C54 - Soul-ed MATE

Instead, he disappears into the bathroom. Protection, maybe.

The water turns on, a thunder that I haven’t heard in the weeks since I’ve been here. A manservant comes with a pail of warm water and a washcloth each morning. Yoongi returns, walking toward me with the ferocity of an ancient warrior. My heart lurches as he lifts me from the bed, still wearing a white tank top and sleep shorts.

He carries me into the large tub, dunking us both into the warm water. It laps at my skin, a blast of intensity across every nerve ending. A gasp escapes me, echoing off the ceramic.

The tender scent of strawberries rises from the water—the soap I ordered from the Amish farmer, I realize. My lips turn up in a smile. I try to force it down, but there’s too much at once— Yoongi’s body surrounding me, the immersion of water. Every sense bombarded. Every defense destroyed. Almost. Somehow, I hold on.

“Stubborn,” Yoongi murmurs. “That’s another thing about you. Headstrong.”

He rubs shampoo into my scalp, and the pleasure is enough to close my eyelids, to force a deep breath from my body. I curl against him, letting him pet me.

“And sensual,” he murmurs. “You think I don’t know you, that you’re just a warm body to me, but I know enough to use against you. I know how to break you if I need to.”

His hands roam lower, down my neck and across my shoulders. Sensation blooms throughout my body, not only the places he touches me. Down my spine and between my thighs. All the way to my toes. As if I’m discovering my body again. As if he’s uncovering it after so long buried.

“Maybe that’s the wrong thing to do,” he says, his hands tight on my hips. “Maybe I should let you stay there, hidden, if that’s what you want to do. Shouldn’t it be your choice?”

I don’t answer, because we both know my choice doesn’t matter. Not in this bathtub, not on Yoongi’s estate. Not while I belong to him. My choice didn’t matter from the moment Kim Taehyung said, ‘Sold.’

“I’m selfish enough to make you come back,” he says, almost tender. “Selfish enough to insist you go on living, even knowing it’s going to hurt you. God, you’re going to be in agony. You’ve been protecting yourself from it.”

I shiver, aware of the pain that awaits me. There’s no way to avoid it, not with the full force of Yoongi’s will upon me. ‘Selfish’, that’s what he called himself. Though maybe I’m selfish for wanting to stay like this, safe and blanketed.

“I know you’re afraid. You should be, after what happened to you. Your father betrayed you. He sold you. He definitely didn’t deserve you for a son.”

The realization sinks in as warm and welcome as this water—that he didn’t deserve me. And the corollary: that I didn’t deserve what he did to me.

“And then what Kim Yongdae did…” Yoongi swears. “You’re worried you’re crazy, but what that motherfcuker did is certifiable. This? This is a sane reaction to that kind of abuse. This is normal.”

Can that be true?

I was sure that I was insane—whether I was born that way or was driven to the brink by the voices in the walls. Either way the result was the same. Except Yoongi doesn’t seem to think I’m insane. Neither did Hoseok. It’s like a sickness.

Temporary.

Like the beating my father took after his downfall, but this one bruised my soul. And Yoongi’s nursing me back to health with emotional chicken soup.

I blink at him, drops of water heavy on my lashes. “There you are,” he murmurs.

My lips move but no sound comes out.

“That’s right. You won, Bluebell.” He laughs, rough and dark. “I’m not humble, so I can admit it hasn’t happened often. But I can’t deny it anymore. I can’t eat, can’t sleep. Even the thought of you being hurt is enough to paralyze me.”

I know what it feels like for a body to brace for pain. It’s what I’ve been doing ever since Kim Yongdae confessed what he did. So, I recognize the tension that enters Yoongi’s body.

“You own the board now.”

Checkmate.

Part of me wonders what he means by that. The other part of me is distracted by the way his hands slide down my stomach. Down, down, to the thatch of hair grown wild in the time I’ve been bedridden.

A daily wash doesn’t include a daily shave, and I’m suddenly very aware of the natural state of my body. He doesn’t seem put off. If anything, his cock hardens beneath my ass as he runs his fingers through the curls.

He strokes me without urgency, almost petting me, as if he could do this for hours, for days. Every touch of his hand, gentle, with water swirling against me, sends me deeper into the dream space.

