Chapter 24

He’s running late tonight.

Looking up from his half-eaten dinner at the kitchen table earlier that evening, Je-hee had checked the wall clock to find the hands already past nine. On any ordinary weekday, Si-woon would have been home two hours ago, of course, but a farewell dinner after eleven years at a company was bound to go to a second or third round.

+ Is everything going well?
+ Have they made you drink a lot?
+ Would you like me to drive over and pick you up when it’s done?

After typing out three different messages and backspacing over every single one of them, Je-hee had flipped his phone facedown on the table and folded his arms with a sigh. “…What is wrong with me?” That morning at the front door, he had sent Si-woon off with a bright, supportive smile, and now here he was moping over an empty dinner plate like a man who didn’t know how to survive a single Friday evening by himself.

He had assumed that once Si-woon moved in with him, the constant ache of missing the man would finally settle down. Instead, sharing every morning and evening had spoiled him rotten, making even a few hours apart feel intolerably quiet. In his previous relationships, his ex-partners had complained that he was too cool and detached; if they could see him right now, fretting over a harmless company farewell party, they wouldn’t have believed their eyes.

It isn’t that I doubt how he feels about me… Pushing his hair back with a wry laugh, Je-hee knew how devoted Si-woon was. The man barely went anywhere besides work, home, and the occasional weekend visit to his sister and nephew. Yet because Si-woon was so quiet and reserved by nature, Je-hee had almost always been the one to initiate every step between them—from asking for his number and inviting him to stay over to suggesting they live together. Beneath all his happiness lingered one small, greedy wish: that just once, Si-woon would lose his composure and reach for him first.

“Stop overthinking and just go to sleep,” Je-hee muttered to the quiet kitchen.

Clearing his dishes into the sink, he pulled a single can of beer from the refrigerator—one he had bought weeks ago hoping they might share a drink at home sometime—and popped the tab. Watching the white foam rise to the rim, he tilted his head back and drained the entire can in one go, grimacing at the bitter aftertaste on his tongue. By the time he finished rinsing his plate and walked down the hall to brush his teeth, the room was already tilting pleasantly around the edges. At least a one-can buzz would save him from lying awake staring at the clock until midnight; he would be out cold the second his head hit the pillow.

“I think I might be home a little late tonight,” Si-woon had told him that morning while tying his shoes. “The team wants to hold a farewell dinner for me… I’ll try not to stay out too late.”

“Take your time and enjoy yourself—you’ve worked alongside them for eleven years,” Je-hee had replied with an easy smile.

That warm memory had been his final coherent thought as he climbed under the duvet in his navy pajamas.

“Ngh—”

Until a sudden, suffocating heat dragged him up from the bottom of a deep sleep.

“Hah, gh… ah, hic, ngh…!”

Forcing his heavy eyelids open in the moonlit bedroom, Je-hee stared straight up at the man silhouetted astride his hips and forgot how to blink. Wait—am I having a wet dream?

There was no other rational explanation for the sight in front of him: Seo Si-woon—the man who usually blushed to the roots of his hair if the lamp was left on in bed—was riding him with flushed cheeks, parted lips, and half-lidded, unfocused eyes, his bare torso gleaming with sweat in the silver light from the uncurtained window.

“Kh-ah—!”

Yet as Si-woon rolled his hips down with feverish intensity, the wet, rhythmic slap of skin against skin and the scorching, vice-like heat milking Je-hee’s bare shaft from base to crown felt far too visceral to be a figment of his imagination. Judging by how thoroughly slick and yielding those inner walls felt around him—and the lingering ache across his own chest and inner thighs—this had been going on for quite some time while he was dead to the world.

Wait a second—did I already come inside him once in my sleep?!

The sudden realization made Je-hee’s entire lower body tense—and whether this was the most vivid dream of his life or a miracle delivered straight to his bed, he had zero intention of letting it stop before he got to enjoy it awake.

“Ah-eek—!”

Catching Si-woon firmly by the waist with both hands, Je-hee sat bolt upright against the pillows in one smooth motion. Unlike its shy owner, Si-woon’s passage clamped down around his shaft as though refusing to let him slip out by a millimeter.

“Si-woon-ah, gh—did they make you drink a lot tonight?”

“Y-you’re awake… ah, ngh…!”

The dreamy haze vanished from Si-woon’s face in an instant, replaced by wide-eyed panic as he realized Je-hee was looking straight at him. So getting drunk turns him this bold? Because Je-hee always passed out after three glasses whenever they drank together, he had never once gotten to witness a properly intoxicated Si-woon up close—aside from those dropped phone calls months ago when he hadn’t even realized the man was tipsy.

As a slow grin spread across Je-hee’s face, Si-woon’s survival instincts belatedly kicked in; bracing his hands on Je-hee’s shoulders, he tried to push himself upright and climb off his lap. “Haa, ngh, wait—let me get off for a second…!”

“Someone stripped my clothes off while I was asleep, so I’m freezing… Won’t you hold me to warm me up, Si-woon-ah?”

