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 hisleft 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.
Hongjoong’s smile drops. He sets his coffee down and his voice goes quieter. “Yeah. I remember that too.” He pauses, looking at me steadily. “I remember you making me rub ointment on the welts across your shins the next day at school. And then guilting me into buying you expensive pastries from my own allowance for a solid month as compensation.”
I take a deliberate bite of the cream roll, chew slowly, and shrug. “Funny how those things turn out.”
Hongjoong’s eyes drop to the pastry in my hand, then back up to my face, and a smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth. He looks pleased, softening the sharp lines of his face, making him look younger, closer to the boy I remember. He picks up his coffee again and takes a long sip, watching me over the rim with sharp brown eyes, and doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t need to. The pastry is good, and the sun is warm, and for a few minutes we just sit there together like it’s been no time at all.
We finish our coffees like two old friends catching up on a Friday afternoon instead of what this actually is. Hongjoong tosses the remaining pastries into a bag and hands them to me, saying I should take them home for later, and I don’t argue because they’re good and I already know Sungyoon will demolish them. We settle up and part ways on the sidewalk, Hongjoong gathering Alto and Rennard’s leashes in one hand and lifting the other in a lazy wave as he heads off on foot toward his building. I watch him go for a second, the red of his jacket obnoxious against the muted spring streetscape, the two borzois trotting alongside him with their silky ears streaming back in the breeze, and then I get in my car.
The drive to Hongjoong’s building takes about twelve minutes. I pull into the underground garage and find a spot. My sedan looks like it wandered in from a different postal code. I grab my overnight bag from the backseat, lock up, and take the elevator.
When the doors open on Hongjoong’s floor I don’t even get the chance to reach for the intercom. The apartment door swings open before I’ve taken two steps down the hallway, and Hongjoong is standing there in the doorway with his jacket off and his sleeves pushed up to his elbows, like he’s been waiting. Behind him I can see Alto and Rennard already curled on their respective beds in the living room, long limbs folded elegantly beneath them, apparently worn out from the walk.
“That was fast,” I say.
“You drive like a grandmother.” He steps aside and tips his head. “Come on.”
I toe off my shoes in the entryway and set my bag against the wall. Hongjoong doesn’t lead me toward the kitchen or the living room this time. He walks straight down the hallway toward the bedroom and I follow, my pulse picking up, because I know what’s coming when we cross that threshold and my body is already responding to the thickening scent of his pheromones inthe enclosed space of the apartment, warmth pooling low in my belly and my skin prickling with awareness.
But when we step into the bedroom, Hongjoong doesn’t reach for me. Instead he veers toward the walk-in closet, disappears inside for a few seconds, and comes back out carrying a large sealed package in one hand and a bottle in the other. He tosses both onto the bed where they bounce once on the duvet.
I frown and pick up the bottle first. Lube. Not the cheap drugstore kind either, this is the expensive stuff, the brand I’ve seen advertised in those discreet omega wellness catalogs that show up in my mailbox every few months. I set it down and tear open the sealed package, pulling apart the plastic and cardboard, and my hands go still.
I stare down at the thing in my grip, then slowly lift my head to look at Hongjoong.
“What the fuck is this?”
It’s a dildo. A massive, jet-black silicone dildo, thick and ridged along the shaft with an almost ridiculously realistic shape, complete with a flared base and a weight to it that makes my wrist dip as I hold it up. The thing is enormous. Not quite Hongjoong’s size but close enough that my fingers don’t meet when I wrap my hand around the middle.
Hongjoong crosses the room and settles into the armchair positioned across from the foot of the bed, dropping into it with an ease. He hooks one ankle over the opposite knee and leans back.
“Stretch yourself with it,” he says simply.
I blink at him. “Excuse me?”
“You’re too tight.” He gestures vaguely in my direction. “My cock is going to be bruised to hell if you don’t loosen up before I get inside you. Last time nearly squeezed the life out of me.”
I give him a long, flat look. My gaze drops pointedly to his lap, where even through his pants I can see the outline of him already thickening against his thigh, and then back up to his face.
“What?” he says.
“That sounds a lot like an excuse for you to sit there and watch me debase myself.”
Hongjoong shrugs with so much unbothered ease it makes me want to throw the dildo at his head. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find the image of you working yourself open highly erotic,” he admits, not a shred of shame in his voice. “But I’m serious, Yoonjae. You really are tight. As pleasurable as it is, I don’t want to damage you. Or myself, for that matter.”
I turn the dildo over in my hands, the silicone already warming against my palms, and frown harder. “I’ve been doing this for years, Hongjoong. I seriously doubt my used-up ass is that much of a problem for you.”
His face sobers. The easy amusement drops away and his expression goes flat, a hard flicker passing through his eyes that’s there and gone in the span of a breath. When he speaks again his voice is even, controlled, but there’s an edge underneath it that wasn’t there a second ago.
“Maybe I’m just bigger than those other alphas,” he says. “Or maybe someone’s been telling you bullshit. Because that tight little hole of yours is definitely not used up.”
My throat works. I look down at the dildo in my hands and then at the lube sitting on the duvet beside me, and a complicated feeling twists through my chest. I want to argue. I want to tell him he doesn’t need to say things like that, that I’m not some fragile omega who needs his ego stroked, that I know exactly what my body is and what it’s been through and I don’t need Hongjoong of all people trying to reframe it for me.
