Chapter 7: Tied and Taken
The silence in Gaby’s one-room apartment in Mapo was a physical presence. It had a texture—thick, muffling, stale. For a week, it had swallowed the sounds of the city outside her window and replaced them with the relentless echo of a man’s whisper. I’ll find you.
She wore the green hoodie constantly. It smelled less of him and more of her now, of her loneliness and the cheap fabric softener she used, but she wore it anyway. It was a skin. A reminder that the body beneath it had been known, utterly and fiercely.
Her phone was a brick. It buzzed with work—a photoshoot for a rising actress, a commercial for a cosmetic brand—but never from a number she didn’t recognize. She found herself staring at male idols on variety shows, her professional eye dissecting their foundation while another, deeper part of her flinched at a familiar sharp jawline or a particular laugh. It was torture. She was haunted by a ghost who was very much alive, dancing on stages under blinding lights, smiling for cameras that loved him.
The knock on her door, late on a Thursday night, was so soft she almost mistook it for the radiator pipes.
Her heart stopped. Then it hammered, a frantic bird against her ribs. She walked to the door, the hoodie swallowing her hands. She didn’t look through the peephole. She already knew.
She opened it.
Hyukjae stood in the dim hallway, a baseball cap pulled low, a black mask covering the lower half of his face. His dark eyes, wide and bloodshot, were the only part of him she recognized. He looked thinner, etched with a new kind of exhaustion. He held a single duffel bag.
They stared at each other. The hallway smelled of old kimchi and damp concrete.
“You found me,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
He just nodded, a short, sharp movement. His gaze dropped to the hoodie, and something in his eyes fractured. He stepped inside. She closed the door, the click of the lock sounding final.
He dropped his bag, ripped off his mask and cap, and shoved them into his jacket pocket. He didn’t reach for her. He just stood there, vibrating with a tension that made the small room feel smaller.
“They have me on a treadmill,” he said, the words rushing out. “Schedules back-to-back. Interviews, rehearsals, a fucking fan meet in Osaka next week. I smile. I dance. I say the right things. My body does what it’s told.” His eyes finally locked onto hers. “But my head is here. In that fucking hanok. My cock is so hard it aches, thinking about your cunt. All the time.”
The crude words, after the silence, were a shock. They hung in the air, raw and true.
“So you came here for that?” she asked, forcing her voice to stay level. “To fuck the memory out of your head?”
“No.” He ran a hand through his hair, a gesture of pure frustration. “I don’t know. Maybe. Yes.” He took a step toward her. “I came because I can’t breathe out there. I need to not be him for five minutes. I need to be the guy who was inside you.”
She could smell him now—sweat, airport air, the faint, expensive scent of his styling products. The idol scent. Underneath it, she caught the ghost of the boy from the hanok. The one who trembled.
“Take off the hoodie,” he said, his voice dropping.
“No.”
His eyes flashed. A challenge. Good. She needed his fire to match the cold knot in her own stomach.
“I bought something,” she said, turning away from him, walking toward her bedroom area. The space was dominated by a large, metal-framed bed, a modern, sturdy thing she’d bought for its practicality. Now it felt like a stage. She opened the bottom drawer of her dresser, behind her stacks of sweaters. She pulled out a long, flat box.
She could feel him watching her. She opened the box. Inside, nestled in black satin, was a harness made of sleek black leather straps. And attached to it, a realistic, veined dildo, dark and substantial.
Hyukjae went perfectly still. His breath hitched.
“My turn,” Gaby said, the words cooler than she felt. She pulled the hoodie over her head and dropped it on the floor. She stood before him in just her simple cotton panties and a thin camisole. His eyes devoured her, the hunger in them so intense it was like a physical touch.
She saw the conflict war on his face—shock, a flicker of fear, then a dawning, dark curiosity that eclipsed everything else. His pride, his inexperience, his desperate need to prove himself—all of it was right there.
“You want to not be you?” she pressed, holding the harness. “Then let me show you how it feels.”
A long beat of silence. The hum of her refrigerator filled the room. Then, without a word, Hyukjae began to undress. His movements were jerky, not graceful. He peeled off his jacket, his shirt, his jeans, until he stood naked before her, his cock already half-hard, curving against his thigh. He was all lean lines and taut muscle, a beautiful, tense weapon.
“On the bed,” she instructed. “On your back.”
