Hongjoong exhales through his nose and crosses his arms. “He doesn’t hate you. He’s brooding. It’s what teenagers do.”
I shake my head, looking down at my hands. “I don’t blame him. I’d be angry too if I were in his position.”
“So then why did you do it?” Hongjoong asks, though the question isn’t casual. He pushes off the door and takes a step closer, his brow creasing as he looks down at me. “That’s what I still don’t understand, Jae. What made you run? What made you think you had to stay away from me and raise our son alone?”
My teeth find my lower lip, and I bite down, the sharp sting grounding me as something comes apart inside me that I’ve been holding sealed shut since I was nineteen. I’ve rehearsed this conversation a thousand times in my head over the years, imagined every possible version of it, and none of them prepared me for how hard it is to actually open my mouth and let the words out.
“The morning after graduation,” I start, my voice wavers so I stop and swallow and try again. “I went to get us food from the vending machines. When I came back you were already up,walking down the hallway toward me.” I can see it so clearly even now, Hongjoong’s wild hair and his unbuckled belt and the confusion on his face, the way he looked right at me and didn’t know. “You told me you thought you’d done something stupid. That you were worried you might have bonded an omega during your rut, that you couldn’t remember anything.” I pause, my fingers twisting together in my lap. “And then you laughed. You said you were relieved nothing happened, that your parents would kill you if you’d made a mistake like that on graduation night.”
Hongjoong is very still across from me. I can feel his eyes on the top of my head, but I can’t look up.
“In that moment, I decided you didn’t want what happened between us,” I say, it sounds flat and distant even to my own ears, like I’m reciting something I memorized a long time ago. “That it was a mistake you were glad to have avoided. That if I told you the truth, that it was me, that you’d bonded me, you would look at me with that same relief and tell me it was fine, that we could figure out how to undo it, and I couldn’t—” My throat closes and I have to breathe through it, blinking hard. “I couldn’t make myself face the possibility of telling you and having you reject me. So I buried it and walked away. And then later when I found out I was pregnant, it was even worse, because by then the fear wasn’t just about me anymore. If you knew about the baby and didn’t want either of us, I wouldn’t have survived it.”
The silence that follows is so heavy I can hear the hum of the apartment’s ventilation system and the faint tick of Hongjoong’s watch.
“Yoonjae.” Hongjoong’s voice is strained, tight and rough like something is being wrung out of him. “I said that because I was afraid I’d bonded an omega thatwasn’tyou.”
I look up. He’s staring at me with an expression that’s half fury and half anguish, his jaw working, his hands balled into fists at his sides.
“You were the only one I wanted,” he says, clear and certain. “I woke up on that floor and the first thing I felt was the bond pull and I panicked, because I thought I’d ruined everything by bonding some random omega during a blackout when the only person I ever wanted to bond was standing right in front of me.”
I have to close my eyes against the sting of them, the sheer waste of it, all those years of silence built on a misunderstanding that could have been cleared up in thirty seconds if either of us had just been brave enough to say what we meant.
“I understand that now,” I say, my voice cracking on the last word. “But at the time, all I heard was you saying that bonding someone would be the worst thing that could happen. And I couldn’t make myself be the one to tell you it already had.”
Hongjoong’s expression doesn’t soften. “You’re an idiot,” he says flatly.
“Maybe,” I agree, because I can’t argue with it.
He moves, crossing the remaining distance between us and crouching down in front of me so we’re eye level, his knees on the floor, his face inches from mine. His fingers catch my chin and tip it up, forcing me to meet his gaze when I try to look away, and his eyes are so close I can see the gold flecks in the brown, the fine lines at the corners that weren’t there when we were young.
“You should have known me better than that,” he says, but there’s no anger in his voice now, just a quiet and bruised note that makes my chest ache.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, and my voice breaks properly this time, splintering at the seams. “I’m so sorry, Hongjoong.”
He holds my gaze for a long moment, his thumb pressing into the soft underside of my chin, and then he nods once, a smalltight motion. “I know you are. And you’re going to work on making it up to me.” His thumb traces along my jaw and drops away. “Starting now. Take your clothes off and get on all fours.”
