I wanted him to find me at least a little annoying too, the way he annoyed me. That was why I’d spoken sarcastically. I scrutinized his profile, wondering if I’d managed to crease even one small line into it, but when I failed to get what I wanted, I asked,
“Did you save Susan’s number?”
“No.”
“Did you memorize it?”
“Numbers are easy to remember.”
“Are you going to call her?”
“That depends on the situation.”
Bullshit. What situation would there be where a stalker contacts my friend? I snorted.
“Ha. What situation?”
“I mean there may be unavoidable reasons to contact her. If you disappear, or something happens to you, or it becomes difficult to keep track of you.”
A barking dog would’ve been preferable.
“Disappearing is your specialty, and even if something happens to me, it probably won’t be worse than having a stalker follow me around. And that part about me becoming hard to keep track of bothers me. It sounds like you’re saying I’m easy right now.”
Enough. I’d exchanged too many words with a stalker. Pouting, I took out my phone. Matchmaking wasn’t in my nature, but I scrolled through my contacts to see if there were any decent men.
Andrew was lighter than dust, so no. Austin was out because I’d personally witnessed him cheating behind his girlfriend’s back. Bruce and Carter weren’t Susan’s type. She’d be yawning within ten minutes of meeting them. Charlie was very accommodating, but sometimes he took that too far, so I wasn’t sure…
Just as I was getting fully invested in choosing someone suitable for Susan, Eden asked,
“What would you do if you were going to die tomorrow?”
Part of me wondered what kind of random nonsense that was, but another part felt a strange familiarity. It wasn’t exactly a novel question, so I might’ve heard it somewhere before. What answer had I given back then? Probably not this one.
“I don’t know. I think I’d get pissed off.”
I tossed the words out with obvious annoyance and continued scrolling through my contacts. Gregory was as close to Susan as I was, so there was no point introducing them, and Harry Clark—who was he again? Losing focus for a moment, I put my phone into my pocket and fell into another thought. About Eden’s question. Eventually, I reached an answer and changed what I’d said.
“If I’m going to die tomorrow? I’d fight the bastard who said that to me. It’d piss me off that someone dared run their mouth about my life like that, and if I beat that bastard, maybe I wouldn’t have to die.”
It felt too empty to quietly accept an ending that had already been decided. I’d have to fight so no one could carelessly swing my end around however they pleased. There wasn’t anything else to do anyway. To recruit a comrade for my duel against the unknown, I turned the question back on Eden.
“What about you?”
Without answering, he made a bored expression, one hand on the steering wheel and the other sweeping back his hair.
“If you don’t know what to do, you should fight too. No, wait, you look weak, so fighting might be a little… Hire someone to fight for you instead.”
Even after I’d gone to the trouble of crafting a customized strategy for him, Eden didn’t seem interested. In the end, I fell silent too.
I only opened my firmly shut mouth again when we arrived at my apartment.
“Tomorrow, I’m leaving earlier than today. My schedule is… Why am I telling you this?”
Probably because I was drunk. I let out a sigh that smelled of alcohol and shoved my hands into my pockets.
Should I say goodbye or not? It’d be weird to tell a stalker to get home safely. But since I used him as my driver, maybe that much was fine? No, wait, it wasn’t like I told him to drive. He volunteered.
I pulled my right hand out of my pocket, intending to wave, then put it back in again. I became conscious of Eden, who likewise had his hands sealed in his pockets.
Neither of us readily turned away. This wasn’t seeing someone off or anything like that. After letting time pass pointlessly, I was the first to shift my foot. When I had moved a few steps away at a pace neither fast nor slow, Eden spoke to my back.
“Pretend you didn’t hear the question I asked. I’ll pretend I didn’t hear your answer either.”
The request, delivered in a voice so low it wouldn’t have reached me if I’d walked just a little faster, had the opposite effect. It made me remember what Eden had asked all over again, and then his voice surfaced from my memory.
“Somerset. What would you do if you were going to die tomorrow?”
As expected, he had asked me the same question before. It was when I’d invited him to my room and we were spending time together. The cup on the shelf was full of coffee, but its aroma had already faded.
I was lying sideways with Eden’s thigh as my pillow. While subtly stroking the firm muscle of his thigh, I slid upward as if by accident. As I pushed my fingers in and out beneath his dark gray drawers, I kept glancing between his legs.
His drawers were steadily getting wet from the spot where the tip of his thick cock rested. When I tried to bury my nose there, Eden stopped me. The hand blocking me brushed back my bangs.
“It’s too early. It’s only nine-thirty in the morning.”
“You should’ve said that before you took off my shirt. Your hands did this.”
There was nothing on the bed that wasn’t disheveled. The sheets and blanket were wrinkled, making even the sunlight falling over them ripple, and the pillow barely hanging off the edge had just fallen. We were both undressed from the waist up. Beads of sweat had formed on our skin, and the nipples he’d sucked still tingled.
“These did it?”
