Chapter 11: Practice Room Four At Four O'Clock
The silence in Practice Room Four had a dense, absorbent quality. Joan sat on the edge of the hard-backed chair, her knees pressed tightly together. The chaise lounge waited, a dark leather pit. She had arrived fifteen minutes early, needing to claim the space before it could claim her. Her bag, with Jeonghan’s book still inside, lay at her feet like an anchor.
She didn’t open it. Instead, she watched the door, counting the slow breaths that felt too shallow for her lungs. The room smelled of antiseptic citrus cleaner and, underneath, something subtly organic—skin, salt, the ghost of previous exertions.
The door clicked open precisely at four.
Cheol entered without looking at her, his movements economical. He placed a small leather folio on the steel table beside the array of supplies—lubricants, towels, the unopened bottle of amber liquid. He shrugged out of his blazer, folded it with military precision, and laid it over the back of the other chair. Only then did his gaze land on her.
His eyes were dark, unreadable pools. No warmth, no animosity. Just assessment.
“You’re early,” he said, his voice neutral.
“I wanted to settle in.”
He gave a slight nod, as if this were a logical tactical decision. He rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt, revealing his forearms. The tendons in his hands shifted as he worked the cuffs. Jeonghan’s words echoed: Watch his hands.
“How do you want to start?” he asked. The question was soft, almost clinical.
Joan’s mouth was dry. Every rehearsed line evaporated. “I don’t know the methodology.”
A flicker of something—impatience?—crossed his face. “The methodology is to achieve a specific physiological response. The approach is flexible.” He paused, his jaw tightening slightly. “We can just go with it, if you want. See what works.”
The invitation was terrifying in its simplicity. It offered no structure to hide behind. She nodded, a quick, jerky motion.
Standing, her fingers felt clumsy on her uniform’s buttons. She undid her skirt, letting it pool at her feet, then hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her tights and underwear. The air in the room was cool against her bare skin. She didn’t look at him, moving quickly to the chaise. The leather was cold and yielding, sighing as she lay back.
Cheol approached. He didn’t undress. He stood beside the chaise, looking down at her with that detached focus. “Relax your legs.”
She let her knees fall apart. The exposure was brutal, a raw vulnerability under the sterile lights. He sat on the edge of the chaise, his weight dipping the surface, tilting her slightly toward him. He didn’t touch her yet. His eyes tracked the line of her body, from her clenched hands by her sides to the junction of her thighs.
“Breathe, Joan.”
She sucked in a ragged breath.
His first touch wasn’t where she expected. His fingers, warm and dry, brushed the hair from her temple, tucking it behind her ear. The gesture was so unexpectedly gentle it made her throat tighten. Then his hand cupped the side of her neck, his thumb stroking the frantic pulse point there. He leaned in, and his lips pressed against the hollow beneath her jaw.
It wasn’t a kiss of passion. It was a deliberate, steady pressure. He mapped a path down the column of her throat with his mouth, slow and inexorable, his breath hot on her dampening skin. His other hand came to rest on her sternum, holding her down, a steady weight.
Every nerve ending was firing, a chaos of signals. The spectator in her mind tried to comment, to analyze the exact pressure of his teeth on her collarbone, but it was drowned out by the sheer sensory overload. His scent—clean cotton, cedar, and something uniquely, intensely male—filled her head.
His mouth moved lower, over the thin fabric of her shirt, his tongue tracing the outline of her nipple through the material. She gasped, her back arching off the leather. A low sound, almost a hum, vibrated from his chest against hers.
Then he was moving down her body, his hands sliding under her thighs, pushing them wider apart. He repositioned himself on the floor between her legs, his gaze fixed on her cunt. There was no teasing, no preamble. He put his mouth on her.
The contact was electric, devastatingly direct. His tongue was flat and firm, stroking a long, slow path from her entrance to her clit. He groaned, the sound muffled against her flesh, as if he’d tasted something he’d been craving. His hands tightened on her thighs, holding her open.
