SPW 54

Hmm. This isn’t something I, who spent a fortnight with Sarang during his heat, should be saying. Nor is it something I, who used my hand to induce his ejaculation to quell his heat fever, should be saying.

Florian pulled up the cotton t-shirt and placed his lips on Sarang’s collarbone, while his palm caressed the hard, yet soft as fiber, skin of his stomach. Sarang, who followed his touch, was cooling down from one fever while becoming aroused with another. It was a process where the high fever that felt like it would rupture every muscle in his body was cooling down, and the heat of pleasure was rising.

Sarang’s arousal was like his personality. He followed when led, cooled down when cooled, and heated up when heated. The occasional low growl was likely a moment when the Alpha’s instinct, something that couldn’t be helped even with his innate disposition, burst out.

Sarang, if you can, please love me just a little. Don’t go any deeper than this. As if this is the critical point, start to slowly extinguish your feelings for me now.

“Heut.”

Florian, who alleviated Sarang’s pain by caressing as much surface area as possible, whispered lowly.

Let’s share something other than love, Sarang. And so, let’s live a little longer than twenty-four.

Swallowing the lips of Sarang, who was sobbing and spilling his semen from being too aroused, Florian sucked on his tongue and whispered, as if his words would break off but never quite did.

It was a common story.

An employee working as a nanny at the ducal estate kidnapped the seven-year-old young duke. There were three accomplices, including the nanny. A drug dealer who wasn’t even at the bottom of a gang’s hierarchy, and a junkie who bought drugs from him. They were members with a low probability of success from the start, and naturally, the plan they devised was also sloppy.

The drug dealer made a threatening phone call to the ducal estate. Another employee of the estate noticed the absence of the nanny and the young duke and immediately informed the butler. It didn’t take long for the news to reach the Duke. Instead of the police, the Duke called the CEO of a private military company with whom he was acquainted.

The drug dealer demanded one hundred billion in a lump sum. The Duke could have withdrawn that much cash immediately, but he refused flatly. The drug dealer, who hadn’t expected to be refused, got agitated and made another threat. Something along the lines of, if he didn’t do as he was told, he would take a knife to the young duke’s body.

The Duke hung up without listening. Every time the agitated drug dealer kept calling, he hung up without a word. The drug dealer, having lost his reason, ran to the young duke with the phone still in his hand and swung a knife. However, being sloppy from the start, they managed to slash the young duke with the knife but did not succeed in acts like dismembering a body part or removing an organ.

This time, the nanny called. The Duke answered the phone again. The Duke did not remember the voice of a mere nanny. The nanny, who was more realistic, lowered the amount. 50 billion. 30 billion. 15 billion. 10 billion. 5 billion. 1 billion. 100 million. The Duke, who was also a seasoned businessman, bargained until the ransom dropped to 100 million, and at the end, he tossed out a single, mocking remark and hung up the phone.

‘I can’t give a single pound to fools like you who don’t even know the basics of negotiation.’

Florian had been watching their negotiation from beginning to end. With his hands and feet tied behind his back, a gag in his small mouth, bleeding from the finger and ear that the drug dealer had tried to cut off, he watched his own grandfather negotiate over him from beginning to end.

Florian was scared. And sad.

The angry nanny, drug dealer, and junkie kicked Florian. Florian shed streams of tears but did not cry out loud. Because he was angry.

The nanny said they would be tracked down soon. The drug dealer suggested selling him off anywhere. The junkie giggled, saying Omegas fetch a pretty high price. It was the moment they were in the middle of their argument. With a thwack—the nanny’s head was blown off. In succession, the junkie’s and then the drug dealer’s heads exploded.

They were the men from the private military company sent by the Duke. They rescued the kidnapped young duke in three days. It was a story that passed without the media or law enforcement ever knowing.

The Duke did not want to leave a stain on the life of his young grandson, the sole heir to his title—no, on his own honor. So he treated the young duke’s kidnapping as if it had never happened. To do so, he spent more than one hundred billion to cover up the incident. In fact, to this day, Florian’s kidnapping has never been known.

