Chapter Four
Icheck the rearview mirror one more time as Sungyoon shoves the passenger door open and leans into the backseat to grab his things.
“You have everything?” I ask, twisting around to watch him wrestle his gym bag free from where it’s wedged behind my seat.
“Yeah, yeah.” He slings his backpack over one shoulder and hooks the gym bag in his other hand, already backing out of the car impatiently, he probably stopped listening to me about thirty seconds ago.
“Check in with me tonight,” I call after him as he kicks the car door shut with his heel. “I mean it, Sungyoon. A text at least.”
He lifts one hand in a wave without turning around, his backpack bouncing against his spine as he jogs toward the apartment building entrance.
I sit there with the engine idling and watch until he disappears through the glass doors, catches the elevator, and is gone.
Then I pull away from the curb and merge back into traffic.
My eyes drift to the rearview mirror again, but this time it’s the packed bag sitting in the backseat that catches my attention.
A change of clothes, toiletries, the usual overnight kit I keep ready for client visits.
Except this weekend isn’t a single overnight.
Hongjoong requested the full two days, Friday evening through Sunday morning, which means that bag is going to sit untouched in a corner of his apartment while I spend most of the weekend horizontal.
I shift in the driver’s seat and immediately wince as a dull ache flares through my lower back and up into my hips.
It’s been two days since I last saw Hongjoong, and apparently that’s about as long as he was willing to hold off before requesting me again.
He did indeed fuck me all night during that first contract visit and well into the following morning, and he was absolutely not kidding about being pent up.
My body has endured a lot over the years.
Alphas of every size and temperament, rough ones and careless ones and ones who treated the whole thing like a chore they wanted over with as fast as possible.
But Hongjoong’s cock is another level of intimidating entirely, and my poor backside still twinges every time I sit down at the wrong angle or twist too fast getting out of bed.
I can only imagine how wrecked I’m going to be once this weekend is over.
I adjust my grip on the steering wheel and blow out a slow breath through my nose, watching the traffic light ahead cycle from green to yellow.
The thing I can’t stop turning over in my head, the thing that keeps me up at night staring at my bedroom ceiling long after Sungyoon has gone to sleep, is that it’s different with Hongjoong.
And that’s the problem. Despite the years apart he still knows me, can read my reactions with an accuracy that none of my previous clients ever came close to managing.
I can’t fake it with him. With other alphas I learned early how to perform, how to moan at the right moments and go limp when expected, how to retreat somewhere inside my own head while my body did the work.
It became second nature after the first year or so, a survival skill more than anything else, the ability to split myself in half so that the part of me that mattered stayed untouched no matter what was being done to the rest of me.
But Hongjoong won’t let me do that. If I react with pain or if my sounds don’t ring genuine, he picks up on it right away.
He changes angle, changes pace, slows down or speeds up or does something unexpected with his hands or his mouth that drags a real response out of me.
He keeps me teetering right on the edge of genuine arousal so I can never fully detach from the act the way I usually do on the job.
I can’t just endure it with Hongjoong, because like he said, he’s not treating me like a hole to be used.
He wants me there with him every step of the way, present and responsive and feeling everything he’s doing to me.
It’s both incredible and terrifying in its realness, and I don’t know what to do with that.
The GPS chimes and I take the next left, following the route toward the coffee shop Hongjoong specified.
He’d texted me earlier saying he wanted to grab something to eat before we headed back to his place, which struck me as odd because most clients don’t bother with socializing, but then again most clients aren’t Hongjoong.
I pull into a spot along the curb, cut the engine, and get out.
I stop dead the second I turn around.
Hongjoong is standing on the sidewalk in front of the coffee shop in a red and black racing jacket so aggressively bright that it borders on an assault on my retinas, paired with designer sunglasses perched on his nose.
Alto and Rennard are sitting at his feet with their long elegant legs folded beneath them, their feathery tails already whipping back and forth at the sight of me.
