Chapter 4: Piano Exploration
The days after the bath held a new charge, a current that hummed beneath every glance and accidental brush of fingers. The silent dinners became loaded, the clink of a wine glass sounding like a gunshot in the quiet. Hyukjae found himself cataloguing Donghae’s movements—the precise way he folded his newspaper, the faint line that appeared between his brows when he read a troubling financial report, the way his knuckles whitened around his coffee cup when Hyukjae entered a room.
It was Thursday. Donghae had come home early, a rare deviation. He’d wordlessly taken Hyukjae’s hand—his grip firm, almost urgent—and driven them back to the lake house. Not for a Sunday. For a Thursday afternoon, as if he couldn’t wait.
Now, he stood at the window of the sun-drenched study, his back to the room, while Hyukjae trailed his fingers over the spines of the old books. The late afternoon light poured in, golden and heavy, picking out the dust motes dancing in the air. It caught the rich burgundy and navy of the Persian rug, making the faded gold threads whisper.
“You never talk about them,” Hyukjae said quietly, his eyes on the framed portraits lining one shelf. All handsome, severe faces, generations of Lee dominance. Each frame was tilted, just a degree off perfect. It bothered him, that subtle disorder in Donghae’s world of precise control.
“Who?” Donghae’s voice was flat.
“Your family. The ones who built all this.” Hyukjae gestured to the room, the land beyond the window.
“They’re dead.” Donghae didn’t turn. “Talking doesn’t change that.”
“It might.” Hyukjae dared to step closer, drawn to the tension in the set of those broad shoulders. “It might change how you carry them.”
Finally, Donghae turned. The sunlight hit his face, but his eyes were in shadow, dark and unreadable. He looked at Hyukjae as if seeing him for the first time that day. “And how do I carry them?”
“Like they’re still here. Judging.” Hyukjae’s voice was barely above a whisper. “Like every move you make is a response to a ghost.”
A muscle ticked in Donghae’s jaw. He took a single step forward, closing the distance. The air between them thickened, ripe with the smell of old paper, polished wood, and Donghae’s clean, sharp cologne. “You think you know something about me now? Because I washed your hair? Because I fucked you in a bathtub?”
The crude language should have stung. Instead, it lit a fuse in Hyukjae’s gut. “I know you didn’t bring me here to look at books.”
For a long moment, Donghae just stared. Then his mouth quirked, not quite a smile. A predator’s recognition. “No. I didn’t.”
In one fluid motion, he closed the remaining space. His hands came up, not to strike, but to frame Hyukjae’s face, his thumbs pressing hard against the hinge of his jaw. The kiss was not like the first, exploratory one in the penthouse kitchen. This was consumptive. A claiming. Donghae’s tongue swept into his mouth, deep and possessive, and Hyukjae met him with a hunger that shocked himself, his fingers twisting into the fine wool of Donghae’s sweater.
Donghae walked him backward, never breaking the kiss, until the backs of Hyukjae’s thighs hit something solid and unyielding—the grand piano, its lid closed, a vast expanse of polished ebony.
He broke the kiss, breathing ragged. “Up.” It was a graveled command.
Hyukjae scrambled to sit on the piano lid, the cool, smooth surface a shock against the backs of his thighs. Donghae stepped between his legs, hands going to the button of Hyukjae’s trousers. He made quick, ruthless work of them, yanking them and his underwear down to his knees in one rough pull. The air in the study was cool on his exposed skin.
Then Donghae’s mouth was on his neck, hot and demanding, licking a searing path from his collarbone to his ear. His teeth scraped over the sensitive cord of muscle, biting down just enough to make Hyukjae cry out and arch into him. One of Donghae’s large hands shoved his shirt up, baring his chest. He bent his head, and his mouth closed over a nipple.
The sensation was electric, sharp and almost painful. Donghae sucked hard, his tongue flicking the taut peak, before grazing it with his teeth. Hyukjae shouted, his head falling back with a thud against the closed lid. Sparks shot down his spine, pooling low in his belly.
“There,” Donghae muttered against his skin, switching to the other nipple, giving it the same merciless attention. “You like that. You go so fucking still, then you tremble.” His hand slid down Hyukjae’s quivering stomach, past his navel, through the coarse hair. He didn’t touch his cock, which was already straining, weeping against his stomach. Instead, his fingers trailed lower, tracing the sensitive skin of his inner thigh.
