Chapter 18

Jinseong rested his forehead against Yi-jae’s shoulder and drew a deep, involuntary breath. Wonderful. Even through the dense fog of high-proof whiskey, the crisp fragrance of dark cedar, ozone, and cold air reached his senses with shocking clarity. Did every dominant Alpha smell this intoxicating, or was each one distinct?

His balance wavered, and Jinseong sagged heavily against the Alpha’s chest. Yi-jae hooked a strong arm around his waist, reached for the fruit platter with his other hand, and slipped another grape between the boy’s lips. Sweet juice glossed Jinseong’s softly chewing lips. When the youth chased a stray drop with the pink tip of his tongue, Yi-jae’s dark gaze darkened further.

“From now on, answer my questions properly,” Yi-jae commanded.

“Yes,” Jinseong answered immediately, his head nodding against the Alpha’s collarbone.

Yi-jae’s long fingers began unbuttoning Jinseong’s dress shirt with practiced ease. “Lie to me, and I don’t care what medicine you’re taking—I’ll kill you.”

He slid the final button free, parted the fabric, and laid his broad palm flat against the bare skin of Jinseong’s spine, traveling slowly downward. “Mmm…”

A violent shiver raced up Jinseong’s back. His posture snapped rigid. The alcohol had amplified his tactile sensitivity to an agonizing degree, making even a simple touch feel unbearably sharp. Yi-jae’s low, gravelly timbre seemed to bypass his ears entirely, echoing directly inside his skull.

“Don’t try dodging my questions, either. You hear me?”

“Yes, yes. I won’t,” Jinseong promised with drunken, solemn earnestness. He bobbed his head several times as though sealing a sacred contract.

“Where are you from?”

“…”

Instead of answering, Jinseong exhaled a long, alcohol-scented breath and buried his face deeper into Yi-jae’s neck, blatantly stalling. Yi-jae bared his teeth, catching the tender skin at the nape of his neck and dragging his incisors down the slope. Jinseong flinched violently, hunching his shoulders.

“Up… up North,” he mumbled hurriedly, and then kept babbling, rattling off the detailed village and provincial address with far more precision than necessary.

“Your name.”

“Lee Jinseong.”

“Age?” Yi-jae asked softly, his long fingers tracing a slow, deliberate line along the tense curve of Jinseong’s neck.

“…”

The silence lasted a fraction of a second too long. Yi-jae’s fingers climbed Jinseong’s spine one vertebra at a time, finally clamping down around his tense shoulder blades. Jinseong squirmed with a grimace, but the arm locked around his waist only pulled tighter. The struggle accomplished nothing except generating an accidental, slow friction between their lower bodies.

“T-twenty-one… maybe twenty-two. I lost track.”

“What?” Yi-jae stared at him. The boy was barely an adult. Jinseong shook his head in a daze, as though calculating the years had become an impossible mathematical riddle.

“Why’d you get off on the fifth floor? You were told to go to the tenth,” Yi-jae demanded.

“A phone…”

“How did you know there was a phone down there?” Yi-jae’s fingers tightened against the bare flesh of his waist.

“…”

“I asked how you knew there was a phone.”

“I found it,” Jinseong whispered, his gaze dropping to the Alpha’s lap. “They told me it was there. So I went to get it.”

“Who told you?”

Jinseong’s explanation didn’t fit. Yi-jae had assumed the boy had deliberately played along with a client to secure access to a handset; now Jinseong was claiming he had simply walked down to collect a lost device. Yi-jae scrutinized the boy’s flushed, unfocused features as Jinseong looked back through the drunken haze.

“I only wanted to make one call,” Jinseong whispered, his voice cracking with fragile desperation. “I wasn’t trying to run away or pull a trick. I just… I wanted to know if Yeonjung-noona was still breathing.”

His face was deathly pale beneath the crimson flush, his lips swollen and dark from biting them. Out of that slurred stream of confession emerged a name Yi-jae recognized all too well from Gold Class’s intelligence files.

“Lee Yeonjung?”

Jinseong’s fidgeting stopped completely. His glassy eyes lifted toward the ceiling, then slid away in sudden, naked guilt. “The… Omega… technician.”

“…”

Yi-jae locked both arms behind Jinseong’s lower back, hauling him flush against his chest until their bodies pressed together with crushing force. “That isn’t true. You’re the Omega.”

“…”

“Aren’t you?”

Jinseong stared down at him. His dark eyes were glossy and unfocused, but they were not empty; some stubborn, desperate thread of survival remained intact beneath the haze. He squeezed his eyes shut, opened them, and then gently cupped Yi-jae’s handsome face between both trembling palms. Baek Yi-jae. He likes kissing.

