Lee Jaeha felt a prickling sense of déjà vu. After nights like the one he’d just had, it was getting almost routine to snap awake at first light, too stunned to believe what he’d gone through.
Anyway, waking before dawn—before even the gray of daybreak—left his head clear. His body didn’t feel grimy either. Clean as if someone had washed him, he watched the rain streak down the window through the dim, bluish light.
Maybe it was the rainy season.
He couldn’t quite remember, but one thing was certain: he was on Taegun’s bed.
“Ha…”
He was afraid to look back. There was a slow, even breathing behind him.
This was the second time he had slept with Jang Taegun. It might sound like an excuse, but his memories of the first time were full of gaps.
He remembered sleeping with Taegun, but who had made the first move, who had decided to push things to that absurd point, and which of them had accepted it—none of that was clear.
Of course, that night had led them all the way to marriage. Even so, it was hard to forgive himself for losing control like this a second time.
Lee Jaeha did not possess much self-love. He had loved too few things to spare much love for himself. Even so, he had confidence in himself—confidence that felt a little more objective than self-regard.
So he counted it among his strengths that he was rational and did not make impulsive decisions.
If this was the second time, maybe it was time to revise that assessment.
“……”
He forced himself to turn, slowly. Taegun was asleep on the bed. Naturally. It was his bed.
Last night, Jaeha had felt as if he were being broken apart and reassembled without end.
Hnn, stop—!
“Director, is it over the moment you come? Your manners are crap. Were you like this when you fucked Omegas?”
He couldn’t bring himself to say, no, sex had been rare and he was practically anorgasmic, unable to go all the way.
The thick, knotted length of him had scraped deep inside, dragged out, then slid back in to rake again and again over the raised inner ridge.
If he opened his mouth only moans came out, and for someone who recalled so little of their previous encounter, that was a shock.
He had never imagined those sounds would come from his own mouth. So his excuses swelled and crashed only inside, swept away by the onrush of sensation.
Taegun hadn’t seemed particularly interested in hearing his answers anyway. If he had, he wouldn’t have thrust in every time Jaeha’s lips parted to speak, making sure that nothing but moans came out.
Remembering it made him dizzy, and he buried his face in his palm. Why had rut hit him out of nowhere?
If Taegun had gone into rut first, he wouldn’t have been able to take suppressants, since suppressants can’t be taken together with antibiotics, and he’d just gotten an antibiotic shot.
Even if he had tried, Jaeha would have stopped him. During Taegun’s rut, it was a spouse’s place to take care of things the way he had last night.
But then why me?
Maybe he had been affected by Taegun’s rut. Not in the sense of an Omega going into heat because of an Alpha’s rut, but in the sense that another Alpha within range could start rutting because the body’s pheromone system grew competitive when one Alpha did.
Stranger still was the change in scent. Instead of the usual faint woody note, it had been wintersweet.
The rain-heavy sweetness of flowers had thickened and pooled at the bedside, mingling with Taegun’s pheromone scent.
He had come wrapped in that smell, taken him inside—an Alpha, taking another Alpha.
“……”
He stifled a small sigh. He still ached below, and the muscles between his thighs were sore from opening to take Taegun.
Oddly, it didn’t hurt like the first time. Why? For an Omega, that place was like a sex organ, but for an Alpha like him, it wasn’t. He hadn’t been born with a body meant for that, and yet he had swallowed greedily enough to feel it himself.
Contrary to what Taegun had said, two Alphas did not have children. An Alpha’s body couldn’t accept another Alpha that way.
But last night had been different. Something—something was not like usual… He gave up trying to think it through. His head throbbed.
He decided he couldn’t just lie there and started to get up. A low voice cut in.
“—!”
He sucked in a breath before he knew it. He hadn’t realized the man was awake.
The Alpha, sounding bored, looped an arm around Jaeha’s waist and hauled him in. He didn’t have time to resist; with his muscles sore, his core simply gave.
Flopping forward, he found his cheek pressed to a hard chest, which was mortifying. Blinking, he squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them.
“…I’ll go to my room.”
“Go. Who’s stopping you.”
He said no one was stopping him, but didn’t let go. The hand at his waist stayed firm.
Which left Jaeha clinging to the very person who’d told him he could go.
“If I’m going, why are you glued to me.”
Taegun sounded indifferent. Jaeha groaned and tried to push himself up again, but it wasn’t easy.
There wasn’t much to brace against, and Taegun’s strong arms wouldn’t release his waist. The arm coiled around him tightened like a snake.
“If you’d move your arm…”
“What arm.”
With shameless calm, Taegun glanced down at him and then closed his eyes again, as if to go back to sleep.
