Chapter Nine
It’s late. Hours past the race, hours past the garage, and I’m lying face down in Hongjoong’s sheets with absolutely nothing left in me.
Every muscle feels wrung out like a dishrag, my limbs heavy and useless against the mattress, my face half-buried in a pillow that smells overwhelmingly like him.
Hongjoong apparently did not work off all that post-race adrenaline in the garage because after we finally unknotted and peeled ourselves off the hood of that car, he dragged me back to his apartment and fucked me against the front door before I even got my shoes off.
Then on the living room floor while Alto and Rennard watched from their beds with the supremely unbothered expressions that only borzois can manage, like two aristocrats observing something beneath their notice.
And then finally in bed, where we’ve been for the last hour and where I’ve come so many times my cock has given up trying.
I groan into the pillow when I feel Hongjoong’s hands on my thighs, pushing my legs apart from behind.
His palms are warm and his grip is firm and I don’t have the energy to resist, just let him spread me open.
I wince when both his hands close on my cheeks and pull them apart, exposing my hole to the cool air of the bedroom, and I can feel how swollen and puffy my rim is, can feel the thick gush of cum that slides out of me the moment he spreads me, a warm white rivulet trailing down my taint and dripping onto the sheets beneath me.
Hongjoong makes a low humming sound behind me, particularly pleased.
His fingers swirl through the mess between my cheeks, tracing my distended rim in slow circles, smearing cum and slick together around the swollen edges of my hole.
Then he scoops up the globs of cum that are leaking out of me with two fingers and pushes them back inside.
I hiss through my teeth and whine as his fingers sink into my abused hole, working deep, plugging me back up and pressing the cum further in with targeted strokes that make my walls clench and flutter around him.
I squirm at the overstimulation, my insides too sensitive and too sore for this, and I look back at him over my shoulder. “What are you trying to do?”
Hongjoong’s eyes are fixed on where his fingers disappear inside me, his expression focused and openly fascinated.
“Making sure you don’t waste a drop,” he says casually, pushing another thick glob of cum back into my hole with his thumb.
“I want to see this pretty hole filled to the brim.” He meets my eyes and grins, sharp and cat-like grin with the dimple cutting into his left cheek.
“I’m going to stuff you so full of it you get pregnant. ”
My stomach twists hard. The words dig in deep and painfully even though I know he’s joking, even though his tone is light and teasing. The irony of it is so vicious it cuts. I look away from him, resting my chin on my folded forearms, staring at the headboard as the knot in my gut tightens.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say, keeping my voice flat. “I’m on birth control anyway.”
Hongjoong hums again, unbothered. I jump when his mouth closes on the flesh of my ass cheek, his lips sealing against the skin and sucking hard enough that I feel the blood rush to the surface.
I reach back blindly to smack at him but he ducks my hand and keeps going, biting and sucking at both cheeks in turn, leaving marks that sting and bloom warm under his teeth.
He sinks his teeth in hard enough to make me grunt and then soothes the spot with his tongue, wet and hot, before moving to the next patch of unmarked skin.
By the time he’s done both my cheeks are going to be covered in bruises and bite marks and I’m going to look like I lost a fight with a rabid animal.
Hongjoong groans and presses his forehead against the small of my back, his breath fanning warm across my skin. “Fuck,” he says, his voice muffled against my spine. “Your body is addictive. We should’ve done this a long time ago.”
I freeze.
The words simmer in the air between us for a moment, casual on his end, devastating on mine. I push myself up slightly, twisting to look back at him with a frown pulling at my mouth. “What do you mean?”
Hongjoong props himself up on one elbow, still idly tracing patterns on my lower back with his fingertips, his touch light and absent. “Just that,” he says easily. “It’s so much better than I ever thought it would be.”
I stare at him. The words rearrange themselves in my head once, twice, and then the implication sinks in and I sit up further, turning my body toward him, my frown deepening into a feeling closer to shock. “Do you mean to tell me you thought about this before?” I ask slowly. “About fucking me?”