He needed the interrogation to stop. Yi-soo’s parting whisper echoed through the whiskey fog in his head like a directive. Baek Yi-jae likes kissing. If he could simply seal that mouth, the lethal questions would cease. Concepts of right, wrong, pride, and shame had become utterly exhausting. Yi-jae’s skin felt pleasantly warm beneath his hands, so Jinseong stroked the man’s cheekbones, almost affectionately. The bizarre, gentle touch made Yi-jae’s brow furrow in genuine bewilderment.

“…N-no. I’m not.”

That was the single truth Jinseong could never surrender, not even at the edge of the grave. He lied once more, drew Yi-jae’s chin closer with clumsy determination, and wet his dry lips with the tip of his tongue. Then he pressed his mouth firmly against Yi-jae’s, pulling back with a soft, wet smack. For an entire beat, Yi-jae did not move. His lips parted; his dark pupils dilated in sudden, profound shock. Jinseong leaned in a second time, kissed him with slightly more pressure, and pulled away.

“I’m sorry. For all of it,” Jinseong murmured, his voice slurred with liquor. There was nothing seductive in his hazy stare—only a desperate determination to stop the Alpha from asking another ruinous question.

“…”

A slow, dangerous smile finally curved Yi-jae’s lips, though it held a volatile mixture of mockery, offense, predatory hunger, and tightly coiled desire. His hand slipped from behind Jinseong’s waist and clamped around the back of his neck with bruising force.

“Insolent little shit.”

“…?”

Before Jinseong could even register the insult, Yi-jae hauled him down. Their eyes met at point-blank range, the sheer intensity in the Alpha’s gaze causing Jinseong’s drunken thoughts to stumble. Jinseong parted his lips to apologize again, and Yi-jae captured his mouth before a single sound could escape.

“…!” Jinseong’s eyes flew wide. His alcohol-soaked cognition lagged several beats behind reality; Yi-jae gave him zero time to recover.

Searing heat invaded his mouth. Teeth grazed against his lips and clicked against his own as Yi-jae drove the kiss deep, reaching all the way to the root of his tongue. Jinseong shuddered, throwing his hands back to retreat, but Yi-jae’s arm locked around his spine like an iron band, dragging him closer still. He’s going to eat me alive.

Pure alarm exploded through Jinseong. He flailed like a drowning man thrashing for air. Terror should have been the only sensation consuming him, yet an electric current answered low in his abdomen, shocking his nerves. His palm landed flat against Yi-jae’s shoulder, trying in vain to push away.

“Stop fighting me,” Yi-jae growled against his lips, raw impatience roughing the edges of his voice as his hot, damp breath coated Jinseong’s mouth.

There was no air left in the room. Jinseong hunched his shoulders and attempted to tuck his chin away, but Yi-jae tilted it back with practiced dominance, recapturing his lips and turning ravenous the instant they collided. His tongue plunged inside, tangling around Jinseong’s rigid one with relentless insistence.

“Mmh…!”

The smothered groan dissolved between their crushed mouths. Saliva glossed their lips, slipping from the corners in wet trails. Yi-jae sucked hard enough on Jinseong’s tongue to make the base ache, then shifted his angle and dragged his tongue across the sensitive roof of the boy’s mouth. Jinseong gasped for air, his face contorting in sensory overload. When he tried to shake his head to break free, Yi-jae bit down sharply on his lower lip. Skin split. The sharp, copper taste of blood flooded Jinseong’s tongue.

He jammed his hand between their mouths, desperately covering the lower half of his face. Above his knuckles, Yi-jae’s dark eyes burned with naked, furious arousal.

“Why are you covering your mouth?”

“…”

Yi-jae’s lips moved hot against the back of Jinseong’s trembling hand. “Who said you could start something and then pull away?”

He caught Jinseong’s wrist and yanked it downward. When Jinseong lifted his other hand to shield his bleeding mouth, Yi-jae caught that wrist too, pinning them both away against his chest.

Jinseong ran the tip of his tongue over his lip, wincing at the sting and the sharp taste of blood. Kisses on television were gentle, tender things. What kind of madness was this? An absurd sense of betrayal flared through the whiskey haze; this felt less like a kiss and more like an execution.

“Stick your tongue out,” Yi-jae commanded, his voice dropping into a low, uncompromising rasp.

“…” Jinseong hesitated, his heart hammering against his ribs. Is he going to hurt me again? He was already bruised; what else did this monster want to carve out of him? Under Yi-jae’s unblinking, dangerous glare, he finally parted his lips, revealing only the very tip.

The arm around his waist tightened immediately. “Further.”

