C17 - Soul-ed Mate

I press my forehead against the cool glass, looking out at the dark woods. Namjoon braved those woods, and maybe actual rogues, to rescue me. It was actually pretty gallant, if not very well-thought-out.

Yoongi would have gotten revenge on him in a manner both public and thorough. And I’d have given up a million dollars. Maybe it would have been worth it for love. But Namjoon had proven this wasn’t love when he broke up with me for what my father did.

So I’m still here, still locked in the tower with my very own dragon. Yoongi is right when he said my mind can imagine the worst. A hundred strategies, a million possibilities. All the things he might do to me.

Why do I wait for him to come to me?

He gave me white because I made the first move. That’s what I should do about sex. It’s an advantage—a small one, but I need any advantage I can get. In chess we’re well matched.

I still lost, sacrificing the game to get information that broke my heart. But when it comes to sex, he’s the far superior player.

I’m a novice.

I’m nothing.

But I will finish this game the way I started it—with courage. I know exactly which room to find him in. The only door that’s locked.

Who keeps the bedroom locked in their own house?

A person with something to hide. My footsteps are soundless on the oriental runner in the hallway. My knock echoes, incongruously loud.

It sounds aggressive. That’s what he said about chess.

Aggressive and mathematical.

That’s how I feel right now, as if I’m making the devil’s bargain. He opens the door, his expression incredulous.

“You.”

His shirtsleeves are rolled up, his dress pants revealing black socks. That seems like suddenly intimate knowledge, those black socks.

I’ve already seen so much more of his body—felt it, anyway, in the darkness of the spiral staircase—but the simple domesticity of his socked feet seems momentous.

“Can I come in?”

He laughs, leaving the door open as he strides back into the room. That’s when I realize that he’s drunk. There’s a bottle on the table by his fireplace.

I recognize the fading ink, the clear liquid.

Limnio.

I follow him inside and shut the door behind us. He lifts a half-empty glass in mock salute.

“Want some?”

“Maybe it’s best if one of us stays sober.”

His throat moves as he takes a large swallow. “I’m not that drunk. Not too drunk to get it up, if that’s what you came here for.”

I blink. It takes me one, two, three seconds to figure out what he means by it and up. It’s embarrassing that I didn’t know there is a too drunk for sex.

“Good.”

A rough laugh.

“Oh, Virgin lily. You’re so delicious. Do you know that?”

My cheeks heat, and I turn away. “Not for much longer.”

There’s a soft clink that must be him setting down his glass. A stir of air as he comes close. The faintest brush of the back of his fingers against my cheek.

“You’ll always be delicious.”

I meet his gaze. “But not a virgin.”

“No,” he says, considering. “I don’t think you’ll be one for very long. Did you come to make a trade? A favourable exchange?”

“I don’t have anything left to bargain with.”

He’s taken my body in every way but this. And he’s taken what I swore never to give him: my mind, my soul. The ball of string that would have shown me the way out.

There’s nothing left. He pulls something from his pocket, examining it. The pale wood gleams in the firelight.

A pawn.

He must have brought it from downstairs. I remember the shape of it, the smooth surface beneath my fingertips.

“So small,” he says, voice thick. “Why can’t I let you go?”

He must be drunker than he thinks if he’s talking to a piece of carved wood. Unless he means me.

“I’m right here.”

His golden gaze focuses on me. “Yes, Virgin lily. Will you undress for me? Will you open your legs? Let me fcuk you until you bleed like a goddamn martyr?”

A tremble begins from deep in my chest, spreading outward to my limbs. “I know you can make it good for me.”

“You don’t want good,” he says as if the word itself is filthy. “You want to be fcuked. That’s why you came here. Say it.”

My voice is a whisper. “I came here to be fcuked.”

He points to the bed. “Sit.”

I sit on the edge of the bed, realizing only when my feet dangle that it’s so tall. I feel small and helpless, which was probably the point. On edge.

Definitely the point.

That’s when I realize what he’s doing. I made the first move. He could have matched me, but that would have been too easy. Instead he moves the game in a different direction, expands the circle of our battle.

The Sicilian Defense.

It’s what he did with the auction, and it’s what he’s doing now. He comes to stand in front of me, his large hand toying with the ruffles of my nightgown.

“What is this?”

I bite my lip, embarrassed. “My other pajamas have…well, pictures. Unicorns. Rainbows.”

I’m not really that childlike, but they were funny.

Playful.

This nightgown is a pale cream with a small pink bow at the neck. Too modest to seduce anyone, but better than monkeys in sunglasses. He studies the ruffles as if he’s never seen them before.

They may as well be a new move in chess theory for how much they take his concentration—the little flurry of fabric, the inch of thigh underneath.

“You hurt me, you know.”

“What?”

