🚨 Warning: This chapter includes depictions of non-consensual sexual actions under unequal power dynamics. Please remain mindful of this as you read. If you feel uncomfortable, do not hesitate to stop reading. 🚨
The king’s eyes then slowly closed and opened. In that instant, a voice inside my head screamed that I absolutely couldn’t do it, but unable to afford staying still any longer, I shifted my body while kneeling.
Honestly, I still didn’t think I could go through with it, but if the king's patience reached its limit, he would likely do something far beyond anything I could imagine.
At my changed posture, the king’s eyes motioned toward his body as if this was the last chance. The thought of having to do something I so clearly didn’t want, driven by fear, made my hands tremble, just like the helpless protagonists in films I had once dismissed so easily.
Slowly, I placed my hands on the floor and leaned my face closer. The sharp scent of liquor radiated from the king.
Whether from intoxication by this liquor or by the king’s cold cruelty, the longer I remained in this palace, the harder it would become for me to think rationally.
Pressing my trembling hands firmly against the floor, I cautiously stuck out my tongue.
Lick.
A faint taste of liquor met the tip of my tongue. I squeezed my eyes shut and licked the liquor off the king’s body like savouring ice cream.
Rustle.
Flinch.
The king's fingers slipped into my hair, gently cradling my scalp. Unintentionally, my face drew closer to his body, so close that with just a flick of my tongue, I could taste the liquor.
Lick.
What on earth was I doing right now? Not only did I sleep with a man who wasn’t Kyuhyun, but now I was even licking his skin.
‘What kind of terrible thing am I doing? Please, just let time stop.’
“Gasp!”
“Even if you spend the whole night like that, you still won’t be able to lick all the liquor off my body.”
The gentle hand that had been cradling my scalp suddenly tightened and yanked my hair upward. With my head forced back, the king’s eyes that met mine were truly merciless.
I closed my eyes to escape reality, but even when I opened them again, he remained cold.
He was the type of person I would never want to know, not even as an acquaintance, if it weren’t for this country.
“So you really do intend to drain every last drop of my patience today.”
Now we had reached the breaking point. The king directly asked if I intended to push his patience to the limit.
At that moment, I saw the silhouette by the door disappear, and I realised it was too large to be a court lady. At the same time, General Hunmu, who had suffered the punishment of ‘sahal’ because of me and only regained consciousness after three days, suddenly came to mind. Even if it was something I couldn’t justify by my values, I couldn’t simply turn a blind eye.
I should have caught the eye of someone else, not General Hunmu, when I first fell into this country.
Unlike before, I grabbed the king’s waist with my hand. Then, clumsily but deliberately, I began licking again, from his liquor-dampened collarbone down to his chest.
As the wet sound of my tongue against his skin filled the room, the king finally released his grip on my hair.
Lick.
Lick.
“...”
The taste of liquor was especially bitter today. No matter how much I licked, the taste clinging to the king’s skin wouldn’t fade.
After licking repeatedly, my lips descended to his well-defined abdominal muscles. Just below that was his intimate area, and the hand gripping his waist tightened instinctively.
Careful not to let my hand brush against him even by accident, I licked all the liquor off his abdominal muscles. When there was finally no spot my tongue hadn’t touched, a sudden surge of emotion welled up inside me.
Since my heart wasn’t ruthless enough, I feared that General Hunmu might be harmed.
On top of that, who knew what kind of psycho-like things this king might do?
‘Licking a man’s body — Yoo Yewon, you’ve done something extraordinary.’
It wasn’t an emotion I could dare reveal to the king, but a hint of ‘Is this enough now?’ couldn’t be fully hidden in my expression as I looked at him. The king glanced over his upper body, which I had licked clean, then met my eyes again and curled the corner of his mouth into a smirk.
“Hey, is anyone there?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
What? It wasn’t General Hunmu?
The voice just now was the voice of the eunuch who had come here with the king before.
"Bring another bottle of liquor."
Was he always this ruthless?
I barely managed to control my emotions and lick up all the spilled liquor, but the moment I heard the order to bring another bottle, I sat down in a daze, as if I had lost my senses.
Despite my reaction, the king, who seemed to be in better condition than when he first came in, soon took the new bottle of liquor himself and looked at me.
"Are you afraid I will tell you to lick my body again?"
It wasn’t that I was afraid. I just didn’t want to do that again, ever.
I neither affirmed nor denied it. I simply showed, with a frozen expression, how absurd it was from my perspective that the king had ordered another bottle of liquor.
“Don’t worry. With such a clumsy tongue, you won’t excite my body at all.”
Then why?
Why did he order another bottle so deliberately, just to watch how I would react?
"Do you think I asked for liquor just to receive such trivial caresses?"
