FlOWERS WITH THORNS | K.TH

Breaths Run

SILIN

"All you have to do is hold still."

I press a soft kiss against his throat. Amusement colors my eyes when I see him jerk, and then stop himself immediately after. His crimson eyes are squeezed shut, his back pressed against the wall.

Seeing him like this.

Pleasure blooms, like some sadistic part of me had broken free from being chained for far too long. The tips of his lashes flutter. When I hold my lips in place, I feel his very pulse quickening, right underneath.

And I know I shouldn't.

That this pains him. The logical side of me screams, its voice urgent and high-pitched. Sensible.

But from a distance. And where it doesn't reach me entirely.

"Hold still."

I caress his erratic pulse with my lips, tracing down the length of the artery branded deep into his throat. His heart thunders against him. I hear a sound from his lips, muffled against the cloth of his mask.

And all I've done is this.

He makes me walk along the edge of a cliff.

Somewhere in the distance, I hear a woman moaning, mixed with shrieks of show-off pleasure. But I no longer care.

Every single part of me is fixed on this red-eyed Tarakan, who is already this aroused when all I've done is a kiss an inch down his throat.

Just a little more.

The first button of his shirt slips loose. The tight-bound collar opens, revealing the strong, symmetrical lines of bone that meet at the base of his throat. His eyes are still shut. His pulse, still dangerously high.

A bead of sweat runs down the angle of his jaw.

And I hear him breathe out Mistress, in a voice half saturated with alarm and desire when I unknot the second button. Then the third. My eyes fall levels lower.

For a second, I allow myself to stare. He has the figure of someone who is untouchable. Years of work and brutal survival had shred every part of him and put it back together.

Scars run, like rivers.

I can feel his gaze on me. I don't look up to see it, but I feel him. And I also feel his fear unfurling. I see it in the way his body folds inward, as if that would somehow hide the blemishes that marks every single inch of him.

My voice lashes.

"What did I say."

He freezes. And I glimpse his fingers bury into the sheets of the bed, so deep and hard that his hands turn white with the strain. His voice is a weak murmur behind his mask.

"...hold...still."

I lean forward, the slightest angle. Then I wrap a hand around his waist, stretched taut. My lips find the tip of the largest scar that marks the corner of his left chest, runs over the place of the heart, and ends at the base of his right.

It's a burn, healed years ago.

The moment my lips touch, I feel his entire body tense. His crimson eyes fly open, before forcing shut again. Both his hands find the corners of the bedsheets and twist until he has chained himself, covered down to his fingers.

And I realize just how selfish I have become.

"Does it hurt?"

He cannot even speak. When he shakes his head, the motion is so broken that any other person would've stopped themselves. His heart pounds. Rivulets of sweat stain his skin.

He is not fine.

But I don't care. Even if he had nodded his head yes, the outcome wouldn't have changed a single bit.

I run my tongue across the entire expanse of the burn, my fingertips pressing into his chest and pinning him against the headboard of the bed. Even when I feel a tremor run through his entire body and the headboard nearly splits in two as he slams his back into it, I don't stop.

I hear cloth ripping, the sound of the blankets tearing apart underneath his fingers as he scrambles for the tatters.

His low, choked gasps grind against the fangs that have already grown to its full extent behind his mask. Soon, I hear the sounds of my breaths, almost as loud as his. My hair unravels, but I don't care. Nothing else matters. He is mine.

Until I feel the chill in the air, and Taehyung's glowering crimson eyes open.

His hands wrap around my waist, pulling me into him in one sweeping, heavy stroke. His breaths run rampant underneath his mask. And when I look up, I see his gaze, cold as ice. Fixed at the door.

I follow it, to see Han.

And I nearly laugh.

"It's alright, love." I lull, wrapping a delicate hand around my Tarakan's and easing it off from my body. The high that I feel right now is indescribable.

How the tables have turned.

"It's alright." I whisper again, and Taehyung's eyes flicker to me in urgency when I slowly shift off of his lap. Then I gather my dress, my feet silent against the cold, wooden floor as I leave him on the bed and cross the room towards the door.

Han looks stricken.

He looks down at me, from the unkept locks of my dark hair to the creases of my dress, where Taehyung had run his fingers too hard. He looks like he has lost all words.

As if he had never expected me to ever do this.

Stupid fucking bastard.

I stop right in front of him. Then I give him a sweet smile, before wrapping my fingers around the edge of the door. My voice echoes even sweeter than my expression.

"My apologies, Your Highness."

"Never realized the door was open."

His lips shift.

"You ca—"

But I never hear the rest of his sentence.

Because I click the door close, straight in front of his face.