Confession

It was sudden, but Inwu hyung's visit was welcome.

Thursdays were half-days for consultations, and when I received a call from hyung saying he'd stopped by a nearby liquor store and decided to reach out, I hesitated for a moment before readily agreeing.

I had no complaints about my current life, but the visit was a change of mood — like an unusual chord joining a monotonously repeating, stable melody. Perhaps it felt that way even more because the Chicago trip and the joint exhibition in the latter half of the year were both drawing closer, and I'd heard nothing from Yuni nuna or Juhan hyung all week.

"But I'm genuinely a little disappointed."

Hyung lifted his lips from his bold wine glass and spoke while slowly turning it on his crossed legs.

The rich, deep, sensual red wine and the cream cheese crackers I'd clumsily arranged on a plate were gifts hyung had brought. He'd worn a troubled expression and apologized that they didn't pair properly with the wine, but there was no way I, who barely knew the taste of wine, would quibble about the right pairing.

I was sitting on a drafting chair I'd pulled up across from the sofa I'd offered him, and I set my glass on the table and looked across at him.

"Since you moved into this place, you haven't seen me once, Yeehyeon-ssi."

"Ah…"

"Is someone telling you not to meet me?"

Tilting his wine glass again and swallowing the dark red liquid, hyung spoke with a slightly mischievous tone.

He had once said he felt jealous even of a childhood friend — and though that friend was probably Inwu hyung, strictly speaking, he had never told me not to see hyung.

"Ah… no. Suddenly a lot of things were decided at once, and my surroundings changed, so I was just overwhelmed. And I've been trying to focus on my painting. Director Liu told me I could go out or invite people whenever I wanted, but — "

My long, rambling explanation was cut short by hyung's dry cough.

"Hmm. I never said it was because of Liu Weikun, so why are you defending him?"

"……."

My ears burned hot. I lowered my head, and hyung laughed — not a mocking laugh that made a joke of my clumsy excuse.

Hyung picked up a particularly savory cracker laden with cream cheese, took a bite, and brushed the crumbs off his thigh.

"Well — the person who wants something has to make the move, what can you do. Thanks to that, I even got the chance to secure a good piece in advance, so I should be satisfied with that for now."

Whenever we spoke on the phone, hyung had been curious about the painting I was doing with Juhan hyung as a model. Everyone around me seemed to find my choice of Juhan hyung unexpected and was curious about it.

I showed hyung the painting, which was about eighty percent complete. Unlike during our phone calls, he looked at it slowly and silently for a long time, with a serious expression. Then he surprised me by saying he wanted to buy it once it was finished.

Although I'd been practicing coloring alongside sketching, this would undoubtedly be a very amateurish piece — my first completed work since I started painting again. I'd naturally been treating it as practice, so hyung's offer made me both happy and slightly bewildered.

After taking a sip of wine, I rubbed the slender stem of the glass with my fingertips and managed to open my mouth.

"About that, hyung… I think it's still too lacking to sell."

"If a collector like me thinks it's worth paying money to own a piece by Yeehyeon-ssi, that should be value enough."

"I truly appreciate that, and I am happy, but — "

It wasn't hyung's action that cut me off this time. It was the sound of the keypad on the thick iron door leading to the parking corridor being pressed from outside. Inwu hyung, who had just brought his wine glass to his lips, looked at me with a puzzled expression.

"Ah… Director Liu must be here."

Inwu hyung's eyes narrowed ever so slightly, but before I could think anything of it, the door was pulled open from outside.

"……."

As the door opened, he — who had been about to step right in — visibly flinched and stopped. Inwu hyung, sitting with a clear view of the door, raised his wine glass toward him with a smile. His eyes, slightly widened and stiffened, quickly scanned hyung, me, and the wine and crackers on the table. Some inexplicable tension made me stand up awkwardly without thinking.

"What's this, showing up without notice."

He glanced at me briefly but addressed hyung first. His voice was blunt.

"I did give notice. To Yeehyeon-ssi."

He dropped his briefcase — bulging with densely packed documents — heavily onto the seat next to Inwu hyung and looked at me again. His eyes and mouth were set, but I couldn't possibly ask him to act normally in front of Inwu hyung. Even knowing that, I still couldn't easily sit back down because of some vague, creeping anxiety. With Inwu hyung leaning comfortably on the sofa and sipping his wine between us, he and I stood facing each other like the two far points of a triangle.

"You're the landlord, aren't you. This is Yeehyeon-ssi's studio — is it really all right to just press the code and walk in whenever you like? Isn't that a bit much of an invasion of privacy?"

"That's not it. I just — told him to come and go freely. I felt bad that Director Liu kept having to go back and forth to the garden because of me…"

Hyung didn't point it out openly this time, but his eyes, raised above the rim of his glass, were looking at me — making excuses for him again — with undisguised curiosity.

"But why are both of you standing? Yeehyeon-ssi, please sit down. Hey, landlord — if you sit down, the tenant can sit comfortably too."

Taking off his jacket and draping it over the sofa back, he sat down beside hyung as though he had no choice, rubbing the area around his eyebrows like someone suffering from a headache.

"What did you come here for?"

"I came to see Yeehyeon-ssi. There's a rumor going around that he's painting Kwon Juhan nude, and I figured since he'd never call me to come see it himself, I'd come."

Thinking I should bring him a glass too, I started to pass the table toward the stairs — but he grabbed my wrist. The gaze that met me when I looked up was dry and lacking its usual persistence. Completely different from the way he always looked at me, as though gently petting me.

"Where are you going?"

"The wine — I was going to get a glass for Director Liu too."

Hyung, sipping his wine, was casting a sideways glance at my wrist held in his hand, but Inwu hyung had probably already noticed the changed atmosphere between him and me.

"It's fine. I won't be drinking."

He lowered his head, rubbing his forehead over and over, and said it in a tone that suggested he was annoyed and tired. Then he pulled my wrist back as if telling me to return to my seat. I was certain this wasn't him being stiff only because Inwu hyung was here — he was plainly in a bad mood.

Doing my best to ignore Inwu hyung's gaze, which was sticking to me with sticky questions and curiosity, I went back and sat down.

"Ah — I put a reservation on that painting, so it's mine, all right?"

Inwu hyung said this while breaking a cracker into pieces on his plate, and he turned to look at hyung with a furrowed brow.

"What reservation?"

"Yeehyeon-ssi's current piece. I said I'd buy it once it's finished."

"Do you know what the price might be?"

Hyung shrugged once and gave a short laugh, as though clicking his tongue.

"I'm a Phantom-signed artist and a major client — surely you wouldn't break all the trust we've built by setting some outrageous price?"

He glanced across the table at me for a brief moment. His face looked like porcelain cracking under pressure. He withdrew his gaze from me and swept back the hair covering his forehead.

"Nothing has been decided yet. We're not even at the stage where verbal reservations can be taken."

"Either way, I've clearly stated my intent to purchase to both the artist and the gallery, so all I'm asking is that you confirm I'm first in line if a sale is decided."

Inwu hyung popped the remaining cracker crumbs on his plate into his mouth and stood from the sofa, saying he must have taken up too much of my work time. He didn't say a single word about the obviously awkward atmosphere. I had never wished so badly for Inwu hyung to point things out with his characteristic lightness. My mouth had gone completely dry trying to imagine how to navigate being alone with him after this, and I drained the wine left in my glass.

Even if the rough attitude he was showing now — the intimidating aura of someone who wanted to be even rougher but was holding himself back — even if it came from jealousy, this was completely different from when he had held me in this very studio not long ago and spoken about his jealousy. It wasn't the raw, uncomplicated emotion of an immature boy struggling with a relationship problem. This was something else.

"Yeehyeon-ssi, do you remember that painting from before?"

Hyung, slipping back into his jacket, smiled brightly as though oblivious to the current flowing between him and me.

"The one I asked you to recommend for the bedroom in my new place — the piece of mine that you chose."

Of course I remembered. I nodded.

"You might already know this, Yeehyeon-ssi, but I never did sell that painting. It's hanging above my headboard now. I used to find it difficult to look at my own work — it felt like looking at the dregs of a self I refused to reclaim. But after you said it was 'honesty about one's own dishonesty,' my paintings started to look familiar to me."

Having walked around the table, hyung placed his hand on my right shoulder and gave it a light squeeze. He, who had been leaning forward with his elbow on his thigh, looked up crookedly and fixed a stare on hyung's hand.

"Come see it sometime when you get the chance. You're always welcome, Yeehyeon-ssi."

Moving behind me, hyung placed both hands on my shoulders and pressed down gently from above before letting go. Bearing the full weight of his gaze — hands clasped before his lips — I rose from my seat.

Hyung walked toward the entrance, turned back, and smiled while walking backward.

"Oh, and I've already booked the appointment, so I'll see you at the clinic. I'll have Director Liu pass along the date and time."

