Sent to Seduce the General Who Conquered My Clan novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Rowing Song
Ji-hwan decides the bed is his own choice, takes the general on his own terms, and a boatman's song makes the general sing in a voice he is hiding.
Oh Man-su poured Ji-hwan's tea himself the next morning, which meant he was pleased.
The Hall of Nine Strings was quiet at that hour, with the other boys still asleep in their silks.
Oh Man-su sat across from him with his jade ring turning on his thumb and smiled his kind, round smile.
"He asked for you again," he said.
"He sent a chair for me at midnight," Ji-hwan said.
"Good.
"Then you know what I need."
Ji-hwan knew.
There was a lacquer box in the General's bedchamber, and inside it was the half of the tiger tally that opened the Northern Pass.
Oh Man-su had been talking about that box since Ji-hwan was nineteen.
"Sixty days," Oh Man-su said.
"Get into his room.
"Get him comfortable.
"Seduce him, Ji-hwan, however you have to, and bring me what is in the box."
Ji-hwan looked at his tea.
The box was the mission, and the bed was only the road Oh Man-su thought led to it.
But Ji-hwan was twenty-five years old, and he knew exactly what he wanted out of a bed.
He wanted to see the man who had hanged his father come apart under his hands.
That reason was his own, and nobody had to order him to want it.
"I'll bring it," he said.
That night the General received him alone in his bedchamber.
It was a plain room, warm from the heated floor, with a low table and one lantern.
On the top shelf stood a black lacquer box.
Ji-hwan looked at the box exactly once.
The General sat on a cushion with his coat open at the neck, and he did not stand when Ji-hwan came in.
"You came back," he said.
"You asked for the end of the song."
"You played it."
"I did."
The General's beard moved, which Ji-hwan decided was a smile.
He set down the gayageum and played the court piece properly this time, with every grace note, and he watched the General not understand a single one of them.
Then he stopped in the middle of a bar and laid both hands flat on the strings to silence them.
"General."
"Mm."
"Did the Inspector call me a little bird because he thinks you'll cage me?"
"I think he meant to warn me."
"Of what?"
The General turned his cup in his hand, slowly.
"That you were pretty," he said, "and I'm not used to it."
Ji-hwan's whole body went warm at that.
It was stupid, and he let it.
He got up and crossed the room and knelt in front of the General, with his knees on either side of the big man's boots.
The General's breath changed.
Ji-hwan lifted a hand to the bearded jaw, and the wiry hair scratched his palm.
"I'm going to kiss you," he said.
"You've been looking at my mouth since the tea," the General said, his voice rough.
"I know I have."
He kissed him.
The General held perfectly still for one heartbeat, like a horse that had been struck too many times to trust a kind hand.
Then his mouth opened under Ji-hwan's, and he made a low sound in his chest that Ji-hwan felt in his knees.
It was a rough, hungry, clumsy kiss, and it tasted of tea and smoke.
The General's hands came up and hovered at Ji-hwan's waist without touching, shaking a little.
"Put them on me," Ji-hwan said against his mouth.
The General did.
His hands were enormous.
They closed around Ji-hwan's ribs and spread across his back, and Ji-hwan could feel the man learning the shape of him with his palms.
Ji-hwan drew back just far enough to breathe.
"Have you done this before, General?"
"With men?"
"With anyone who wasn't paid to pretend."
The General looked at him with those deep, tired eyes.
"No," he said.
Ji-hwan should have felt triumph.
Instead something tilted in his chest, and he blamed the heat of the floor.
"Then I'll teach you," he said, and stood.
He untied his sash and let the pink silk fall open, and he let the General look.
The General stared at him.
"Kneel," Ji-hwan said.
"Here, in front of me."
The General slid off his cushion onto his knees on the warm floor.
He was a big bearded man in a general's coat, and he looked up at Ji-hwan with his lips parted.
Ji-hwan took his chin in his hand.
"Open your mouth."
The General did.
Ji-hwan guided his hard cock into that mouth, and the wet heat of it around his shaft nearly took his legs out from under him.
"Heavens," he breathed.
"Slow.
"Use your tongue.
"Yes, like that."
The General was clumsy and he was devoted, sucking the heavy head and watching Ji-hwan's face for every flicker of what worked.
When Ji-hwan pushed his cock deeper down his throat, the General took it.
Ji-hwan tangled his fingers in the black topknot and pulled the hat off, and the General groaned around his length.
The sound shot straight up Ji-hwan's spine.
"Good," Ji-hwan said.
"Look at you.
"The great General Ma, on his knees with a musician's cock in his mouth."
The General made the sound again, and his hands came up and gripped the backs of Ji-hwan's thighs.
Ji-hwan fucked his mouth in slow, short thrusts, panting, and he did not look at the box on the shelf at all.
The heat built low in his belly and spread through his arms and his legs.
He came down the General's throat with a cry he had not meant to make, his fist wound in the General's hair, and the General swallowed every drop of his cum and held him through every shudder without letting go.
Ji-hwan stood there shaking.
The General wiped his beard with the back of his hand and rested his forehead against Ji-hwan's hip, and he said nothing at all.
Ji-hwan stroked his hair.
He kept doing it for far longer than the mission required.
Later he sat on the floor beside the General with his zither in his lap, because his hands needed something to do.
He plucked out a tune without thinking, a rolling, rocking tune the Hall's cook used to sing at the washing trough.
It was a boatman's song from the south.
The General's head came up.
He sat very still, and then he began to sing the second verse in a low, cracked voice.
It was not the voice he used at court.
It was thick and southern and soft.
He stopped in the middle of a line and looked at his own hands.
"I haven't heard that since I was nine," he said.
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