Hyukjae jolted. It was a different kind of sensitivity, a vulnerable, tickling heat that made his legs fall open wider of their own accord. Donghae’s fingers stroked there, a maddening, gentle rhythm, while his mouth continued to torture his chest.
“Please,” Hyukjae gasped, writhing. “Donghae, please touch me.”
“I am touching you.” Donghae’s voice was muffled against his skin. He bit down on his nipple again, and his fingers crept higher, brushing the tight furl of his hole. Hyukjae sobbed. “I’m discovering you. Learning what makes you come apart.” He pressed a single finger inside, just to the first knuckle. It was dry, a rough, shocking intrusion. “This. This makes you clench around nothing. Just the idea of it.”
He withdrew his finger and finally, finally wrapped his hand around Hyukjae’s cock. The relief was so intense Hyukjae saw white. But Donghae’s stroke was agonizingly slow, a tight fist moving from root to tip, his thumb smearing the pre-come over the head.
“Tell me what you want.” Donghae’s own breathing was harsh, his erection pressing insistently against his tailored pants. “Exactly.”
“I want you to fuck me,” Hyukjae begged, the words tumbling out. “On the piano. Now. I want to feel it in my teeth.”
A feral sound ripped from Donghae’s throat. He shoved Hyukjae’s shoulders, bending him backward until his spine was pressed against the cool ebony. He yanked his own pants open, freed himself, not bothering with pretense or preparation. He spat into his hand, slicked himself roughly, and positioned the blunt head at Hyukjae’s entrance.
“Look at me,” Donghae ordered, his voice raw.
Hyukjae forced his eyes open, meeting Donghae’s burning gaze. He saw the vulnerability there, a crack in the marble facade, the same awe from the bath. Then Donghae thrust, burying himself in one devastating surge.
The cry was punched out of Hyukjae. The stretch was brutal, exquisite, a blinding fullness that wiped his mind clean. The piano groaned beneath them, a discordant shudder of strings echoing inside the instrument.
Donghae set a relentless, punishing pace. Each drive was aimed, precise, nailing that devastating spot inside Hyukjae with brutal accuracy. The piano became an instrument of their joining, rocking with each impact, emitting low, resonant thuds and sympathetic vibrations.
“You feel that,” Donghae grunted, his body slamming into Hyukjae’s. “That’s me. That’s where I am. Deep in your goddamn guts.” He leaned over, bracing one hand on the lid next to Hyukjae’s head. “You think about ghosts? This is what’s real. This. The way you take me. The way your body begs for it.”
He was right. Hyukjae’s body was begging, trembling, hurtling toward an apex. He clawed at Donghae’s back, his thighs locked around his hips. The obscene sound of skin on skin, of wet, rhythmic thrusts, filled the sunlit room.
“I’m gonna come,” Hyukjae warned, a broken whisper.
“Come.” Donghae’s command was a plea. “Come all over this priceless fucking heirloom. Mark it.”
The permission, the sheer filthy ownership of it, triggered his release. Hyukjae came with a soundless scream, his back bowing off the piano, stripes of white painting his stomach and chest. His convulsions clamped around Donghae, pulling a guttural roar from the man’s throat as he followed, pulsing deep inside, his entire body shuddering with the force of it.
He collapsed forward, catching his weight on his forearms, his forehead dropping to Hyukjae’s shoulder. They lay like that, joined, panting, the piano’s faint hum their only requiem.
Donghae’s lips moved against his sweat-slicked skin. “The library,” he whispered, the words ragged and torn. “It wasn’t anger.”
Hyukjae went still, his heart hammering against his ribs.
Donghae drew a shaky breath. “It was terror. You smiled… and I realized I wanted something I couldn’t calculate. Something that could ruin me.” He lifted his head, his eyes bloodshot, open, utterly defenseless. “So I calculated how to get you anyway.”
The confession hung in the air, more intimate than anything their bodies had just done. The contract, the marriage, his sister’s conveniently failed deal—it wasn’t business. It was a siege. A desperate, flawed acquisition of the one thing his money and power couldn’t simply buy.
Outside, the sun dipped lower, casting long, stretched shadows of the pines across the room. One fell directly over a tilted picture frame, setting it right.