I stood there, glancing back and forth between him and hyung. Inwu hyung had arrived, and I had let the driver leave early — someone needed to open and close the parking lot gate, but he showed no sign of moving.

Pit-a-pat. At the sudden noise, I looked up at the window facing the garden. A downpour seemed to be starting; thick raindrops were already pelting the glass.

"Rain, out of nowhere. I should get going before traffic gets bad."

Hyung, who had been slowly retreating while keeping both of us in sight, turned back toward the entrance with a crooked smile. As I reluctantly moved to follow him out, he — who had appeared at my side without me noticing — placed his hand on my shoulder.

"Sorry — would you bring me a beer from upstairs?"

His eyes were following hyung's back, not mine. Was I being too sensitive to feel something like reproach in the weight of that hand, heavier than usual, pressing down?

When I came back with the beer, he had already seen hyung out and was standing at the table, holding the wine bottle and looking at the label. I wondered if hyung had properly called a designated driver, but instinct told me now was not the time to ask. I slowed my steps and hesitantly set the green translucent bottle on the table.

"Um — it's not that I went out. Hyung came here to the house…"

After he finished work, we had always been so close, constantly exchanging small moments of physical contact as if compensating for the half-day we'd spent apart. This was the first time we'd maintained distance in such an unstable, cooled atmosphere. The unfamiliar discomfort only made the easy intimacy of before stand out in sharper contrast.

He quietly set down the wine bottle and turned to look at me, standing awkwardly a few steps away and rubbing my arms. His face still looked like porcelain on the verge of shattering. I could feel the immense effort he was making to prevent the cracks from becoming full destruction.

"And it was also almost time for Director Liu to finish work — "

"Why are you making excuses?"

"That's — "

That was because he looked like he was in such a terrible mood.

I couldn't say that. His question wasn't one seeking a real answer, and I knew it.

He thanked me perfunctorily for the beer, twisted the cap off, and drank a full third in one swallow. Meanwhile, the sound of the rain — which had progressed past a patter to a proper downpour — was carving an irregular rhythm into the room. In just a few minutes the room had grown noticeably darker, but neither of us thought to turn on a light.

"About the painting — it would be a problem to finalize something like a reservation without consulting the gallery."

It had only been Inwu hyung's one-sided declaration of intent; I hadn't indicated any acceptance on my end. But saying so now didn't seem like it would make him feel better or smile.

"Since it was your first time and you might not know, this time I'll talk to Choi Inwu somehow, but — "

He tilted his chin up and tipped the bottle back quickly — more like pouring it down than drinking.

"At least let me be consulted about who Seo Yeehyeon's paintings go to from now on."

His face was contorted as though forcing out words that were hard to say. If his low mood came from jealousy, and if that jealousy extended to the paintings too, then maybe mentioning I had no intention of selling to hyung would help a little.

While I racked my brain for how and in what way to bring it up, a ring came from inside his briefcase. He took another sip of beer, set the bottle down, pulled out his phone, checked the caller, pressed his lips together, exhaled through his nose, and answered.

"What now."

I'd expected a work call, but his opening word was casual. He glanced at me, turned his back, and stepped away from in front of the sofa.

"It's the same kind of party as always. The guest list is one we put together together with them, we've confirmed the final list, so there's nothing to worry about. The media outlets are carefully selected for influence and credibility. Just do the same as you do here. Yuni and I will be together the whole time — nothing will be different."

I had a good idea who he was talking to. My own mood was plummeting rapidly now.

After pacing around the studio for about five minutes, struggling to persuade Artist Shushu, he suddenly threw a brief glance my way and lowered his voice.

"All right. I'll be there in thirty minutes, so go on and talk. …What? Cheese ca — Ha. I know which one you mean. I'll buy it, just don't fall asleep on the people waiting for you."

Along with my sinking mood, the warmth in my chest seemed to drain too. Jealousy wasn't something you could only feel in tender conversations. Even in that exchange of complaints, I could sense the long, intimate history between them — the way they knew each other.

The violent emotions that rose all at once were so unfamiliar they left me bewildered. He acted annoyed, acted inconvenienced, but in the end he was going to give Shushu everything she asked for. I wanted to attack him with cold words and a frozen expression.

Shushu's relationship with him had bothered me for a long time — I had even confessed once that I wished he wouldn't do things like carrying Yuni nuna on his back. But my feelings before hadn't been this ugly. Feeling as though my entire face and chest were scorched and shriveled, grotesquely twisted like melted, punctured plastic, I rubbed the corner of my mouth and looked away from him.

He stopped in the middle of the empty space and said:

"You said you hadn't heard about the party. You said you hate parties and photo shoots — now we're back to square one. How do you plan to break into a new market without any promotion? I'm sorry, but tonight's dinner — you'll have to handle it on your own."

At that definitive statement about going to see Shushu, my gaze snapped to him. Watching his profile as he irritably swept his hair back and urgently sent a message somewhere, my heartbeat gradually quickened. The rain fell irregularly — sometimes gentle, sometimes stronger — amplifying my anxiety.

Even when Manager Han pressed him, he always treated it as a nuisance, so why was he insisting on meeting Shushu in person right now? Why did it have to be now? The impulse to question him harshly was only distressing. It was an ugly side of myself I didn't want to face — but more than that, I didn't want to let him go.

Following him as he grabbed the jacket from the sofa back and made to pass by me, I lightly caught hold of his arm just above the elbow.

"What if… you didn't go?"

The words that broke through without any eloquence were direct. He stopped walking and turned, his eyes widening slightly. I was surprised by my own action, but having already thrown out the most essential words, I decided not to care about petty pride or fear.

"If you leave like this now — "

"……."

Unable to find anything better to say to make him stay, I bit and released my lower lip hard. Not having the courage to look at his face, I dropped my gaze to his shoulder and spoke helplessly.

"I wish you wouldn't go."

He didn't react immediately.

The muscles of his arm, revealed below twice-folded sleeves, were tensed. His broad chest beneath the shirt expanded and contracted with a larger-than-usual amplitude, straining the fabric. We hadn't raised our voices or exchanged exhausting, hurtful words meant to wound, but we were already draining each other emotionally. We had given each other that right. It felt like glimpsing the raw underside of what a relationship actually was.

Within my field of vision, he released the tension in his shoulders and exhaled.

"Right now I'm too — anyway, it's better if we're not together."

"……."

"Whatever you're thinking, I'm leaving because of work. Nothing else."

It seemed to mean: don't misunderstand.

It wasn't that I didn't trust him. I knew it was only work, knew there was nothing between him and Shushu, yet I still didn't want to let him go. And I couldn't blame him for his emotions coming out crooked, unable to be hidden, even while knowing nothing had happened between me and Inwu hyung. If anything — I understood.

He placed a hand heavily on my shoulder, squeezed it once, and left the room. It was just — a casual touch, the kind that might pass between him and Juhan hyung, the kind that meant nothing at all.

The soundproofing here wasn't as good as upstairs, and the sound of the rain was so loud it was like standing in the middle of a downpour. I stood blankly in the sound of the rain for a long time, trying to calm myself.

I thought I should at least clean up the messy table, but when I tried to move, my hands were busy and useless. Trying to put the cracker plate onto the tray, I knocked over the wine bottle, and what remained of the dark red liquid spilled. I wasn't the type to get irritated over something like that, but I found myself cursing my own foolish mistake aloud as I wiped up the wine that had pooled on the table and floor.

Just having done that much left my body as drained as if I'd completed heavy physical labor. I gave up on tidying and sank onto the sofa, and started drinking the beer he had left behind.

I hadn't harbored such a naive dream as to expect only sweet days. But I think I'd arbitrarily assumed that if we ever fought, it would be for some deeper, more fundamental reason.

His judgment — that it was better for us not to be together right now — might perhaps have been the slightly more mature decision. Trying to console myself with that, I pulled my legs up onto the sofa, bent my knees, and rested the beer bottle on them. I didn't really know what cigarettes tasted like, but I suddenly felt like having one after a long time without.

"……."

My body stiffened at a mechanical sound mixed in with the rain. The sound of someone entering the door code. I awkwardly got up. My heart began beating fast, but I didn't want to anticipate and then be disappointed. Maybe he had forgotten something. His briefcase was still here. Or maybe he had come back still angry, intending to continue the argument.

The lock disengaged and he opened the door. Even after opening it, he didn't step inside — just stood in the hallway holding the handle, looking at me. His face seemed to be asking permission to enter.

I went quickly around the table and approached him. Up close, his eyes were no longer attempting to control their emotions, the way they had been before he left.

"I'm sorry for acting so childish."

"……."

As if wanting to make it clear the fault was his, he spoke with emphasis.

"I try not to, but — it's not working. I'm ten years older, and I still can't manage my emotions over something like this. It's pathetic."