It isn’t the nightmare with fire and voices. This is cleansing. Purifying, as if he took me apart only to put me back together. When his hand nudges me, his sensual slow strokes, it feels both inevitable and yet entirely new.

He draws gentle strokes, writing letters across my sensitive skin, leaving his mark, indelible. I sigh, pressing my face to his neck, breathing deeply of his musk.

When I cum, it isn’t with explosions or rainbows. There’s only the glint of gold, the slightest spark of life, as I murmur, “Yoongi.”

His expression turns tender. “There you are, bluebell.”

Have I returned from somewhere?

It feels like I’ve been asleep a thousand years. Like I’ve dreamed my entire life, only to come awake this moment. “Please.”

“Tell me what you need,” he says, grave and sure.

There’s only one answer I can give, only one thing a doll truly wants. And that’s all I’ve ever been. To my father. To Yoongi. The whole world sees me as a piece to be played. And I can never really be safe as long as I’m being moved around the board against my will.

“Set me free,” I whisper.

His eyes blaze with emotion. “Say it again, Bluebell.”

“Freedom.”

And whatever happens next, I know that I am changed. I can no longer defend a king who doesn’t value me, the pawn who faces the enemy front lines. I can no longer fight for my own virtue, a knight who wields his sword in service. And I can no longer hide behind the walls of Yoongi’s castle.

I’m a queen in my own right, whether I fall or fight another day, whatever my next move, wherever I land. I have the whole board to consider, every direction available.

My fate may not decide the game, but I can go anywhere I want.

The queen has freedom the king does not.

She decides her own fate.

!!~~~~!!

I wake up alone in the bed, blinking into the darkness. Shadows tell me it’s early morning, before I would normally expect breakfast. My body hums pleasantly from the bath the night before. The bed smells like Yoongi, but he’s not here. The sheets on either side of me are cool beneath my fingertips.

For a moment I wonder in silence—and then I remember. My mouth works. I swallow. “Yoongi?”

The sound is scratchy and halting, so I try again, stronger this time. No one answers. Maybe he went to a different bedroom. Or to his office. There are a hundred places he could be in this house, a thousand valid reasons for him to be absent from his bed.

Why did I wake up?

Did I hear something?

Did the house shift?

A sense of urgency propels me to sit up. I need to find him. I push the heavy blankets aside, suddenly finding them suffocating. My feet touch the carpet for the first time in a week. My toes curl in pleasure at the softness, trapping the fibers beneath them.

That’s when I see the bedside table.

The gleaming white castle sits there, all by itself. It definitely wasn’t there the night before. And there’s no reason for it to be separate from its set, except as a message.

I pick up the piece, fingering the smooth marble. It’s almost a surprise. For some reason I expected to find it shattered. Maybe there would be lines in the stone where it had been glued back together, not quite right. But it’s as perfect as ever.

A folded sheet of vellum remains on the nightstand. I open it, feeling oddly weightless.

My beautiful Bluebell,

My estate is the safest place in the city. It’s yours. You have beaten me thoroughly, and with more mercy than I deserve. I’ve lost the thing I care for most—your heart, your smile. Your presence. And I can’t even regret it, because the more I came to love you, the more I want you to win.

That’s when I know what strength is—not surviving. Not even fighting. Sometimes strength is moving forward, another checkerboard, a single step.

“Stay,” I whisper.

Only there’s no one to hear me. I run out to the stairwell, shouting for him. “Yoongi! Where are you? Yoongi.”

Mrs. B comes out of the kitchen, looking flushed and disheveled. “Jimin?”

“Where is he? Did he leave yet? Please tell me he didn’t—”

And then through the high arch window above the front door I see it. The black limo, pulling away from the circular drive, picking up speed down the pebbled path.

My heart lurches.

I stumble down the curving staircase and out the front door. Stones bite into the soles of my feet, but I don’t slow down. I can’t slow down. I must look wild, completely insane, wearing only a thin tank top and sleep shorts, my hair a disaster. Nothing matters except stopping that car.

How can a person on foot catch a moving vehicle?

How can one shouting reach the inside of a heavily padded limo?

It’s impossible, like everything about me and Min Yoongi, which is exactly why it works. The only way it would happen is if he looked back. The limo comes to a smooth stop, its black paint gleaming in the sun like marble.