“Fuck,” he whispered, pulling back just enough to speak, his lips glistening. “You’re already so wet.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. He dove back in, his technique shifting from exploration to focused assault. He used the broad flat of his tongue, then the pointed tip, circling her clit with ruthless precision. His fingers joined, two of them sliding into her without hesitation, curling upwards, stroking a spot inside that made her vision whiten at the edges.
“Cheol—” His name was a broken thing.
He increased the pressure, his fingers pumping in a steady, driving rhythm, his mouth sucking her clit hard. The dual sensation was overwhelming, a coiling spring of tension in her gut winding tighter, tighter. She was panting, her fists tangled in her own shirt, her hips bucking against his face. He didn’t relent, his grip on her thighs iron-strong, keeping her exactly where he wanted her.
The orgasm ripped through her, sudden and catastrophic. It wasn’t a wave; it was a detonation. Her body bowed off the chaise, a raw, guttural cry tearing from her throat. Pleasure, scalding and absolute, flooded her nervous system, blinding her. She shook with the force of it, pulses of intense sensation rolling through her core, matched by the relentless curl of his fingers inside her.
But it was dry. A shuddering, muscular clench without release.
As the last tremors subsided, he slowly withdrew his fingers. He lifted his head. His lips were swollen, his chin wet. He looked at her face, flushed and slack with spent pleasure, then his eyes dropped to the space between her legs, still glistening from his mouth but lacking the evidence the assignment required.
A flicker—sharp, undeniable frustration—darkened his features. It was there and gone, replaced by a rigid blankness. He let her legs fall from his grasp. He reached for a towel, wiped his mouth methodically, then his fingers.
“We’ll try again,” he said, his voice husky but devoid of warmth. He stood, turning away from her to adjust his own clothes, a clear dismissal.
Joan lay there, the high heat of orgasm rapidly cooling into a sticky, hollow ache. Her body thrummed with satisfaction, but her mind was a riot of failure. The spectator was back, jeering. She had come, hard, but she had not surrendered. He had pulled a reaction from her body, but not her deepest, most vulnerable function.
He had won the battle and lost the objective. And the look in his eyes before he’d hidden it told her he knew it, too.
The real challenge, the terrifying one, had just begun. And it had nothing to do with physiology, and everything to do with the man now standing with his back to her, his shoulders tense with a frustration that mirrored her own.
The sound of his breathing was the only thing in the room, a controlled, measured rhythm that felt like a condemnation. Joan stared at the rigid line of his back, at the way his knuckles were pale where he gripped the edge of the steel table. Her own skin was cooling, the wetness between her legs already turning clammy.
Watch his hands. Jeonghan’s voice. Chaos theory with better plumbing. The book’s diagnosis of spectatoring. He’s obviously into you. He can’t afford to crack. Mingyu’s blunt wisdom. Joshua and Ara’s cold, clinical touches that had made her a visitor in her own flesh. It all coalesced into a single, furious point of clarity in the humid silence.
He had performed a technical exercise. She had received it. And they had both failed.
The hollow ache in her chest burned away into something hotter, more defiant. She pushed herself up on trembling arms. The leather of the chaise made a soft, sticking sound as she peeled her skin from it. She stood, her bare feet silent on the cool floor. She walked to him.
She placed a hand on his shoulder. The muscle beneath his shirt was a tensed cable. He didn’t shrug her off, but he didn’t turn. She applied firm, deliberate pressure, rotating him towards her.
His eyes were wide, confused, the careful mask shattered by her direct action. She didn’t speak. She looked directly into his face as her fingers went to the buttons of his pristine white shirt. The first button slipped free. Then the second. Her movements were slow, methodical, a silent reclamation of the script.
“Joan,” he said, her name a rough question in his throat.
She didn’t answer. The third and fourth buttons gave way, revealing the hard plane of his chest, the taut lines of his abdomen. She pushed the shirt off his shoulders. It caught at his elbows, and he made a small, involuntary movement to let it fall, his arms now bare. She saw the flicker in his dark eyes—confusion giving way to a dawning, hungry recognition.
