C32 - Soul-ed MATE

“Kneel.”

In the heartbeats that follow, he could storm from the room. He could push me down on the floor and have his way with me. There are a million outcomes besides what he does. One knee on the floor. Then the other. With the way he sat, he still comes to my waist.

This is the part where he tucked my head against his thigh, where he absolved me in a wordless balm. Where I could feel his arousal, already hard and throbbing. His hands go to my jeans, careful and sure. It’s like a fever, an intense burn that makes my skin warm and pink, that makes me shudder.

His fingers are blunt as they stroke down my stomach, into the twitching organ between my legs.

“Fcuk,” he breathes. And then he fuses his lips on the head, making me buck in surprise. I knew what he wanted from me, but the slide of his tongue is still a shock. I cry out, and he groans his approval.

He pulls back to meet my eyes. “That’s right. Let them hear you. They’ll never get to taste you like this. Never get to feel you against their lips, will they?”

“Oh God,” I gasp. “No, no.”

Alpha satisfaction makes his eyes glow golden.

“This,” He eyes me from head to toe, “has always been mine. Say it.” His hand slides under my knee and he lifts my left leg on his shoulder.

Those words. My cheeks flush. “This—” Two fingers nudge at my opening, pressing inside with a possessive force. My flesh wraps around him, clenching and clenching, trying to pull him deeper.

“Finish.”

“This—”

He leans forward to work a slow lick from his fingers to my cock, the extended contact a blissful agony. My hips rock against him, begging, desperate.

I know what he wants. “This pretty little hole has always…”

When he takes my cock in one slide, I lose all sense of time and space. I’m floating in a sea of sunlight and pleasure, only his mouth and his fingers and the rough sound of his encouragement.

He holds me on the brink until tears leak down my cheeks. It hurts, and I whimper. He’s merciless, teasing me with gentle licks then ferocious and twists of his fingers.

“Always yours,” I manage to gasp. “I’ve always been yours. Only yours.”

His fingers curl inside me, and my body shakes. His hand around my waist and the chair behind is the only support that keeps me substantiated. The pleasure radiates through me, blooming over my chest, my lips, all the way down to my toes.

My mouth opens on a silent cry. His teeth graze the tender skin of my balls ever so bleakly , that I scream. They all hear me—those men downstairs. The dangerous ones, the powerful ones.

They know who owns me now.

And I know too.

!!~~~~~!!

After the orgasm hits, my legs crumple beneath me. Yoongi catches me in his lap, cradling me as pleasure renders me helpless. The tidal wave of pleasure recedes, but the water remains, lapping at my skin in remembered relief.

Yoongi doesn’t hold anything back, murmuring soft words while he strokes my hair. This is a side of him I haven’t seen before, but one I always knew existed—the natural counterpoint to his strictly enforced stoicism.

He was so careful never to be kind, so deliberate in his remoteness. And God maybe that was for the best, because his tenderness hits me harder than the orgasm.

A few seconds and I’m already addicted.

‘You were always mine.’

He moves before I’m ready, fixing my clothes and leading me downstairs. Kim Taehyung waits for us, wearing a forbidding expression.

Through the link of our hands, I feel Yoongi tense. “We’re leaving.”

“Don’t you think you’ve done enough?” Taehyung asks.

The temperature drops by twenty degrees as I smell the suffocating scent surrounding us.

“Clearly, I don’t...and I’m taking him home. And Taehyung...since when are you the police around here?”

“Since I found out I failed him. It’s coming apart.”

The question strikes a chord in me—curiosity mingled with expectation. Something is happening, pieces moving into place around me. Not quite understanding the choices of my opponent but trusting that they have meaning. Which means the final blow is coming. Exhaustion weighs down my limbs, my eyelids. The shock of my father’s involvement in my downfall, the blissful respite that Yoongi’s mouth offered.

They lay a blanket over me, shielding me from the world.

“You have nothing to do with this,” Yoongi says, voice tight.

“I think I do. I’m the one who sold him to you. My—” Taehyung is angry, his composure wavering.

“—No, Taehyung. He’s mine. He was always mine. And I don’t think you want to get between me and what’s mine. You aren’t suicidal?”

The threat is delivered with cold certainty, between two alphas who are friends. I don’t want to get between them. My family’s secrets are a dark vine, winding its way through the city, thorns leaving marks everywhere it goes.

“Please,” I whisper. “Don’t fight.”

The ticking of the grandfather clock marks the tension in inexorable evenness.

Taehyung studies me, dark gaze impersonal but thorough as it takes in my weariness. “There’s a week left of the thirty days, but I don’t give a fcuk about that. Not anymore. Do you want to go with him?” Taehyung asks me.