“Whenever I think about you, I hurt.” He puts a hand to his chest. “Here.”

For a second I think he might be mocking me, like the men in the auction did. It’s a cold splash of water on arousal that shouldn’t be there. But he looks deadly serious. And he always tells the truth.

“That’s the limnio talking,” I say, pressing my knees together.

He draws a line down my legs, where they touch. “This is the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Not my girth or my ass. It’s the seam of my legs, the line that keeps him out. He wants a chess game. That’s why he bought me. That’s why he waited to take my virginity.

I don’t know whether the others wanted my body or my soul, but this man—he wants the challenge. I look away because it’s scarier to play the game.

Don’t fight him, oppose him. Make him desperate for more.

That’s what Jihyo told me.

I remember the knowing look in her eyes, the challenge. She knew how much harder this would be, to participate instead of fighting. To try to win knowing I’ll most likely lose.

I want to be the martyr, like he said. I need that, because it’s the only way I can hate him. Make me bleed. Make me cry. I’d despise him in pure righteous fury. It’s the kindness I can’t trust.

His thumb turns my chin to face him. “Virgin lily.”

“Yoongi.”

“Spread your legs.”

My heart pounds. “Make me.”

There’s that pawn again. He rubs his finger over it in a way that shouldn’t be sensual but is. Again and again, until the smooth curved head seems like a place on my body. Until every stroke of his thumb makes me squirm.

“Don’t you want this?” he murmurs. It would be easy for him to push his hand between my legs, to spread them for him to see.

I couldn’t stop him.

I wouldn’t try.

He wants me to give in, though. He wants to line up his pieces, prepared to strike. And then he wants me to move my queen into jeopardy, because he asks.

“No.”

He laughs softly, considering the rounded head of the pawn. “Such a small thing. But powerful. Don’t you think?”

His tongue swipes his thumb, which he uses on the pawn again. It glistens with his saliva. Then he does something obscene, something shocking—he puts the curved pawn against his lips.

A kiss.

The hint of a lick. “Open.”

My legs are trembling with the force of staying together. My inner thigh muscles are clenching and unclenching, spasming as I watch him suck the little head of the piece.

My breath catches. “I can’t—”

Every cell in my body is screaming for me to open my thighs, but it’s not just his thumb that will touch me. Not just his lips or his tongue. He’ll fcuk me tonight. The promise is burning bright in his gaze.

“You have to, Virgin lily. It’s the only way you’ll feel better. Just give in.”

Move into jeopardy. Be captured. So simple and yet so hard to do.

Surrender.

My fists clench in the sheets behind me. Slowly, centimetre by centimetre, I open my legs to him. Two of his fingers lift the frill at the bottom of my nightgown, studying me with humiliating frankness.

“Such a beauty. Is it beautiful because no one has fcuked you yet? Or is it fcukable because it’s so beautiful?”

I have to laugh. “Now that’s definitely the limnio talking.”

His grin is dark and playful.

Seductive.

“The limnio is a nice excuse to say what I’m thinking. God, Virgin lily. If you knew what I thought about, watching you in that gold dress, seeing you in those godforsaken yoga pants. Prancing around the house like you feel safe. I want to bring you down like a fcuking gazelle in the Serengeti.”

My eyes feel wide, my breath faster. My legs spread a little farther apart.

“Keep your hands in the sheets,” he says softly.

“Okay,” I gasp.

“Yes, sir.”

There’s a fight inside me.

The string, hold onto the string! But I want so badly to surrender.

I need to. My eyes close on a sigh. “Yes, sir.”

Blunt fingers push my thigh to the side even farther. I’m so exposed like this.

Vulnerable.

Then he touches me, like I wanted him to. My body shudders against the caress. Except it feels different. Harder. Cooler. I look down to see him holding the pawn, pressing it against me.

“Oh God,” I whisper.

“I love those ridiculous ruffles, but I need you to take that off now. Unless you want me to come all fcuking over it.”

He takes both my legs up and put them on his shoulders making me lean back on my elbows for support.

It’s hard to move, hard to breathe when he’s moving that chess piece against my rim. Clumsy arms manage to work their way out of the nightgown. I push it over my flushed face, not even minding the stark nakedness that follows, his hungry gaze on chest.

It all feeds the intensity building between my legs, cantered on that horrible little chess piece.

The one he caressed.

The one he licked.

My body responds to the hardness of the wood, the curve of the head, but I want something else.

Heat. Velvet.

His body, muscled and hair roughened. The pawn feels impersonal, demeaning, and God, even sexier because of it. There’s a darker seduction in knowing he’s once removed from me.

The pawn is a tool, and so am I. My head drops back, eyes staring at nothing, hips rocking into the piece.

