I work my tongue along the underside as I take him deeper, hollowing my cheeks. Hongjoong’s fingers thread into my hair and grip, not yanking but guiding, his palm cupping the back of my skull. I don’t resist when he holds my head steady and pushes his hips forward, his cock sliding past my tongue and into my throat, the stretch of him making my eyes water and my jawache. I breathe through my nose and swallow around him, and Hongjoong curses softly above me, his grip tightening in my hair as he starts to move, fucking my mouth in slow deep strokes that push him all the way to the back of my throat on each one. I let him use me, keeping my throat open and relaxed, my hands gripping his thighs for balance as tears leak from the corners of my eyes, and when he comes I swallow every drop, working my tongue around the sensitive head until he hisses through his teeth and pulls free with a wet sound, his cock dragging across my lower lip as it slips out.
Hongjoong steps back, chest heaving, and starts undressing with enough urgency to tell me he’s nowhere near finished. He pulls his shirt over his head and kicks his pants the rest of the way off, his cock already twitching with renewed interest, and tells me to get on the bed. I’m already moving, peeling my sleep shirt off and shoving my pants down, climbing onto the mattress and lying on my back. I pull my legs up and fold them back against my chest, spreading wide, and reach down to grip my own cheeks and open myself up for him, my hole already slick and clenching, glistening in the low light from the bedside lamp. I hold myself there, exposed and waiting, offering everything I have.
Hongjoong kneels at the edge of the bed between my legs, his eyes dropping to my hole, and I watch his throat bob as he swallows. He runs his thumb over my rim, the pad of it dragging through the slick gathered there, and the light touch makes me shiver and clench. Then he lines himself up and pushes inside in one long steady thrust that doesn’t stop until he’s buried to the hilt, his pelvis flush against my ass. I gasp and arch off the mattress as the fullness of him settles deep inside me.
He starts to move, the rhythm is different from the last several nights. Still deep, still filling me completely on every stroke, but slower, more indulgent, his hips rolling instead ofsnapping. Something in it has shifted, something I can feel in the way his hands settle on my thighs instead of pinning my wrists, in the way his eyes stay on my face instead of fixed on where his cock disappears into my body. It’s closer to the way he touched me before everything came apart, before the truth detonated between us. I wrap my legs around his waist and pull him deeper, crossing my ankles at the small of his back, and when Hongjoong leans down and kisses me I kiss him back with everything I have, my hands coming up to frame his face, my thumbs brushing the sharp lines of his cheekbones as his tongue slides warm and languidly against mine.
Later we’re lying on the bed together, my body loose and heavy with satisfaction, Hongjoong sprawled half across me with his head resting on my chest and one arm thrown over my waist. I’m drifting in that pleasant haze between wakefulness and sleep when I feel his mouth close around my nipple and suck, his tongue flicking at the sensitive bud, and I frown down at him.
“How long are you going to keep doing that?” I ask, watching the top of his blonde head as he works at my chest with single-minded focus.
Hongjoong pulls back just enough to circle my swollen nipple with a fingertip, then tweaks it between his thumb and forefinger, rolling the peaked bud, sending a sharp spark straight down to my cock. He looks up at me with an expression of genuine contemplation, like he’s pondering one of life’s great mysteries.
“I’m just wondering how you managed to feed a baby with these,” he says, pinching lightly. “I’m trying to imagine you with full swollen tits, heavy with milk, leaking everywhere.” His eyes go slightly glazed. “That’s an incredible mental image, actually.”
“Quit imagining it,” I snap, swatting at his shoulder.
Hongjoong sighs with theatrical wistfulness, propping his chin on my sternum and gazing up at me. “I can’t picture it though. These tiny pink buds swelling up with milk.” He flicks one with his fingernail and I jerk. “They’re so cute and small right now. It doesn’t seem possible.”
“They went back to normal size after I stopped nursing, obviously,” I say, slapping at his head. “That’s how it works, you pervert. They don’t just stay like that permanently.”
Hongjoong’s eyebrows do something obscene, waggling with a delight that makes me want to smother him with a pillow, and then before I can stop him he ducks back down and seals his mouth over my nipple again, sucking hard with hollowed cheeks, his tongue laving flat and wet over the peaked bud with a thoroughness that makes my toes curl against my will.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I sputter, shoving at his forehead.
He pulls off just long enough to say, completely deadpan, “I want to see if I can make them swell with milk again,” and then latches back on.
“That’s not how biology works, you absolute degenerate—” I try to wrestle him off, planting both hands against his head and pushing, squirming underneath him, but Hongjoong just wraps his arm tighter around my waist and holds me pinned, humming contentedly around my nipple with his eyes closed, radiating self-satisfied energy. He clearly has absolutely no intention of letting go anytime in the foreseeable future. He switches to the other side without releasing me, his mouth hot and wet as itcloses over the neglected nipple, and I curse and kick at his legs and call him a degenerate again for good measure.