She closed the distance and kissed him.
It wasn’t gentle. It was a claiming. Her mouth crashed against his, all teeth and desperate tongue, pouring every ounce of her frustration and want into the connection. He froze for a second, utterly caught. Then a low groan vibrated from his chest into hers, and he kissed her back.
His hands came up to frame her face, but the kiss deepened, turning feral. It wasn’t the calculated, distant man from a moment ago. This was someone starved. The memory of the past week flashed behind his eyelids: Wonwoo’s name called for her before his, Mingyu’s hands kneading her shoulders in the common room, Jun’s laugh across the cafeteria table. Possession, sharp and desperate, coiled tight in his gut.
His kiss became a language. It was all consuming heat and seeking pressure, his tongue mapping the interior of her mouth like he was memorizing it. His hands slid from her face, down her neck, over the fabric of her shirt. He fumbled with the buttons, his usual precision gone, driven by a need that had cracked his professional facade wide open.
He got the shirt open. He pushed it back, his palms rough and hot against her shoulders, baring her to the waist. His fingers found the clasp of her bra, deftly unhooked it, and tossed it aside without breaking the kiss. The feel of his bare chest against her breasts, skin to skin, made her gasp into his mouth.
He walked her backward, their limbs tangled, until her calves hit the chaise. They sank onto it together, a tangle of need. He was on top of her, the full, heavy weight of him a delicious anchor. She broke the kiss, dragging in air, her head spinning. She cupped his face, her thumbs brushing his sharp cheekbones.
She saw the conflict there, the last remnants of his walls. Her gaze was steady, an open field. A silent plea. Be here with me. Just be here.
“Let’s try again,” she whispered, her voice raw.
Something in him settled. The frantic edge softened into a deep, burning focus. He nodded, almost imperceptibly. This time, he didn’t go straight for the finish line. He started a pilgrimage.
He kissed her again, slower now, a deep, drugging exploration. Then his mouth left hers, tracing a blazing path down her neck, to the frantic pulse at the base of her throat. He took his time with her breasts, laving one nipple with slow, circling sweeps of his tongue until it was a hard, aching peak, then drawing it deep into the hot wetness of his mouth to suck, gently at first, then with a firm, rhythmic pull that sent jolts straight to her cunt.
“God, Cheol,” she breathed, her fingers spearing into his hair.
He moved to the other breast, giving it the same reverent, thorough attention. His hands weren’t idle. They swept down her ribs, her waist, her hips, learning the shape and give of her. He kneaded the soft flesh of her inner thighs, opening her wider, but didn’t touch her where she wept for him. Not yet. He mapped every sensitive curve—the dip of her navel, the crease where her thigh met her hip, biting there softly, making her jump.
He was building it. The critical mass. The chaos. The anxiety was gone, burned away by the deliberate, worshipful heat of his attention. The spectator in her mind was quiet, blissfully submerged in sensation.
Only when she was writhing, whispering please against the quiet hum of the room, did he finally lower his mouth between her legs. He didn’t dive. He breathed her in, his warm exhalation cascading over her soaked folds. Then he licked, a long, slow, filthy drag from her opening to her clit that made her back bow off the leather.
“Fuck, you taste perfect,” he growled, the words vibrating against her.
He settled in, his arms hooking under her thighs, holding her open and up for his feast. He ate her pussy with a devoted, rapturous intensity that shattered thought. He used his tongue in flat strokes, in tight circles, then sealed his lips around her clit and sucked, hard, while two fingers plunged deep inside her, crooking to find that magical spot.
“Right there, oh god, right there!” she chanted, her hips pumping against his face.
He added a third finger, stretching her, filling her unbearably. The coiling tension was different this time—deeper, thicker, a pressure building in her core that had nothing to do with just her clit. It was a gathering storm in her belly, in the deep muscles of her cunt. He felt it too, changing his rhythm, his sucking becoming more insistent, his fingers curling and pressing relentlessly inside her.
