Day 25: Passion

“You are GOING!!!”

Byeol’s shriek reverberated in the marble halls along with hasty footsteps and inaudible sounds of agitation. Once you heard the loud clank of the front door slamming shut, you rushed downstairs to find Jaehyun in the kitchen.

“Is everything quite alright? I heard the commotion.”

“Young master has a tailcoat fitting today for his wedding and he adamantly refused,” Jaehyun responded solemnly, “His left cheek was… reddened.”

Mountains of lead were immediately placed on your shoulders, and your soul got crushed under the unbearable weight. You felt like you just learned you didn’t even have another week to live because you indeed didn’t. For some reason, you could swear your demise was still a long way down the road, but it was fast approaching, and there was nothing you could do about it. 

You needed to find a way out.

“I uh… I will visit the town market today,” you forced a barely convincing smile, “Is there anything you wish for me to bring back?”

If Jaehyun said yes, you would still bring back her request wherever that may be, but thankfully she didn’t as you were going nowhere near the market. When you left the house, your feet turned into two horses, carrying you faster than a carriage ever could to the only person who had a snowball’s chance in hell to save you.

“May I approach, my lord?”

These words weren’t addressed to Hyunjin this time. The man with broad shoulders turned around and smiled brightly at your sight.

“What did we say?” he closed the giant accounts notebook in front of him, “If you insist on calling me that, no you may not.”

“I apologize, my lo—” you stopped yourself and uttered as you stared at your feet, “Christopher.” 

“That’s more like it,” he affirmingly nodded, “How may I be of service to you?”

“I wouldn’t come to you if I weren’t desperate,” you started playing with your fingers after taking a seat, “I hear your estate owns land in the south. I was wondering if there would be any possibility for me to find work there.”

“Work?” he questioningly raised his brows, “Why all of a sudden?”

Your eyes immediately welled up. How could you even begin saying to him ‘I am on my deathbed, and I have to be as far away from here as possible for my misery to end’? 

“Please don’t ask me that, I beg you,” your voice came out so small it was almost inaudible.

The young man’s features were riddled with worry. He approached closer and kneeled in front of you, resolute to capture your gaze no matter how much you tried to avert it.

“There is more to you being a guest at the Hwangs, is there not?”

“Please don’t–don’t ask m—”

One squeeze of your hands to hopefully offer a sliver of comfort, and your tears immediately declared full independence, evacuating all the words piling up in your throat as if a dam broke.

Once upon a time, when it hadn’t been that long since you entered your prime marriage years, you had taken in your first apprentice not much younger than you. He didn’t feel like an apprentice at all; he was more like the son of your nonexistent mother’s friend and managed to charm you with that rascal personality of his. He made you believe in love, and it turned your entire world upside down. 

You loved him. You loved him so much.

That was why you almost bled to death when he said ‘I do’ at that altar with tears running down his face. Everyone thought it was the most heartwarming thing to see the groom moved to tears in front of his bride, but only you and Minho knew you had exchanged your last farewells ten minutes prior. He had made his choice no matter how painful for the both of you, and that wound refused to turn into a scar for the longest time. You had to skip town to forget all about it. You scraped whatever remained from your scorched heart, locked it in an iron box, and put it away somewhere no one could ever find again.

You kept teaching young men about how to be a good husband, one after another, with almost no breaks between two apprentices to keep your mind occupied. With no attachment whatsoever. They would just come and go. Come and go. Come and go. Every single moment you were by yourself, your heart was still crying over Minho.

One pregnancy scare later, you refused to have physical relations with your apprentices. 

It was a scam anyway—you were teaching these men about showing affection to their ladies while being intimate with them, but all you could picture behind your eyelids was Minho. And how he was probably showing affection to someone else now. Just the way you taught him.

Then Hyunjin appeared out of nowhere.

How could you have possibly foreseen that he would be the damn blacksmith to crush that iron box in half? How could you have known he would sit on the floor and relentlessly work on reassembling the pieces of your blackened heart? You didn’t even know what it was about him to cause you to feel this way, but you simply possessed no willpower when it came to him. He was the purest thing to ever exist. There wasn’t a menacing bone in his body, and he deserved only the best things this life had to offer.

You just wished it could be you to give him all that.

“I let it happen again,” you shamelessly cried, “I couldn’t help it. God, I’m such a fool.”

Christopher wanted to speak a few words of solace, but they were terribly eluding him. What would you even say to a woman looking into the abyss of unbelievable pain impatient to shroud her? That this too shall pass?

What good did those words ever do to anyone?