Hongjoong peers over the rims of his sunglasses past me at my car parked along the curb, and his expression curdles between horror and open disgust.
“What the fuck is that?”
My shoulders hike up defensively. “What? I bought it used.”
“You should have had it scrapped.” He tips his sunglasses down further, staring at my sedan like it personally spat on his shoes. “It looks like it’s being held together by rusted screws and luck.”
“We can’t all be heirs to an automotive empire, Hongjoong.” I slam the driver’s door shut, maybe a little harder than necessary. “Some of us have to make car payments.”
He rolls his eyes behind the designer lenses and gestures dismissively at the vehicle. “We’d better go in and order before someone mistakes that thing for garbage and has it towed off the street.”
“It runs fine,” I mutter, but he’s already turning toward the coffee shop entrance, the dogs rising fluidly to their feet beside him.
He glances back and tells me to grab a table outside, that he’ll go in and order for both of us since he already knows what he wants.
I open my mouth to argue, but he’s through the door before I get a word out, the dogs’ leashes pressed into my hand.
I settle into one of the wrought-iron chairs on the patio and Alto immediately places her long, delicate snout in my lap, gazing up at me with those dark, soulful eyes that borzois seem to be specifically bred to weaponize.
Rennard, deciding that subtlety is beneath him, flops his entire body across my feet with a dramatic huff and stretches out on the warm pavement.
I stroke Alto’s silky head and scratch behind her ears, watching people pass on the sidewalk.
The early spring weather is pleasant, a light breeze carrying warmth and the faint sweetness of blossoms from the trees lining the block, and for a moment I let myself just sit and breathe without thinking.
I’m startled when Hongjoong reappears and sets a fully loaded tray down on the small table in front of me.
I stare at it. Pastries of every kind cover the surface, flaky croissants and cream-filled rolls and fruit tarts and something drizzled in chocolate, alongside two drinks.
Hongjoong slides one of them toward me, a frappe heaped with caramel drizzle and whipped cream and chocolate shavings piled so high the lid barely fits.
“You still like sweets?” he asks, settling into the chair across from me and stretching his long legs out to the side so he doesn’t kick Rennard.
I take the frappe and say nothing, because I do.
Absolutely. I take a sip and the caramel hits my tongue and I have to stop myself from closing my eyes with pleasure.
Hongjoong watches me with a small satisfied look, then crouches down beside the table and places a small cup of plain whipped cream in front of each dog.
Alto and Rennard dive in with delicate laps of their tongues, their tails sweeping the pavement in unison.
I watch him straighten back up and settle into his chair, picking up his own coffee, something black and unsweetened, and I feel myself unwind slightly.
“I’m glad to see you finally lived your dream,” I say, nodding down at the dogs. “I remember how badly you always wanted one when we were younger, but your mother refused. How she was always going on about how they were dirty and beneath the family.”
Hongjoong’s mouth curves and he leans back in his chair, cradling his coffee against his chest. “You remember the time we found that stray puppy by the school?”
I snort. “The one we snuck into your house?”
“We took turns ferrying that thing back and forth between our bedrooms for almost a week so neither of our mothers would catch on.” He’s grinning now, the dimple cutting deep into his left cheek.
“I kept it in my closet during the day and you’d come pick it up after school and hide it in your room at night. ”
“Yeah.” I pick up one of the pastries from the tray, a cream-filled roll, and turn it between my fingers.
“And I remember how our moms did eventually catch on. Your mother lost her entire mind. She wouldn’t stop shrieking about how her son was going to get rabies from some gutter mutt, I thought she was going to call the health department on a puppy the size of a shoe. ”
Hongjoong laughs, but it fades when he sees my face change.
Because I remember what came after that too.
The dog’s owner turned up looking for it a few days later so it was safely returned, crisis averted, except that my own mother took a cane to my legs afterward until I was sobbing on the kitchen floor.
She beat me for disgracing our family in front of Hongjoong’s wealthy parents, for making us look like the kind of people who harbored strays and couldn’t control their children.