I strongly shook my head, pushing the door — which he hadn't opened all the way — wider with my shoulder.

"I was already furious just seeing you drinking with someone else. And then to show him your painting — the painting that might be your first work as Seo Yeehyeon — and to leave it in his hands, somewhere I wasn't — "

He stopped speaking and drew a deep breath.

"It felt like my head was going to explode. As though you'd actually been with him."

I couldn't let him go on tearing himself apart. Taking the remaining two steps, I pressed my lips to his. I felt his body stiffen in surprise. His lips, meeting mine, tasted sweeter than before — like something lost and found again.

The hand that had reflexively grabbed my side slowly wrapped around my waist. Now it was my turn to be childish, pathetic, and honest.

"Don't go. Being alone with him — I don't like it."

As if my bothersome, whining words were a beautiful and noble confession, he looked down at me with an expression of deep feeling.

His arms wrapped tightly around my waist as he claimed my lips. The kiss was strong enough to sting — he bit down and sucked with an intensity that was almost punishing. I clung to his neck as he kissed me urgently, as though to overwhelm and press me down. His tongue plunged between our pressed lips and found every sensitive place inside.

Half lifting me, he stepped into the room. Behind him, the door lock clicked shut with a crisp sound.

He strode straight across the empty studio, tossing his jacket somewhere onto the floor. Already one hand was slipping under my T-shirt, tracing the prominent outline of my shoulder blades, while his other hand gripped and squeezed my hip over my jeans.

Thump, clatter. The drafting chair I had moved in front of the sofa knocked against my calf and toppled noisily. Paying it no mind, trusting him, I tightened the arms around his neck and pressed my tongue hard against his.

It was a kiss that brought back memories of Hong Kong. That night in his hotel room, when we had rushed through the living room, tangling ourselves in a frenzy the moment we entered.

It felt like it might have been our first kiss.

If he hadn't pointed that out, oblivious me might have let it pass without ever realizing the significance of it being my first kiss in my life.

The hand that had been twisting my hip moved forward, unbuckling my belt and pulling down the zipper. Unlike his usual smooth ease when undressing someone — as though he were undressing himself rather than another person — today he was impatient.

Mmph, hmm. My shoulders flinched as his hand plunged through the gap and wrapped around me over my underwear. The groan vibrating deep in my throat made it hard to keep hold of his tongue.

As I tried to pull my head back, loosening my grip, he pushed his pelvis forward and pulled my waist tight against him, as if refusing to allow it.

His slick, hot tongue retreated and then slid back in, its tip sharp and hard as it pressed between my lips. The gaze that met my narrowed eyes was already boiling, focused entirely on me.

While he constantly adjusted his hold on my waist and pulled me closer, stroking me to draw out an erection, and simultaneously filled my mouth with his tongue's insistent caress, I quickly fell in step with his pace.

"Mnh… hh, mm… mm."

My cheeks burned at the thrusting of his tongue — which so clearly intended to simulate, and succeeded in simulating, penetration. But I couldn't deny that heat was also gathering at my cock, which was beginning to swell with an unmistakable firmness.

From below to above, above to below, deeper between my legs. The hand trying to build my arousal was putting in more force than usual.

"Ah. Huff, ugh."

The rough friction of his palm against me conveyed something raw — the bewilderment of not being able to contain the fierce desire that had ignited all at once, and the desperate need to pour it out onto the person in front of him.

I didn't dislike this — his excitement uncontrolled and irregularly spilling out from within the composure built on reason, restraint, and practiced skill. I felt a petty, secret pleasure watching him lose his balance and his pattern because of me.

To make it easier for the hand trembling between my legs — almost shaking from the effort of holding himself back — I lowered my hips and widened my stance. In that small motion, I became newly conscious that we were truly beginning to have sex, and at the same time a sharp tingle shot up the back of my neck.

His eyes narrowed as he noticed my arousal amplifying. His tongue slipped out of my mouth, and he peppered kisses across my lips, threading words between them.

"Tell me — one more time."

He kissed my entire upper lip densely, then leaned his forehead against mine and rubbed our noses together.

"Tell me not to leave. That you don't like it — whoever it is — me being alone with someone else."

"……."

Hearing my own words confirmed through his mouth made my gaze wander in embarrassment. It suddenly seemed strange that I felt more ashamed of what I'd said earlier than of the hand now moving against me beneath my pants.

"Hah, uh."

When I avoided his eyes without answering, the hand stroking my cock became more explicit. His lips moved from my nose to my cheek and covered my ear, exhaling heat that kept blurring my mind.

"Tell me you want to monopolize me — so much that you want to separate me from the rest of the world."

"You don't… dislike that, do you?"

I finally managed to ask, biting and releasing my lip, and a faint laugh touched his lips at my ear. A self-deprecating sound.

"Why would I dislike it."

"……."

"If I want to do that to Seo Yeehyeon, there's no way I'd dislike it done to me."

His face — tangled with extreme desire that ran directly counter to lust and excitement — was tightly contorted, as if he were in pain.

The possessive words he wanted to hear from me — weren't they actually the words he wanted to say to me?

While I turned that thought over, the hand working at the front of my pants withdrew. Not having received an answer, he pushed his frustration onto me. This time he thrust his hand inside my underwear from the back, pulling my body flush against his and creating friction with his entire body.

His straining, sensual physique locked me in tight. The solid mass of his shoulders, chest, and arms. The hot firmness of his erection. The raw, vivid sexuality flowing from a body built tight with appeal — felt even through clothing.

"Tell me. That you want me as much as I want you. That it's the same. Tell me you won't run."

It wasn't that I lacked such desire and was delaying out of uncertainty.

I held his large body tightly and writhed my hips within the arms holding me, pressing my body against his. I could be bold. I could be honest. It wasn't so hard anymore.

"I do… So much so that I feel unfamiliar to myself with this childish stubbornness — I want you a lot too, Representative-nim."

"……."

With an expression as though he'd heard something he couldn't quite believe, he traced every corner of my face before pressing his lips to mine. Unlike the hand between my legs — rough enough to make his broad shoulders shake — the kiss was slow and deliberate.

The sensation of his lips sucking my lower lip and then gently releasing it made the soft flesh throb sweetly. A moan escaped me involuntarily, overcome by the mood. The kisses raining over my face were tender to the point of being almost ticklish, while the hand rubbing and gripping and rocking between my legs was offensively rough.

The contrast was so stark it felt like two different people — one above, one below — but this was his way, and for me, who knew no other touch, there was nothing to compare it to.

"Inside… you're completely soaked."

He lowered his voice and whispered it close to my ear, as though sharing a precious secret. I breathed out a sigh that felt like it might undo me, and following his lead I slipped my hand into my underwear.

"Ugh… mnh."

Surprisingly, it was drenched in there. To exaggerate slightly — it was so soaked I might have wondered if I'd accidentally wet myself rather than leaked pre-cum. But the viscous, sticky fluid that clung to my hand and stretched was only bodily fluid from excessive arousal.

A mystery of the body I hadn't known during the bland years when masturbation was the entirety of my sex life. Lately, there were times when this much fluid came. Since it was proof of arousal, he seemed to quietly enjoy it whenever this happened — but I was still a little… embarrassed.

But that was only a slight regret that washed over me after sex was fully done. I didn't dislike confirming my own arousal as a physical reality, nor did I dislike how it spurred him on even more intensely. I was changing — moving further from who I used to be.

He bent his head and buried his lips in my nape. He let them slide across my skin for a moment, then bit down hard.

"Haa, ugh… mmm."

The hand layered over mine gradually quickened. My back arched from the pleasure of grinding my soaked groin against his. Between wet skin and palm, a squelching sound — reminiscent of penetration — echoed. He bit my nape hard enough that his teeth seemed ready to break through, but it felt thrilling rather than painful.

"Being this lewd — what am I going to do with you."

There was genuine worry in his voice. A sigh that seemed to acknowledge defeat settled against my nape.

"Even when I'm working — I only think of you lately."

"……."

"I'm over thirty. To have nothing but sex on my mind all day — do you know how pathetic I feel?"

But you're probably holding back and working hard anyway.

I was startled by my own inner thought — as if I were hoping he couldn't work because he was thinking of me — and tried to pull back, but it was impossible.

His other hand, holding my waist, rubbed against my lips. Though it had no real force behind it, my lips shifted wherever his fingers moved them.

"Here."

The hand that had swept down from my nape scratched my nipple over my T-shirt.

"And here."

The hand that had been layered over mine inside my underwear slid out just far enough to stroke my cock, which was hard enough to peek above the waistband.

"Here."

"……."

Knowing where his next target would be as he mapped out each sensitive point of my body, I swallowed with a shameless anticipation. The hand that had been stroking my cock moved past the back of my hand — which had gone still inside my underwear — and delved deeper. My heel lifted at the hand pressing firmly and rubbing in deliberate circles against my entrance.