Florian was angry at such a Duke. It was an emotion larger than anger, but the young Florian did not know if it was betrayal or rage.

☀️

Sarang knew that this moment was not a dream.

The body heat against his own, the breath that touched and left his skin, the cool scent of figs soaking his entire body made him realize the present.

“…”

Sarang couldn’t take his eyes off Florian, who was using his arm as a pillow and sleeping soundly in his embrace.

Rian.

The touches and breaths that had soothed and caressed him all night were not his hallucinations or dreams. The real Florian had held him, stroked him, and eased his pain. Sarang knew that a morning without any pain was not a given. The fact that Florian, who didn’t have to, had rushed from afar to take away that single pain made the tip of Sarang’s nose turn red.

Rian.

‘A precious existence? A day will come for our Sarang, too, when one day, suddenly, out of the blue, you realize it.’

Sarang could now fully understand Colin’s low whisper.

Sarang, who had been gazing endlessly at the morning sun settling on the neatly closed golden eyelashes and illuminating the golden hair, bringing it back to life, flinched.

“…”

Florian pushed up his golden eyelashes and looked up at Sarang. Caught helplessly by the brilliant blue eyes that captivated him just by being revealed, Sarang neither got scared like before nor backed away in a fluster. He simply, for a long while, entrusted his every breath to Florian. Florian, who had been looking up at Sarang in silence, smiled like a mirage and raised the corners of his lips.

“Sarang, I have something to ask you.”

“…Yes, Rian.”

Wondering what he could possibly want to ask as soon as he opened his eyes, Sarang nonetheless nodded obediently.

“Do you happen to have another Omega besides me?”

“…”

Sarang just stared at Florian with his eyes wide open, as if they were about to spill over. Florian, who sat up, was, unlike himself, completely disheveled. His golden hair, which he casually swept up, was slightly tousled, and inside his shirt, from which a button had been torn off, were clear reddish marks. The bite marks were also visible on his collarbone, which was faintly showing.

Sarang, guessing he must have done it, did not blush but instead carefully examined Florian’s condition. At the end of his gaze, Sarang noticed Florian’s eyes slightly distorted by the sunlight and reached out his hand.

“Why do you ask such a question?”

Sarang’s question, as he created a shade with his hand to block the sunlight, contained only pure curiosity without any other emotion.

“Rian?”

After checking if the shade was properly made, Sarang looked down into Florian’s brilliant blue eyes and tilted his head. Even though the sunlight that had dazzled him should have been blocked, Florian’s brow was slightly furrowed.

“Are you angry?”

“I’m not angry.”

Florian took down Sarang’s hand that was blocking the sunlight and pulled the cord to lower the canopy curtains.

“Answer me first, Sarang.”

Ah, Sarang slightly parted his lips, still with a look of incomprehension on his face.

“For me, there’s only Rian.”

“I know.”

Florian let go of the now genuinely bewildered Sarang’s hand and leaned his upper body against the soft headboard of the bed.

“But it made me wonder why you don’t ask for pheromones.”

Florian, who checked the wristwatch he had left on the bedside table, turned to look at Sarang sitting quietly beside him.

“You said it’s Boxing Day right now. I heard two or three games a week is the norm.”

It was just past eight in the morning.

“I suppose soccer doesn’t take up that large a percentage of your life, Sarang?”

Florian rested his left arm on his raised knee and leaned his left cheek against it. It became a posture where he was looking directly at Sarang. The quiet bedroom, the sunlight that softly illuminated the room as if making a gentle rustling sound, the hair that shone like meticulously woven gold thread, the elegant facial lines and handsome features—the man, who seemed like the magnum opus left behind by a deceased master painter, was perfect even down to the slight crease that passed over his brow, as if it were intentional.

“Rian, soccer is the only thing that has always been by my side from the moment I was born until now.”

“From the moment you were born?”

“They said my parents were avid soccer fans. They even used soccer matches for prenatal education, and in Korea, there’s something called a doljabi, but my parents planned to put out only five soccer balls. They said that instead of toys, our house was filled with nothing but soccer balls, big and small.