Hongjoong cracks a grin. “Now who’s being crude?” He squeezes my ass with one hand, his palm warm over the marks he just left, and then his grin softens, becoming more honest. “Yeah,” he admits. “I did.”
He looks up and meets my eyes, his expression open, an unguarded look that I don’t think I’ve ever seen on Hongjoong’s face before, not even when we were teenagers and he wore every emotion on his sleeve like a badge.
He holds my gaze steadily and says, “When I realized it was you that first night at the hotel, I thought for sure it was fate. That this was my chance.” He pauses, his thumb rubbing a slow circle against my hip.
“That’s why I didn’t hesitate. I’ve wanted you ever since we were teenagers, Jae. ”
I stare at him. My brain stalls out completely, turning over and over without catching. The words echo in my head, and I can’t make them fit into the shape of reality as I’ve understood it for the last fifteen years.
“You did?”
Hongjoong nods, watching me.
I sit up all the way, turning to face him fully, the sheets pooling around my waist. My body aches in a dozen places and I’m still leaking his cum onto the mattress beneath me but none of that matters because my mind is spinning too fast. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?
” I ask. I can hear the bewilderment in my own voice, the edge of almost hurt underneath it.
“You never did a single thing to indicate you were interested. Not once.”
Hongjoong shrugs against the pillow, one shoulder lifting and dropping. “Because I was young and dumb.”
I shake my head, still reeling. The words come out before I can think better of them. “I wish you had said something.” I swallow. “Because I wanted you, too.”
Hongjoong’s eyes widen. He pushes up onto his elbow, his body going taut with surprise, and he searches my face like he’s checking for a lie. “You did?”
I nod.
He sits up fully now, mirroring me, and turns it around on me immediately. “Then why didn’t you say anything?”
I sigh and rub my face with both hands, pressing my palms against my eyes for a moment before dropping them.
“Because I always thought I wasn’t your type,” I say.
The old bitterness is still there, faded but present, like a bruise that never fully healed.
“You liked stereotypical omegas. Small and feminine and delicate. You dated them constantly.” I look at him and my chest feels too tight.
“And you always used to tell me you didn’t see me that way.
You’d say I wasn’t like an omega to you at all, that I was more like one of your alpha friends.
” I pause, chewing on my thoughts. “That’s the words you used, Hongjoong. I took them at face value.”
Hongjoong stares at me for a long moment, and then he laughs.
It’s not a mocking laugh, it’s disbelieving, almost pained, like he’s just realized the scope of a mistake he didn’t know he’d made.
He runs a hand through his hair, the blonde strands falling messily across his forehead, and shakes his head.
“I only said those things because I knew how much omega stereotypes bothered you,” he says.
“You went out of your way to reject every typical omega expectation. You were proud of it, outspoken about it, you hated when anyone reduced you to your designation.” He meets my eyes, his expression is painfully earnest now.
“I was afraid that if I made a move, it would come across as just another alpha trying to exert some fucked up biological claim on you. That you’d think I only saw you as an omega to conquer.
” He swallows. “I thought you’d be disgusted.
Or insulted. And I didn’t want to risk our friendship by making you think I was just another knothead who couldn’t see past your designation. ”
I just stare at him. My mind is cycling backward through years of memories, every interaction, every loaded silence, every time Hongjoong threw his arm around my shoulders and I leaned into it and told myself it meant nothing, every time he looked at me a second too long and I convinced myself I was imagining it.
All of it rearranging under this new light into a picture that’s so obvious in hindsight I want to scream.
Hongjoong laughs again, more self-conscious this time, rubbing the back of his neck. “Those omegas I dated back then,” he says. “The small, pretty, delicate ones.” He looks at me sideways. “I dated them specifically because of you.”
My brow furrows. “What?”
“I went for anyone who was the complete opposite of you on purpose,” he says. “Because I didn’t want anyone to be a stand-in for you. I didn’t want to project what I felt onto someone who just happened to remind me of the person I actually wanted.”