“Let go, Joan,” he commanded, his voice muffled and wet against her. “Come on. Squirt for me. Soak my fucking face. Do it.”
The crude permission, the raw need in his voice, was the final trigger. The storm broke. Her orgasm detonated, a white-hot supernova that ripped a scream from her lungs. But this time, the clenching waves were followed by a sudden, shocking release—a hot, gushing flood that pulsed out of her with the force of the pleasure, soaking his chin, his mouth, his fingers buried inside her.
He groaned, a sound of pure, triumphant satisfaction, and drank her down as she spasmed and shook, the rivulets running over his skin. He didn’t stop, drawing out every last drop, every last tremor, until she collapsed, boneless and utterly spent, into the leather.
He slowly withdrew his fingers. He lifted his head, his face glistening, his eyes black with a wonder that looked almost like fear. He looked at her, utterly wrecked and open beneath him, then down at the evidence shimmering on her skin and his.
A breath shuddered out of him. He lowered his forehead to her stomach, his arms wrapping around her hips, holding on as if to steady himself. The silence that followed was no longer hollow. It was vast, fragile, and ringing with the echo of something that had finally, irreversibly, broken open.
It was vast, fragile, and ringing with the echo of something that had finally, irreversibly, broken open.
His breath was hot against her stomach. Her own breathing began to slow, the wild hammering in her chest settling into a deep, weary rhythm. The air smelled of sex and salt and leather. She floated in the aftermath, her fingers limp in his hair.
Slowly, feeling returned to her limbs—a pleasant heaviness, the cool stickiness on her inner thighs. She looked down at the crown of his head, at the way he clung to her. A strange, protective tenderness welled up, sharp and unfamiliar. He had given her that shattering release, had commanded it from her depths, but now he seemed the most vulnerable of the two.
She stirred, sliding her hands from his hair to his shoulders. She pushed gently. He resisted for a second, then allowed her to move him. He sat back on his heels, avoiding her eyes. His face was a mess—her wetness drying on his chin, his lips still flushed and swollen from their work. He looked ruined, and beautiful, and miles away.
Joan pushed herself up onto her elbows. Without a word, she reached for him. Her hands found his belt buckle, the cold metal a stark contrast to the heat of his skin through his trousers. Her fingers fumbled with the mechanism.
He jolted as if shocked. His hand clamped over hers, stopping her. The touch was firm, final.
“Don’t,” he said. His voice was gravel.
He stood up so abruptly she flinched. He turned his back and walked across the room to where his shirt had fallen. He picked it up, not looking at her. He shrugged into it, his movements stiff. He began buttoning it with a focus that felt like violence.
Joan sat up fully, the leather sticking to her back. Confusion curdled the warmth inside her. A cold trickle of humiliation followed. She watched him tuck the shirt neatly into his trousers, his back ramrod straight. The silent, efficient president was back, walls slamming into place over the wreckage.
“You don’t have to be afraid, you know,” she said. The words hung in the quiet room, louder than a shout.
His hands stilled on his last button. He didn’t turn around.
“I like you,” she added, the admission simple and terrifying in its nakedness.
He was silent for a long moment. Then his shoulders dropped, a fraction of an inch. He turned. His expression was unreadable, but the rigid panic had left his eyes. He nodded, once.
“I know that now,” he said. The roughness was still there, but it was softer.
He moved closer, the space between them charged with everything unsaid. He stopped in front of her. Slowly, he raised a hand and cupped her cheek. His thumb brushed over her cheekbone, smearing a tear she hadn’t realized had fallen. A small smile touched his lips, just a faint curve that slightly showed the dimples in his cheeks. This was private, almost pained.
“But not now,” he said, his voice low. “At least not here.” His gaze swept the sterile room, the steel table, the clinical supplies. This place was for assignments, for spectacles. For failure. “Now, get dressed.”
He let his hand fall. “There’s somewhere I wanna bring you to.”