"And here too."

"Ugh, ngh… nnh."

At the sensation of his finger pressing and circling precisely over my hole, I buried my forehead in his shoulder, unable to stay still. I couldn't stop my hips from rocking on their own.

"Pops into my head out of nowhere. Seriously. It's inconvenient."

As I pushed off the floor with my toes and tensed my lower body, he narrowed his brow — not even squeezing my cock — and let out a breath like a groan of admiration.

"Take responsibility, Seo Yeehyeon. You will, right? Huh?"

"Ugh, ngh… mnh."

The moment I shuddered at his finger pushing deep inside, it withdrew — leaving only the edge of his fingernail. Then, straightened, it thrust back in deep.

He exhaled roughly as he pushed his tongue into my ear.

"Ah, yeah… ngh. Haaah."

Just his fingers moving in and out quickly was enough to almost send me over the edge. I let my mouth fall open, spilling out a moan I couldn't contain, and grabbed his arm with the hand I'd pulled from my underwear. My hand, covered in fluid, was slippery everywhere. Every time his hand — undoubtedly just as wet — probed inside, an explicit wet sound rang out. A hot, aroused tongue coiled around my ear. It felt as though he were gripping my very sense of hearing and licking it.

"So soft. Why is it so wet here too. Listen to the sounds coming from you, Seo Yeehyeon — from a 'Beta.'"

"Haa, ah… hnh."

I bit my lower lip and shook my head wildly. At his whisper calling that place of mine a 'Beta,' a maddening excitement seething inside me was suddenly overturned.

Beta. Alpha. Omega. Those words — as common as 'man' or 'woman,' used every day without a second thought — somehow felt like private shorthand for the hole I used with him during sex, a second organ made only for him. A vulgar pleasure rolled through me, the same kind I felt whispering dirty things to him in bed.

At his husky voice, mixed with excited breath, whispering about what he wanted to do to my Beta, I unknowingly clenched — squeezing his finger tight. Inside, his finger stirred my inner walls as though he absolutely could not stand it.

"I want to touch it together."

What on earth did he mean, together? Even while thinking it was absurd, I couldn't push away his hand as he seized mine and drew it toward that spot. Half hesitant, half unable to hold back curiosity, I let his hand guide my middle finger — and push it into my own hole. Into my Beta, where one of his fingers was already inside.

"Ugh."

I bit down on my molars against the indescribable, alien sensation and buried my face in his shoulder. The pre-cum I'd leaked enough to soak my underwear had probably flowed in along with his hand; my inner walls were wetter than I'd expected, which made my face burn even hotter.

Facing myself — drenched and yearning for sex with him all through my body, even in that secret inner depth — was brutally bare. There was nowhere to hide, no way to deny it.

Even though I'd learned the pleasure of anal sex, I'd never put my own hand inside my hole before, because we had sex often enough that using it for self-pleasure had become unnecessary. It was my own body, and yet I accepted his fingers or his cock inside it so much more naturally than I accepted my own hand — that fact felt suddenly strange.

"Ah, ngh… don't — wait, I don't like — "

Inside, his fingers tangled with mine. It was a truly, truly strange sensation. I looked up at him with an expression like someone biting down on something cold. He, meanwhile, looked like someone who had hot water poured over them — savoring the new friction created by his fingers entwining with mine inside me.

"Why don't you like it? Because it feels good?"

"……."

As though he'd struck the exact center of the target, I was speechless. I tried to swallow to wet my dry mouth, but there was nothing to swallow. He pressed his hand over mine, moving in the same direction, and pushed firmly upward inside me — while with his other hand he brushed my hair back.

"Feeling good. Feeling it while we're together — that's not something dirty. Don't feel guilty for enjoying yourself when we're like this."

Exposed unknowingly to socially constructed sexual repression, I still felt something like guilt even during sex with someone I liked. Until my reason completely took flight.

But there was no need for that.

I thought about whether I felt something sordid in the way he rubbed his fingers against mine inside my wet inner walls — and the answer came immediately, without need for deep thought. If the other person had not been him, I never would have agreed to any of this. Because it was him, every secret event between us could become a secret contained inside our relationship, one that left no bitter aftertaste.

Groaning at the sensation of his finger pressing firmly against my inner walls, I nodded. He kissed my exposed forehead, slipped his arm under my armpit to hold my back, buried his lips near my ear, and whispered.

"This is it. The place I go crazy in every day when I'm inside Seo Yeehyeon."

"Ah, hnh."

The sensation of his movement inside me — felt simultaneously by my finger and by the inner walls themselves — was far more raw.

"Because I'm inside Seo Yeehyeon together with Seo Yeehyeon right here — it's really…"

He trailed off, lowering his head slightly, biting his lower lip and smiling. That smile, which looked almost shy despite the content of his words, made something stir in me without warning. I wanted the man in front of me. I pushed my own finger deeper inside, responding to his rhythm on my own. The temperature in his eyes as he watched me instantly soared.

"Ngh, hah… mmm."

Touching my own hole for the first time — and knowing his finger was inside it too — enticed me further. He didn't look away from even the smallest reaction flickering across my face.

Together with him, I began to move my arm with real urgency. I rocked my hips up and down repeatedly, even building a rhythm to match the thrusting inside me.

"No joke."

He muttered it in a heavily suppressed voice, then stretched out the arm that had been holding my waist and roughly pushed my soaked underwear — already tattered and half-off — further down. My jeans, with the zipper open, had slid down long ago and were hanging at my calves.

Rubbing my forehead against his shoulder, I looked down. My cock — swollen and red — was glistening everywhere. Every time he and I thrust inside, it dangled clumsily in all directions, up and down and sideways.

While I couldn't meet his gaze, I couldn't look away from what was happening below. I could feel his eyes from above, watching the same thing as he breathed in heavy gasps.

If my hand slowed, he immediately sped up as though refusing to let me rest. A thick, taut, slick arm — muscles and veins standing out sharply — stirred inside me within my line of sight. My cock bounced with the recoil.

"Ah, h-hah, haah, ugh."

Just as I felt arousal surge and flood my chest, there came the sudden familiar gush from the head of my cock. But it felt different from the pre-cum I knew. It resembled the feeling of coming — except that instead of the relieving emptiness of release, it left me with a swelling, burning desire that only expanded.

The fluid flowing down my cock couldn't support its own weight and dripped, trailing through the air and leaving several round marks on the gray floor. It was a primal, savage scene — like a starving beast drooling before a piece of meat.

My senses ignited by the image, I let out a sob-like moan and twisted his shirt in my fists.

"Haa, hah… Ah. Mmm."

The rhythm of my body's movement was fluid, but I had completely lost the rhythm of my breathing. Even gasping with my mouth open like someone hyperventilating, I leaned against him, writhing my entire body, and went on thrusting inside with him.

His hand climbed up my back and came over from behind my shoulder, sweeping my hair and pressing his lips several times to my forehead. When I tilted my chin up, he immediately lowered his head to devour my lips. The scent was overwhelming, and a dense red haze filled my mind.

The copious pre-cum flowing down my cock dripped onto my palm and down between my legs. Perhaps drawn in along with my hand into my inner walls, the viscous fluid seeped between his fingers and mine, creating a messy, squelching sound inside. The sensation of fluid that had pooled and dripped from my cock, from my Beta, flowing over the soft skin of my inner thighs, made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

"Can you feel it? Clenching and releasing — it's incredible in there right now."

He gripped my chin, bit his lower lip, and worked his fingers inside me. His pupils, studying me from beneath narrowed eyelids, held a deeper blue than usual, almost cold.

"When Seo Yeehyeon squeezes like this — does his own finger feel good too? The way I feel right now? I'm suddenly curious."

"Huh? What do you think?" he added, sly and teasing. I hugged his neck and pulled him closer. Lowering his head, he offered me his ear, and I pressed my cheek hard against his. I stuck out my tongue and wetted his ear. He moved his head up and down, rubbing our cheeks together. Trying to be honest, focusing on the arousal blooming inside me, I opened my mouth.

"Just…"

"……."

"I'm… turned on."

At that word, he tensed his entire body for an instant.

"Mm. It doesn't seem like just turned on."

A whisper followed about the dampness and softness of my inner walls — already prepared for penetration. And as if to confirm his own words, he deliberately scraped against the inside where fluid had pooled, drawing out a wetter sound, stimulating me subtly.

"Hnh, ah… ugh."

"Me too. Since Seo Yeehyeon is leaking so much, so generously — I'm also… very turned on. Should I take my fingers out and put something else in? Should we go with that?"

His voice was threaded with uneven breaths from arousal. At those words — whispered with his chest heaving — my inner walls contracted on their own again.

I felt like I might come just standing here. Since our time together usually stretched for hours, I always had to hold off my first release as long as possible. Without another thought, I nodded.

