then disappeared back into the smoky interior. The sounds were of sizzling oil, the clang of a wok, and the distant, rhythmic calls of farmers in the fields below.
“It’s obscenely beautiful here,” Hyukjae muttered, staring out at the vista. “It feels like it should cost more to look at it.”
“I’m paying for it,” Donghae said, sipping his tea. “So look all you want.”
The food arrived on cracked ceramic plates. Nasi goreng, but unlike any they’d had at the resort. The rice was a deeper, richer shade, studded with plump prawns, flecked with mysterious dark herbs. The scent was complex—garlic, chili, shrimp paste, and something else, peppery and warm.
The old man winked. “Special herb. Local secret. For… stamina. For happiness.” He made a vague, looping gesture with his hands that was utterly unambiguous. “For newlyweds. You enjoy.”
He shuffled away. Donghae looked at the plate, then at Hyukjae, his expression morphing into one of pure, unadulterated mischief.
“Well,” he said. “We can’t be rude.”
He scooped up a forkful, careful to get a bit of everything. He held it out, his eyes locked on Hyukjae’s. “Open up, Captain.”
Hyukjae glared. “I have my own fork.”
“And I have this one. Come on. Cultural experience.”
With a resigned sigh, Hyukjae leaned forward and took the bite. The flavors exploded—salty, spicy, deeply savory. And then, underneath it, a slow, spreading warmth. It started in his stomach, a gentle glow, then began to radiate outward. It wasn’t a sudden frenzy. It was a tide coming in, slow and inevitable, heating his blood, making his skin feel acutely sensitive to the brush of his own shirt.
He saw Donghae watching him, studying the reaction. Hyukjae’s pupils felt wide, swallowing the green light of the terraces.
“Feel good?” Donghae asked, his voice low.
“It’s just food,” Hyukjae said, but his voice was thicker.
Donghae just smiled and took a bite himself. They finished the plates in a strange, charged silence. The warmth in Hyukjae’s core became a persistent, demanding throb. By the time they paid and began the walk back to their waiting driver, the sensation had crystallized into a single, focused need. Every brush of fabric was an irritation. The sight of Donghae’s hand, the line of his throat, became objects of intense, almost painful fixation.
In the car, Donghae slid close. His hand landed high on Hyukjae’s thigh. “Tell me.”
“Tell you what.”
“What you’re feeling.”
Hyukjae turned his head, meeting Donghae’s dark, knowing eyes. “I feel like I’m going to crawl out of my skin if you don’t touch me properly.”
The smirk that spread across Donghae’s face was one of total victory.
The villa doors hadn’t even shut before Donghae had him pinned against the teak wall. The kiss was consuming, a direct line to the fire in Hyukjae’s gut. Donghae tasted of the tea and the strange, spicy herb.
“Six,” Donghae breathed against his mouth, his hands already pulling at Hyukjae’s shorts.
“What?”
“I’m going to fuck you six times. One for each of the main ingredients he used. I counted.”
“That’s insane.”
“It’s a goal.” Donghae got the shorts down, his hand wrapping around Hyukjae’s already leaking cock. “And I always meet my goals.”
The first time was against the wall, fast and rough, a claiming meant to stoke the fire, not put it out. Donghae shoved in, the stretch a blinding relief to the ache of want. Hyukjae chanted curses into his shoulder, coming with a shocked, violent intensity that seemed to surprise even himself. Donghae followed, spilling inside him with a groan.
They barely made it to the bedroom before Donghae was turning him onto his stomach on the cool sheets. The second time was deep, relentless, Donghae’s chest plastered to his sweaty back, his voice a continuous, filthy stream in Hyukjae’s ear. “You’re so hot inside, you’re burning me up, this is all that fucking rice, you’re my perfect, desperate slut—”
The third time, Hyukjae pushed him onto his back and rode him, seeking his own rhythm, chasing the sensation that felt just out of reach. The herb-like warmth blurred everything into a haze of pleasure-pain. Donghae’s hands gripped his hips, guiding him, before flipping them again to finish with a brutal finality.
There was no clock, only the sun’s slow arc across the sky, marking time in shadows on the floor. They drank water from the same bottle between rounds. The fourth time was in the shower, water sluicing over them as Donghae fucked him slowly against the river stone, his movements almost lazy, maddeningly controlled as he wrung another ragged orgasm from Hyukjae’s oversensitive body.
Exhaustion began to layer onto the need. His muscles quivered with fatigue. The fifth time, on the floor by the bed, felt like a fever dream. Donghae was murmuring in Korean, soft, worshipful words that contrasted violently with the carnal act. “My heart, my home, you take me so beautifully, I’ll die here, I’ll die inside you.”
Hyukjae came crying, the release a shuddering, soul-deep convulsion that left him sobbing weakly into the rug. Donghae collapsed over him, spent.
For a long time, there was only the sound of the ocean and their wrecked breathing. The warmth had not abated. It was a low, eternal ember now.
Donghae stirred first. His hand, trailing through the mess on Hyukjae’s stomach, moved lower. Hyukjae flinched. “I can’t. I’m empty.”
“One more.” Donghae’s voice was slurred with exhaustion but adamant. “I said six.”
He urged Hyukjae onto his side and spooned behind him. He was hard again, the persistent, shameless proof of the herb’s power or his own obsessive will. He pushed in, and Hyukjae whimpered. It was a dull, full feeling now, bordering on uncomfortable, his body overstimulated and raw.
This last time was slow, agonizing. Donghae moved in tiny, shallow increments, his arm wrapped tight around Hyukjae’s chest, holding him together as he came apart. There were no fireworks this time. It was a slow, tender milking, a gentle coaxing of the last drops of pleasure from a utterly spent source. When Donghae finally came, it was with a soft sigh, a gentle pulse deep within him.
He didn’t pull out. They lay welded together in the twilight. Hyukjae felt spent, hollowed out, completely claimed. The warmth finally began to recede, leaving a profound, bone-melting satiation in its wake.
Donghae nuzzled the nape of his neck. “Goal met.”
Hyukjae tried to speak, but his throat was raw. He simply reached back, his hand finding Donghae’s hair, tangling in it. A silent acknowledgement. A surrender.
Later, cleaned up and lying in the dark, Hyukjae’s body felt like it belonged to someone else. A pleasant, heavy stranger. Donghae traced idle patterns on his bicep.
“Do you believe in that stuff?” Hyukjae whispered. “The herb?”
Donghae was quiet for a moment. “I believe,” he said slowly, “that we wanted an excuse. And he gave us a really good one.” He kissed Hyukjae’s shoulder. “The mind is the most powerful aphrodisiac. And my mind is permanently fucked when it comes to you.”
Hyukjae closed his eyes. In the darkness, the memory of the rice terraces, that endless, serene green, floated behind his eyelids. It was a peace he felt now, deep in his wrecked and sated flesh. A peace that, for the moment, had been utterly, thoroughly earned.