Chapter 37

Dawn seemed to have broken outside. Jaeha blinked, but his eyelids felt so heavy that prying them apart was almost impossible.

Even within the dim room, the faintest sliver of light was enough to send a sharp sting through his eyes.

He remembered crying near the very end, sounding almost like a child. It had not been grief that brought him to tears. His body had simply reacted on its own, the tears flowing without end.

The sensation had been agonizing, as though every opening in his body were spilling an endless torrent of clear fluid.

He could not even remember falling asleep. At some point, he must have simply lost consciousness.

His skin no longer felt sticky. A brief wave of dizziness swept over him at the thought of Taegeon washing him while he lay unconscious.

“Get some more sleep.”

The voice sounded deep and endlessly submerged, accompanied by the drifting fragrance of rugosa roses blooming along seaside cliffs.

Pheromones were not perceived through the nose alone. The olfactory cells merely registered the scent after it first clung to the skin, and Jaeha could tell that he was currently immersed in Taegeon’s pheromones.

By nature, an Alpha could not help remaining wary of another Alpha’s scent. Even among those who lived in the heart of modern civilization, that instinct remained unchanged.

It belonged to the same primal realm as hunger.

Jaeha had always found the pheromones of other Alphas unpleasant. Their scents were invariably combative. Even when they knew he was a dominant Alpha, they carried a relentless urge to overthrow him the moment they sensed the slightest opening.

That ignorant hunger for conquest irritated him whenever it latched onto his skin.

Lee Jaeha was not the sort of man who boasted about his dominance, but neither did he tolerate insolence. Pure rational judgment told him that allowing others to look down on him could never place him in a favorable position.

Jang Taegeon’s pheromones, however, were somehow different. They made Jaeha feel as though he had been submerged in a world containing nothing but sky and sea.

He was not drowning in its depths. He was simply floating upon the surface.

The sea could have swallowed him whole, stolen the last breath from his lungs, and forced foam down his throat until he suffocated. Instead, it remained quiet, almost as though it were gently holding Jaeha afloat.

Why was that? Why did Taegeon’s pheromones treat him with such leniency?

His curiosity stirred. Jaeha parted his lips and asked in a cracked voice, “Director Jang… how do my… my pheromones feel to you?”

His throat ached from that single sentence. Perhaps it was because he had spent hours groaning as though he were screaming, despite living a life in which he rarely raised his voice. Or perhaps his throat had been scraped raw by air forcing its way violently between his glottis and vocal cords whenever he tried to suppress his moans. Whatever the cause, his voice had become severely hoarse, almost unrecognizable compared with its usual measured tone.

Rather than answer, Taegeon buried his face against the nape of Jaeha’s neck. Since he was already holding him from behind, the movement felt natural, almost inevitable.

Jaeha felt the oppressive weight of the man’s forearms tighten around his waist, hauling him flush against a broad chest. The embrace was heavy enough to suffocate him, yet the heat radiating from Taegeon’s body was impossible to deny.

The faint, rhythmic hum of the ceiling air conditioner drifted through the silence. When no verbal response came, Jaeha allowed his expectations to wither.

Perhaps Taegeon had simply fallen asleep.

Yet Taegeon continued to linger, his lips pressed firmly against the nape of Jaeha’s neck. The vibrations of his voice traveled through those textured lips and into the ridge of Jaeha’s cervical spine before the sound itself ever reached his ears.

For one suspended moment, Lee Jaeha’s sense of touch completely supplanted his hearing.

It was primal and visceral, a sensation Jang Taegeon had awakened in him for the very first time.

“Executive Director Lee Jaeha’s pheromones are strongest right here,” Taegeon murmured.

His hand traveled downward, passing over Jaeha’s cock before pressing firmly against the perineum beneath his scrotum. Only then did Jaeha realize he was not wearing any underwear.

Now that he was conscious of it, he could also feel something thick and heavy lodged deep within the cleft of his buttocks. It was hard as bone, radiating suffocating heat as though desperate to force itself into every available crevice.

Jaeha began to squirm on instinct, then froze halfway through the movement.

The low vibration of Taegeon’s chuckle rolled against his back. “I won’t touch you any further. I have to leave soon, and if I penetrate you again right now, I don’t think your hole will ever let me go.”

“That’s…” Jaeha wanted to protest, to insist that it was not true, but the words died in his throat. He raised one hand and buried his face deep in the sheets.

Relief washed over him because the room remained dark, concealing the heat flooding his face.

“As for those pheromones… well, if I keep talking about them, I don’t think my cock is ever going to calm down.”

“…”

“Once Myeongsun starts driving, I can just masturbate in the back. Tell me, do you like the thought of your wife going around and showing off his dick outside?”

“No, that’s not what I meant!”

