Chapter 16: Bathroom Claiming
The painting took hours.
What began as a simple task—Yong-Jin pointing a trembling finger at a swatch called "Forest Glen"—became an all-consuming ritual. Zykin had dismissed the crew waiting with rollers and drop cloths with a single glance. They left the cans, the trays, the brushes.
“This,” Zykin said, stripping off his sweater to reveal the intricate tapestry of tattoos across his shoulders and chest, “is ours.”
So they painted. Not with careful precision, but with a kind of desperate, laughing chaos. Zykin used a wide roller, slapping thick, wet bands of the soft forest green onto the stark white walls with violent, sweeping strokes. Yong-Jin followed with a brush, cutting in along the ceilings and trim, his movements neat at first. But then Zykin would come behind him, dipping his fingers into the paint tray and streaking a line down Yong-Jin’s bare arm. Yong-Jin would retaliate, flicking his brush so that spatters flecked Zykin’s chest and throat.
They said little. They just worked, breathed in the sharp, chemical scent, and marked the space—and each other. Paint became a second skin. Drips of soft forest green dried in Yong-Jin’s dark hair, crusted on Zykin’s blond stubble, caught in the grooves of his old scars. They were a mess of color and sweat and quiet, shared purpose. By the time the last wall was covered, the afternoon light had faded, and they stood in the twilight of the new room, leaning against each other, speckled and spent.
Back at the estate, the air was cool and silent. The grand hallway echoed with their tired footsteps. Without a word, Zykin guided him by the hand, past dark paintings and closed doors, to the master bathroom. It was a cavern of black marble and gold, the huge clawfoot tub already steaming, the scent of bergamot from an oil diffuser doing little to mask the sharper, cleaner scent of gunpowder that always clung to Zykin.
They undressed each other slowly, peeling away paint-stiffened clothes. The dried green flakes fell to the polished floor like strange confetti. Yong-Jin’s skin was paler underneath, marked with faint lines where the paint had seeped. Zykin traced them with a reverence usually reserved for religious icons.
The bathwater was almost too hot, a searing embrace. Yong-Jin hissed as he sank in, the heat working into his aching muscles. Zykin climbed in behind him, the water sloshing violently over the rim to pool on the black marble. He pulled Yong-Jin back against his chest, and they settled into the steaming silence, the only sound their breathing and the gentle drip of the oversized gold tap.
Zykin’s mouth found the junction of Yong-Jin’s neck and shoulder.Not a kiss. A slow, deliberate lick, his tongue rough against the skin, tasting salt and the faint, bitter tang of paint. Then his teeth. A gentle scrape at first, then a sharper bite that made Yong-Jin gasp and arch back into him. Zykin soothed the sting with another lick, biting again a little lower, marking a trail along his shoulder.
“You chose well,” Zykin murmured against his damp skin, his voice a low vibration. “The green. It is alive. It is not a prison color.”
Yong-Jin’s head fell back against Zykin’s shoulder. “It’s just paint.”
“It is a sunrise in a forest,” Zykin corrected, his hands sliding down Yong-Jin’s slick sides to rest on his thighs. “It is the space you made. With me.”
His hands flexed, urging. Yong-Jin understood. He shifted in the water, turning awkwardly in the confined space until he could straddle Zykin’s hips. The water came up to their chests. Beneath the surface, everything was blurred, hot, and weightless.
Zykin was already hard, his cock a thick, insistent presence against Yong-Jin’s stomach. His eyes were dark, the green nearly swallowed by black in the low light. He looked ravaged, paint still clinging to his eyebrows, his devotion a naked, terrifying thing.
“Ride me, baby, please.”
The ‘please’ shattered Yong-Jin. It was a crack in the marble facade, a plea from the Tsar himself. He reached between them, his own fingers clumsy with want. He took Zykin in hand, feeling the heavy, solid weight of him, the jump of a vein under his thumb. Guiding himself, he sank down.
The stretch was immense, breathtaking. It forced the air from Yong-Jin’s lungs in a punched-out groan. He went slowly, the hot water offering no resistance, just the slow, burning slide as he took Zykin inside, inch by impossible inch. He felt full, split open, possessed in the most fundamental way. When he was fully seated, hips flush against Zykin’s, they both went still, breathing ragged in unison.
Zykin’s head was thrown back against the curved rim of the tub, his throat working. His hands gripped Yong-Jin’s hips, his fingers pressing into the bone. “Bozhe moi,” he whispered, a prayer. “You are so fucking tight. Every time. Like you are made for me.”
He didn’t wait for Yong-Jin to move. He lifted him, just an inch, and then pulled him back down, setting a slow, deep, torturous rhythm. Water sloshed over the side in great waves with each downward stroke, soaking the silk towels heaped on the floor.
“That’s it,” Zykin growled, his voice thick. “Take me deeper, kotyonok. Take all of me. Show me you want it.”
Yong-Jin did. He braced his hands on Zykin’s broad, tattooed shoulders and began to move, meeting each upward thrust with a downward grind. The friction was brutal and perfect. Each drag of Zykin’s cock inside him sparked a line of fire straight to his core. He was losing himself in the rhythm, in the slap of wet skin, the steam, the primal scent of their coupling mingling with bergamot.
Zykin’s control fractured. He sat forward, capturing Yong-Jin’s mouth in a biting, messy kiss. One hand fisted in his wet hair, holding him still for the invasion of his tongue. The other hand left his hip and wrapped around Yong-Jin’s leaking cock, stroking him in time with their thrusts.
“You feel that?” Zykin snarled against his lips. “You feel how deep I am in you? You will feel it tomorrow. You will feel me when you walk. When you sit. You will remember who you belong to.”
“Zykin…” Yong-Jin panted, the name a broken thing.
“Say it.”
“Yours,” Yong-Jin whimpered, the admission torn from him. “I’m yours.”
The words unleashed something savage. Zykin’s thrusts became harder, faster, pistoning up into him. The water churned around them. Yong-Jin cried out, each drive hitting a spot that turned his vision white. He was unraveling, his own release coiling tight and desperate in his gut.
Zykin’s hand worked him furiously. “Come for me. Come all over my hand. Let me feel it.”
The command, the relentless friction, the dizzying sense of being utterly used and utterly worshiped—it was too much. Yong-Jin shattered. His orgasm ripped through him with a silent scream, his body seizing, spilling hot stripes over Zykin’s fist and onto the churning water between them. The clenching, rhythmic pulses of his climax dragged Zykin over the edge.
With a guttural roar that echoed off the marble, Zykin buried himself to the hilt and held there, his entire body rigid. Yong-Jin felt the hot, deep rush of his release flooding inside him, a claiming that went beyond skin. Zykin trembled, a fine, violent shaking that seemed to come from his very bones, his face buried in Yong-Jin’s neck, breathing him in like oxygen.
For long minutes, there was only the sound of sloshing water and their ragged breaths. Slowly, Zykin softened inside him. He didn’t pull away. He kept Yong-Jin close, his arms locked around him in the cooling water.
When he finally spoke, his voice was hoarse, wrecked. “The green,” he said into Yong-Jin’s skin, as if continuing a conversation. “When it dries… it will be the color of your eyes when you come.”
Yong-Jin, boneless and spent, could only shiver. The heat was leaching from the water, but the heat inside him, where Zykin still rested, felt permanent. The paint on their skin was softening, turning to slippery smears of forest and shadow. They were a mosaic of each other’s making, and for the first time, the thought didn’t feel like a cage. It felt, terrifyingly, like a home.