Sent as the Alliance Leader's Hostage Husband novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Tea Duty

The Hall Elder orders Ye-han to serve tea on his knees, so he turns it into a show, then goes to the Leader's room and puts him on his.

Ye-han woke alone in a bed the size of a boat, with a bowl of cold porridge on the pillow.

There was no note.

The Leader of the Martial Alliance had left him breakfast and gone to run his country.

Ye-han ate it, which annoyed him.

By noon he was kneeling on a mat in the Hall of Elders, in full crimson, with a tea tray in his hands.

"The bride will serve the council," said the Hall Elder.

He had arranged it himself.

Twelve elders sat in a half circle on raised cushions, and sect masters crowded the doors to watch the Demon Cult's heir kneel.

It was meant to be a humiliation.

Ye-han had been trained for humiliation since he was six.

He lifted the teapot and smiled up at the nearest elder, a fat man in green.

"Honored Master," he said warmly. "How is your daughter in Haeju?"

The man's hand froze on his knee.

"My daughter?"

"The one who is not your wife's," Ye-han said, and poured.

The tea left the spout in a perfect gold thread.

The man in green took his cup with fingers that shook.

Ye-han moved down the line on his knees, slowly, and every elder got a cup and a kind word.

"Master of the Granary Hall, I hope the rice at your border depot has been counted."

"Master of the Jade Hall, what a lovely jade belt. Was it very costly to smuggle?"

Ye-han had a spy network and a very good memory, and he used both.

By the seventh cup, the doors were silent.

By the tenth, the sect masters had stopped looking at him and started looking at the elders.

The Hall Elder was last.

Ye-han held out his cup in both hands and bowed his head until his braid fell forward.

"Elder," he said, soft enough that it carried only to him.

"Nobody here has asked what your steward does on the third night of every month."

The cup rattled in the Hall Elder's fingers.

"I knelt in the dust on the road in. It was more honest than this floor."

Ye-han put the cup into the old man's hand.

He rose without being told, and he walked out through the middle of the hall.

Nobody stopped him.

That was the first ten minutes of his second day as a hostage, and he considered it a success.

His trunks had arrived by afternoon, along with Chun-sik.

Chun-sik was fifty-two and round, bald as an egg, with spectacles on a string.

He had cooked every meal Ye-han had eaten since he was six.

He was carrying a pot of soup up the Leader's stairs.

"You have lost weight," he said, setting it on the floor.

"I have been in the fort for one night."

"It shows in the face."

A young man had followed him in with the last trunk.

He was slight, and soft in the face, with freckles across his nose and a scholar's knot of black hair.

There was ink on his fingers.

"Young Lord," he said, bowing quickly. "I am Eom Ju-won, the Leader's secretary.

"He asked me to make sure you had everything."

He had the clearest eyes Ye-han had seen in that grey fort.

Ye-han looked at him and felt the small itch you get when a face belongs to someone you ought to know.

He couldn't place it.

Behind him, a bowl hit the floor and shattered.

Chun-sik was standing very still with his empty hands out in front of him.

His face had gone the colour of tallow.

"I am sorry," he said, to no one. "My fingers."

"Let me," said Ju-won at once, and went down on one knee to gather the shards.

Chun-sik backed away from him.

Ye-han noted it and forgot it by supper.

That night he did not go to bed.

He walked down the dim corridor in his sleeping robe and let himself into the Leader's study, where the door had been left unbarred.

Gyeong-wook was alone at a desk, reading by one lamp.

He was reading, and not reading.

His brush hung dry in his hand.

"You didn't come back to the room," Ye-han said.

"I thought you might want it."

"It is your room."

"It is ours now, I think."

Gyeong-wook looked up, and the lamp threw a sharp shadow across the scar on his lip.

Ye-han saw his eyes drop to the neckline of the robe.

"I wanted to say one thing," Gyeong-wook said. "You were magnificent today."

"That's two things, and the first was a bribe."

"It was true."

"You heard."

"Ju-won told me.

"The Hall Elder's cup shook so hard he had to set it down on his own foot."

Ye-han laughed in spite of himself.

Then he walked around the desk and took the brush out of Gyeong-wook's hand.

"Come to bed," he said.

Gyeong-wook rose.

He was a head taller than Ye-han and half again as broad.

He commanded four hundred sect masters, and he followed Ye-han down the corridor.

Ye-han enjoyed that more than he wanted to admit.

In the chamber he pushed Gyeong-wook down on the edge of the bed.

Gyeong-wook sat with his knees apart and his hands open on his thighs, waiting.

"Keep your hands there," Ye-han said. "Do not move them until I tell you."

"Yes."

His voice had gone low and rough.

It was one word, and it landed in Ye-han's belly.

Ye-han knelt on the cold floor between his knees.

He pushed up the hem of the grey robe, and Gyeong-wook's breath stopped.

He was already hard against the plain white cloth beneath.

"Tell me what I'm allowed to do," Gyeong-wook said hoarsely.

"Nothing.

"Watch."

Ye-han pulled the cloth down.

Gyeong-wook was thick and flushed, heavier than Ye-han had expected, and he jumped as the cool air touched him.

Ye-han wrapped his fingers around the base of Gyeong-wook's cock, slowly, his rings cold on the skin.

Gyeong-wook's whole body went rigid.

His hands pressed into his own thighs until the knuckles went white, but they stayed where Ye-han had put them.

Heaven, how they stayed.

Ye-han licked the head, once, lazily.

Gyeong-wook swore.

"Quiet," Ye-han said against him.

"If the guards hear you, the elders will say I've broken the Leader."

"You have."

Ye-han took him into his mouth.

He took half of him at first, and then more.

He worked his tongue along the underside where the vein ran thick, and Gyeong-wook made a sound.

His hips jerked.

Ye-han looked up at him through his lashes without letting go.

"Did I say you could move?"

"No."

"Then do not."

Gyeong-wook closed his eyes, and Ye-han watched his chest heave.

His jaw worked.

There was a faint tremor in his thighs, and his hands stayed flat on them, shaking with the strain of obeying.

Ye-han had never in his life had power like this, and it came over him.

He swallowed Gyeong-wook down until his nose touched the dark hair at his belly.

Gyeong-wook said his title like a prayer.

"Young Lord."

"Please."

Ye-han drew back an inch, his hand still wrapped round the base.

"What do you want?"

"Let me touch you.

"Let me come.

"Tell me I can."

Ye-han pulled off, slick-lipped, with his own cock aching hard under his robe.

"Not yet," he said.

Gyeong-wook groaned, dragged and ruined.

Ye-han took him again, slower and deeper, edging him close and drawing away.

Gyeong-wook's thighs went slick with sweat, and he was pleading in broken words.

"Please.

"Please, I will do anything."

"Then come," Ye-han said, "for me, now."

Gyeong-wook came with a shout he had to bite into his own forearm, hot and endless, pulsing down Ye-han's tongue.

Ye-han swallowed it, every drop, and rose on his knees with his mouth wet and his face burning.

Gyeong-wook opened his eyes.

His hands were still on his thighs.

They had left white prints in the cloth.

"You can move them," Ye-han said.

Gyeong-wook caught Ye-han's face in both palms and kissed him, tasting himself on him, shaking.

When he let go, his forehead dropped against Ye-han's.

"No one has told me what to do in ten years," said the Leader of the Martial Alliance.

His voice cracked.

"Do it again."

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