My Orders Changed on the Wedding Night novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: The Iron Fist
The Chief's champion challenges the groom in the yard, and the bath afterward is not for washing.
By noon the next day the whole mountain knew, and by one o'clock somebody wanted Ja-heon beaten for it.
The guests of the Spring Assembly gathered in the training yard to watch the groom be tested.
It was the Alliance's custom.
A man who married above his station had to show the sects he could hold that station.
Seon-woo sat on the dais in a white chair with a cup of tea and a face.
He had not looked at Ja-heon since dawn.
Ja-heon knew why.
If Seon-woo looked at him, the whole yard would see what had happened on the floor of his study.
Ja-heon stood in the sand in his black coat and iron bracers and waited for his opponent.
The Chief's champion walked out of the guest ranks.
Hong Gang-mun, the Iron Fist of the Alliance, was thirty-six years old and six feet two.
He had a shaved head, a torn left ear and iron wraps on both wrists.
He had killed over a dozen men in sanctioned duels, and Ja-heon had read the reports.
"Bodyguard," Hong said, and gave him a bow exactly deep enough to be an insult.
"The Chief said you would want the match."
"Did he?"
"He said a man who takes a master's name ought to prove he's worth it."
The sentence sat oddly with Ja-heon.
He had no time to think about it.
Hong came in low.
His fist was a hammer wrapped in iron, and it passed through the place where Ja-heon's ribs had been half a heartbeat earlier.
Ja-heon turned inside the blow, set his forearm against Hong's elbow, and felt the shock run all the way to his shoulder.
The crowd gasped.
He spun away and Hong spun after him, and the sand cracked under their feet.
Hong was fast for a big man, and he fought straight and honest, and Ja-heon liked that about him.
It made the next part worse.
Ja-heon was supposed to be a nobody's bodyguard, a drifting sellsword with a plain sword and no school.
If he beat the Iron Fist in six moves, which he could have, someone would ask where a drifter had learned the Blood Cult's Shadow Step.
So he let Hong's fist land on his shoulder, and the pain bloomed white.
He went down on one knee, and the crowd roared.
He came up under Hong's guard and drove an elbow into his stomach, hard enough to move him two steps and no more.
He took three more blows he did not need to take.
He gave Hong a shallow cut on the forearm to be proud of.
At the end he let Hong pin his wrist against the post.
Hong stopped there, with his face close.
He did not look like a man enjoying himself.
"You're holding back," Hong said quietly.
"I'm holding up."
Hong's mouth twitched, almost a smile.
Then Seon-woo stood, and the yard went silent.
"The match is ended," he said in the voice that stopped things.
"The groom has held his ground against the Iron Fist, and the Crane is satisfied.
"Hong Gang-mun, the Pavilion thanks you."
He turned and walked off the dais without once looking at the blood running down Ja-heon's arm.
Ja-heon would have bled twice as much for one look.
An hour later Seon-woo had him in the bath house behind his rooms, a small old room full of steam.
Seon-woo had sent everyone else away.
Ja-heon sat on the stone bench with his coat and shirt off, and the heat made the cut on his shoulder sting.
Seon-woo knelt in front of him in a damp robe and washed the wound with a cloth.
His hair had come loose from its tie and trailed in the water.
"That was not necessary," Seon-woo said.
"It was a test."
"You let him hit you."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"It was easier to lose than to explain how I'd won."
Seon-woo looked up.
For a moment his black eyes were fierce and hurt, and then they settled into something worse.
"You are not a drifter," he said.
Ja-heon's heart stopped.
"Nobody learns that footwork from a sellsword.
"I know you have lied to me about where you came from, and I do not care.
"I only care that you stay."
Ja-heon could not speak.
The needle lay in his coat on the far side of the room, and Seon-woo had just handed him his trust.
He took Seon-woo's hand off his shoulder and kissed the palm.
"I'm staying," he said.
It was the first true thing he had said to Seon-woo in three years.
Seon-woo pulled him forward by the wet hem of his trousers, and Ja-heon went.
Their mouths met hard.
Seon-woo kissed him with teeth and need, and he got Ja-heon's trousers open without looking.
Ja-heon was already so hard it hurt.
"Turn around," Seon-woo said against his mouth.
Ja-heon turned and braced both hands on the wet stone wall.
Steam rolled over his back, and the cooler air touched him wherever Seon-woo's hands were not.
He heard Seon-woo pick up the little jar of oil from the shelf.
"Spread your legs."
Ja-heon spread them.
Behind him Seon-woo let out a low unsteady breath, and the first slick finger pressed against his hole.
It went in slowly.
Ja-heon groaned, and Seon-woo stopped.
"Don't stop," Ja-heon said.
"Say it again."
"Don't stop."
Seon-woo pushed deeper, and Ja-heon shivered down to his heels.
Strangers in a hundred cheap rooms had touched him, wanting nothing from him.
No one had ever done it like this, as if he were learning Ja-heon's body by heart.
Seon-woo added a second finger and curled them and found the spot that buckled Ja-heon's knees.
Ja-heon said his name into the wall.
"There?" Seon-woo said, as if he had won something.
"Yes.
"Fuck, yes, there."
"Good.
"I want to hear you."
He worked Ja-heon open until Ja-heon was shaking and begging.
Then his fingers left, and Ja-heon heard the rustle of his robe, and the blunt head of Seon-woo's cock pressed against him, hot and slick.
"Tell me to stop," Seon-woo said, ragged.
"Never."
Seon-woo pushed in.
Ja-heon felt every inch of him, a slow blazing stretch.
His forehead dropped against the stone, and he gasped out something that was not a word.
Seon-woo stopped when he was all the way in.
He held there with his chest against Ja-heon's back, panting, one arm banded around Ja-heon's waist.
"Ja-heon.
"Breathe."
Ja-heon breathed.
Seon-woo began to move.
It was slow at first, and deep, and each thrust pushed against the place his fingers had found.
Ja-heon's cock jerked against the stone with every stroke.
The sounds he made echoed in the little room, and he did not care.
Seon-woo gripped his hips, then his shoulder, and then reached around and took hold of Ja-heon's cock and stroked it in time.
"Come for me," Seon-woo said into his ear.
Ja-heon came.
It tore out of him, hot and hard, spilling over Seon-woo's fist and the wall.
Seon-woo followed a moment later with a cry Ja-heon would remember for the rest of his life.
They slid to the floor together, wet and boneless.
Seon-woo held him against his chest in the warm water.
"You will stay," he said, and it was almost a question.
"As long as you want me."
Seon-woo kissed the scar on his jaw.
Then he said, "Good," and Ja-heon laughed helplessly with his face in Seon-woo's neck.
A knock at the door ended it.
"Pavilion Master."
It was Nam Sun-ok, the steward, and her voice had gone very dry.
"The Chief's wedding gift has arrived."
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