“This actually explains a lot to me,” he finally uttered while spacing out.

You looked at him to search for the answer on his face. He flashed one of those dimpled smiles again that warmed your insides like the afternoon sun.

“Your eyes sparkle when you utter his name,” he gently wiped a tear falling down your cheek with his thumb, “Even when you are crying.”

You weren’t feeling a shred of joy, but you couldn’t help reciprocating his smile, even if it was fifteen kinds of broken.

“I will send word and inquire about the kind of work you can do in the south,” he helped you to your feet and handed you a handkerchief, “Expect word from me.”

“Thank you very much, my lo— Christopher,” you bowed deeply in excess gratitude, “I shall never forget your kindness.”

After leaving the shop, you walked around aimlessly to calm yourself down to the best of your ability. It was already dark when you returned to the manor. You were dreading the unpleasantry you may witness so much that you stood there with your hand on the handle for no less than ten seconds. Maybe your silent prayers were heard after all because when you pushed the door open, you were met with absolute silence inside. You quietly made your way back to your chambers, your chest still sizzling, but your reality completely changed colors when you opened the door to your room.

Hyunjin was waiting for you in that little corner with a tray in front of him.

“My lord?” a genuine smile sprouted on your lips, indefinitely postponing all your woes, “What is this?”

“Lemon liqueur,” he stood up to his feet as you approached and crowned his greeting with a kiss on your hands, “Jaehyun taught me how to make it.”

“You made this… for me?”

“Of course. Why the surprise?” he caressed your face and pulled you closer, “Come, sit next to me.”

You were so endeared by the gesture that you thought you were taking your last breaths with how much your heart was fluttering. 

“I am most grateful,” you bowed your head albeit with an unusual tinge of shyness as if you were talking to your actual husband.

Well, in the eyes of the Lord, Hyunjin was still your actual husband, so…

“I uh… I–I wanted to… offer my gratitude,” he circled the rim of the glass with his finger, “For… yesterday.”

“It was an honor and an absolute pleasure.”

And you meant that quite literally. Sharing a bed with Hyunjin was of course an honor regardless of the title he bore, but you also couldn’t remember the last time a man made you bask in your womanhood like Hyunjin did.

He poured the vibrant yellow liquid into the crystal chalices sitting side by side on the tray, then clinked his glass with yours. The sweet and sour drink did such a fantastic job rejuvenating your battered soul that you finished it all in one go. There was a shadow of unsureness on his face like he was trying to stitch words together in his mind, restlessly tapping his fingers on the table.

“Remember what you said about… unconventional ways the other day?” he finally made an introduction.

“Yes?”

“You said passion was a beautiful palette and never a single color, but you didn’t elaborate further.”

“And?” you knowingly smiled.

“I would like to talk about it now if it’s alright.”

His words inadvertently stirred something in you. Even though he maintained his impeccable composure, you were still looking at a man consumed by his greed, wanting much more of the aftertaste that lingered on his palate. You cleared your throat and began explaining. 

“Every once in a while, a husband and a wife may find themselves longing for unorthodox desires. It is not something to be ashamed of; most people feel that. If you wish to explore it, you should learn how to communicate openly as well as listen without judgement. That way, you and your lady can explore new ways to have extremely pleasurable experiences, and your marriage can sustain its enticement.”

You were being very nonchalant about it, and while Hyunjin was keeping a magnificently convincing poker face, his body was catching on fire again.

“Do you long for such things?” he managed to pick one question among the million other ones crawling in his head. You were just about to give him an answer, but then…

You saw it.

Something was faintly glinting at the very bottom of that gaze. He wasn’t asking you a mere question; he was trying to confirm something, and he was running out of ways to be subtle about it. Credit where credit is due, he was keeping his poise like an absolute gentleman. Like the nobleman he was.

Then again, there was simply nothing more satisfying than watching a well-mannered man absolutely lose it.

You scooted closer to him and caressed his hair, slowly leaning into his ear to whisper your answer, perfectly enunciating each syllable with as much air as possible.

“Quite frequently.”

Hyunjin let out an involuntary sharp exhale while closing his eyes, on the very brink of snapping with no return.

“When–When I asked you… whether you had such desires, you said maybe,” he pretended he remembered it just that moment, “What are they?”

“I am not sure they exist in your little books. What if it paints me in a dastardly light for you?” you playfully teased with a heartfelt chuckle, “What if you think I’m a degenerate?”

“Then I’m in love with a degenerate woman.”

No.

No, he did not… He did not just say that. You certainly misheard it. He surely meant it in some other way. 