He obeyed, lying down against her pale gray sheets. The metal frame gave a soft groan under his weight. She retrieved two long, silk scarves she used for her hair—one deep purple, one crimson. She approached the bed, the leather harness in her other hand.
“Wrists,” she said.
He lifted his arms, offering them to her without hesitation. The trust in that gesture made her chest ache. She tied each wrist securely to the vertical bars of the headboard, the silk smooth and strong. He tested the bonds once, a sharp pull, then relaxed into them. His vulnerability was a potent, frightening thing. His dark eyes never left her face.
Gaby stepped into the harness, adjusting the straps around her hips and thighs, tightening them until the silicone appendage stood out from her body, an artificial but formidable erection. She took a bottle of lube from the drawer and slicked the length of it, the glossy wetness catching the light from her bedside lamp.
She climbed onto the bed, straddling his legs. She could see the pulse hammering in his throat.
“You’ve thought about this,” she stated, not asking. She’d seen the flicker in his eyes at the hanok, a question he’d been too afraid to voice.
He swallowed. “Yes.”
“Tell me.”
“I’ve… thought about how you feel. Inside. I wanted to know…” He trailed off, his cheeks flushing.
“You wanted to know how it would feel to be filled.” She finished for him, her voice low. “To lose control.”
He nodded, a sharp, almost ashamed dip of his chin.
She leaned forward, her hands on either side of his head, the tip of the dildo nudging against his inner thigh. “Then close your eyes. And don’t open them until I say.”
His eyelids fluttered shut. His breath came faster.
She started by kissing him, a deep, consuming kiss that mimicked what was to come. She kissed his jaw, his throat, the sensitive hollows of his collarbones. She moved down his body, her mouth charting a slow, worshipful path over his chest, his taut stomach. She avoided his aching cock, which stood fully hard now, weeping a clear bead of precum onto his skin.
She pushed his legs apart, her hands firm on his inner thighs. She bent her head.
Her first touch of her tongue to his hole was a lightning strike. His whole body jerked against the scarves, a choked gasp tearing from his lips.
“Shhh,” she murmured, her breath hot against him. “Let me.”
She rimmed him with a slow, deliberate precision she used when applying the perfect line of eyeliner. She circled the tight, clenched muscle, softening it with the flat of her tongue, then pressing the tip inside in shallow, probing thrusts. The taste of him was clean, salty, intensely private. His hips began to move in small, involuntary circles, pushing back against her mouth.
“Fuck,” he breathed, the word ragged. “Gaby… please…”
She added a finger, just the tip, slick with her saliva, pressing in alongside her tongue. The groan he let out was long and torn from deep within his chest. She worked him open like this, with her mouth and one finger, then two, scissoring them gently, feeling the hot, clenching resistance of his body give way to a hungry, open need.
When she was satisfied, she sat back on her heels. She poured more lube into her palm, warming it, then slicked the dildo thoroughly again, her eyes on his face. His eyes were still screwed shut, his lips parted, his entire being focused on the empty, aching sensation she’d left behind.
She positioned the broad, blunt head against him.
“Open your eyes,” she said.
He did. His pupils were blown black, his gaze clouded with a mix of terror and want so potent it stole her breath.
“Watch me,” she commanded, her voice steady though her heart was a drum. “Watch me take you.”
She pushed forward, applying steady, inexorable pressure. His entrance resisted, then yielded, swallowing the silicone tip with a soft, wet sound. His face contorted—a sharp gasp, a wince of real strain, his back arching off the bed.
“Breathe,” she urged, pausing, fully seated just an inch inside. “Breathe through it.”
He sucked in a ragged breath, his muscles trembling. He gave a slight, desperate nod.
She pushed deeper, a slow, relentless invasion, until she was buried to the hilt inside him, their bodies joined in this reversed, intimate fusion. He was so tight, a hot, velvety vise around the fake cock. She felt the power of it surge through her—the power to give him this, to show him this side of pleasure that was all surrender.
She began to move. Short, shallow pulls at first, letting his body adjust. Then longer, deeper strokes. The sound was obscenely wet, a slick, rhythmic squelch that filled the quiet room. His tied hands clenched into fists above him. His own neglected cock bounced against his stomach with each thrust, leaving shiny trails of precum.
“You feel that?” she whispered, her own breath coming faster as she established a hard, driving rhythm. The bedframe rattled softly with their movement. “This is me. Inside you. This is what you did to me. This full, fucking stretch.”