Yoongi’s hand tightens on mine. Clearly, he’s willing to fight his way through, fight his own friend. My heart has been cracked and battered ever since the auction, but the final blow is this—realizing that Yoongi still thinks I’ll say no. That he has to buy me, to force me, that I could never want him on my own.

“I want to go,” I say, my voice clear. Taehyung’s expression reveals he still doubts the truth of it, but he doesn’t stand in our way anymore.

I don’t know what change of heart made Taehyung auction me, as emotionless as if I were a Cashmere rug, and then suddenly decide to help me. But I don’t need his help. Not about this.

Without another word Yoongi leads me past Taehyung, down the hallway and out the front door. A black limo waits in the damp air, raindrops glittering on the glossy tinted windows. Then we’re pulling away from the Inferna, heading toward Yoongi’s home, side by side in the deep shadowy interior.

A shiver works through me, and Yoongi changes the settings to warm me. I feel hot air blowing on me, but it can’t touch the coldness inside me. Only Yoongi’s hands do that, his body as he curves around me, his lips as he murmurs against my temple.

“Thank you,” he says.

“It’s coming apart,” I whisper.

“What is?”

The carefully constructed tangle of lies my father has built. And I’m afraid to see what thread appears next. Afraid to find out the rest of my mother’s story.

“Did he really sell me?”

“I’m sorry, Jimin.”

Pain can’t touch me now.

Grief.

Fear.

“Keep me,” I say softly. “The rest of the thirty days. Don’t send me away again.”

His arms tighten around me. “I won’t.”

“The pictures.”

“I’ll find out who took them. Who vandalized the house.” Yoongi’s voice is grim. “He’ll wish he hadn’t.”

My eyes close against the possibilities. “I don’t understand. Why now?”

“I had security on the house. When you came to get your photos taken, you

mentioned someone had been at your house at night.”

Old terror tightens my chest. “I convinced myself I had imagined that.”

“That would have been the best-case scenario, but I put security on the house anyway. Even after you were with me.”

“Because Dad was still there.”

And I realize that part of the weariness I saw in his eyes was from my father’s injuries.

“And you didn’t pay for his care just because of me.”

“Some people think the point of chess is to kill the king. You know the truth.”

“Checkmate. It comes from the Persian verb for ‘to remain’. It means he’s helpless. Trapped.” My lashes lower. “Is that what you wanted to do to my father?”

“It’s the ultimate victory. Not that he should die, be made a martyr, mourned by a son he doesn’t deserve. I want him trapped in every sense of the word, unable to make another move, but alive and fully aware of his loss.”

“That’s disturbing.”

“That’s chess.”

Realization dawns. “And you stopped security after the auction, after I lost the house and you were no longer responsible for it.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s when someone vandalized it.” Someone who had pictures of me naked. Possibly the same person who had tried to break into my house while I was home.

“But why didn’t they come after me directly?”

“They probably figured you’d find out what happened at the house.”

“But the motel would have been so much easier to break into.” I draw in a sharp breath. “You had security there too, didn’t you?”

“Not as much as I wanted, but some. And I made it known that you were under my protection. No one would have gotten into your room, that was for damn sure.”

It clicks, then. “Jin. You put him there?”

“We had an understanding.”

Questions flood my mind. Did Jin tell him everything that had happened, including Namjoon spending part of the night?

Did he call Yoongi the night we got high?

Is that why he came to check on me?

Maybe someone else would have found that kind of watchfulness unnerving and violation, but right now I find comfort in it. In a world where alpha would want control, my alpha Min Yoongi exhibits protection.

It’s not the same thing as freedom. My mother settled for safety, too.

Maybe that can be enough.

!!~~~~!!

I wake up with moonlight across my face. I’m wearing a T-shirt and panties, the sheet tangled around my legs. I thought he would send me to my room, like before, but instead he carried me to his bed.

Exhausted, worn down, I fell asleep. Yoongi lies next to me, his powerful body in rare repose. He doesn’t look young in sleep, only softer. Without the strict control he maintains while awake.

Lashes against his cheeks, incongruous fragility on a body compact with muscle.

A shadow darkens his jaw. My legs move restlessly as I remember the burn of his bristles between them. The alpha hadn’t had time even to shave. The black shadows around his eyes are evident that the alpha didn’t get any sleep for a long time.

The sheet crosses his abs, and I use two careful fingers to move it aside. Cotton briefs mold to his body, revealing narrow hips and the shape of his cock against his thigh, large even in sleep.

I still remember the taste of him, the salt and musk. Beneath the sheet his legs almost reach the base of the bed, making even the oversize frame look miniature.

“Enjoying yourself,” comes his husky voice. My gaze snaps to him. Embarrassment wipes all the words from my brain. He laughs, his lids low with sleep. “Don’t stop, bluebell. I think I can cum from you looking at me.”