However differently one may be in love with someone.

Your desperate attempts to convince yourself of an alternate truth were laughable. Resistance was simply futile at this point. It was true. You were in love with him, too. Desperately. Violently. Vehemently. And you stopped caring about the chasm that stood between you two. His status. His age. His education… You loved him. 

You loved him.

Deliriously.

“If there are things you are secretly craving, I am willing to fulfill all of them for you,” he spoke with sudden urgency filling his voice, eyes piercing holes into the curvy decanter before him, “You don’t have to allow me the same privilege in return out of mere obligation. Just know that you can ask me.”

“I can, huh?” you placed a little kiss on his left ear, and he finally turned to your direction and held your hands in his. “Well, I am curious about one thing, my lord.”

“Yes?”

“You enjoy reading tales of depravity, I gather,” you tucked a stray lock behind his ear, “Why do I have this sneaking suspicion that you also enjoy writing them?”

Maybe it was the liquid courage he injected into his veins through the refreshingly sour drink. He smiled as he averted his gaze, but not a shred of shyness existed in it. Rather, an enticing mischief had moved into his lips.

“You may be onto something,” he refilled your glasses.

“What are they about?”

His hands had absorbed all the cold from the decanter, but it still didn’t soothe how much he was burning. He intertwined his fingers with yours, then lifted your hand to kiss your wrist.

“They are about you, darling.” 

FUCK! 

Among all the possible answers you were expecting, this was certainly not one of them. Your confident composure suddenly cracked as you lost control of your speech.

“R–Really?” your eyes were widened as saucers, “How–How so?”

He was the one smiling knowingly this time, relishing how he managed to catch you pleasantly off guard. 

“That’s a secret,” he pressed his finger on your lips.

“You cannot do this to me!”

“But some things are not meant to be divulged, don’t you think?” 

True. If he wished to share them with you, he already would have, no? You had no choice but to respect his wishes. You slowly pulled your hands away and wrapped your arms around his neck. As you brushed his silky hair with your fingers, you couldn’t help the urge to kiss him. Kiss those sweet lemon-flavored lips. His scorching skin. Contracting his contagious lust.

“You are very welcome to explore your urges with me, too,” you punctuated the kiss.

You had never seen an expression like that on Hyunjin’s beautiful face before. He looked like you gave him the worst and best news of his life in the same breath.

“As in… As in I–I have…?”

“Yes, you may have the same privileges in return, and not out of mere obligation,” you kissed the corner of his lips, “It’s quite late. Shall we go to sleep now?”

You knew what you were doing, of course. You had wound and wound and wound the spring so tightly and were just furtively waiting for what was going to happen when it finally snapped.

You hoped there would be a harsh recoil.

Being in Hyunjin’s arms would normally lull you to sleep almost instantaneously, but thanks to a certain piece of information you acquired that night, you were wide awake, restlessly tossing and turning in your place. Your earlier resolve had melted at lightspeed, and you were dying to know what he was writing about you. 

Your sanity eventually lapsed.

After making sure he was asleep, you carefully sneaked out of bed and tiptoed to his study with the stealth prowess of a feline. His bookshelf was filled with volumes of bound books. If someone was keeping a secret journal, obviously they wouldn’t put it on display like that. When you walked behind his desk, you noticed a small drawer under it. The first one contained stacks of letters. The second one was filled with rolls of spare parchment. The third one…

When you saw the leather-bound notebook inside, your heart started racing.

You carefully pulled it out and sat on his chair, slowly turning the pages adorned with his beautiful cursive. You quickly skimmed the pages to invade as little of whatever remaining privacy as you could, and about ten pages later…

Her supple flesh beckons me. Her beauty devours me. It sings the most obscene love songs to me, begging me to wear her on my body. Her scent wraps its fingers around my throat and commands me to breathe her only. Her taste lures me to repent for the ways I find my sustenance. Her rapturous cries threaten to cease my existence. I die every moment I can’t take refuge inside her. 

Every breath I take, every day I wake, it is all to swear myself to her skin all over again.

Your throat was getting drier with each sentence, and you were unwittingly pressing your legs together. His voice was echoing in your head as if was narrating all this to you.

“Darling?”

The voice suddenly manifesting in the room gave you such a terrible start that the notebook jumped from your hands and hit the floor with a loud thud. There was simply no excuse you could offer for your horrid behavior. 

“I–I wholeheartedly apologize. I’m…” your voice trembled as your breathing turned erratic, “I am aware this is wrong, but…”

“But what?”