Two fingers slowly withdrew from my body. Even the sensation of them leaving was enough stimulation that I had to hunch my shoulders and squeeze the base of my cock to keep from coming. As soon as they pulled out, not wanting him to notice the feeling of fluid leaking from the still-unclosed gap, I lowered my head and pretended to focus on taking off my clothes.

I stripped off the jeans that had slid to my ankles, and then the stretched, soaked underwear. I'd probably have to throw it away. He watched from a step back, then helped pull off my T-shirt.

Only after I was completely naked did the sound of the rain finally register. It was so loud it felt chilling — as if I were standing naked in a downpour — and I felt faintly embarrassed that I'd been so absorbed I hadn't noticed it.

Standing awkwardly, I crossed one arm over my chest and tried to discreetly cover my cock with the other hand, but the prominent heaviness of it made that difficult. Even his gaze sweeping over my entire body was stimulating it further.

"I can't take it anymore," he muttered, almost to himself, unbuttoning his shirt. He found the wrist covering myself, took hold of it, and led me to the bed. Through the light partition into the bedroom, he sat me on the edge of the mattress.

The bed — with its double-layered thick mattress and a topper added on top — was high enough to reach his groin. Despite its simple design, it had a slightly luxurious feel.

His chest was partly visible through the open front of his unbuttoned shirt. When I climbed onto the bed and glanced up at him, he looked down at his own chest and gave a soft laugh. Then he lightly bit my nose.

"Showing your colors."

With the lingering smile still on his face, he stepped back, undid his belt buckle, and pulled down the zipper. Without hesitation he slid his black briefs down, and his cock sprang out — the word "burst" would not be inaccurate. It had that kind of force and weight.

He bent to remove his lower garments completely, then approached me with a face now entirely devoid of any remaining humor, and slowly pushed against my chest. He guided my legs — lying across the bed — upward, bending my knees. The sound of the rain suddenly surged loud again.

"Mmh… mmm, hnh."

Just his rock-hard cock brushing the back of my thigh made my prone body twist. The muscles around my ass clenched, and my hole tightened. Watching all of it, he finished removing his shirt and slowly pushed my knees outward, spreading my legs further apart.

Conscious of being spread open by him, I bit down on my lower lip. His right hand slid down my inner thigh toward my groin. The hot palm traced the path the fluid I had leaked earlier had taken.

He slid his hand down between my cheeks, and rubbed against the sensitive skin there.

"Ngh… mnh."

As I moaned and tightened my thighs, he kept his face between my legs and looked up at me. He was aroused to the point where it looked almost like anger — or resentment.

Maintaining eye contact, he placed his hands on my raised knees and moved closer. His cock rubbed against the inner flesh of my spread thighs. I couldn't take my eyes off the fluid, suggestive sway of his hips.

Even lying down, I was breathless.

My cock pressed against my lower belly, and my sweat-damp chest rose and fell rapidly. The moment his cock changed direction, slid over the crease of my groin, and pressed firmly downward, I widened the space between my knees without being asked. I saw his eyebrows twitch as he looked down.

The desire that had been building since before we entered the bedroom had reached its peak. Any concern about looking ridiculous was already beyond consideration. I stroked the area around my cock and looked up at him with a gaze that was unmistakably seductive. In the room darkened earlier than usual by the rain — lights still off — his blue eyes glittered.

I hadn't known I had this side to myself, but there were moments when his reactions to my sudden impulses came back to me as a thrilling pleasure.

Like now, when he was focused between my legs wearing the face of an inexperienced, late-blooming boy seeing another person's body for the very first time.

"……."

I slid the hands that had been stroking both sides of my groin deeper and began touching my Beta — the place we'd just been moving in together. His eyes widened. His breathing roughened. His shoulders, which looked as solid as stone walls, trembled. He didn't seem to notice, but the grip on my knees had grown very strong.

When I pulled the entrance open slightly from both sides and let it show, he made a sound that was almost a choke and brought one hand down to his own cock. Standing before me as I lay on the edge of the bed with my legs spread, he gripped the base of his already fully hard cock.

"Nnnh, ngh… ah."

Just the sensation of his swollen head settling against my entrance and pressing gently was enough to make me arch and grab the sheets. He raised an arm to wipe the sweat from his forehead haphazardly, then stroked my heaving lower belly and clicked his tongue.

"I used to mock that nonsense — the idea that every man but me is a wolf — and think it was only insecure, small-minded people who said things like that."

"……."

His tip — slick with the copious pre-cum typical of an Alpha — kept slipping, barely grazing the entrance without quite entering. That tantalizing contact made my lower body twitch and squirm.

"I think I have to join that sad group after all."

He let out a breath and slowly pushed his head inside. Just having the head in brought a pressure like something bearing down on my entire body, and my chin lifted, my lips parting.

"Haa, ah… hh… haa, hnh."

He gripped my side. Trembling finely, I lifted my eyes — already moist from the pressure below — to find his. Because the height of the bed was slightly mismatched with the position of our bodies, he had spread his legs to lower his center of gravity, gently rocking his hips to coax the entrance open with just the head inside.

"Handsome, cute, with a great body — and on top of that, sexy too. How could I not feel anxious?"

"……."

Joke or earnest. I examined his face.

His words were more embarrassing than the situation between my legs — the fact that I was receiving his head.

He leaned his upper body over me as I turned my head away, interlacing our hands. Then he raised our joined hands to his lips and kissed the back of my hand.

"Ah. Ugh. Hh."

As he leaned forward, the heat penetrated deeper, and I bit my lip and rocked my hips. From the closeness, his eyes watched my reactions with a hungry attention. Damp breath rained over my face.

"You being this bold in bed — I love it, and even if my daily life falls apart because of a sexier Seo Yeehyeon, I welcome it. But at the same time I keep feeling anxious."

"That… really doesn't seem like it."

"What doesn't?"

If we were talking about anxiety caused by someone's appeal, I was confident I could claim the world number one position in that category. For the very person who had made me number one to now be talking about his own anxiety — I genuinely couldn't relate.

"Are you saying you can't agree right now that Seo Yeehyeon is sexy?"

He narrowed his eyes and thrust sharply, driving deeper. I had to swallow my moan and cling to our joined hands. He pressed my hands into the sheet and covered my body with his.

He worked his hips, rubbing his hot tongue against my ear. Each time he drove down into me, the deepest part of my body reverberated with a vibrating ache. The cock was less than halfway in, but the sensation of my inner walls splitting open was vivid.

"Ngh, ngh. Ngh. Haa."

Gasping at the pleasure of being completely filled by deep penetration, I wrapped my legs around his waist without thinking. He paused for a moment — letting out a breath as though catching himself — then raised our joined hands to his lips and bit down on my knuckles.

"You deny it and then you do this. Where did you learn to be like this?"

"Ah."

Licking the complex curves of my ear with careful attention, he whispered about how much my movements stimulated him.

He told me I was good.

The burning, almost scorching sensation as he forced my tightly clenched entrance open. The dense pressure, like being thoroughly worked through as he drove into the snug inner walls.

And as if mocking that resistance and tightness — as the penetration repeated, as his cock rubbed against my inner walls and the prominent ridge of his head dragged over that spot inside, again and again — he whispered about how my Beta gradually softened and opened and grew wet, and finally clung to him with a passionate, sticky honesty.

Listening to all those explicit words, I moaned as if losing my mind, shook my head, rolled my hips, and pressed against him. He soaked my insides thoroughly with his own pre-cum, driving deeper with the loud, slick sounds of sex.

Looking down at my face — contorted and close to sobbing — he slowly swayed his pelvis from side to side. Even the graze of his pubic hair against my tender inner flesh made me shudder.

"Then I'll just have to show you. How sexy Seo Yeehyeon is."

"……."

Not knowing what he intended, I could only breathe in ragged gasps — and then, after kissing my lips, he raised his upper body and pulled back. The sensation of his thick cock, which had been locked in so tightly it felt ready to split me, dragging back against my inner walls as it withdrew was so vivid I instinctively raised my head and looked down. As if showing it off, he looked at me with his sweat-drenched face and smiled.

"Aaah."

When everything had withdrawn except the head, I shook my head — unable to tell if what I felt was anticipation or fear — and made a strange sound.

His cock, which had scraped sharply against the upper part of my entrance as it pulled out, displayed its hard elasticity with a forceful bounce against his lower belly, vibrating. Fluid tangled around it scattered in all directions.

Goosebumps rose on my arms at the sensation of fluid leaking from the opening, which I knew had to still be gaping. There were moments when the feeling of fluid flowing out from inside me felt like the most tangible proof of sex.

I pulled my legs together with a shudder at the strange, eerie feeling — something I would never have experienced had I not had sex with an Alpha in a place I had never thought to use.