But even as I shove at him, there’s a looseness spreading through my chest that wasn’t there an hour ago, a knot that’s been pulled free, and my eyes sting with it even while I’m cursing at him. I can feel it in the way his hands hold me, firm but without the punishing edge of the last several days, possessive but no longer angry. The fury has burned itself down into a demeanor I recognize, more like fierce protectiveness than rage, the same look he gets when he talks about Sungyoon’s future or when he noticed the scars on my body that first night. And from down the hall I can hear the faint sounds of Sungyoon shifting in his bed, the soft click of dog nails on the hardwood as Alto or Rennard repositions, the quiet living sounds of a household settling in for the night.
I stop fighting Hongjoong off and let my hands drop to the mattress, staring up at the ceiling while he continues his ridiculous mission against my chest, and I let myself hope that Sungyoon heard what Hongjoong said to him tonight, really heard it, and that maybe my son will find his way back to me the same way his father did.
Chapter Fifteen
Isit on a concrete barrier at the edge of the empty practice track with my legs crossed, a coffee in one hand and my phone in the other, watching Hongjoong attempt to teach Sungyoon how to drive. Not a race car, mercifully, just a standard sedan from Hongjoong’s personal collection, a dark blue model with leather seats and an engine that purrs rather than roars. But from the way Hongjoong is carrying on you’d think he’d strapped himself into a vehicle careening off the side of a mountain.
Sungyoon stomps on the gas pedal and the car lurches forward with a screech of tires that echoes across the vacant asphalt, and Hongjoong’s theatrical scream carries clear across the track, high-pitched and genuinely distressed, audible even from where I’m sitting a good fifty meters away. I cover my mouth with my coffee hand and laugh hard enough that some of it sloshes over the rim and burns my fingers, watching through the windshield as the car jerks to a violent stop and Hongjoongclutches his chest with both hands like he’s having a cardiac event while Sungyoon gestures at the steering wheel in obvious exasperation, his mouth moving rapidly in what I can only assume is a string of complaints. Hongjoong holds up one finger in a “wait” gesture, climbs out of the passenger side with the stiff dignity of a man who has just survived a near-death experience, walks around to the trunk, and retrieves a crash helmet. He puts it on with great ceremony, adjusting the chin strap and giving it a firm pat, then climbs back into the passenger seat and buckles himself in with exaggerated care. Sungyoon stares at him. Even from here I can see the look on my son’s face, the flat disbelief of a teenager whose parent is embarrassing him on a cosmic level.
The next time Sungyoon starts to accelerate, easing onto the gas with noticeably more caution this time, Hongjoong grips the sides of his seat with both hands and lets out a shriek that would put a horror movie victim to shame. Sungyoon’s voice cracks across the track, sharp and indignant.
“I can’t concentrate if you keep screaming like that!”
“I can’t help it!” Hongjoong shrieks back. “My life is flashing before my eyes! I’m seeing my childhood! I’m seeing my dogs!”
“You’re insane!”
“Brake! Brake brake brake—”
“I’m not even going that fast!”
I take a sip of my coffee and settle in, the concrete warm beneath me from the afternoon sun, and watch them circle the track in fits and starts. Alto and Rennard are sprawled on a blanket I laid out beside the barrier, their long elegant bodies stretched out in the shade of the garage overhang, completely unbothered by the distant sounds of their owner’s hysterics. Rennard lifts his narrow head when a particularly loud screech of tires reaches us, blinks once with aristocratic disinterest, and puts his head back down on his paws.
Gradually, lap by lap, Sungyoon gets smoother. His turns widen out from jerky overcorrections into something approaching actual curves, and his acceleration evens from lurching bursts into a steadier build. Hongjoong’s shrieks taper off into exaggerated whimpers and then eventually, as I watch the car complete a full circuit without any tire noise at all, into genuine coaching. His voice carries on the wind in fragments that reach me across the open track.
“Turn here—yeah, good, ease off the brake before the curve, not during—that’s it, that’s it, now accelerate out of it—”
I lower my phone and just watch them for a while, my coffee going lukewarm in my hand. Over the last couple of days I’ve noticed something changing in Sungyoon, a softening toward me that I’m almost afraid to acknowledge in case noticing it makes it disappear. He’s not back to normal, not by a long stretch, and the hurt in his eyes when he looks at me is still there, visible and earned. But the stonewall has crumbled into something less hostile, it feels more like a teenager working through his feelings than a son who’s written off his father. He answered a question I asked him at breakfast yesterday with a full sentence rather than silence, something about his math homework that turned into a brief exchange about his upcoming exam schedule. This morning he accepted the lunch I packed for him without protest and even mumbled a “thanks” over his shoulder as he headed for the door with his school bag. Small things. Barely perceptible to anyone who wasn’t looking for them. But I notice every single one and hold each one carefully.