He closed the door behind him and slowly approached, brows properly furrowed with disapproval. 

“I was so curious I couldn’t help myself,” you lowered your head in remorse, “Please forgive me.”

He walked behind his desk and placed both hands on top of it to trap you under his frame. 

“Couldn’t help yourself,” he lifted your chin, “Is that it?”

When your eyes met his, you felt like a bolt of lightning passed through your body.

Something about him was different. He was looking you up and down, assessing every inch of you carefully. His gaze was commanding, domineering even. He looked like a man fully in control, annoyed that someone didn’t know their place.

Your heart was going fully rabid in your chest.

“Do you act on everything you can’t help yourself with?” he slightly tilted his head.

The recoil… 

It was happening.

“I… apologize,” he chewed on your lips.

“Well, apologies are nothing but empty words, are they not?” his fingers reached the strap of your nightgown and started pulling it down ever so lazily, “It does not undo what you have done.”

He knew. He knew he had you in an absolute chokehold, perfectly able to see how much he was turning you on. You were shivering under his touch, so gentle yet immensely dangerous, igniting the first sparks of arson on your body. Your hardened nipples were staring at him, egging him on to go even more audacious. He wrapped one hand around your waist and slid the other strap down to expose your chest fully, and the more he gawked at your bare figure, the more his breathing was quickening.

He wanted his woman and he wanted her now.

“How do you plan on making this up to me…” he spoke against your lips, sneaking one hand under your nightgown and sliding it up until his fingertips reached a delicious wetness, “Darling?”

He asked you a question. In layman’s terms. Quite straightforward.

It required days’ worth of contemplation to properly answer it, but Hyunjin was demanding your response right now, staring at you with eyes darker than the night and slowly erasing the distance between you by one millimeter per second. There was no telling what was going to happen if you failed to reply in that arbitrary amount of time he had allocated for you.

Which was exactly why you didn’t want to say anything at all, but…

“Name it,” you glued your gaze to his lips, breathing more erratically as you pictured all the blasphemous things you wanted to do with them. “Anything you want.” 

The delights longed for in secret. The pleasures craved in complete silence. He had told you he was willing to fulfill all of them, and you had welcomed him to do the same. Maybe you would loathe him if he explicitly told you what he wanted to do to you. How much he wanted to disrespect you. He claimed no responsibility—this was your fault in its entirety for being this beautiful, turning him into this despicably debauched man looking to drown himself in all kinds of depravity.

But only with his lady.

“Anything,” he caressed your pussy like he was lovingly stroking your hair. “So if I wish to drag you to the backyard right now and have you out in the open, you will say yes?”

“Is that what you are secretly craving, my lord?”

“Fuck your lord. I am your man,” he harshly pulled you close by your waist. “You are to address me properly.”

Your breath unwittingly hitched in your throat. His stern demeanor was bleeding all over his coyness, tittilating something inside you. He sneakily dragged your underwear down and let it pool around your ankles, only ghosting his lips on your skin to deny you any gratification until you fucking knew your place.

“Then anything my man wishes,” you iterated as your eyes fluttered close. “I deserve the punishment.”

“Punishment?” he tsked in dispproval. “Is your opinion of your husband that low, darling?”

He slid your nightgown up to your waist, using your hands as clothespins to keep it there, then slowly kneeled before you. Your nakedness was never not going to get to him; that was a given, but Hyunjin was having the hardest time trying to make sense of a strange occurrence. He should have been used to it by now. He knew what he was going to see; he had committed every nook and cranny of yours to memory, but every time he laid his eyes on your exposed skin, he was reacting even worse than the previous time he saw you bare, burning alive as if cauldrons of boiling oil was being poured all over him.

“So you wanted to know what I write about,” he licked his lips, staring at you like a ferocious predator ready to devour. 

“Yes,” you breathily answered.

“It’s about my compulsive thoughts of you,” his voice subsided into a loud whisper that felt like a hurricane making landfall on your body. “It’s about how I can’t stop thinking about defiling you. Are you satisfied now?”

You jerked in your place when his lips found you, placing kisses after kisses on your pussy. Those velveteen pecks were deepening again, trapping your clit within his lips and gently sucking on it.

“V–Very much,” you gulped, “but if you could… recite something for me, my lord.”

“What did I just fucking say to you?”

He spread your lips apart and directly faced his target, closing his mouth on your cunt completely. You were already dissolving on his tongue, rolling your hips for more wet friction, but something else held dire importance at that moment. You extracted the last drop of your willpower and reluctantly squeezed his shoulders, signaling him to come up.

