Only My F-Rank Touch Calms the S-Rank Hunter novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Ten Minutes

Assigned as Ji-seok's private guide, Si-woo sits for a forearm session in the Hannam penthouse, talks through it, and ends up in the hunter's lap ordering his hands onto the floor; in the mirror afterward he finds an ember-gold line on his back.

By Thursday Si-woo had a new job, a new address, and a letter from Eom with his name misspelled.

"Private guide to Captain Cha Ji-seok," it said. "Hazard pay is not applicable to F-rank personnel."

Ga-eul read it over his shoulder and said a word he would not repeat.

"They're paying you less than the stretcher," she said.

"I know."

"You're taking it?"

"It's thirty minutes a day with a man who doesn't explode when I hold his hand."

"That's not an answer."

It wasn't.

The real answer was ten minutes in the road, with the gold going out of Ji-seok's eyes.

Si-woo had felt more useful then than in four years of carrying other people's blood.

Ji-seok lived at the top of a glass tower in Hannam, in an apartment with almost nothing in it.

One sofa.

One long table.

A kitchen so clean it looked like nobody had ever been hungry there.

Ji-seok opened the door himself, in a grey T-shirt that stretched across his shoulders, his hair tied low and still wet from a shower.

He was a head taller than Si-woo.

Up close, the scar through his eyebrow was old and white, and his hands were not quite steady.

"You came," Ji-seok said.

"It's in the letter."

"I thought you might not."

"I thought about it." Si-woo took off his glasses and wiped them on his cardigan, because he was nervous. "The pay is bad."

"I'll pay you," said Ji-seok.

"The Bureau does that."

"I'll pay you more."

"You can't bribe your guide, Captain."

Something moved at the corner of Ji-seok's mouth, very small, gone at once.

"Sit," he said.

The Bureau manual said ten minutes of bare forearm contact, and Si-woo had memorized it on the train.

They sat at opposite ends of the sofa.

Ji-seok rolled his sleeves to the elbow and laid his forearms across his knees, palms up, and Si-woo put his hands over them.

The heat came up at once, a slow tide.

Ji-seok's whole body was braced.

Si-woo could feel every muscle clenched around the power.

"You can breathe," Si-woo said.

"I am breathing."

"You're holding your breath and calling it breathing. Your ribs haven't moved in a minute."

Ji-seok's eyes came up.

"Most guides don't talk," he said.

"Most guides are A-rank and scared of you. I'm an F and I'm tired."

"Why are you tired?"

"I carried a stretcher for nine hours yesterday." Si-woo pressed his thumbs into the tendons of Ji-seok's wrists. "Breathe in."

Ji-seok breathed in.

"Out."

Ji-seok breathed out, and Si-woo felt the gold slide a little way up his own arms and settle.

"Better," Si-woo said. "Again."

They did it for ten minutes, and then for twenty.

Si-woo stopped looking at the clock.

Ji-seok's pulse beat in his palms, strong and slow, and Ji-seok watched his mouth when he talked.

At some point Si-woo noticed he was still talking, about nothing, about Ga-eul's terrible cooking.

Ji-seok listened.

At some point Si-woo noticed he was hard.

It was embarrassing, and it was not a surprise.

Ji-seok was huge and warm and smelled of soap and something burnt and sweet.

He was looking at Si-woo.

Si-woo started to take his hands away.

Ji-seok's wrist turned under his fingers, caught them, held them.

"Don't," Ji-seok said.

"Captain, the ten minutes..."

"Ji-seok."

"Ji-seok." Si-woo's mouth was dry. "It's been forty."

"I know."

"You're not flaring."

"I know that too." Ji-seok's voice dropped. "I want to ask you something, and I don't know how to ask it properly."

"Ask it badly."

"May I touch you somewhere that isn't your hands?"

The air in the room seemed to get thicker.

"Yes," Si-woo said.

He said it so fast it came out as one syllable.

Ji-seok did not move.

He sat there on his end of the sofa, vast and still, his hands trembling under Si-woo's.

Si-woo understood that he would not move until someone told him he could.

That nobody had ever told him.

Si-woo climbed into his lap.

It took some doing.

Ji-seok was solid as a wall.

Si-woo put his knees on either side of Ji-seok's thighs and his hands on his shoulders, and the grey-green eyes went wide.

"Look at me," Si-woo said.

Ji-seok looked.

Si-woo kissed him.

Ji-seok's mouth was warm and terribly careful.

Si-woo bit his lower lip until Ji-seok made a sound in his chest.

"Hands," Si-woo said against his mouth. "Put them on the sofa. Flat. Don't move them."

Ji-seok put them down at once.

The whole big body obeyed, and Si-woo's cock jumped against Ji-seok's stomach.

"Good," Si-woo said, and heard Ji-seok's breath stutter. "That's right. Stay."

He took his time.

He kissed Ji-seok's jaw, the scar in his eyebrow, the hollow under his ear.

He rolled his hips down over the hard length straining in Ji-seok's sweatpants.

Ji-seok groaned, low and wrecked, and his hands dug into the cushions.

"You're holding on again," Si-woo said. "Stop."

"I can't."

"Then I'll hold it for you." He laid his palm flat in the middle of Ji-seok's chest. "Let me."

He ground down, slow and hard, and Ji-seok pushed up into it once and froze, horrified at himself.

"Do that again."

"I might hurt you."

"I'm an F-rank," Si-woo said. "I'm built for taking it. Move."

Ji-seok moved.

His hips rolled up in a rough short thrust, and they both gasped.

"There," Si-woo said. "Again."

He got a hand between them and pulled Ji-seok's cock out of his waistband, thick and flushed and heavy in his fist.

Ji-seok swore, a long broken curse.

Si-woo wrapped his fingers around Ji-seok and then around himself, both of them in one hand, and started to stroke.

Ji-seok's forehead dropped against his shoulder.

"Si-woo," he said, thick and shaking. "Please."

"Please what?"

"Tell me what to do."

Si-woo's whole body lit up.

It was the best thing anyone had ever said to him.

"Keep your hands where they are," he said. "Look at me."

Ji-seok lifted his head.

"And when you come, you come on my hand, and you don't hold anything back."

The gold showed in Ji-seok's eyes, only at the very rim, and Si-woo felt its warmth pour into his palm.

He worked them harder, faster, the slick sound filling the room.

"Good," Si-woo said. "Good, Ji-seok, like that, give it to me."

Ji-seok came with a shout that cracked the glass of the lamp beside them.

Hot over Si-woo's knuckles, over his wrist, the whole body bowing up under him.

Si-woo followed, shaking, his face buried in Ji-seok's neck.

The gold went through him like a long slow wave.

Then it was quiet.

The lamp's bulb tinkled in its cracked housing.

They stayed like that for a long time, breathing, Ji-seok's hands still flat on the cushions where Si-woo had told him to leave them.

"You can move them now," Si-woo said.

Ji-seok's arms came around him.

Very slowly.

As though he were lifting something that might shatter.

Si-woo woke an hour later on the sofa, under a blanket, with a glass of water on the table and the lights low.

He went to wash his hands in the bathroom.

The mirror over the sink was long.

When he pulled up his shirt to wipe his stomach clean, he saw his own back in it.

There was a line between his shoulder blades.

A thin line, the width of a finger, running down his spine.

It glowed a faint ember gold under the skin.

He touched it.

It was warm.

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