Eden pulled the blanket over himself to cover between his legs and held out his hand in front of my eyes. Even though I knew it was meant to disrupt my thoughts, I was tempted. Swallowing, I lifted my head slightly. After rubbing my lips against his soft palm, I looked up at Eden through his fingers.
My gaze must have been burning hot with obscene meaning. Back then, I was a novice who didn’t know how to control the heat boiling inside me. I was so desperate to pounce on the man in front of me that it wasn’t easy to act composed. So I delivered the following line as though it were a devastating counterattack.
“I think it might’ve been the other hand.”
Eden was much more grown-up than I was. He was two years older in reality too, but to me, it felt like there was an even greater gap between us. He didn’t exactly look like a jaded playboy, but at least he knew how to hide impatience.
“Do you mean this one?”
When he moved that hand away and showed me the other, I grabbed it at once before I could miss my chance. While admiring the bite mark I’d left on the inside of his wrist, I kneaded his hand. His skin was warm and soft like a child’s, but the bones were thick like those of a grown man.
The body heat and texture beneath my touch tempted me. I wanted to rub my lips against the back of his hand, where bone and veins stood out. I wanted to lick his nails with my tongue as if tracing over them. It was hard to postpone the desire that made my mouth water, so I started talking nonsense.
“Have you ever learned piano? Your fingers are long, so I feel like you’d play well.”
“I’ve pressed the keys once or twice. What about you?”
My hands were as long as Eden’s, and my palms were wider.
“I can tell the black keys and white keys apart!”
“That’s unexpected. I thought the piano on the first floor was yours.”
“It is mine. I received it as a gift. But my playing is awful. I don’t like obediently following sheet music.”
Because my mother considered playing an instrument a requirement for being a gentleman, I had learned piano, since it looked familiar and approachable, but there was no hope. Even the famous pianist invited as my private tutor threw up the white flag at my distractibility. When I sat in front of a piano, I got so restless I couldn’t stay still.
“You are free-spirited. I can’t imagine you calmly doing what you’re told.”
“No. I listen well. Especially on top of this—you know I obey your commands.”
At my mischievous smile, Eden gave me the expression of a strict history teacher. Ironically, he felt like some fastidious person who valued virginity. There was no way he’d forgotten the things that had happened in this room, on this bed.
How many times had we devoured each other, moving back and forth between romantic kisses and animalistic ones? Counting would have been tacky, so I stopped, but it must have been at least ten times a day. Nor had we only kissed on the lips. We moved to ears and napes, and touched each other too.
Even I, who had neatly folded my hands during our first kiss, no longer hesitated to undress him. It didn’t take long for my brain to be ruled by the pleasure I had tasted so late. I wanted to grow hot, and I wanted Eden. Eden surely desired me too.
There had been nothing forced about the time he knelt in front of me, licked my navel with his tongue, and took my cock into his mouth. If anything, he’d devoured me of his own will. Back then, I was worried my cock might melt limply inside that narrow, soft mouth. Remembering how I’d actually come messily and gone a little soft made me dizzy.
I wasn’t the one who shoved my freshly hard cock back down Eden’s thoroughly wet throat. He was the one who did it. As if he meant to wring my cock dry until nothing came out, rubbing his chin against my balls as he did.
Eden had been shamelessly greedy. I could still vividly remember him clinging to me with his slightly wet eyes flushed red, yet the man before me now was acting like a guardian of purity instead. If I hadn’t known his sweat tasted sweet, if I hadn’t known flames could rise in those clear emerald eyes, I would’ve been completely fooled.
But I had witnessed what lay beyond that. I had felt his longing against my skin and kept it with me.
Besides, you’re training me even now.
It felt as if he could see straight through the desire filling me. Like tossing bait to a beast, he placed his own hand in mine and tested my patience. He was a sly trainer.
“Somerset. What were we talking about?”
The reason I didn’t resent him for being calm all by himself was that the shadow beneath his long eyelashes trembled slightly. After confirming that fragment of agitation he hadn’t managed to hide, I grinned.
“The piano. Anyway, I don’t have talent. My hands like touching soft skin more than piano keys.”
Like yours.
If Eden Reed’s long fingers had been piano keys, I would’ve been more than interested. I would have sat in front of the piano all day and never left.
“I’m more drawn to the sound that vibrates in your throat than the sound a piano makes.”
I spoke quietly as I pulled his hand right up to my nose. Just as I couldn’t hold back anymore and was about to press closer, he wiggled his fingers and changed the subject.
“So, was this hand the culprit?”
Ah, right. I was interrogating the suspect who’d taken off my shirt. I’d forgotten the surface-level reason I was holding his hand. It was just an excuse I’d made up because I wanted to touch him anyway.
“I’m still not sure. I’ll check.”
Only then did Eden relax the strength in his hand. Once I had permission, I took his thumb into my mouth first. I pursed my lips and used my tongue. Pleasure existed in the taste buds of my tongue, and in my eyes as I looked up at him. When the breath that slipped from between his teeth fell down over me, my whole body tingled.
