Chapter 2: Whiskey and Warnings Against the Wall
The bar’s noise seemed to recede, funneling into a tunnel of silence that contained only the space between them. Kinn stopped a foot from the scarred oak, the reek of spilled beer and stale smoke now sharp in his nose. Up close, Porsche was more potent. A small scar sliced through his eyebrow. Ink coiled over his collarbone, disappearing beneath the thin cotton of his tank top. His arms, resting on the bar, were corded with the kind of muscle earned through labor, not a gym.
“You look lost, jao na,” Porsche said, his voice a low rasp that cut through the music. The honorific for a young lord was laced with something that wasn’t respect. It was a provocation.
“I’m exactly where I intend to be,” Kinn replied, his own voice cool and flat. He let his gaze travel, a slow, assessing inventory. “You’re Porsche.”
“Maybe.” Porsche didn’t blink. “Who’s asking?”
“A potential client.”
Porsche let out a short, humorless laugh. “I run a bar. I mix drinks. I don’t do ‘client’ meetings after ten.” He turned to grab a bottle of whiskey, pouring two fingers for a waiting customer without breaking eye contact with Kinn. The movement was fluid, economical.
“My father disagrees.”
Something shifted behind Porsche’s eyes. A shutter coming down. The playful glint vanished, replaced by a guarded sharpness. “Your father,” he repeated. He placed the bottle down with a deliberate quiet. “Follow me.”
He didn’t wait for a reply, simply lifting a section of the bar counter and stepping through. He moved with a loose-hipped confidence through the crowded room, not looking back. Kinn followed, acutely aware of the dagger’s weight against his thigh and the eyes tracking his expensive suit through the grime.
They passed a sticky-floored restroom and a clattering kitchen hatch before Porsche shouldered open a heavy, unmarked door. The noise of the bar muffled instantly, replaced by a thick, quiet gloom. It was a storage room, cramped and lined with liquor boxes. A single, bare bulb dangled from the ceiling, casting harsh shadows. It smelled of damp cardboard and dust.
Porsche turned, leaning against a stack of boxes, crossing his arms. The space forced them close. Kinn could see the faint sheen of sweat on Porsche’s throat, the rapid pulse beating there.
“Korn Theerapanyakul’s son,” Porsche stated. It wasn’t a question.
“Kinn.”
“I know who you are.” Porsche’s gaze was a physical touch, scraping over Kinn’s face. “And I know what your family does. So why the fuck are you in my bar, Kinn?”
The bluntness was a shock. No one spoke to him like that. Kinn felt a flare of irritation, and beneath it, a hotter, darker thrill. “My father said you solve problems. Discreetly.”
“I solve my problems. And my people’s problems. I don’t solve mafia heir problems. That’s a good way to end up face-down in the Chao Phraya.”
“This is a unique problem.” Kinn took a step closer, invading his space. Porsche didn’t retreat. His body heat was a tangible force. “It requires a unique solution.”
“Yeah? What’s the problem? Someone not kneeling fast enough when you walk in?”
Kinn’s control, so carefully maintained under his father’s gaze, began to splinter. This man, with his mocking eyes and his effortless defiance, was a match struck in a room full of fumes. He reached out, faster than Porsche could react, and fisted a hand in the front of his tank top. The fabric strained. He yanked him forward, until their faces were inches apart.
“The problem,” Kinn hissed, “is that I need an heir. And I have no interest in acquiring one through the usual… channels.”
Porsche’s eyes widened fractionally. Then, to Kinn’s shock, a slow, wicked smile spread across his face. He laughed, a low, incredulous sound. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me. That’s the discreet problem? You’re gay and daddy needs a grandkid?”
“It’s not a joke.”
“It’s fucking hilarious,” Porsche shot back, his own hands coming up to grasp Kinn’s wrists. His grip was strong, bruising. “What, you think I’m some kind of incubator? Get the fuck out of my bar.”
He tried to shove Kinn back, but Kinn held fast, using his weight to spin them. He slammed Porsche against the rough brick wall. A cloud of dust puffed around them. The dagger in his pocket dug into both of them. Porsche grunted, the air leaving his lungs in a rush, but his eyes blazed with pure, undiluted fury.
“My father would not have sent me here without reason,” Kinn ground out, his body pressed against Porsche’s, pinning him. “He said you were from a village. In the mountains.”
All the fight seemed to drain from Porsche’s body for a single, suspended second. His expression went blank with shock. “What?”
“The mountain village. Where the men… are not like other men.”
Porsche stared at him, his breath coming in short, sharp pants against Kinn’s mouth. The noise from the bar was a distant throb. The revelation hung between them, ugly and immense.
“You don’t know anything,” Porsche whispered, but the defiance was gone, replaced by something raw and vulnerable.
“I know my father knows. And he sent me to you.” Kinn leaned in, his voice dropping to a predatory murmur. “He thinks you’re the solution. Tell me why.”
For a long moment, Porsche just breathed, his chest rising and falling against Kinn’s. The anger seemed to melt, transforming into something else—a bitter resignation, a dark, shared understanding. Then, that fierce, challenging light returned to his eyes.
“You want to know the secret, jao na?” Porsche’s hand let go of Kinn’s wrist and snaked up, his fingers closing around the silk of Kinn’s tie. He pulled, not to choke, but to bring their lips agonizingly closer. His breath, sweet with stolen whiskey, ghosted over Kinn’s mouth. “The men from my village… our bodies are tuned to a single, fucked-up frequency. We can bear life. But not like a broodmare. Not for just anyone.”
Kinn’s heart was a jackhammer against his ribs. He couldn’t move.