Jaeha tried to wriggle free without pressing on his injuries, but it wasn’t simple. After a few more futile shifts, he went limp. Avoiding pressure on the wound was the best he could do.
Even so, a sense of unfairness crawled up. In a husky voice, he said,
“…Why do you keep speaking so casually to me.”
“They say younger men get more love when they act cheeky.”
What is he even saying. He didn’t know where the man had heard that, and the offhand tone he’d been using all along didn’t make it sound sincere.
Jaeha took it as Taegun teasing him. Or maybe the man had noticed, without meaning to, where Jaeha’s feelings leaned.
A little light-headed, he thought: he didn’t even know how Taegun liked his morning coffee, and yet they’d already slept together twice and, on top of that, gotten married.
Was this really okay. Was this what ordinary married life looked like. He had no good examples around him.
His mother had married without love and had him, then rejected his father’s love without end. His father answered that with vengeance—a muddle of inferiority and obsession. He kept a household outside the home.
If they’d been self-aware adults, they wouldn’t have done that, but unfortunately, Jaeha’s parents were not.
With the closest example ruined, tales of other people’s lives were hard to believe.
So it was impossible to guess where the line of normal had broken for him. He could sift the noise from the real among hundreds of reports laid on his desk, but he didn’t have the discernment to judge what made a right marriage.
Even so—
“If you’re not getting off me, we can just sleep like this.”
Taegun patted his back. The big palm was clumsy as it tapped along his spine, and yet his eyes were already sliding shut.
Maybe it’s not all bad.
Despite himself, he found the relationship tilting, in his mind, toward the positive.
He’d never soothed himself with vague things like, not bad, might be fine, but he didn’t know what else to do with the stranger he felt like now.
“……”
Two breaths mingled evenly in the bedroom, and dawn was still a little way off. Pale blue crept through the gap the blackout curtains hadn’t fully covered.
Feeling underwater, he drifted off.
Would something be different when he woke tomorrow? Or would they keep muddling along and make a marriage out of it like this?
Either was fine. His mind eased; he didn’t even try to pry his heavy eyelids open.
The rut passed like that.
The pheromone scent had seemed different, but maybe that was just nerves. The heat that had driven him to that strange edge was washed clean away by morning.
“I’m hungry.”
That single line snapped him out of his fog. Jaeha jumped a little. The Alpha who’d fallen asleep holding him from behind had murmured it with his face tucked into Jaeha’s nape.
“Hungry…?”
“You might not be, Lee Jaeha, after swallowing a lot of me.”
“…I’ll fix something. Now.”
He scrambled up before the rest of that sentence could reach daylight. What was in the fridge.
Myungsoon had just gone to the market, and they’d prepped to eat together yesterday; even a quick spread would look decent.
He was thinking that as he pushed himself up from the bed.
“—!”
He nearly collapsed straight onto the floor. If Taegun hadn’t caught him by the waist from behind, he would have.
“Are you reckless or brave. Do you not remember how much we went at it?”
“Even at dawn, and now again,” he clucked, scolding like a child.
Jaeha barely heard him. He only sucked in air. Taegun had tugged him back, and he’d ended up sitting right on the man’s lap.
He still wasn’t dressed. He could feel the man’s groin against his bare backside, plainly. Half-hard, it pressed insistently into the soft of him.
Heat flared through him before he knew it. He could tell from the quiet huff that Taegun had noticed the flush spreading over his nape and ears.
As the man’s chest swelled with a soft laugh, that hard plane brushed Jaeha’s back.
It made his head swim. Broad daylight, bare skin, perched on the strength of the man’s body.
“Let me go.”
“Why. Worried some dumb thug might start ramming again when I’m sore enough to die?”
“I’ve— I’ve never thought anything like that.”
Startled, he rushed to deny it, and Taegun pressed a kiss to his nape and chuckled. Only then did Jaeha realize it was a joke.
So he jokes, too. He found himself smiling, helpless, not even noticing how red his ears must be.
Taegun didn’t seem in the mood to push further; he simply lifted him by the waist and set him back on the bed. Flustered by the bright room, Jaeha yanked the duvet up to cover himself first.
Looking down at that, Taegun spoke as if indulging him.
“Does that actually cover anything?”
“…More than not covering anything…”
“Do your best. I’m in the mood to be impressed.”
Then he planted one hand beside Jaeha’s waist, lowered himself, and bit down on his collarbone. When Jaeha gasped, “Ah,” the man licked just that spot and straightened.
“Lie there and let me look after you. If you hover, I’ll hear that as a request to use the dining table.”
That part was a little scary.