“L-let go of my waist, ah-gh—”

Instead of loosening his hold, Je-hee locked both arms around Si-woon’s back and pulled their bare chests flush together, rubbing their erect nipples directly against each other until a violent shiver tore through the man in his lap.

“Hic… mm, ah! Hurry and, hic, let go of me, ah—” Dropping his customary polite speech altogether in his panic, Si-woon squirmed in his embrace—which only ground the shaft buried inside him deeper against his own prostate.

Easing back an inch to look at his flaming face, Je-hee asked gently, “Why are you trying to run away? I was so happy when I opened my eyes just now that I genuinely thought I was dreaming. You look like you’re enjoying it, too, Si-woon-ah—so why can’t we keep going like this?”

“Ngh…” Averting his eyes with a stricken expression—as though being forgiven so easily only made his conscience hurt worse—Si-woon whispered, “B-because I… did this to you while you were asleep without asking—”

“And that’s the exact reason I love it so much.”

Si-woon’s head snapped up in disbelief. Had he honestly braced himself for Je-hee to get angry and lecture him? Half-laughing, Je-hee kissed the corner of his mouth. “What on earth would I have done if you hadn’t gone to your farewell party tonight? I should send your team a thank-you basket for letting me see this side of you.”

“Ah-haa… ngh—!”

As Si-woon stared straight into his smiling eyes from an inch away, a sudden, unmistakable tremor rippled through his thighs, his passage clenching hard around Je-hee’s shaft as a fresh spurt of white spilled between their pressed stomachs without a hand touching him.

Feeling that tight internal spasm, Je-hee paused in amazement and glanced down between them. “Did you just come from looking at me?”

“Hic, ah—don’t touch me down there right now, hic—!”

He had suspected this pattern on a couple of earlier nights without daring to tease Si-woon about it aloud; tonight, with all his own restraint blown to pieces, Je-hee couldn’t resist leaning in to whisper against his burning cheek, “You really do love my face that much, don’t you, Si-woon-ah?”

Watching Si-woon’s pupils waver wildly as his flushed skin grew even hotter in his arms, Je-hee wiped the stray tears from his lover’s cheekbones with both thumbs. Even having just climaxed moments ago, Si-woon’s cock remained half-hard against Je-hee’s abdomen, weeping clear fluid with every breath he took.

“Si-woon-ah. Seo Si-woon.”

“Mm, hic… I’m listening… ah-ngh!”

The earnest way the man still nodded while trembling from head to toe made Je-hee’s chest ache with affection. “I’ve been lying still and behaving myself this whole time… so it’s my turn to move now, right? Look, I’m making sure to ask your permission first.”

Conveniently omitting the fact that he had been unconscious for the first half of the encounter, Je-hee waited until Si-woon wrapped both arms around his neck and gave a helpless, defeated nod.

“You’re already so warm and relaxed inside tonight… I think I’ll take you all the way to the hilt.”

Gripping the firm curve of Si-woon’s buttocks in both palms, Je-hee surged upward in a single, seamless thrust that buried his shaft to the root, letting out an involuntary groan of pure bliss at the scorching, unbarriered heat hugging every vein along his length.

“Ngh, ah… mmph—”

Curling his toes into the mattress as his hands clawed at the sheets behind Je-hee’s back, Si-woon failed to stifle the high, broken cries that tore from his throat with every deep stroke.

“…Does it feel good?” Even when the answer was written across every inch of Si-woon’s flushed face, Je-hee couldn’t resist asking to hear it in that low, breathless voice.

“Yes, ah… it rubs all the way up here… It feels so good, hah.” Resting a trembling palm over his own navel with half-lidded, unfocused eyes, Si-woon gasped as another clear trickle leaked from his untouched cock beneath his hand. “Whenever you, ah… press all the way in like this—ah!”

Clenching his jaw against a rough curse—doesn’t he have another farewell dinner tomorrow night?—Je-hee swelled even harder inside the clinging passage, making Si-woon flinch forward and stare back at him with wide, bewildered eyes.

“Ah, ngh—! Why… ah, did it just get even bigger inside…?”

“Ugh… ah, mmph!” Grinding the swollen head squarely across the sensitive ridges of Si-woon’s inner wall until the passage spasmed around him in frantic waves, Je-hee heard him sob aloud.

“Don’t, ah… hic, don’t grind against there—ah, hah! It’s too… ah, deep, hic…!”

Gripping the bedsheets with white knuckles, Si-woon shuddered violently through a dry, spine-arching climax, his stretched rim fluttering and clenching in a vain reflex to push out the heavy length gorging his passage—a struggle that only made every pulsing vein along Je-hee’s bare shaft rub more vividly against his tender walls.

“If you keep squeezing me like that… ngh, my cock really is going to melt inside you.”

Fighting for his life not to come on the spot, Je-hee knew that with no condom between them and Si-woon’s passage already slick from earlier, he had pushed deeper past that inner ring than he ever dared on ordinary nights. “I’m sorry, Si-woon-ah, just… ah, hold on for me… ngh, a little longer.”

“Hic, ah… Je-hee-ssi, mmph…!”