Defiance had long been beaten out of him. Jinseong let out a faint sigh and extended his tongue. Yi-jae lowered his head and dragged his own tongue slowly, flatly across the exposed pink surface. The wet, deliberate friction was somehow infinitely more obscene than the violent kiss, and Jinseong arched violently in shock, both hands flying up to shove against Yi-jae’s broad chest. The fingers locked above his tailbone clamped tight. Jinseong’s lower back bowed, his hips thrusting helplessly forward against the Alpha.

“Don’t push me away,” Yi-jae growled, the words brushing damply against Jinseong’s chin.

Yi-jae caught the recoiling tongue between his front teeth, biting down just hard enough that Jinseong feared for one terrifying second it had been severed. Then their mouths sealed together again. Wherever Jinseong tried to retreat, Yi-jae pursued, drawing his tongue deep into his mouth and sucking with feverish fixation. A hand reached for his belt buckle. Jinseong’s eyes snapped downward.

“Lee Jinseong.”

Yi-jae’s warning jerked his attention back up, but only for an instant. The sordid memories of the hourly motel and the induced heat flooded his chest with panic. Though he pressed his lips obediently against Yi-jae’s, his terrified gaze kept darting toward his waist. Hooked fingers caught the waistband of his boxer briefs. He really intends to touch me.

Jinseong grabbed Yi-jae’s wrist with one hand, using the other to cover his groin. Beneath his palm, his traitorous flesh was already rock-hard—a reaction that made no logical sense after an ordeal that had mostly caused pain. If Yi-jae touched him now, Jinseong had no idea what humiliating, shameful response his body would surrender.

“You really never listen to a single word I say.” Yi-jae ground his molars together, batting Jinseong’s hands aside with effortless power.

“Ah, um… this is…” Jinseong stammered, his mind spinning frantically.

The alcohol supplied a catastrophic flash of inspiration: What if I touch him instead? If his hand occupied Yi-jae down there, perhaps the Alpha would abandon the attempt to expose him. It was the logic of a cornered child. Jinseong reached down, aiming directly for Yi-jae’s groin.

“…”

His wrist was intercepted in midair. Crushing pressure sent a sharp, numbing ache radiating into his knuckles. Yi-jae’s eyes flared with pure, lethal fire. “Should I just fucking kill you right here?”

“…”

Jinseong’s eyelids twitched. In that instant, the air in the parlor seemed to grow thick and suffocating—a sensation distinct from drunken dizziness, yet terrifyingly familiar. He knew this atmosphere. Dominant pheromones.

Yi-jae supported Jinseong’s spine, laid him flat along the velvet sofa, and stripped his trousers and crimson boxers down in one fluid motion. Jinseong’s erection caught briefly on the waistband, then sprang fully into the light. Jinseong bit his swollen lip under the Alpha’s piercing stare.

“Dangerous…” Jinseong breathed, the word slipping past his teeth before he could stop it.

Yi-jae looked up, a dry, mocking smile touching his mouth. “Me? Or you?”

“…”

Jinseong swallowed the answer in silence. Both of us.

Yi-jae straightened over him, his towering shadow swallowing Jinseong’s pale frame entirely. His dark eyes traveled slowly, hungrily over every exposed inch of porcelain skin. Gooseflesh erupted along Jinseong’s bare thighs beneath the freezing scrutiny. Yi-jae shrugged out of his tailored suit jacket, letting it drop to the floor.

Jinseong’s gaze tracked the movement of his broad shoulders, then drifted helplessly over the sculpted line of his neck, the tattoo coiling across his chest, the narrow waist, the heavy groin, and the powerful thighs. He was staring openly before he even realized what he was doing. This is really, truly dangerous.

“Ah!”

A scorching palm closed firmly around his length. No one had ever touched him there with such deliberate ownership. Jinseong looked down, but Yi-jae’s broad chest blocked his view. When their eyes locked, the Alpha appeared deceptively calm.

“…!” Blinding pain struck without warning. Yi-jae squeezed with punishing force, his thumb grinding roughly over the hypersensitive crown until Jinseong’s brow knotted in agony.

“Ah, it hurts!” Jinseong cried out, the protest slurring against the Alpha’s chest.

“That’s punishment for playing games with me.”

“I told you I didn’t—ah!”

Yi-jae’s hand began to stroke with ruthless, unyielding momentum. A sound tore from Jinseong’s chest—half breathless gasp, half wounded sob. His head fell back against the armrest, his hips writhing helplessly against the velvet. It bore no resemblance to the hurried, mechanical release he had occasionally sought in private; this was too heavy, too precise, too completely overwhelming.