Of course I can’t bear to look at him now—can’t look at his body, can’t even meet his eyes. “You’re mocking me.”

“God, you have no idea what you do to me.”

He takes my hand, guiding it over his briefs.

Hot.

Hard.

Throbbing.

“Oh,” comes out as a squeak.

His voice roughens. “Stroke it.”

I run my fingers lightly over his length, feeling him through the fabric. A damp spot stains the tip, and I press my forefinger there, making him grunt. A small smile touches my lips. He’s right that there’s power here, power in making him shift on the bed, his body so strong, made vulnerable by my touch.

“You like this,” I say softly, shyly.

His voice leaves no doubt. “I crave it.”

My gaze trails back over his body, snagging on the nightstand. And there’s the pawn piece, the dark trophy that I had feared. My breath catches.

I look away, not wanting him to see my pain. This is the bed where he took me for the first time. These are the sheets that had been stained with my blood—bleached white now.

“Hey.” He grasps my chin and turns me to face him. “Talk to me.”

“The pawn.”

He follows my gaze, understanding hitting his light brown eyes. “I won’t hurt you again. The first time—”

“It wasn’t painful like that.” I close my eyes tight. “Well, it was, but that’s not what hurt the most. It was how you pushed me away after, like that’s all I’m good for.”

His eyes go dark, more bronze now. “You think I only want you for sex?”

“You paid for me, Yoongi. That’s not something a man does if he wants a relationship.”

“I don’t want a relationship,” he says roughly. “I want to own you.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Your family has dark secrets. Well, this is mine. That my father owned many—not just because it made him money. Not just so he could fcuk them. He bought and sold them because that’s what he wanted to do, that was the only thing that got him off.”

My chest constricts. “And that’s what you want to do—sell me?”

“Never.” A cold laugh. “I’m too fcuking possessive for that. No one else gets to touch you.”

“What if you get tired of me?”

“I tried, bluebell. I sent you away. I tried to forget you, but I get hard just looking at a chess piece. I can’t seem to let you go.” A rough sound. “A lifetime of discipline and now I’m a fcuking addict.”

I bite my lip. “What if I get tired of you?”

He growls, flipping me over in a whirl of male strength. I’m face-first against the bed, his body framing mine. He nuzzles the base of my neck, a primal show of possession.

“Mine,” he whispers.

I fought that word before. I resented it even as I hated it. Now my muscles clench in implicit submission. His knee nudges my legs apart. He pushes my hair aside, fingers clenching in the strands.

A hot press of his mouth against my back, following down my spine until I’m spread apart and wanting. Blunt fingers force their way inside me, finding me wet.

He groans in approval. “Fcuk yes.” Even his fingers feel thick in the small space, my skin struggling to adjust around him. His cock is even bigger.

He twists his fingers, seeking a spot, finding it—and I arch against the bed, wordless sounds begging for release.

When he took me, I faced him. It had seemed like a powerless position, the depth and speed of the thrusts completely his to command. Submission in the most base animal language.

But I realize the range of motion that I had to touch him, to wrap my legs around him, to press my chest against his chest. Now I’m entirely motionless, his hand in my hair holding me above, his weight holding me down.

I can’t touch him.

His fingers circle around the rim spreading the slick dripping from it and I moan. “Please,” I whisper. “I need…I need…”

He gives me a little shake with a fistful of my hair. “You take what I give you.”

I groan my dissent, without even leverage to push back against him. His cock burns a slick trail across my butt as he presses a kiss to my nape. Only a second later do I realize that kiss was a warning, maybe even an apology.

The wide head of his cock nudges against my rim. Without a word he thrusts inside me, ripping past clenched muscles, forcing me open.

A pained cry is muffled by the sheets. My body reacts instinctively, inching up the bed in a frantic bid to escape. It only succeeds in tightening the pull on my scalp.

A calloused hand angles my hips, and then he plunges again, thudding against a point inside me. My mouth opens on a silent scream. His entire body covers mine, chest against my back, hips covering mine, arm stretching out along mine and grasping my wrist.

My hands clench and open, desperate for some mooring. There’s nothing but his body in a sea of wild sensation, every rock of his body bursting stars behind my eyelids.

Untouched orgasm crashes through me, violent and stormy, never-ending as I contract and pulse and quiver around him. It’s too much, this relentless throb inside me, this powerful bass he makes with my body.

I can’t breathe, can’t speak. This is what he meant when he said he owns me—the complete capture of my body, the takeover of my mind. I’m drowning in Min Yoongi, the scent and sound of him. The feel of him inside me.

“So good,” he says, dark and almost angry. “So fcuking good.”

I feel when he breaks, the stark sound of loss he makes, the fail of his rhythm, the way he holds me to him instead of holding me down. His body empties into me—his cum, his despair.

His desperate weakness for an omega he shouldn’t want.

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