I stand and pull my shirt over my head, folding it once out of habit before setting it on the nightstand. My pants follow, pushed down my hips and stepped out of carefully, the plug inside me shifting with every movement and sending dull sparks of sensation through my already oversensitive body. I’m naked and goosebumped in the cool air of the bedroom and I can feel Hongjoong’s eyes tracking every inch of exposed skin as I climb onto the bed and lower myself to my hands and knees, turning my ass toward him, the flared base of the plug visible between my cheeks.
“Now let’s see if you’ve been a good little omega,” Hongjoong says from behind me, and I hear the rustle of him pulling his shirt off, the clink of his belt. “Take the plug out and show me how well you’ve kept that hole all filled up for me.”
My face burns. I reach back with one hand and grip the base of the plug, my fingers slipping slightly against the silicone, and pull. My body resists, the suction fierce after hours of being plugged, my hole clenching desperately around the widest part as it drags against my swollen rim, and I have to grit my teeth and pull harder, a low grunt escaping me as the bulb stretches me open on its way out. The plug comes free with a wet squelching sound that makes me want to bury my face in the mattress and never come up, and immediately the cum that’s been trapped inside me all day starts to pour out in a thick warm rush, spilling down my taint and over my balls, dripping onto the sheets below me in heavy drops as my hole gapes and clenches helplessly, too wrecked and swollen to close properly.
Hongjoong swears behind me, a low appreciative curse that I feel more than hear. My cock twitches between my legs despite the humiliation flooding my face with heat. He moves forwardand takes the plug from my trembling hand, and then his other hand grips my jaw and turns my face to the side. He holds the plug in front of my mouth, the silicone coated in a thick glistening layer of cum and slick.
“Open.”
I open my mouth and Hongjoong pushes the plug past my lips, the rounded end pressing down on my tongue, and the taste floods in immediately, bitter salt and musk and the sweeter undertone of my own slick, all of it mixed together into something that makes my stomach flip and my cock leak onto the sheets below me. My lips close around the silicone and I hold it there, jaw stretched around the girth, saliva pooling.
“Hold it there until I’m done,” Hongjoong says, releasing my jaw. “And it better be clean when I take it out.”
I nod around the plug, my breath coming in short huffs through my nose, and brace myself on my hands as I feel Hongjoong move into position behind me. The blunt head of his cock presses against my gaping hole and then he pushes in, sliding through the cum still inside me with a filthy wet sound that fills the quiet bedroom, and I bite down on the plug as a moan vibrates through the silicone, muffled and desperate. Even after everything he’s done to me, the feeling of Hongjoong filling me up is still devastating, still makes my whole body light up and clench around him like it’s trying to keep him there forever.
He starts to move, his hips rolling in deep, grinding thrusts. His hands roam over my body, leaving nothing untouched. His fingers find my nipples and pinch, twisting until they’re peaked and aching and I’m whimpering around the plug, then slide lower, one hand wrapping around my cock and stroking through the precum dripping from the tip while the other cups my balls and rolls them in his palm, squeezing gently. He touches me everywhere, his hands tracing my ribs and my stomach and the dip of my waist, gripping my hips hard enough to bruise andthen smoothing over the marks with his thumbs, possessive and punishing and thorough all at the same time.
I come with the plug still clenched between my teeth, my moan trapped and muffled, my cock pulsing in Hongjoong’s fist as my hole spasms around him. Hongjoong grunts behind me and drives in deep, his hips stuttering as his knot starts to swell, the base of his cock thickening and stretching my wrecked hole wider and wider until it catches and locks with a pressure that makes my vision blur, and then he’s coming inside me in hot waves, filling me up on top of everything already in there, so much that my belly cramps and I let out a broken sound around the plug that’s half sob and half moan.
I hold myself up on shaking arms for what feels like an eternity, my jaw aching fiercely around the plug, drool sliding down my chin and dripping onto the pillow, until Hongjoong’s knot finally deflates enough for him to pull free. He reaches around and hooks a finger into the corner of my mouth, easing the plug out carefully, a string of saliva stretching between my lips and the silicone before it breaks. He turns the plug in his fingers, examining it in the lamplight, and nods once with visible satisfaction when he confirms I’ve licked it clean.