He looked at me with a serious expression, glanced over his own cock, walked out through the open door, and came back with a phone from the table. In his hand was my phone.

Unsure what he was planning, I slowly pushed myself up to sit. He climbed onto the bed, his erection leading the way. He showed a brief flash of surprise that the screen wasn't locked, then tapped it a few times. Suddenly he stretched his arm out, tilting his head back and forth toward the screen.

The moment I realized he'd started recording, my hips instinctively began to slide backward. He quickly settled between my legs and pulled me close by the waist.

His legs slid under my thighs, bringing our groins together; our erect cocks brushed against each other. That alone made the back of my neck tingle, and I parted my lips — surrendering to his kiss as he leaned in.

"Mmm, mnh… hnh… mm."

I was conscious of the camera recording the right side of my face, but my body — hypersensitive from being hard for so long — craved his kiss more.

The suction on my lower lip ended. He probably had a blatantly longing look on his face, but I didn't have the composure to deal with that right now.

"This is Seo Yeehyeon's phone. Whatever happens to the file after — that's entirely up to Seo Yeehyeon."

"……."

He watched me closely from beneath his lowered eyelids.

"What do you think? Not interested?"

Surprisingly, I was interested.

A lewd curiosity about how we would look captured on that phone screen he was waving around pulled at me. Had I always been this sexually curious and forward? Sex with him was always an encounter with unfamiliar sensations — an encounter with an unfamiliar version of myself.

Stroking his arm as he fidgeted at my waist, I pressed my lips firmly against his lips right in front of me. He tilted his chin to deepen the kiss. Using only his lips, he gently traced mine, taking and releasing again and again.

I ran my hand up his bare shoulder and circled his firm, long neck. I opened my mouth to take his lips in. Our lips overlapped and shifted — above then below, below then above.

We rarely closed our eyes when we kissed.

I don't know if most people actually close their eyes when they kiss, the way they do in films. I also don't know why he never closes his. At first, I didn't have a particular reason either.

I was simply curious what he looked like while kissing — and as time passed, I stopped closing mine because I couldn't bear to miss him, even for a moment. It felt too precious to waste. I wanted to experience him with every sense I could mobilize, not only my lips and tongue. Even if that desire was a little improper.

I liked him, and he liked me — most likely, with high probability — and we were in a bed together. What did it matter if I was a little improper?

Perhaps his words telling me not to feel guilty had taken effect, because even rather audacious thoughts crossed my mind.

Even now, we were entwining our tongues while looking into each other's eyes — but now I couldn't ignore the phone in his left hand, which felt like a third presence in this bed.

And yet my excitement and focus on sex were not disrupted at all. If anything, the front-facing camera screen lighting us up made my skin tighten and sharpened every sensation of feeling him.

"Hh… haa, mm… hh, hnh."

Moaning at the flexible caress of his tongue — which filled my mouth, then teased the inner lining of my cheeks and lips as it retreated — I suddenly narrowed my throat and quieted, remembering even these sounds were being recorded.

Seeming to notice, he smiled and gave my lips a quick kiss. Then he lightly cupped my chin, rubbed our lip surfaces together, and whispered.

"Look at the screen. At us kissing."

Like a coward — like someone watching a horror film through the gaps between their fingers — I cautiously turned my eyes.

When he curled his tongue and licked along the underside of mine, I offered it to him, and — eueu, mm… heum. Mm. It was immediately swallowed, sucked until it stung.

As he tightened around my tongue, glancing sideways to adjust the angle, on the screen another version of myself appeared — tangled with him in a kiss even more vivid than the real thing happening in front of me.

No — the person on the screen looked far more sexually heightened than the real me felt. The self I experienced still seemed to hesitate, to hold a defensive stance — but the self on the screen looked explicit, bold, as though thoroughly enjoying the situation. Which one was real?

My own appearance — hazy, unfocused eyes, sucking his tongue, a moan rising from the back of my throat — was more foreign to me than a stranger I might have met for the first time today.

The glistening of the red flesh between his lips and my teeth — not fully swallowed — was more intense than the first pornography I had accidentally stumbled upon with a few clicks in my boyhood.

"Hh, hnh. Mm. Mmm… mmh."

When he pushed the phone slightly farther away, his face appeared beside mine on the screen.

Instead of facing each other directly as usual, we tilted our faces toward the phone — monitoring ourselves and each other in real time on the screen, testing the stimulation through them.

The rubbing of lips, the deliberate tangling of tongues outside our mouths, the back-and-forth tangle of bodies — every part of a kiss that wasn't entirely romantic was laid bare alongside the blinking red dot at the top of the screen.

The two figures on the screen were simultaneously the real me and him — and also androids modeled after us. The initial shock, which had seemed to strike my very core, dissipated with surprising ease, and behind it came the human curiosity of facing one's own double. Or perhaps this was how it might feel to see a mirror for the first time in over twenty years of life.

It wasn't only me. He too was showing undisguised interest in the new game he'd proposed.

Sweeping his tongue through my mouth and checking my reaction on the screen, he gently stroked the back of my neck, drew me closer, and repeatedly bit lightly at my lips before letting go.

"You can't take your eyes off the screen. Who did you fall for? Which one of us? Hm?"

At his teasing words, spoken as though he found it endearing, I tried to look away and pretend otherwise. But just as watching someone eat with obvious pleasure on screen stimulates appetite, I couldn't deny that the lewd tangle of us on the screen was arousing me.

Instead of pressing for an answer, he moved the hand around my neck downward, caressing as he went. As his lips nestled into my nape, I tilted my chin up to meet it — and my eyes met my own on the screen, which inexplicably made the muscles in my lower back pull tight.

He pushed my legs — resting on his thighs — bending my knees. Sitting with a slightly hesitant posture as he guided me, I adjusted my position, and as I settled with my knees raised his hand slipped beneath my balls.

"Ugh, mmm."

As I tilted my head back and leaned my upper body backward, my center of gravity shifted, widening the space between my legs. His fingers began working inside my wet hole — already soft and loose from the earlier penetration. He bent his head as though inspecting carefully, pressing methodically against different points of my inner walls, then deliberately rubbed the entrance with a knowing nuance before pulling his finger out and looking up at me.

Ding. Ding. As the first video ended, the second recording began immediately. He used his long thumb to tap the icon in the lower right corner of the screen, switching the camera direction. The phone — now on rear-facing — was suddenly thrust close to my chest.

In the extreme close-up, shaky as though from an experimental independent film, my hard nipples were clearly visible even in my own field of vision.

"Haa, ha… haa."

A moan escaped even though nothing was touching my body, as though I had received intense stimulation. My arm braced on the sheet trembled, and my chest twitched. He became absorbed in framing my chest on the screen with an almost clinical intensity, adjusting the angle repeatedly.

"……."

His hand stopped, and his gaze slowly lifted to meet mine — because my own hand had begun to caress the nipple on the screen.

The nipple, gathered into a sensitive reddish hue, was slightly swollen from the long caresses of the previous night. With my middle finger, I stroked the plump, protruding flesh from bottom to top, again and again.

He drew a sharp breath, his broad shoulders jerking as if angry. Watching the nipple being bent and rolled on the screen, he pulled the camera back and lunged directly at my chest.

"Hah, ah… hh, mph."

His tongue overlapped my finger. Capturing both his fingers and his tongue tangled around one small nipple on camera, he was entirely unembarrassed by his own presence in the frame.

Looking back and forth between the real him and the him on the screen, I slowly pushed the finger that had been teasing his tongue — bending the nipple this way and that — into his mouth. He glanced up at me and opened wide, taking both my nipple and the tip of my finger inside at once. My back arched and my hips lifted at the sensation of my finger being rolled inside his mouth alongside the hardened nub.

My lower half — stirred open and left empty — kept twitching, wanting to be filled tight again. Whether I wanted to admit it or not, I could no longer reach a satisfying release through ejaculation alone.

"Ugh, hnh… uu… mnh."

So much pre-cum had already flowed out that I wondered whether any semen would even come when I finally came. My cock was starting to ache. How could he stay hard this long and hold back from coming? Was this, too, some unique sexual ability of a Golden Alpha?

But now — me, a perfectly ordinary twenty-two-year-old Beta — I wanted to come with his cock inside me. I wanted it badly.

Sensing I was pushed to the extreme, he chewed his lip, spit out my finger, and sucked hard on my nipple as if trying to compress it. As he sucked, his tongue rapidly scraped across the nub inside his mouth.

"Haaaah, ah… haaah."

I stomped my feet, writhing my calves, arched my back, and pulled his head close. His body then covered mine, driving me down.

Unable to hold the weight that crashed down, I fell back onto the sheet, my hips lifting into the air. I ground my cock wildly against his chest as he worked his jaw, biting my nipple even harder.

"Ugh. That — hh. Ah."

