The Lord of the Castle
After a short, light kiss from Hyerin, who had come as far as the door to see him off, the man turned his steps toward the beach. It wasn't long before the shore opened in front of him—not one of the newest hot spots, but a beach plenty of people still loved and kept coming back to. Hands shoved into both pockets, he took a slow look around.
Peak season hadn't started yet, and the crowd was thin. He wandered between the parasols, scanning his surroundings with idle indifference. College kids who looked as if they'd come for a retreat. Couples running with the sand for a backdrop.
Among all that ordinary scenery, his gaze snagged on one presence that stood out with a jarring force. Other eyes kept sliding that way, but no one dared approach, as if some invisible barrier had been drawn around her. At the center of it lay a woman face-down, a dazzling fall of blonde spilled across her back. His curious gaze traveled over her.
She looked less as if she belonged on this beach than as if she had been dropped onto some private stretch of the Mediterranean.
Hair so pale it was nearly white glittered silver beneath the sun and fell in long waves to the middle of her back, the ends stirring in the sea breeze with a few grains of golden sand caught in them. Skin that hadn't taken so much as a tan was pale and smooth as unfired porcelain. Whenever the fierce sunlight struck that white flesh and bounced back, even the air around her seemed to blanch.
Calling her body merely tall didn't begin to cover it.
The legs stretched long across the sand were sharp as lines drawn with a ruler, and the curve from her narrow waist out to her hips rose at a pitch steep enough to steal the breath.
What seized the eye most of all were those precarious scraps of cloth.
A pure-white micro bikini.
The all-white micro triangle top hung from a single thin string running from neck to back, barely supporting a weight that looked ready to spill. Because she was lying prone, the lush swell of her breasts, pressed by gravity, overflowed the strings and left anyone looking a little dizzy at how precarious it all seemed.
The thin cord sunk deep along the cleft of her ass didn't so much cover that firm rear as frame it, the better to emphasize it. White skin, white cloth, and over them a thin gold anklet and rings that flashed and glittered in the sun.
From the way she lay, the flesh of her ass poured lushly over the string, and the line between sunlit white skin and that thin cord stood out with extreme clarity.
A large pair of black cat-eye sunglasses sat upside down across her face. A thin gold chain circled one ankle, and two gold rings glinted on her toes. No oil had been rubbed into her back yet, so even the fine down showed in the sunlight, and her nails were a clean nude with only the tips done in a white French manicure. A single thin gold ring sat on one finger.
Most of the Koreans around her wore one-pieces or rash guards, but she alone flaunted the exposure and the palette of someone who had just stepped out of a high-end European resort. Even from a distance you could catch the whisper—whoa, she's a foreigner, right? Men nearby stole glances, only to whip their eyes away the moment she turned her head a fraction, crushed by that overwhelming presence, or take a smack across the back from the girlfriend they'd come with.
The man walked up beside her head and cast his shadow over her.
Darkness settled across the white back that had allowed no one else to trespass.
She turned her head slowly. With an elegant flick of her hand she lowered the sunglasses perched on the tip of her nose, and her eyes were revealed.
A deep blue-gray.
Ice-like irises that stayed cool even under the hot summer sun looked up at him.
"Hi… looking for something?"
A low, faintly husky British accent rode in on the wind. He answered smoothly.
"Yeah. I was looking for you."
"Huh. Do I have to say it in Korean? For you?"
"So you do understand Korean. Of course you answer me in Korean. For my sake."
As he said it, he stretched his legs out and sat down beside her with an ease that bordered on shameless. Instead of frowning, she let out a short laugh. With the tip of her foot she nudged her designer beach bag and sent it skidding in front of him.
His eyes met hers. To the man tilting his head, she answered with a smile.
"If you want to handle me… show me what you've got. Start with this."
Where her chin indicated, a bottle of golden suntan oil was half poking out.
The attitude of someone ordering around a private masseur. Even that arrogance was alluring. He felt a smile forming before he could stop it, wiped it away at once, and picked up the bottle with a rather serious face.
"Been a while since I had to show what I can do. In Korea, when someone tells you to use the oil, sometimes they don't mean just on the outside. Sometimes they mean inside."
"Inside? Like… lubricant?"
She lifted a brow a fraction and huffed a laugh. She'd caught his meaning, and the leisure in her face said she wasn't flustered in the least. He stayed just as unhurried.
"Do you have what it takes?"
She slid the sunglasses down to the tip of her nose and openly raked her eyes over his groin. A smile edged with scorn hung at her mouth—a provocation. Could an East Asian man really dare satisfy her?
"Who knows. Shall we find out?"
He uncapped the oil and poured a generous pool into his palm. The slick liquid ran between his fingers.
He wasn't thrown. If anything, as if the challenge pleased him, he brought the oiled hand to her shoulder. The gold in his palm warmed quickly against body heat until it was lukewarm.
First he touched a fingertip to her left shoulder blade. The moment warm oil met cool skin, her shoulder gave the faintest flinch. Amused, he lowered his whole palm—slowly, very slowly.
A wet sound whispered over the sand.
His palm began to glide down the center of her back. Wherever the oil touched, white skin took on a golden sheen and shone. He deliberately kept the strength out of his fingertips, brushing her as if with a feather, then without warning pressed down with his whole palm and released, over and over. Each time, her back rose—small, but unmistakable.
"Umm…"
The first breath to slip from her mouth. She was still pretending at leisure, but the end of it trembled. He didn't miss it. He poured more oil into his hand and this time followed the line of her waist downward, from that narrow waist all the way to the curve of her ass where it suddenly rose.
Every time his palm rode that S-line down, the flesh of her ass, wet with oil, glittered and spilled over the bikini string thin as thread.
