He might have mistaken it for a dream and been the one to pounce on Taegun first. The moment he entertained that possibility, his vision went white.
If he was going to get out, it had to be now. Even with his rear burning and the muscles of his inner thighs trembling, he yanked on his trousers and, without even buttoning his shirt, slipped out of the bedroom.
He fastened a few buttons as he staggered for the entryway. He tapped the pocket of the jacket draped over his arm—wallet and phone seemed to be inside.
If those were all that remained, that would have to do. Before the water stopped running, Lee Jaeha slipped out of the room. He went straight down to the lobby and climbed into a taxi a woman had just gotten out of.
Going to the family house felt like a disaster waiting to happen, so he gave the address of the upscale apartment he kept near the office. The driver glanced at Jaeha once in the rearview mirror, but thankfully the car pulled away without incident.
By the time they were crossing Hannam Bridge, he blacked out for a moment and came to at the driver’s call; he shoved a fistful of bills at him and went upstairs.
Afraid someone else might get on, even just standing straight without leaning on the elevator wall was agony. He thought he ought to move to a luxury villa where each unit had its own private elevator.
He couldn’t remember whether he’d stopped by the dressing room after opening the front door, or if he’d just shed the suit like a husk and left it. His memory kept dropping out in patches.
He barely managed to shower. The steady ache of his nipples and areolae the whole time, the inexplicable muscle pain along the inner thighs, and the heat flaring from the back—there were so many things he didn’t want to think about too deeply.
After that he didn’t think at all; he just collapsed and slept.
Luckily it was the weekend, and the urgent fire had been put out a little while ago when the investment agreement was finalized, so no one came looking for him.
No—“no one” wasn’t quite true. His phone kept ringing without stopping.
But without even checking who was calling, Jaeha powered it off. Then he tossed it onto the living room sofa, shut himself in the bedroom, and drifted back to sleep.
He woke twenty-two hours later, on Sunday morning.
“Damn it.”
For once, he rose with a curse. He knew perfectly well that swearing in a crisis never helped solve anything, but his mouth opened on its own and the words spilled out.
Regret and self-loathing prowled at Jaeha’s bedside, wagging their tails at their new friend.
He’d never felt inner thigh pain after sex before. At first, he didn’t even realize it was an aftereffect of the act.
Half sick of the way places that had never hurt in his life were now complaining, he found himself getting irritated when his legs trembled with every step.
He hadn’t been neglecting exercise, so why were those muscles sore? Then he thought: if you spread your legs to take someone, of course that could happen.
Only then could he recall where the muscle pain plaguing him the past few days had come from.
“Wider. You asked to be fucked. If you cooperate, I might feel like putting in the effort, right?”
Yes—that line he remembered exactly. “Wider” couldn’t mean anything else, so the strain between his legs felt like the most natural thing in the world.
At that thought his face flamed. He shook his head and buried his face in the pillow again.
He skipped meals, let out a low groan whenever fragments of memory surfaced, and then drifted back to sleep.
That was what Lee Jaeha kept repeating all weekend. And today, he had to go to work on Monday—something even a chaebol heir couldn’t dodge.
“In the morning you have a meeting with the line staff. The Development Team’s deputy manager is scheduled to attend first.”
He gave his secretary a vague nod. His back hurt so badly he couldn’t sit properly.
With legs long for his height and a short waist, he’d never had lower back pain. The pain itself was unfamiliar, and with that unfamiliarity, a certain face kept replaying in his head; that was what tormented him most.
He couldn’t believe it even as the pain gnawed at him the whole time he sat. That that sort of pain had raked over his body.
He’d thought a restful weekend would be enough, but maybe because he’d taken an Alpha with an Alpha’s body, he couldn’t collect himself. Every chance he got, he wanted to nod off like a sick bird.
When he finally finished his duties, he told his attendant to take him to the apartment, not the family house.
As soon as he got home he showered and fell asleep without eating. When he woke, dawn was only just greying.
After a full three days, the fatigue finally loosened and his reason returned. Only now could he claim to be thinking clearly.
But no particular plan came to mind.
“…What do I do.”
He really didn’t know what to do.
He didn’t remember the details, but judging from the hazy scenes and the traces, it had been consensual; if not that, then the other party had accepted Lee Jaeha’s one-sided pawing.
There was no reason for Jang Taegun to spend a night with another Alpha, and besides, Jaeha was the fiancé of Taegun’s boyfriend, Sumin. Among acquaintances of acquaintances, that was just about the worst possible relationship.
Taegun didn’t look like a man starved in that department, and he wasn’t the sort who would lunge at a freebie.
Unless he was bored of the whole thing from having done it too much, maybe. In any case, he didn’t look so desperate that he’d jump someone just because that Alpha was out of his senses.
If so, four-fifths of that night’s sex was on Lee Jaeha. It seemed certain he’d been the one to cling first and force the encounter.
He couldn’t picture himself begging for it and clinging to someone, but in any case, it probably hadn’t started on Jang Taegun’s side.
Drunk, unable to tell dream from reality, he must have demanded sex as if entrusting himself to the man.
Jaeha was a broadly sensible person, but after a month of filthy dreams, when Jang Taegun merely loosened the top button of his shirt from the heat, it might have looked to him exactly like Taegun yanking down his drawers and baring his cock.
There were only the two of them in that room, which would have made his private misunderstanding all the deeper.
And he’d been drunk, hadn’t he. With a high tolerance, he’d never drunk to blackout, so he didn’t even know what his drinking habits were.