Sounds that were barely words fell from my lips. Finally, he was entering me — a little more urgently than usual. Thanks to the earlier penetration, he managed to push all the way inside in roughly three thrusts.

"Haa, ngh… ah. Hh."

Before I could even steady my breath — shattered by the pressure of his cock filling me completely — he began to roll his hips. The moans that had been subsiding quickly transformed into jagged, rasping breaths that spoke of rough, intense sex.

Now he was using his tongue outside his lips to toy with my nipple — capturing the entire areola, slightly reddened and slick with saliva, along with his own face on screen.

"Seo Yeehyeon."

His eyes, looking up at me from my chest, were hazy. He drove his hips heavily — pounding into me — then lifted his head and pressed his lips against mine with a soft, damp sound before pulling away.

"See? Pretty. I was right."

As if confirming his own words, he turned my chin to face the screen.

"Ah. Uuuh, hnh."

The force of his thrusts — accelerating now — shook me violently. What was visible on the screen was only my face, shaking and moaning; not even the place where we joined, where fluid would have been leaking and squelching around the base of his cock. And yet it instantly evoked sex itself.

I realized, looking at the figure on the screen, that perhaps I had only been able to have sex with him like this because I couldn't see myself before. The person on the screen was sexually undone to a far greater extent than I had ever imagined. I had always pictured myself as somewhat more — restrained, hesitating before pleasure — but that was a delusion.

Belatedly I tried to cover the traces of sex overflowing across my face with the back of my hand, but I couldn't look away from the screen.

"Even though I'm inside you right now — seeing you on screen still makes me want to."

His excited breaths, rapidly piercing me, drowned the sound of rain and filled my hearing entirely.

"Even like this, Seo Yeehyeon — don't you think you're sexy?"

Between each word, he paused to thrust his hips sharply upward. Our images overlapped and shook on the screen. Whether it was because I was sexy — as he said — or because of the extraordinary stimulation of watching a depersonalized version of our own sex, I had to admit it now.

Unbelievably, I was getting turned on by watching myself.

"Ah… ah — hh…"

As I watched him grinding into me wetly below, I lowered the hand covering my mouth. My lips trembled with hesitation.

"Am I… always like this?"

To my evasive question-answering-a-question, his eyes sparkled as he licked his lower lip. The question itself was already a kind of admission about the provocative side of myself I'd just discovered.

The movement of his hips grew even more intense. Smack, smack, smack. The sounds of sex — pounding into me, soaked with pre-cum — were explicit enough to be embarrassing even for the two of us making them. With every withdrawal, it sounded like translucent fluid was stretching away from the thick head of his cock.

"Why? What do you think you look like right now, Seo Yeehyeon, to ask me that?"

"Ugh, too much — "

"Do you understand now why I feel anxious?"

Looking at his flushed face — waiting for a lewd answer — I grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him into a kiss. Ding. He threw the phone onto the sheet and covered me. His broad, contoured chest pressed down heavily against mine. As our upper bodies overlapped, the friction below deepened. With every thrust, his heavy balls swung and struck below my entrance with an elastic impact that scrambled my thoughts further.

"I can't show this to anyone but you, Director. So don't wor — ry. Ah."

He looked down at me with eyes blazing blue as if I had betrayed him, then lunged at my neck. He bit into the flesh, sucked hard, then squeezed and chewed with the pressure inside his mouth. The pain, sharp enough to leave a mark, sparked a twisted, arid pleasure.

Huff, huff. Having broken past his limit, boiling over, he was suppressing nothing. His broad shoulders covering me swelled and heaved in my line of sight.

"Being able to make you like this, being able to see you like this — it's only me."

It wasn't a declaration of confidence. His voice sounded more like a desperate plea: It has to be only me. Moving to mark another spot on my neck, he went into overdrive. His large, glistening body — pressed tight against mine, only the lower half moving rapidly — was intensely, savagely animalistic.

"Ah, ah. Hh… nnh, haaah."

The sensation of orgasm rushing toward me left me breathing as though I were about to tip over.

Bracing his fists on the sheet, he pushed up his upper body and drove his hips with a rough, fast urgency that threatened to shatter both the bed and me. It wasn't only his hips — from his shoulders through his back, waist, ass, and thighs, his entire body created wide, undulating curves, and poured the force of that momentum into me. I convulsed intermittently, almost in spasms.

"Seo Yeehyeon — snap out of it and look at me."

"Ah, hnh."

He grabbed my wrist with his hot hand and pulled it down, making me feel his cock — hotter than my hand. I felt the thick base of it plunging in and withdrawing, slick and heavy. The throbbing, hot length seemed to have a pulse entirely its own.

His eyes, glittering with a blue glow, looked down at me and said:

"I'm your Alpha."

"……."

In the rising tension just before orgasm, his words felt like a small declaration. The furrow between his brows, for a moment, didn't seem caused only by lust. He said it again.

"Yours. Your Golden."

My Alpha — the one he was speaking of — was inside me, spreading my Beta, and I could feel it in my hand. I instinctively stroked his thick cock as it entered and exited my entrance, which was stretched to its limit, its edges pulled taut.

He bent his head and watched the movement of my hand with a slow, sharp inhale — sshhp, hh.

Leaving only as much length as my hand could touch, his fast, driving movements made my wet inner walls throb and pulse.

"Ahhh… ah… hnh, hup."

"Your Alpha — what is he doing to Seo Yeehyeon the Beta right now? Huh?"

My tender inner flesh, rubbed and worked to extreme sensitivity, craved to be driven harder, to the very limit — urging me to give him the answer he wanted.

I clawed at his arm on my shoulder, and from below I pulled the base of his cock inward as I trembled.

"Sex… hah, ugh. Having sex. Your Alpha, Representative-nim, here, in my Beta — sex…"

He cursed and lunged — kissing me savagely until my lips were crushed. For him, it was clumsy. Messy. But for that very reason, his unrefined, undisguised desire came through without barrier.

"Ugh, mm. Yeah… ngh. Ngh."

"Seo Yeehyeon — let me hear more of you getting fucked. Just hearing your sounds — don't you know it makes me want to finish? I'm going crazy with how much you're turning me on."

His confession — rational thought abandoned, obsessively, vulgarly fixated on sex — layered stimulation on stimulation, driving me forward. He was undressing me with words even though I was already naked. I was the one losing my mind.

"Hah, ah! Ah, hnh."

With the sensation of his cock pulsing inside me, I sensed knotting approaching. That feeling — building like the primal, fear-inducing theme of Jaws — made me grab the sheet with both hands and rock my hips wildly.

He glanced at my reaction, picked up the phone, and — ding — the camera was rolling again. But this time, I had no capacity to care about that voyeuristic third gaze.

The rear-facing camera, which had been capturing my cock with new pre-cum flowing over the dried traces of the first, now turned toward the space between my legs — toward where we were joined.

"Ahhh, ah! Haa."

The almost violent, overwhelming pleasure given by the knotting pulsing powerfully inside me did not dull with repetition. Thump, thump. It felt as if he had implanted a new heart inside me.

His glowing eyes dissected and magnified my every reaction to the knotting, inch by inch, through the roughly six-inch screen. My lips, my chest, my lower belly, the wet groin tangled with fluids of unknown origin, and my cock — swollen and twitching as if ready to burst — were all laid bare before his eyes by the lens that permitted no distortion.

Eyes wide open, my waist and back arching wildly, I came without so much as rubbing my cock once. I flailed my arms through the air, my lower jaw trembling, as the pulse inside me beat more vividly than my own heartbeat.

"It's all right. Breathe, Seo Yeehyeon."

"Ngh, ah… Representative-nim… Repre…sentative-nim."

Lost in the ecstatic, dreamlike pleasure of coming while knotted, I reached for him like someone losing their mind. He interlaced his fingers with mine — with the hand not holding the phone — and pressed them to the sheet, slowly grinding our joined lower bodies together.

"Hey, it's all right. Your Representative-nim is right here. It's all right. You know what this is. It's knotting."

While gently rocking inside me even after I had already come, and meticulously recording through the screen the physical changes the knotting was causing in me, he whispered and asked me to call him by his name.

Even though I had come, he was still knotted. The heat of the semen erupting inside me in time with his contracting and expanding rhythm was vivid. He released my hand and pushed up the back of my left thigh, beginning to drive his hips like a beast charging forward — fully surrendering to the pleasure of the knotting.

By now it had grown dark, and the artificial light filtering through the window fell on his bare body. His face, lit by the phone screen, looked paler than usual, but his eyes — devouring me — shone a clear, vivid blue.

With wet eyes and parted lips, I called him.

"Awi."

"……."

"Kun."

"……."

Having called those names, I understood. How much I had wanted to call him by his name rather than his title.

His names — which had felt like a privilege belonging to those he cherished, which had always made me feel small. If he ever knew about my selfish desire to make all his various names my own, I wondered what he would think.