"...Did you order it... to drink?"
"It’s for feeding you."
“Pardon?”
The king soon poured the liquor into the cup until it nearly overflowed. After that, instead of me, he downed it himself.
But then—!
“Mmpf! ”
The king’s lips suddenly touched mine, making me swallow the liquor in one gulp. The unexpected surprise kiss and the liquor going down the wrong way made my throat burn like it was on fire, and a cough burst out.
“Cough! Cough!”
"You said you can’t drink well? I was the same."
“Cough… haah…”
“You see, when someone goes through things too hard to endure, there are times when all they can do is try to ease it with liquor. For you, right now, that’s wanting to go home, but not being able to.”
"...Why are you doing this…?"
"Since you’ve licked all the liquor off my body, this is your reward. So that you can forget by getting drunk.”
“...I don’t want to do that. I can bear it on my own...”
This time, the king didn’t even pour the liquor into a cup; he pressed the entire bottle to his lips. Then, cruelly, he forced me to swallow all the liquor from his mouth.
"Cough! Stop! Please stop."
“You still dare to give orders to me, the king.”
Moment by moment, my unconscious actions seemed to be sharply judged by him against those of other courtiers, piercing me like a hidden wound. If it had been another woman, would she have silently endured even harsher treatment from the king?
Even with tears welling in my eyes from the liquor I had been forced to drink twice, I felt I had to address the part about the ‘order' clearly, so I met his gaze and spoke with burning lips.
"...How could I possibly dare give an order... I haven’t fully adjusted to this place yet, so my words came out wrong... I just... sincerely wish that the king… would stop giving me liquor..."
"If you don’t want to drink, then conceive my child. No matter how mad a king I am, I wouldn’t make a woman carrying my child drink liquor."
Why did the king, who seemed so cruel and cold, look at that moment like a child tightly clutching his wounds?
Could all these strange actions until now be because I stubbornly refused to get pregnant? Because I didn’t behave or speak the way he expected, he was trying to break me by any means, like a child who only felt secure when things went their way.
My expression as I looked at the king was difficult to define in a single word. At that moment, I simply thought that even a king who appeared so immense and terrifying must have his own deep wound he could not easily accept, and the tightly coiled feelings in my heart dispersed like a mist.
“From now on, I will come to find you every night and get you drunk, so you won’t even think about wanting to go back.”
“...”
"However, if you want to get pregnant, tell me anytime. I will personally hold you."
The king said those words, then deliberately brought the drink to his lips again and kissed me. This time, it wasn’t just our lips that touched. His tongue suddenly slipped in, and we shared the bitter, harsh taste of the liquor together. Our tongues tangled and explored each other until the taste of liquor vanished. When we finally pulled apart, the king relentlessly made me drink again.
One cup.
Two cups.
Three cups.
Even with Kyuhyun, I had never kissed this much in such a short time.
With every kiss, my thoughts faded away, and my body grew limp. Eventually, even my hands, which had tensed whenever the king’s lips touched mine, relaxed and gently settled onto the floor. My body felt as heavy as a rock, probably because I’d drunk on an empty stomach and the liquor was hitting me faster.
Clack!
The king set down the empty bottle and looked down at my intoxicated self. His gaze, which had merely observed before, shifted as his hand reached out to loosen my jeogori, and I no longer had the strength to stop him. The fabric slipped off with a soft rustle, and the tightly bound chest under the sokchima rose into view, curved and pronounced.
His fingers traced and caressed the prominent curve of my breast, passed over my nipple, then moved down to my slender waist and finally skimmed over my navel in sequence.
Unable to steady my body from the liquor, I looked at him hazily. The king met my gaze, as if waiting for me to say something.
If what he meant was that I had to bear his child to avoid drinking, then I’d rather drink bottle after bottle until I lost consciousness. Even without saying it aloud, that truth was fully revealed in my drunken expression, which was impossible to hide, and it showed clearly in my eyes, too.
Rustle.
The king’s hand, which had been touching my body, fell away. Then, leaving me in my drunken state, he rose to his feet.
It might be an offence, but my body felt too heavy to move. As I lay there looking up at him, he turned away, having casually draped on just the gonryongpo [1] from the clothes he had taken off.
Just before leaving, he spoke softly with his back to me.
“I will return at this hour tomorrow. I wonder how long your desire to go back will continue to dominate your mind, along with that stubbornness of yours.”
“...”
“It took me a full year, but maybe it will take you less.”
Translator's Corner:
[1] The gonryongpo (곤룡포), also known as the 'dragon robe,' is worn by the reigning king and the grand (crown) prince. Source: https://en.namu.wiki/w/%EA%B3%A4%EB%A3%A1%ED%8F%AC
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