“Yes,” he hissed, his head thrashing side to side. “God, yes.”
“It hurts?”
“Yes.”
“You want it to stop?”
“No. Fuck, no. Don’t stop.” The words were a plea, stripped of all pretense. “Please, Gaby. Harder.”
She obeyed. She braced her hands on his hips and fucked him harder, deeper, the slaps of their bodies growing louder. His moans were continuous now, a broken, wanton soundtrack. She watched his face unravel, the sharp, beautiful features dissolving into pure, unguarded sensation. This was the man behind the idol, the one he was desperate to be—overwhelmed, owned, utterly real.
“I’m gonna come,” he warned, his voice strangled. “Just like this… fuck…”
“Do it,” she gritted out, pounding into him, sweat dripping between her breasts. “Come on my cock. Show me.”
His orgasm ripped through him with a violence that was almost frightening. His body bowed off the mattress, a raw, wordless shout tearing from his throat as his own cock jerked and pulsed, shooting thick, white stripes across his stomach and chest. He clenched around the dildo so tightly she could barely move, his thighs shaking violently.
She fucked him through it, through the tremors and the choked sobs, until he collapsed, boneless and spent, against the sheets. His eyes were closed, tears leaking from the corners.
Slowly, gently, she pulled out. He flinched at the sudden emptiness. She quickly unbuckled the harness, letting it fall to the floor, and crawled up his sticky, trembling body. She used her teeth to gnaw at the silk knots until his wrists were free. He brought his arms down slowly, groaning at the stiffness, and then they were around her, crushing her to him.
He was crying quietly, his face buried in her neck. She held him, her own eyes burning.
“Now you know,” she whispered into his hair.
He pulled back just enough to look at her, his face a wreck of tears and release. “It’s not the same,” he said, his voice rough. “What I feel for you… it’s not just in my body. It’s in here.” He took her hand and pressed it flat against his sternum, over his pounding heart. “It’s like a fucking tumour. It’s growing.”
The raw confession hung between them, more intimate than anything they’d just done.
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand. Then his phone, in his discarded jacket, buzzed too. Once. Twice. A relentless, synchronized reminder.
Hyukjae didn’t look away from her. The shattered, open man slowly receded. The mask didn’t snap back into place—it crept in, a shadow of duty dulling the light in his eyes. He kissed her, a soft, lingering kiss that tasted of salt and goodbye.
“I have a 6 AM call time,” he said, the words hollow.
“I know.”
They cleaned up in silence. He dressed. He picked up his duffel bag. At the door, he hesitated, looking back at her standing in the center of her apartment, naked, marked by him, holding his green hoodie again.
“The tumour,” he said, his hand on the doorknob. “It’s the only real thing I have.”
Then he was gone, the door closing softly behind him, leaving her alone with the silence and the wet, aching echo of his truth staining her sheets.
Then he was gone, the door closing softly behind him, leaving her alone with the silence and the wet, aching echo of his truth staining her sheets.
The tumour. She felt its metastasis in her own chest, a cold, spreading root. For three days, she moved through her jobs like a ghost, her hands steady with brushes and sponges while her mind replayed the feel of him clenching around that fake cock, the shattered sound of his weeping. Her apartment felt cavernous. The green hoodie on her floor was a dead thing.
On the fourth evening, her own need became a physical itch, a relentless hum. She stood under a scalding shower until her skin was pink, but it didn’t touch the hollow ache between her legs. She dried off, the towel rough against her nerves. She went to her drawer. She didn’t reach for the harness.
She pulled on the white, sheer button-down shirt he’d left at the hanok weeks ago. It smelled like sandalwood now, like her. It hung to mid-thigh. She left it unbuttoned. She lay back on the metal bed, the frame cool against her shoulders. She spread her legs, let her fingers trail down through her curls, already damp. She was slick, her cunt throbbing with a lonely, specific memory. She imagined his eyes seeing her like this, waiting. Her own touch was a poor substitute.
The lock in the front door clicked.
Her breath caught. Only one person had that key. She didn’t move. She heard the hesitant footsteps in the entryway, the pause. He appeared in her bedroom doorway, still in the black practice clothes from his schedule, hair damp with sweat. He looked wrecked. Beautiful and exhausted.
His dark eyes found her on the bed, took in the sheer shirt, the deliberate sprawl of her legs, the glistening wetness he could see from across the room. A muscle jumped in his jaw. His backpack slid from his shoulder and hit the floor with a thud.