“My body won’t take your seed,” Porsche breathed, the words a hot, filthy promise against Kinn’s lips, “until my soul takes your heart. It’s a sacred, stupid lock. And you don’t have the key.” He tightened his grip on the tie, his other hand dropping to palm Kinn roughly through his trousers. Kinn gasped, a jolt of pure, electric desire searing through him. “But that doesn’t mean,” Porsche murmured, biting Kinn’s lower lip, sharp and sudden, “we can’t practice fucking like animals tonight.”
It was surrender and attack all at once. The last thread of Kinn’s control snapped.
He crashed his mouth onto Porsche’s, the kiss less an act of passion than one of devouring. It was all teeth and clashing tongues and shared, frantic breath. Porsche met him with equal ferocity, his hands ripping at Kinn’s tailored jacket, shoving it off his shoulders. Kinn yanked the tank top up, breaking the kiss just long enough to drag it over Porsche’s head and toss it aside. He was magnificent—sleek, golden skin stretched over defined muscle, the tattoos a beautiful map of some history Kinn ached to learn.
Porsche fumbled with Kinn’s belt, his fingers clumsy with urgency. The dagger, forgotten, clattered loudly as it fell from Kinn’s pocket and skittered across the concrete floor. Neither man looked. The sound was irrelevant in the face of this.
Kinn spun them again, this time bending Porsche over a stack of sturdy wooden crates. The cardboard boxes dug into his stomach. Kinn leaned over him, his mouth on the nape of Porsche’s neck, biting down on the tendon there. Porsche groaned, a deep, ragged sound that went straight to Kinn’s cock.
“You want to practice?” Kinn growled, his hands pulling at Porsche’s jeans, dragging them down over his hips. “Let’s practice.”
He didn’t wait, didn’t ask. Spitting roughly into his own hand, he slicked himself, then pressed the head of his cock against Porsche’s entrance. It was dry, too tight, a brutal intrusion.
Porsche hissed, his back arching. “Bastard,” he choked out, but he pushed back, forcing himself onto Kinn, taking him in an excruciating, burning inch.
Kinn buried his face in Porsche’s shoulder, stifling his own groan as the blistering heat and tightness enveloped him. He gave no quarter, driving forward until he was fully sheathed, until their bodies were locked together, panting.
For a heartbeat, they were still, joined in a painful, perfect fullness. Then Porsche moved, a sharp roll of his hips. “Fuck me, then,” he snarled over his shoulder. “Or are you all talk, jao na?”
Kinn saw red. He pulled back and slammed in, a hard, punishing stroke. Porsche cried out, his hands scrambling for purchase on the crates. Kinn did it again. And again. He set a ruthless, driving rhythm, each thrust jolting through both of them. The crates shook. A bottle fell from a shelf somewhere and shattered.
It was raw, primitive, and devoid of any tenderness. It was a fight for dominance, for release, for a momentary escape from the gilded cages that trapped them both. Kinn gripped Porsche’s hips, his fingers digging into the flesh hard enough to bruise, holding him in place as he pounded into him. The slap of skin on skin, their grunts and curses, the coarse scent of sweat and sex—it flooded Kinn’s senses, obliterating thought.
Porsche took it all, pushing back against every thrust, meeting violence with violence. “Is this… what you needed?” he gasped, his voice broken. “To fuck your… problem away?”
“Shut up,” Kinn grunted, angling his hips, driving deeper. Porsche shouted, a raw, shattered sound as Kinn hit that spot inside him. His body clenched, a series of brutal spasms that nearly undid Kinn right there.
Kinn reached around, wrapping a hand around Porsche’s leaking cock. He stroked him in time with his thrusts, rough and fast. “Come for me,” he commanded, his voice guttural, foreign to his own ears.
Porsche came with a choked-off roar, his cum striping the cardboard in front of him, his body convulsing around Kinn’s cock in waves of intense, pulsing heat. The sensation was too much. Kinn’s own orgasm ripped through him, a blinding, white-hot eruption that felt like his spine was melting. He emptied himself deep inside, hips stuttering, his forehead pressed hard against Porsche’s sweat-slicked back.
Silence descended, broken only by their ragged, desperate gasps for air. The world slowly seeped back in—the chill of the storeroom air on their overheated skin, the distant bass from the bar, the smell of sex and dust.
Kinn pulled out, the motion making them both wince. He stumbled back, fastening his trousers with trembling hands. Porsche stayed bent over the crates, his shoulders heaving.
For a full minute, neither spoke. The reality of what they’d just done—a brutal, anonymous fuck in a filthy storeroom—crashed down around them. It was everything Kinn was used to, and yet entirely different.
Porsche slowly straightened, wincing as he pulled his jeans up. He turned, his face unreadable. He looked at Kinn, then at the golden dagger glittering on the floor near their feet. He walked over, bent down with a slight hitch in his step, and picked it up. He weighed it in his palm, his gaze on the snarling lion.
“Your heart,” he said quietly, his voice hoarse. He held the dagger out, hilt-first. “Until your soul takes mine. That’s the deal, Kinn. That’s the only deal my body knows.” He gave a tired, shattered version of his earlier smile. “So you’d better find a key. Or get used to the taste of failure.”
He pressed the dagger into Kinn’s numb hand. Their fingers brushed. A spark, not of passion, but of something deeper and more terrifying, passed between them.
Then Porsche turned, retrieved his tank top, and walked out of the storeroom, leaving Kinn alone in the dim light, the scent of their coupling clinging to him, the dagger cold and heavy in his hand, and the impossible, cursed terms of his salvation echoing in the sudden, hollow silence.