He drew a sharp, deep breath, his shoulders and chest heaving, and looked at me as though shooting a glance.

"Seo Yeehyeon."

"……."

This time, he called my name. The camera — which had been capturing the crimson flickering of the knotting — was no longer aimed at us. All that faced me was the blue flame leaping from him.

"Come to Chicago with me. Please, come with me."

"……."

"Will you… come with me?"

Whether afraid to hear my answer, or perhaps carried by some pleasure only a knotted Alpha could feel — a pleasure I couldn't comprehend — I looked up at his tormented face, hesitated, and then nodded with a voice that came out cracked and dry.

"I will. I'll go. I want to be with you."

Ting. The sound of filming stopping completely — and cut off from everything else, we were entirely focused on each other.

He kept rocking his hips until the knotting subsided enough for his cock to barely slide free. He then turned me over without pulling out.

It felt as though all strength had already drained from my body, but I braced myself on the sheet, relying on his arm lifting my lower belly from behind. Each time he pounded into my hole — where pre-cum and semen had mixed — the sound of sex was like punching into a pit filled with mud, and my mouth kept going dry.

Surprisingly, as if he had simply changed batteries, he immediately entered knotting again — without any process to build his arousal back up. It was the first time a second knotting had followed so quickly after the first.

"Ahhh, hh… no… I feel like I'm going to die… haa, it's strange. It's so strange. My insides are melting."

In a frightening pleasure where my insides felt as though they were literally dissolving — as though I myself would lose form and liquefy — I tried to crawl away across the sheet to escape. I was crying. I thought they were only physiological tears, but I didn't truly know why.

He covered me from behind and stroked my cock to scatter my consciousness. Kisses rained down on my ears and cheeks. Inside my body, his Alpha — no, my Alpha — was expanding, creating friction that made all of my insides burn. I felt as if my ego, along with my fragile internal organs, was about to explode and be destroyed.

"I'm sorry. Bear with me a little longer. Go to your limit for me. Show me everything. Don't run away."

Don't run away, Seo Yeehyeon. Please.

In a desperate voice mingled with sighs, he murmured repeatedly, as if collapsing — all while not letting me run away. And there was no way to escape the cock knotted inside me anyway. What was he so afraid of? Like an idiot.

Biting and sucking and working at various points on my neck and shoulders, marking them red and purple, he implanted a new heart inside me — even as the heat and tremors from the previous knotting had not yet faded.

I couldn't tell how much time passed until we had spent every last drop of desire, impulse, and energy and reached a complete stillness. I could barely recall how this exhausting sex had even begun.

Actually, I remembered.

It was the desire for mutual constraint and exclusivity. A childish yet desperate longing to have that right confirmed.

After sating that hunger for possession to its fullest, my phone held five videos — but I couldn't find the courage to play them back. I didn't delete them, either.

I had to lie face-down on the sheet for a long time, like someone returning home after hours of intense physical effort. No — it felt less like exercise and more like having been severely beaten. My insides trembled, and my skin throbbed everywhere.

Even after the knotting subsided, he didn't pull away immediately. He lay heavy on top of me for a long time, caressing slowly, stroking my hair, and kissing my face and upper body. Only after my eyes had regained some focus and my breathing had stabilized did he withdraw his still-warm cock with a languid groan and move off me.

Unlike me, who was a complete wreck, he showed no signs of exhaustion. He left the bedroom and returned with a towel and water. The outline of his erection was clearly visible through the towel wrapped around his waist. Despite having knotted twice in quick succession with only a brief interval between, sex had once again failed to quiet him.

Trying to ignore the powerful aftereffects of sex still coursing through every inch of my body, we sat side by side on the edge of the bed and drank the bottled water he'd brought. We definitely both needed hydration. It felt as though every last drop of fluid inside me had been wrung out.

3:13. 5:37. One was 12:02.

While I was mentally tallying the playback times of each video in my phone's album, he was pressing his lips to each of the marks he'd left on me. He had left the studio lights on, so a soft light — neither too bright nor too dark — seeped into the bedroom. The rain was no longer pouring, but it was still drizzling.

"This one's too deep. It must have hurt when I did it."

After staring at the video thumbnails — which I was too afraid to touch — for a while, thirst washed over me. I drank more water and turned to look at him.

He was pointing to a particularly dark, bruise-like mark just above my collarbone, speaking apologetically — but his face couldn't quite hide a smile. He had occasionally left a mark or two in hidden places before, but this was the first time he'd left so many — spanning my neck, collarbone, shoulders, and chest.

Since this was sex that had followed us both laying our jealousy bare without filter, I supposed he had wanted to claim ownership, even through the meager means of leaving marks on my skin. The sight of him kissing the marks he'd made struck me as oddly endearing — even though it hadn't seemed endearing at all while he was making them.

A weak laugh escaped me. Looking down at my mottled upper body, I tried to make a joke of it.

"Do you like it?"

He looked up at me with a slight frown, having been kissing the mark left above my nipple, and turned my shoulder toward him. Then he leaned back to create some distance and took in the full spread of red traces our sex had left across my body.

"Very much. I'm thinking about submitting it as a work of art somewhere."

Because he was flawlessly handsome, his very presence already conveyed seriousness. His face couldn't look frivolous even if it tried. When he made jokes like this with an even more earnest expression on that face, I still didn't quite know how to react.

"Honestly, I have no intention of sharing it."

Drawing closer and kissing my bare shoulder, he said it with a laugh. Feeling a rush of warmth at the sight of his large frame hunched over — arms hanging between his legs, cheek rested against my shoulder — I laughed too.

Embarrassingly, each time I laughed, the semen he'd left in thick deposits from the knotting seeped out below — in fact it was flowing rather than seeping, impossible to stop. The towel under me was growing damp. Trying not to let him notice the sensation that kept making my upper body straighten, I fiddled with the water bottle and my phone and spoke.

"It's nice that this job doesn't require me to go in to work. Times like this."

He sparkled with mischievous eyes and laughed, tickling my waist and rubbing his nose against mine.

"Are you saying it's a good job for having sex right now? Seo Yeehyeon, you've gotten so lewd."

I didn't feel any need to deny it. Because it was true. Responding to the light kisses he pressed like someone savoring an afterglow, I let out a leisurely sound from deep in my throat. Then, suddenly, the thought that the first visual record we had of ourselves together was a sex tape made me feel a little hollow. I didn't feel guilt or discomfort about those videos — but separately from that, I wanted at least one piece of evidence that our relationship wasn't only about sex. It was an impulse without context.

"Representative-nim."

"……."

His twitching eyebrows seemed to express dissatisfaction at the usual title returning after sex — but he didn't voice it.

"Shall we… take a picture together?"

Perhaps it was unexpected, because his eyes widened. But soon he smiled, as if he'd been waiting for this, and quickly moved behind me — wrapping his arms around my waist. As he pressed his cheek close, almost resting his chin on my shoulder, settling into a pose for the photo, I opened the camera and flipped the lens.

The screen — which had been showing the cluttered table outside the open door — changed to a bust shot of us both. It had already been about a month since we'd started spending our days practically glued together, but we'd never captured ourselves in a frame, so it was a fresh two-shot.

Because the composition caught us down to our bare chests, the photo had a faintly risqué feel. I tried adjusting how far I stretched my arm, but a tight frame of only our faces wasn't much better either.

"Come to think of it, this is my first selfie."

"What about me — do you think mine would be the second?"

He hugged my waist a little tighter and turned to look at me. Come to think of it, the image of him holding up a phone and looking for the right selfie angle was unimaginable, and the thought made me let out an unexpected laugh.

Unlike him — who looked completely natural — I stared at my stiff reflection in the screen, then lowered my arm and hung my head.

"This looks awkward. Should we just not do it?"

"Why? I was already looking forward to it."

The genuine disappointment in his voice made me hesitantly raise my arm again.

"Since neither of us is wearing a top, it doesn't look very wholesome."

He tapped the screen where we appeared and laughed, then pressed his lips to my cheek. His right arm crossed over my chest to wrap around my left shoulder, and his handsome face — which looked good even on camera — moved close in the frame, as if about to kiss me.

"Try smiling a little more."

To loosen my rigid expression, he caressed my side and whispered in my ear.

"No matter what, we're going to look like a couple who just had sex anyway."

Click. With a slightly awkward and insufficient smile, an image of the two of us was captured and preserved in a 4:3 ratio.

Couple. Whether he said it consciously or not, the word left an impression as lingering as the aftereffects of the knotting.

Watching his profile as he sent the photo we'd just taken to his own number, I suddenly felt a longing for him even though he was right next to me. Even after he had knotted inside me twice moments ago, it felt as though it still wasn't enough. It wasn't a hunger born of distance. I couldn't explain it even to myself — so I simply pressed my forehead into his shoulder.