Before he could speak—to apologize, to explain, to say anything that would break the spell—she pointed a finger at the center of the bed.
“Get on. On your back. Now.”
The command, hard and low, snapped the last thread of his idol composure. He obeyed, his movements hurried, almost clumsy. He shucked his pants and shirt, his cock already thick and full, and lay back where she had been moments before. The metal felt new under him.
“Wrists and ankles,” she said, rising. She fetched the silk scarves.
He offered his limbs without protest, his gaze locked on her face, trusting and terrified. She tied each wrist firmly to the top corners of the headboard. She moved down, looping a scarf around each ankle and securing them to the lower vertical posts of the footboard. He was spread-eagle, utterly vulnerable, his erection straining up toward his navel.
She stood at the foot of the bed, looking down at her work. “You’ve had your fun,” she said, her voice cool. “You fuck me. You disappear. You come back with poetry about tumours. You don’t get to be the only one who owns something.”
She turned and got the harness from the drawer. Not the sleek one. A simpler, sturdier black nylon one. She attached the dildo he’d bought himself, the one from his secret online search she’d found in his bag at the hanok—thick, veined, and uncannily realistic. She pulled the straps tight around her hips, the weight of it foreign and powerful.
He watched, his chest rising and falling rapidly.
She knelt on the bed between his splayed legs. She didn’t kiss him. She leaned down and took one of his balls into her mouth, sucking the tight sac gently, rolling it with her tongue. He jerked against his bonds, a sharp gasp escaping him. She moved to the other, lavishing the same attention, her nails lightly scraping his inner thighs.
“Gaby…” he whispered.
She ignored him. She trailed her mouth lower, along the sensitive skin of his perineum, and then pressed her tongue flat against his hole.
He cried out, his back arching. It was the same sound from before, raw and unfiltered. She rimmed him with a focused brutality, her tongue circling and spearing, not to prepare but to overwhelm. She licked and probed until he was trembling violently, his knuckles white where they gripped the scarves, his breath coming in ragged sobs.
“Please… fuck, please, I can’t…”
“You can,” she murmured against his skin, hot and wet. “You will.”
She took the bottle of lube, squeezed a generous amount into her palm, and slicked the dildo until it shone. She positioned the swollen tip against his entrance, which was flushed and relaxed from her mouth.
“Tell me you want it.”
He was beyond pride. “I want it.”
“Say it like you mean it.”
“I want it!” he shouted, the words tearing from him.
She thrust in. Not slow. One hard, deep plunge that buried the entire length inside him in a single, shocking stroke. His scream was guttural, choked off into a strangled moan. She gave him no time. She pulled back and slammed home again, setting a brutal, pounding rhythm from the start. Her hips slapped against his ass, a sharp, rhythmic percussion in the quiet room.
“Oh god, oh fuck,” he chanted, his head thrashing. His cock was a dark, leaking arc against his belly, pre-cum dripping in steady threads onto his skin with every driving impact.
She leaned forward, bracing one hand by his head, and reached underneath him with the other. Her fingers wrapped around his shaft, stroking him in perfect, ruthless time with her thrusts. The double sensation—the deep, filling stretch and the tight friction on his cock—drove him into a frenzy.
His words dissolved into nonsense, into choked Korean curses and fragmented pleas. She fucked him harder, the bedframe groaning in protest.
“You feel this?” she growled into his ear, her own breath hot and labored. “This is what you leave me with. This empty, fucking need. Now you feel it too.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m—”
“Come for me, Hyukjae,” she commanded, her voice iron. “Now.”
He shattered. His body convulsed, seizing against the scarves as his cock pulsed violently in her fist. Thick, white come shot over her fingers and across his chest and stomach in ragged stripes. His hole clamped down on the dildo in a series of tight, milking spasms that made her own knees weak.
She kept fucking him through it, through the aftershocks, until his cries softened into whimpers. Finally, she stilled, buried deep inside him. She slowly, carefully, pulled out. He flinched, a full-body shudder at the loss.
She unbuckled the harness, letting it fall to the floor. She crawled up his trembling, come-streaked body and leaned down. She kissed the slick, swollen tip of his cock, a soft, filthy benediction.
She moved to his wrist and began untying the silk knot. Her fingers worked slowly.
“Round 3 in ten minutes,” she said, her voice now devoid of its earlier steel, leaving only a stark, shared exhaustion in its place.