“Recite something for me,” you held his beautiful face between your hands, “my treasure.”

Even in the pitch black room, even in the darkest of nights, you could always see the shooting stars in his eyes every time you called him that. It was as if there was a piece of amber slowly burning inside him, keeping him wide awake even well into the night, and it refused to die down at any cost.

The amber… It was in the shape of you.

“Breathe life into me,” you brushed your lips against his.

And he took that to mean Love me to death.

Your essence on his lips was the most decadent flavor to indulge in, the late hours of the night somehow condensing it in your mouth. As he courteously shared your own taste with you, swirling his tongue around yours, you were thinking about what made it so pleasurable to be kissed by Hyunjin. Was it the shape of his lips? Was it how full they were? Was it because he didn’t know how to kiss other than trench-deep?

Or was it how his hands didn’t know where to caress you throughout the whole thing, desperately wanting to hold you in his arms?

“A nectar she bears,” he pulled the chair closer with his foot and placed your leg on it. “I long for the taste. I long for you.”

One arm around your waist, firmly holding you in place. Slender fingers prodding your entrance and thumb caressing your clit. How merciful. He at least had the decency to show you how he was going to kill you so you could brace yourself.

“The gods envy the stars in her eyes. They envy me when I’m trapped in her thighs,” he brushed his nose against your neck, filling his lungs with your scent. “Even when I lay next to you, darling, I long for you.”

Your entire body shuddered when the breeze of his breath blew on your body. Those kisses on your neck were the gentlest thing ever, like a feather tickling you. Slow. Soft. Meant to be savored. But they were so wet. They were so loud.  

They were the deadliest assault weapons to ever exist.

“You are the air I breathe. You are the curse that makes me seethe. Even when we become one, darling, I long for you.”

The sounds his fingers made while sinking into you were maddeningly satisfying. The suspicious squelch was turning more lewd with each flick of his wrist, making him more rabid as his palm rubbed against your clit.

“When I’m in your deepest recesses,” his breathing escalated to match yours as he beckoned you faster, “When I’m lost in your crevices…”

He pressed his forehead against yours, grabbing onto your waist as if you would disappear otherwise, and listened. He listened to your breathing. He listened to your heartbeat. He listened to your muffled moans that would echo in this room if it weren’t the dead of the night. He listened to your looming demise about to turn your entire vision white.

“When you kill me with your bare hands, darling, I long for you,” he confessed into your lips again. “I long for you. I long for you.”

You wouldn’t know if the poem ended there or if the rest of it indeed went like that; all he did was whisper I long for you in between every kiss he placed on your skin. Everything he said, every single one of those words, was your very own thoughts coming to life through him. It wasn’t enough when Hyunjin shielded you in his arms as you drifted to sleep. It wasn’t enough when you let him take shelter inside you as deep as he wished. It wasn’t enough to just gaze at him from afar when you could be kissing him instead. You longed for him. Everything that made you, every single one of those atoms, deliriously longed for Hyunjin.

“Let me witness you unravel again,” he panted. “Don’t deprive me of your luster.”

“In… In me… Please… God… I… I lo—”

You removed his hand and reached for his waistband, risking a sizeable tear in the fabric of his nightwear when you tugged on it hard. God, that sight… The arousal of the man that owned your heart. The flesh of the man that you wanted to tear apart. Smooth like a pebble but firm like a rock, flushed so dark pink that there was no way even a drop of blood was circulating his brain right that moment. You spread your legs as wide as you could on the desk, obscenely sucking on his fingers as you let him inside you, and Hyunjin’s groan came out a lot louder than intended, fully audible through the dense hush of the manor.

“Quiet!” you loudly whispered in panic, covering his mouth with your hand. “You are going to wake the entire house.”

“How I love my wife at this hour of the night is nobody’s fucking business,” Hyunjin growled through his clenched teeth as he picked up his pace to a feverish rhythm. “I love you. You have consumed me, darling. I do not exist anymore.”

The loud scream that almost ripped from your throat was immediately silenced by Hyunjin’s lips on yours, sucking on the moist flesh along with your soul out of you. You felt something violently erupt and do an entire lap throughout your bloodstream as he spilled and spilled and spilled inside. Dousing you. Drowning you. Claiming and reclaiming you for himself for all eternity.

“To our bed now,” he put your arms on his shoulders and suddenly lifted you for a bridal carry, “where I can worship you all through the night. I’ll recite as many confessions as you want.”

What was it that he said? 

You have consumed me, darling. I do not exist anymore.

Well… 

Neither did you.

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