Yoongi’s hand finds my cock and he starts stroking it lightly with the tip of his thumb, smearing the pre-cum dripping from the tip.

“That’s right,” he murmurs. “Come all over the pawn. Spill your slick juice on it. I want to lick you up like that. I want you nice and wet for what happens next.”

He stops his ministrations on my cock as I look him in the eye.

What happens next, what happens next.

The words bounce around in my head, meaningless. Until the sound of a zipper tears through the room.

Then my gaze snaps to his pants, where he’s taken out his cock. He’s stroking it. And it’s big. Massive. A million times bigger than the pawn.

How will it go inside me?

Why wasn’t I satisfied with the small wooden head on my hot cavern? He’s got a club in his fist.

“Wait,” I say, the word slurred with impending climax. “Wait, please.”

“Naughty, Virgin lily. There’s no waiting.” He makes the circles faster,

tighter, pressing the pawn right where I need it. Then I’m crying out, sobbing, begging him to stop, give me, no, more, please.

The spasms continue long after he pulls the chess piece away. He doesn’t just lick me up. He puts the whole head of the pawn into his mouth, sucking me off the wood before tossing the pawn aside.

Then there’s something thick and blunt at my entrance.

“How?” I ask, almost frantic with the question.

How will he fit?

How did I come to this?

How will I go on after this, knowing that I sold my soul to the devil?

He doesn’t give me an answer but pushes inside with one hard thrust. The cry that escapes me is primal—grief at losing something. Pain at the violation.

“Yoongi.”

“A little more,” he says, teeth gritted. That’s when I realize he isn’t all the way inside.

“Oh God. I can’t take more.”

“You knew it would hurt,” he murmurs, jaw tight, eyes shut as if he’s hanging on to control by a thread. I shouldn’t care about him, shouldn’t love what he does to me.

That’s how he’s broken me. So much worse than the ripping agony in my body. So much harder than knowing we’ll end when the clock stops ticking.

“Do it,” I whisper. He takes the invitation with a curt nod. There’s a slight tensing of his muscles. I feel it between my legs. That’s the only warning before he pushes forward, plunging deep inside me.

I can feel him at my very centre, filling me, hurting me.

“How do people do this?”

His laugh is pained. “Only you could make me smile at a time like this.”

I wince. “Is it over?”

He reaches down and uses his thumb like he promised, rubbing slow circles at the mushroom head like the smooth head of the pawn. Around and around in endless, blissful circles.

By degrees I can relax. It still feels too full. Too painful. There’s a memory of the burn as he entered me. But my muscles ripple around in something almost like pleasure.

Then he pulls back and pushes in, hitting a spot inside me that makes my back arch, my head bend back, my teeth click together in audible shock.

“That’s right, Virgin lily,” he says, one syllable between every thrust. I’m turning into some other creature, more and more every time he finds that place inside me.

My whole body feels liquid, turned inside out. Something is building, like when he strokes hard on my dick but different too. “I’m not…a virgin…anymore.”

He’s inside me, so deep inside me. One thrust and he’s all the way to the hilt. I can feel the coarse hairs of him pressing against my sensitive bare skin. He grinds there, and my eyes roll back.

“Did you really think this would end?” he mutters roughly. “Did you think I would fcuk you and you’d stop being my Virgin lily?”

I don’t answer.

I can’t.

He’s rocking against me with his whole body, and it’s pushing me over some edge. I dig my heels into his back, desperate to hold on to the ledge.

“No, I bought your virginity. I took it. It’s mine, Virgin lily. Just like you, you’re mine.”

My mouth opens on an uneven breath. He pushes his hips against mine, a crude demand my body understands better than I do. I’m aching for him. I’m dying for his touch.

His hand slips between us and he pushes the skin of my cock covering the head behind in erratic motions. His pace increasing with each thrust.

He hits something in me and my body jerked a few inches up in air at the motion. I feel light headed as the pressure in me builds up like a fcuking volcano ready to erupt.

When his mouth finds mine, I lose. The orgasm hits me, and I’m freefalling, dizzy with it, upside down, the wind against my face. I can see the high ledge that I’d stood on as I reach the ground and crash.

Yoongi grabs the back of my neck with one hand, my hip with the other.

Leverage, I realize.

My body and soul.

One. Two. Three deep thrusts and then he’s coming, groaning like he’s in pain, muttering my name in rapid succession—Jimin, Jimin. Fcuk, Jimin. Jimin. Jimin.

He collapses on me, rolling to the side, pulling me with him. And then one final ‘Fcuk’ has his voice broken.

“I didn’t know,” I whisper, and it feels like a grave injustice that it took until the ripe age of twenty to learn how this could feel. At the same time it’s the perfect discovery. “I didn’t know you could be so deep inside.”