Yoongi steps out of the back, an incredulous look on his face. “What are you doing?”

There are only a few pieces left on the board. Only the two of us in the endgame. One of us has to die so the other can win—and so Yoongi knocks over his king. It’s both a gift and a loss, a sign that something finally matters more than winning.

I lurch at him wrapping myself to his body like if he wouldn’t hold me. I might descend to the depths of hell. He holds me like I’m some fragile doll. My hands tighten around his neck as I inhale his deep musky scent.

“Stay.” I whisper so softly that if not for his strong senses he wouldn’t even hear me.

Hope flickers across his face, doused by stoicism. “That isn’t how the game is played.”

“I’m done playing.” I step down looking at him, my hands still wound aound his biceps.

“So am I.”

“I love you.” I’m out of breath, the words falling like gasps.

“What did you say?” he demands, taking a step closer.

And something matters more to me than losing. “I love you, Min Yoongi.”

He takes another step closer, almost compulsively. And stops. “God. Don’t.”

“I really do.”

“It’s suicide. To love a man like me.”

“Then what is it to love someone like me?” My laugh sounds maniacal even to myself. “Hearing voices. Chasing cars. I’m a little bit crazy myself.”

“I like crazy. You’re a queen, Bluebell. My queen.”

I throw myself into his arms again. Of course, he catches me.

“A queen needs a king and you’re my king.”

!!~~~~!!

My teachers are kind enough to extend the deadline for my final thesis. When it came to choose my thesis for my Gender in Classical Greek Literature class, there were too many topics to explore. Beauty and exploitation. Shame and oppression. Sexuality and the tangled web of female agency.

I had decided on motherhood, the examination and expectation of the role as caregiver. It was an homage to my mother, a person who I love without ever having known, more myth than fact—like the literature I was to examine.

When I return to my laptop a few days later I know I need to start over. There’s something else I need to examine, a subject I know intimately but that remains a mystery—virginity. The auction changed the course of my life. It ruined me. It saved me.

How could such a small strip of skin so greatly affect me?

Why does the lack of experience mark me as somehow more valuable?

I buried myself in Yoongi’s library, digging out the Greek dramas and philosophers. I located texts online with religious practices and Hippocratic medical writings. I pored over every text I could find that explored the classical views on sexual purity.

I learnt about Danaë and Ariadne and Aethra and Briseis. (for more read Once upon a MYTH on Patreon)

The list was endless. Each women used and thrown because they couldn’t meet the societal normal. And they were in a way a slap to the dominance.

Was a woman ruined once that’s taken?

Why virginity was a taboo in Greek mythology?

Why was virginity something for a man to take, as if it was a possession? It took me weeks to write the first version of my essay, carefully outlining and rewriting, debating the best sources and the right format for my arguments.

The new one appears as quickly as I can type the words, a manifestation of a lifetime of study, a synthesis of everything I’ve learned—a rebuttal to what Kim Yongdae said to me in that dilapidated mental hospital.

What’s wrong with teaching a child about their body? He didn’t teach me. He violated me. He didn’t show me anything. He took from me.

That’s the essence of how a man takes possession. By exerting their power. By purchasing them. By bending them to his will. These are first times in the purest sense.

The first time I was used and sold and abused.

They aren’t my only first times. There’s the first time I orgasmed by myself, alone in the silence. The first time I stepped over the threshold at the Inferna, determined to save my father and myself. The first time I climaxed against Yoongi’s fingers in the warm tub, coming alive, feeling every nerve ending in my body as if I were born anew.

For all that we consider modern society to be enlightened and even highly sexualized, our views on innocence and sin are remarkably puritan. For the Greeks, virginity was not about a small strip of skin. It wasn’t irrevocably missing after having sex. Virginity was closer to abstinence, to modesty. A purity of body and thought. A sacred duty.

And that’s why I don’t object, when Yoongi continues to call me his Virgin lily when he wanted dominance, bliuebell when he exerted on his lover side. It’s true enough. True in the most important ways. That I belong to him and no other. That he belongs to me, too.

Of course, I add annotations and references to my paper. It wouldn’t be complete without them. Still, I’m nervous the day after I submit the paper. Most of the undergrad work is simply regurgitations of existing concepts.