He deliberately nudged the string up a little. It sank deep into the cleft, and the white flesh stood out all the more. When oil seeped into that space, her waist lifted slightly and fell.
"Careful. You wouldn't want it to spill."
He whispered it low.
"Cheeky."
She snorted and turned her head a little to the side. She couldn't hide the smile that spread at her mouth.
Now he used both hands in earnest. One traveled up along her spine and kneaded the nape of her neck; the other went down the inside of her thigh, all the way behind the knee, wrapping the whole long, straight leg. When the oil ran to her ankle, the gold anklet flashed with a slippery light.
Her breathing grew rougher. Breath that had at first escaped only through her nose now slipped between her lips. The sunglasses had already slid below the tip of her nose, and those blue-gray eyes, half-lidded, were looking up at him. He slipped his fingers just under her side, where the bikini top's string barely clung, gave the string a little tug, and let it go. As he did, he whispered.
"Can I turn you over now?"
Instead of answering, she slowly rolled. The moment the body that had been face-down flipped, her full breasts swayed once with gravity and settled back into place. The micro bikini top was now truly hanging on by a single string thin as thread. She raised her arms and stretched them languidly above her head. Her chest rose higher; her waist dipped deeper. The front of her, still only lightly oiled, blazed in the sunlight.
"Continue."
She said it low, in the tone of a command. The voice was still husky, but a very small tremor rode the end of it. Smiling, he poured more oil into his hand and rubbed it slowly between both palms. Even the sound of the golden liquid slicking and dripping between his fingers mixed with the waves and came through intimate and low. She looked up at him past the sunglasses without a word.
"So what's your name?"
"Why should I tell you?"
"In Korea there's a saying—that you can build the Great Wall in a single night. We're about to raise that enormous wall, so shouldn't I at least know the name of the lord of the castle?"
"Rahel."
"Rahel… pretty name."
He rolled the name around in his mouth. Not the commonplace Rachel.
Like the noble woman in the Bible for whom Jacob gave fourteen years—or like some aristocrat living in an old European castle. From the name itself spilled an old-fashioned, weighty grace.
He gave Rahel a warm smile, then first set only his fingertips lightly on her collarbone. A drop of oil warmed by his body heat slid slowly down into the center of the valley between her breasts.
In that instant her chest rose—very small, but unmistakable.
"Hah…"
A short, sharp breath leaked between her lips.
The sunglasses had now dropped all the way to her chin, and her half-lidded blue-gray eyes were fixed on him. The provocation was still there, but a wavering heat had begun to seep into the edge of her gaze.
He lifted one corner of his mouth and slowly lowered his palm.
Oil ran from her collarbone down the white skin and spread along the upper curve of her breasts. Once that skin was dyed gold, the gloss reflecting the sunlight looked as if a thin silk had been laid over her.
He deliberately brushed her with only the edge of his palm.
He skimmed the long line beside her breast, almost—only almost—catching the thread-thin string of the micro bikini. Each time the string shifted up a little and more of that lush flesh showed, her breath fell a beat behind.
"The string's in the way. Isn't it?"
"…go on…"
When he murmured it low, Rahel answered quietly. A faintly sweet scent seemed to rise from her mouth.
He pinched the top's string between thumb and forefinger and slowly pushed it aside.
The moment her white breasts were fully bared, the small of her back lifted and dropped. Her pink nipples were already stiff and hard, glittering wet with sunlight and oil.
He let one more drop fall. This time, precisely onto her left nipple.
"Ah…!"
For the first time she made a real sound.
A short, sharp moan. The noise that burst from the base of her throat was fierce enough to swallow even the waves around them.
Only then did he set his whole palm down.
When the warm palm closed over her breast, the lush flesh spilled softly between his fingers. He rubbed in slow, sure circles. Wherever the oil touched, her skin shone gold, and the spring and heat under his palm grew hotter and hotter.
His right hand kept kneading her breast. His left moved down onto her stomach.
Every time his palm slid along that narrow belly, her abdomen trembled in small spasms. Oil pooled above her navel, then slowly ran downward and seeped along the edge of the V of her bikini.
"All right. Now for the part that really matters. I think you'll be plenty satisfied."
As he whispered, pushing one knee between her legs, Rahel's lower belly quivered in fine tremors. At once he pressed his thumb into the V of her bikini bottoms and dragged them down.
Between white skin and golden oil, the soft mound of her pussy, which had been hiding shyly, peeked out. Still covered in downy golden fuzz, the place had already flushed peach-pink from the heat. He loaded his fingertips with oil again and brushed the hottest, most sensitive bud as if only in passing.
"Hngh…!"
Rahel's waist jerked up as if she'd been shocked.
She reflexively tried to close her legs, but his knee barred them hard. He didn't waste the opening. He spread those long, sleek legs wide.
In the middle of the white beach, her secret place laid its pink bare under the sunlight.
He could feel the sidelong looks of vacationers passing by, but he paid them no mind and gripped the insides of her thighs with both hands. Every time his palms slid from the root of her thigh to the knee and back up, Rahel's breathing turned rough as an animal's. The heat leaking from between her legs seemed ready to scorch the back of his hand.
At last he used his whole palm and rubbed over her deep spring as if to take it. The moment oil mixed with her own wetness and the slick, sticky sound struck his ear—
"Ah… th-there…!"
Rahel's voice cracked. The haughty English was gone. What remained was breathless Korean, nothing but instinct. He smiled, satisfied, and slowly lowered his head.
"Well? Manageable enough, isn't it? Only now you're talking to me in Korean?"
Instead of answering, Rahel bit her trembling lips and nodded—slowly, but with certainty. Under the sunlight, the moment her gold-glossed body shuddered to the rhythm of his hands, even the wind off the beach seemed to hold its breath and go still.