Sent as the Alliance Leader's Hostage Husband novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Try It Tonight
On their wedding night Ye-han presses a poisoned needle to the Leader's throat, and he lets him, and the dare ends in his bed.
The Leader's chamber was a cold stone box with a lake outside the window and a bed the size of a boat.
There was nothing else in it.
No scroll, no flower, no second cushion, not one thing a man owns because he likes it.
Ye-han stood in the doorway in his wedding silk and said what he thought.
"You live like a monk who lost a bet."
"I live like a man who is rarely home."
"Then why is the bed so big?"
"It came with the room."
Gyeong-wook stood by the window with his back turned, taking off the wooden beads one by one.
Candle flames bent in the draft off the water.
The door shut behind Ye-han, and the bar fell.
He was two hundred miles from home, alone with the man he'd been sent to kill.
He had never been so interested in his life.
"If you are waiting for a speech," Gyeong-wook said, "I have none."
"I was hoping for a threat."
"I do not make them."
"Then I'll make one."
Ye-han crossed the floor in his bare feet, and Gyeong-wook turned to meet him.
His bandaged hand hung at his side.
The other hand was empty and open, held a little out from his body, so Ye-han could see it held nothing.
Ye-han pulled the red cord from his braid.
The needle came with it, bright as a hair of ice between his fingers.
Gyeong-wook looked at it without moving.
"Sit," Ye-han said.
Gyeong-wook sat on the edge of the huge bed, and Ye-han stepped between his knees.
Gyeong-wook had to tilt his head back to look up, and that did something to Ye-han's pulse that he decided to ignore.
He laid the point against the side of Gyeong-wook's throat, on the big vein under the jaw.
"One scratch," he said. "You know what's on it."
"I have a fair idea."
"You are very calm."
"You are very close."
Gyeong-wook's eyes went to Ye-han's mouth and came back, without apology.
It was a short look, and Ye-han felt it from his collarbone to his knees.
"You are going to flinch," Gyeong-wook said.
"I do not flinch."
"Your hand is shaking again."
Ye-han pushed the point in a hair's breadth, enough to dent the skin.
Gyeong-wook did not breathe.
He did not reach for Ye-han either.
His hand stayed open on his own thigh, the knuckles scarred white, and Ye-han realized he was the one who was waiting.
"Aren't you afraid?" Ye-han said.
"Of dying?"
"Of me."
"A little," Gyeong-wook said.
His voice dropped.
"Not of the needle."
Ye-han should have driven it in right there.
He wanted that noted.
The Cult's best poisoner could not have asked for a better moment, and he stood there and let it pass.
He threw the needle on the pillow.
Then he got both hands in the front of the grey robe, and he kissed Gyeong-wook.
He meant it as an insult.
It was a rotten kiss, the kind you give an enemy, all teeth, and he bit Gyeong-wook's lip right across the scar.
Gyeong-wook made a sound low in his chest.
Then his good hand came up and closed on the back of Ye-han's head, gently.
He opened his mouth under Ye-han's, and the kiss turned into something else.
It was slow.
It was devastatingly patient.
Gyeong-wook kissed him as if he had spent the afternoon thinking about it and had all night to do it right.
Ye-han climbed onto his lap.
He hadn't decided to.
His knees were either side of Gyeong-wook's thighs, and the silk of his robe rode up.
He felt exactly how hard Gyeong-wook already was, thick against his belly through the grey linen.
"That," Ye-han said against his mouth, "is very rude."
"I have been trying to think of something else for an hour."
"Think harder."
"I find I cannot."
Ye-han laughed, breathless, and shoved his shoulder, and Gyeong-wook fell back onto the bed with Ye-han on top of him.
Gyeong-wook lay there, big and heavy and open.
He looked up with candlelight in his hair and a trace of Ye-han's blood on his lip.
His hand came to rest on Ye-han's hip, light, and stopped.
"Tell me where," he said.
Ye-han's breath caught.
"Tell you what?"
"Where to touch you. I will not guess. I have been wrong about everything in this hall for ten years."
"You're a Leader," Ye-han said, hoarse. "You're supposed to be giving the orders."
"I know."
Gyeong-wook said it so quietly.
"I am tired of it."
Ye-han didn't understand what he'd walked into.
He only knew his whole body wanted to say yes to something he couldn't name.
"Hands on my waist," he said.
Gyeong-wook's fingers spread, enormous, and found the silk at Ye-han's back.
"Pull."
Gyeong-wook pulled, and Ye-han slid down his body until his cock pressed against Gyeong-wook's.
Two thin layers of cloth lay between them, and they both made the same noise.
"Again," Ye-han said. "Slower."
Gyeong-wook dragged him up and over, a long deliberate roll, and heat spread through Ye-han's belly.
Ye-han braced his hands on Gyeong-wook's chest.
He could feel Gyeong-wook's heart there, hard and fast, and it did not belong to a calm man.
"You lied," Ye-han said.
"About what?"
"You said you weren't afraid."
"I said not of the needle."
Ye-han rode him through the cloth, grinding down.
Gyeong-wook held his waist and guided him over the long hard line of his cock.
He said nothing at all.
He watched Ye-han's face with a look so naked and hungry and astonished that Ye-han had to close his eyes.
It had been a very long time since anyone had looked at him as if he were the point of something.
"Young Lord," Gyeong-wook said, and his voice cracked on it.
"Please."
"Please what?"
"Faster."
"Say it properly."
"Please go faster."
Ye-han did.
He snapped his hips and ground down hard, and the headboard hit the wall.
Gyeong-wook's breath came ragged.
His hand slid up under the robe to the bare skin of Ye-han's back, and he swore, one low word.
"You are so warm."
"Don't stop touching me," Ye-han said. "I will kill you if you stop touching me."
"That is not a threat I mind."
Ye-han came first.
He hadn't planned that, either.
It tore through him with a shout he tried to bite off, and his whole body locked, wet and shaking against Gyeong-wook.
Gyeong-wook pulled him down against his chest and held on while he shuddered.
Then he put his face in Ye-han's neck.
"Again," Ye-han managed. "Now you."
"Tell me how."
"Hold still."
Ye-han took him by the wrists and pinned them over his head.
It was the only way he could think of to stay in charge of his own hands.
He rolled his hips down once, twice, hard.
Gyeong-wook arched under him.
"Young Lord," he said, in a voice like torn paper, and came, soaking the cloth between them, his whole big body shaking.
Ye-han felt it through his own belly.
He stayed where he was, with Gyeong-wook's wrists in his hands, and for a while neither of them said a word.
Gyeong-wook's breath slowed.
Ye-han's didn't.
He could hear the lake against the wall, and a long way off a night watchman calling the hour.
"That," Ye-han said eventually, "was not an assassination."
"No," Gyeong-wook said. He sounded dazed.
"It was very bad technique."
"I have noticed that I am not good at being killed."
Ye-han climbed off him, shaky as a newborn foal, and pulled his ruined robe straight.
Then he reached for the pillow to get his needle.
The needle was gone.
He felt the sheets, and the floor, and he turned to look at Gyeong-wook.
Gyeong-wook was sitting up with his hair rumpled, and in his bandaged palm lay a bright hair of steel.
He had taken it off the pillow while Ye-han was shaking.
"You can have it back," said the Leader of the Martial Alliance, "when you stop wanting me dead."
Ye-han opened his mouth.
He was surprised to find he had no good answer at all.
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