Have I gone too far? Flown too close to the sun?

From across the chessboard Yoongi gives me a dark look. Only then do I realize I’ve been tapping the wooden rook against the board.

“Sorry.”

“What’s the matter, bluebell?”

“I should have sent the first paper.”

He turns back to his book. “Perhaps.”

With a huff, I throw the piece at him. It bounces off his arm and falls harmlessly to the floor, rolling on the rug. “You’re supposed to say I did the right thing.”

The corner of his mouth lifts. “If you already know, then why are you worried?”

“Because...”

“Because?”

“Sometimes men have antiquated views of virginity and a women’s status in old human societies and its akin to us werewolves where omegas were used and abused for years. Even now, and my stuffy professor might not enjoy them being challenged.”

Yoongi closes his book and sets it on the chessboard. “Smart men enjoys the challenge. Surely you know that.”

A small smile teases my lips. “And what if he’s not smart?”

Golden eyes regard me with solemn promise. “Then I’ll kill him for you.”

I can’t hold back my laugh. “Liar.”

“I’ll arrange for a sex scandal, thereby revoking his tenure.”

My eyes widen, because that one seems more plausible. “Don’t.”

“Can I at least have his office vandalized? We’ll cut words out of your essay to spell out ‘The professor must die’.”

“I’m pretty sure I didn’t use the word professor in my essay.”

He nods gravely. “Then I suppose we’ll have to accept whatever the grade is.”

“How sensible.” I stand and stretch, my muscles tight after hours spent reading. I love these evenings of quiet repose, but I love the loud recreation that follows even better.

His eyes track the sliver of skin beneath the hem of my croptop. “Quite.”

“Is that what you are? Logical? Analytical?”

“For the most part,” he says, eyes narrowing. “Unless provoked.”

I pick up the king, tapping the square cross at the top with my finger, feeling the imprints and the edges. “Then I suppose it would be wrong to provoke you.”

“God,” he mutters, watching my finger trace the outline.

And I put the tip of the king to my lips. My tongue darts out to taste. Wood tastes like nothing, but all I feel is danger when his golden eyes sharpen on me. He takes a step forward, and I drop the piece to the floor.

Another step.

I’m backed against the spiral staircase, carvings pressing into my back. When I would slide away, he shoots a hand to my collarbone, holding me there. He brings his body flush against mine, looming over. His thumb brushes over the delicate bones at my throat, the way I felt the wooden chess piece.

“Beautiful,” he murmurs. “You provoke me just by standing there. By looking at me. By writing those glorious, filthy words about sex and women and love and myths.”

“Love?” I ask, suddenly breathless.

He bends his head until he’s a breath away. “Yes, love. What else would a king feel for his queen? What else would an alpha feel for the omega who made him whole?”

I need to hear the words. “Do you love me?”

“Oh, bluebell. I love you with every cold bone in my body. I love you with every dark thought, every violent impulse. I love you enough to leave the walls I’ve carefully built, the iron bars I refined, the castle I made.”

“I don’t want you to leave,” I whisper.

“This castle is for you. I’m talking about the one inside me, the one locking up everything gentle and kind I ever might have been. And now I stand in front of you, completely defenseless.”

That was one thing Kim Yongdae got right.

Repression is a powerful instinct. Much like fight-or-flight. You thought you could forget me.

I can’t forget what happened to me anymore than Yoongi can forget what he’s done. We can be stronger for remembering.

For surviving.

For loving.

“I won’t ever hurt you.”

“Won’t you? You could crush me. With a word. A look. If you don’t let me kiss you, right this second.”

And I do him one better, rising up on my toes, pressing my lips to his. I kiss him, forcing my mouth against him, my will against him, my love imbued in every shiver and breath.

The words I love you slip out, air shared between us.

Then we lose ourselves in the magic of battle, of chess, the powerful exclamation that comes from one body consuming another—being consumed in return.

I’ve spent my life trying to be more than a fragile princess in a tower. Trying to be smarter or kinder. Trying to be better in some way that will lend me power of my own. It wasn’t isolation that made me weak, though.

It wasn’t a pretty pink dress. It was thinking that being saved made me weak. Accepting help, supporting friends. Finding love. All of it made me stronger.

And I could give strength in return, the one to finally make Yoongi a king.

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