There’s a strange emptiness when he pulls out of me, a dampness against my thigh. Then I’m draped over him, catching my breath against his broad chest, reeling from what just happened.

I’m still breathing hard when he stands up. He touches something on the sheet. Blood, bright and smeared across white sheets.

It looks barbaric. That came from my body. From his rough claiming. His hand curls into a fist.

“Yoongi?”

Without a word he goes into the bathroom. I’m half expecting him to draw a bath like he did for me before. Or maybe return with a damp towel. I can feel him between my legs.

It’s sore there. And bloody, apparently. The sweat on my body cools, and I shiver in the bed. Alone. I feel a little disoriented, as if I drank a whole bottle of that limnio.

What just happened? That was sex. I just had sex with Min Yoongi. I lost my virginity to him. My legs are unsteady as I stand, using the side table to hold myself up until my knees lock.

Then I make my way over to the bathroom, where the door is slitted open. Yoongi is standing there naked, unselfconscious, his arms braced on the edge of the counter, his strange gold gaze trained on the mirror.

He’s looking at himself.

What does he see?

“Yoongi?”

He doesn’t move. “What do you want?”

The sharpness of his voice cuts me. “Are you coming back to bed?”

I liked the way he held me last time, curled around me protectively while I drifted off to sleep. I need him to do that again, especially with the strange, remote expression on his face.

“It’s my bed,” he says, voice brusque. “I belong there. Not you.”

I suck in a breath. “Why are you being like this?”

“Like what?”

“Like an ass!”

“I’m sorry if you were expecting something different, Mr. Park. I bought you. I used you. Now I’m done.”

Stung, I take a step back.

“So I’m supposed to go to my room and sit there until you want to use me again, is that it?”

He swings around to face me, taking a step closer. “No, I don’t want to use you anymore. Now that I’ve had you, I’m done. You can go.”

My mouth drops. “But…a month…”

His gaze flickers over my body, both admiring and cruel. “You’re beautiful, but there are lots of beautiful omegas in the city. The only thing that made you special was your virginity, and now that’s gone.”

Hurt feels like a concrete block in my chest, weighing me down, making it impossible to breathe. “You’re just saying that.”

“Why would I just say that?” he asks, mocking. “Do you really think that highly of yourself? One taste and it will be all heavenly…birds singing…angels flying? Ballads? You think I’ll fcuk you for eternity? That’s a pretty magical hole you must have.”

Rage feels so much better than the aching pain. “Fine. Pretend like there wasn’t a connection between us. Pretend like you didn’t enjoy the chess and the…the sex!”

Two steps and he’s right in front of me. Then his hand fists in my hair. He bends my head back so I’m looking up at him. “Let’s get this straight, Park Jimin. I enjoyed the chess. I enjoyed the sex even more. But you were only a means to an end. A pawn in this case.”

I blink, but there’s no fighting these tears. They fill my eyes and fall in shameful drops down my cheeks. He lets go of my hair with a rough sound.

“We got too close,” I say, my voice uneven. “You’re scared, because—”

“Make excuses for me. Because Dad kept a Darkmoon, I never learned how to love, is that it? Tell me, bluebell. Did you imagine you could fix me? Did you think if you beat me at chess, I’d learn my lesson? But I won the game, didn’t I? You lost.”

Through the tears I see the beige pawn lying on the carpet.

Discarded.

Its usefulness over. That’s what I am here—my father’s daughter, bought to send a message. Fcuked to drive that message home. He’s nothing if not thorough. And now my usefulness? It’s over.

I stare at his back as he walks into the bedroom, dismissing me. He picks up the half-empty bottle of limnio from the table.

How could I have cared about him?

But it doesn’t matter.

I still care about him. My wolf care about him, even now that I know he’s every bit the monster I feared. Fate is the cruellest enemy of all.

With my heart in my throat, I move to leave. I’m standing with my hand on the knob, trying to make sense of it. I spent so long thinking about defeating the Minotaur that I didn’t consider he might just let me go. I didn’t consider that I would have liked to stay.

Part of me wants to go to him, to demand that he explain why he’s kicking me out, to make him see we have something deeper. Except I barely know that myself. It’s a shock to realize I’ve come to care for him, this man of precious metal and revenge, of carved wood and heartache.

I’m supposed to hate him. From across the room comes a terrible crash, making me jump. I turn to see the thick limnio bottle in shards against the iron grate in the fireplace, a ship against jagged rocks, embattled by the storm.

Yoongi destroyed it, that last memento from his father.

How had I forgotten his violence?

Why had I been so sure he wouldn’t use it against me?

Fear runs through my veins, cold and thin. I may not hate Min Yoongi, but I’m still afraid of him. Then I’m running through the halls, trying to remember my way back, trying to find the way out.

!~~~~~!!!!!~~~~~!