The abrupt image of Taegeon masturbating in the back seat while Myeongsun drove startled Jaeha so thoroughly that his curiosity about the pheromones vanished at once.

He answered with such haste that his already damaged voice cracked even further.

“Then don’t stir things up for no reason. Just sleep. When I tell you to sleep, you sleep.”

There was a certain leniency in Taegeon’s tone, but it was equally clear that Jaeha had been testing the limits of his patience. At times, Taegeon treated him like a child who did not know any better, despite being the same age as Jaeho.

A small, involuntary laugh escaped Jaeha and sent a tremor through his shoulders.

From behind came a quiet tsk, followed by the gentle press of teeth against his nape before Taegeon released him. Despite the aggression of their sex, Jang Taegeon never left marks anywhere a shirt collar could not conceal.

It was almost as though he remembered that Jaeha still had to go to work.

Jaeha found himself treasuring those small, quiet kindnesses.

The room blurred before his drowsy eyes. Sleep descended over him like a heavy veil, and it felt as though he had closed his eyes for only a fleeting instant.

When he opened them again, disturbed by the brightness spilling into the room, morning had fully arrived.

Taegeon, who had recently spent most nights in Jaeha’s room, appeared to be washing in the ensuite bathroom.

Jaeha pushed himself upright, only to realize he was completely naked. He instinctively moved to cover his lower body, but the gesture felt pointless, and his hand fell back to his side.

Tiny hickeys bloomed across his inner thighs like scattered petals. The sight made his attempt at modesty feel even more absurd.

Jaeha grabbed his track pants and pulled them on. When he failed to spot the T-shirt he had left hanging on the portable rack, he gave up and left the room bare-chested.

A glance at the clock confirmed that it was shortly past six in the morning. He stretched deeply to loosen his stiff muscles, then headed toward the kitchen.

He wanted to prepare something for Taegeon before sending him off for the day. As he opened the refrigerator, he tried to shake the lingering fog from his mind.

A dull ache pulsed through his inner thighs. The aftershocks of the night’s strenuous activity seemed to pass through him in slow, gradual waves.

It was far too soon for lactic acid to have built up. After all, they had continued until the final hours before dawn.

Jaeha leaned against the refrigerator door, struggling to clear his head, when a voice drifted from behind him.

“You’ll live to a ripe old age, I suppose.”

“Ah…”

He spun around in surprise and released a brief groan when his waist seized. In the same heartbeat, Taegeon stepped closer and pinched Jaeha’s nipple, choosing the one that still carried the faint impression of his teeth.

The skin had been rubbed raw until even the slightest touch stung, and Taegeon’s firm pinch sent a strange, sharp pain flashing through him. Jaeha had never imagined that such an insignificant part of his body could produce sensations so bizarrely electric.

“Ugh…”

“Why are you leaving it exposed?” Taegeon’s gaze lingered on his chest. “Do you want me to suck it?”

“…That’s not it.”

Taegeon ignored the denial and reached past him for a bottle of water on the refrigerator shelf.

“I’m busy too. Do you want your wife losing money because he spends the entire morning hanging from his husband’s breasts instead of concentrating on work?”

It was not as though Jaeha were the one clinging to Taegeon’s chest. Even so, a quiet, persistent thought whispered that he did not want Taegeon to leave for work at all.

Stay here with me instead.

He could not bring himself to say it. He hesitated, and the moment passed before he could form a response.

Meanwhile, Taegeon reached around him, extending one arm toward the bottle on the refrigerator shelf. The angle nearly drew Jaeha into an embrace, and their chests brushed briefly before they separated.

Taegeon looked down into Jaeha’s face and twisted the cap free with a sharp snap. Without breaking eye contact, he brought the bottle to his lips and drank.

Jaeha watched the strong column of his throat ripple and his Adam’s apple rise and fall. Only after several seconds did he realize he was staring far too intently.

He bit his lip and jerked his gaze aside.

Taegeon chuckled. “You’re practically drooling.”

Jaeha barely stopped himself from taking the bait. A faint crease appeared between his brows, born of mild indignation at the teasing.

Taegeon leaned down and pressed his damp lips against the furrow before turning away.

He took several steps toward the entrance, then paused as though something had suddenly occurred to him.

“When you go out, use the car driven by Myeongsun or Jeong-gil.”

“Oh, yes. I’m already doing that.”

“Good.” Taegeon glanced back at him. “I’m off to earn some money, so wait for me like a good husband. We’ll see whether what I poured into you last night comes spilling out again today.”

“…”

Jaeha remained silent, his lips compressed into a narrow line.

Taegeon released a low chuckle and turned toward the entrance.

Jaeha briefly considered following him to see him off, but the impulse died the moment he remembered that he was not wearing a shirt.

A heartbeat later, the heavy thud of the front door closing echoed through the still apartment.

***