A habit that surfaced past thirty might well be hanging off the person he liked and begging for sex. He wanted to believe he wasn’t that pathetic, but by all indications he’d become exactly that pathetic man.
Of course, Lee Jaeha was the clever sort, and the more critical the moment, the calmer he grew—but unfortunately, he was in the middle of his first love.
So without even knowing what he was missing, he started with self-reproach. He didn’t realize that none of these suppositions passing for reasoning were worth a thing.
Every tunnel he dug, for no good reason, ended in the same place. In the middle of his hormones and pheromones boiling over for Jang Taegun, the problem was that he’d holed up with him alone in a hotel room and drunk.
He’d started with a drink to ease the tension and explain it had all been a misunderstanding—that he didn’t particularly have feelings for him—but the drink had become much too big.
The fiancé of his lover, and an Alpha at that; Taegun must have been thrown too. The thought left a bitter taste.
He spent days chewing over regret salted with self-blame. He even skipped meals, too busy ruminating on that trash.
Thanks to living strictly by the manual, he’d never lacked nutrition or sleep, but now both were scraping bottom. While the first love he’d only just recognized was stealing his peace of mind, Lee Jaeha briefly lost the cool and reason that had been like lifelong friends.
And so, a week later, he went and did something the clear-headed Lee Jaeha never would have. No—something an ordinary person would never do.
“You’ve lost your mind, haven’t you?”
His stepmother tried to stop him with words only.
Even the question—are you crazy?—seemed to carry a hint of amusement.
“Now it’s done, now it’s finally done!”—her eyes seemed to say, with a joy that made the frown lines between his brows twitch, rare as success had been for him lately.
Sadly, she was right. He was crazy. Otherwise he couldn’t be doing this.
Jaeha nudged a knife he’d never lifted before and straightened it where it sat slightly askew. Tonight’s dinner menu was a home-style Provençal spread Kim Ranhui had enjoyed during her study-abroad years.
As for Lee Jaeha, Italian suited his palate better than French. On a night like this he would normally skip dinner or eat at the office, but tonight he had something to say.
He had to notify the family. He had broken up with Kim Sumin, and it was because of Jang Taegun. The notice was that he, not Sumin, had fallen for Taegun first.
His father, sipping a glass of cognac as an aperitif, wore for a moment a look like he’d misheard, then asked the more basic question.
“…Who is Jang Taegun?”
“Dear… you know, from Jang Construction—”
Before his stepmother finished, Lee Ikhyeong, Jaeha’s father, made a bizarre face. He could swear he’d never seen his father make that face in all his life as his son.
He didn’t smile much to begin with, and had even less to smile about in front of family, but even Jaeha almost laughed at how ridiculous that face was.
Only then did he realize he’d wanted to make his father pull exactly that face.
He hadn’t known it would feel this good to wreck his father’s expectations for him and break the role the man took for granted.
He’d never rebelled, not even after his mother died, because there’d been no need. Seeing that expression, he understood.
He had wanted this. He’d wanted, more than anyone, to betray his father’s expectations with a vengeance.
To a degree that satisfied even him, Lee Ikhyeong’s genteel cheeks trembled as he raged.
“What are you saying right now. An Alpha…? And what are you going to do with some thug bastard?”
“Date him. Marry him, if possible.”
So he did it. He’d planned to explain why he broke off the engagement with Sumin and then leave, but once again, dinner was something his suit would be eating in place of his mouth.
The white wine poured to pair with the fish course flew straight into his chest.
“Dear!”
His stepmother cried out in alarm. Her scream swallowed the smaller sound of the glass striking him and shattering.
The rim nicked the back of his neck and drew blood, but at that table no one cared about such a petty wound. Not even Lee Jaeha.
It seemed that whenever he mentioned Jang Taegun, someone nearby threw food at his body.
Glancing at his fuming father’s face, Jaeha looked past his hand over his mouth, eyes wide, and spoke as he stared at his half brother.
“I’m not the only child in this house. If you need a stud, Jaeho wouldn’t be a bad choice.”
“W-what?!”
“Oh my, Jaeha—how can you talk like that!”
Kim Ranhui went pale and shrieked. Her acting was top-tier. For a conglomerate wife, the stepmother had the sort of chops that could aim for an Oscar or Cannes.
Without moving his head, he slid his eyes to her. Under the pressure of a dominant Alpha, Kim Ranhui gulped a breath with a squeak.
He hadn’t avoided facing her all this time because he feared her. He’d avoided her because she was a nuisance.
That woman hadn’t killed his mother. His mother’s depression had always been severe; she would stare at her long hair with a look that said she was wondering if she should hang herself from it.
So he didn’t want revenge. He just avoided the filth because it was troublesome.
“I apologize, Mother. A recessive Alpha wouldn’t be enough to use as a stud, would he. Jaeho, I’m sorry. Your brother must have gone too far.”
Her face flushed in an instant. There was anger in her eyes. The way he insulted her child’s birth was the same as insulting her.
Without a backward glance, Jaeha turned and left the house. He didn’t even have that kind of mother. There was no one he wanted to protect, and no one he wanted to protect him.
Seeing them all in such an uproar made him want to keep his word now. What he’d half-thought—fine if it’s given up, otherwise I’ll think about it later—was now burning with belated stubbornness.
He had never made an impulsive choice like this. Ever since meeting Jang Taegun, Lee Jaeha felt unlike himself.
So he swiped his phone screen and tapped the unknown number that sat beneath his outgoing calls.
For someone who didn’t hesitate, his hand moved slowly as he lifted the phone to his ear. Frowning faintly, he closed his eyes and opened them.
It rang. With a click, the other party picked up.