Knee Marks
The moment she sat down, all four square marks on her buttocks throbbed at once.
It was Thursday morning, Ha-yoon's office on the twenty-second floor of Tae Yul. She swallowed and perched herself angled toward the front edge of the chair. In the bathroom mirror that morning, her buttocks had carried overlapping red marks in the exact shape of the leather.
"What happened to your knees?"
Eun-bi pushed through the glass door and was setting a file folder on the desk when she stopped to ask. Through the sheer nude stockings, the red marks on both knees showed plainly where they had slid out beside the desk under her angled sit. They were the marks left by the kennel corridor's painted floor and the training room's rubber mat.
"Yoga."
"You do yoga? Since when?"
"Since this week."
"You do yoga with your knees?"
"A lot of the poses are done on your knees."
Eun-bi looked down at her knees once more and left smiling. Ha-yoon drew the hem of her skirt down over them. When she pressed her knees together beneath the desk, the marks under the stockings dragged against each other and stung. Shift her hips even slightly on the chair, and the square marks compressed, reviving the smell of the training room rubber at the tip of her nose.
In the afternoon conference room, Yoon Tae-seok held up Ha-yoon's review memo.
"Everyone read Attorney Seo's memo at least once. This is what a review looks like."
Applause broke out around the table. Ha-yoon bowed her head to receive it.
Yoon Tae-seok set the memo down on the table and tipped his chin toward Ha-yoon.
"Attorney Seo, a few words."
"The other side's due diligence materials were well organized."
A few people laughed. While Yoon Tae-seok clicked his tongue and moved on to the next agenda item, all Ha-yoon felt was how empty her neck was. A bare throat — no necklace, no choker, nothing on it.
Pretending to prop her chin on her hand, she pressed two fingers to her neck. Exactly the width that had fit between the collar and her skin last night. The bare skin was smooth; all her fingertips found was her pulse.
At ten that night, in the Yeonhui-dong living room, only the floor lamp beside the sofa was on.
Jae-hyuk had said little all evening. Even after finishing the dishes, he spent a long while in the kitchen opening and closing the cabinet doors. Ha-yoon sat on the sofa with her knees drawn up, listening to the dishes clink against each other.
Jae-hyuk came out of the kitchen carrying a stainless steel bowl — the wide, shallow one they used for tossing salad. He had filled it with water right to the brim, and with every step he walked looking down at the water.
He folded a dish towel, laid it in the middle of the rug, and set the bowl on top. The towel was there to keep the rug from getting wet. Ha-yoon, seated on the sofa, stared at it for a long time.
"This was the only bowl in the house big enough."
Jae-hyuk said it as though offering an excuse, then nudged the towel's edge square with his fingertip.
"I'll try it too."
Jae-hyuk stood beside the bowl and looked at her. Even with the words out, the next ones took a long time coming. He rubbed the side seam of his trousers with his thumb.
"...Get down."
The hesitation reached her before the command did. At that single word, dropped a beat late, Ha-yoon's cunt began to wet.
"Yes."
Ha-yoon stood and stripped off her loungewear. She pushed the long pants she'd worn to hide her knees down to her ankles and stepped out of them, then peeled off her T-shirt, her bra, her panties, laying each on the sofa in turn. As her naked body came into the lamplight, Jae-hyuk's eyes traveled past the fringe of her damp pubic hair and stopped on her knees.
Ha-yoon knelt on the rug and planted her palms. The soft pile brushed over the marks on her knees. When she spread them to shoulder width, her cunt opened between her thighs and met the living room air. It was a softer floor than the kennel's rubber mat — and that was exactly what left it somehow wanting.
The bowl sat between her hands. On the wide, shallow water, the lamplight and Ha-yoon's face wavered together. The kennel's bowl had been narrower and deeper; this was the one Jae-hyuk tossed salad in every weekend. Even with the difference nearly comical, the insides of her thighs were already slick.
She lowered her face to the bowl until her elbows met the rug. Her hips rose of their own accord, and through her parted thighs the living room air touched her wet folds, cool. Without pursing her lips, Ha-yoon let her tongue hang loose from the start and scooped up the water.
The face reflected on the water broke apart at the tip of her tongue. Her heavy breasts hung and swayed between her bent elbows, their tips grazing the rug's pile. In the quiet living room, the sound of her tongue lapping water carried, distinct.
"With your tongue."
Jae-hyuk's words came only after her tongue had already carried up water twice. Without a word, Ha-yoon lapped once more. The water beading at the tip of her chin dripped back into the bowl.
"...Your hips. Higher."
It was what Su-rin used to say on the mat on Saturdays. From Jae-hyuk's mouth, it sounded like a plea. Ha-yoon bowed her waist and lifted her hips higher, her spread cunt raised further into the open.
Behind her came the sound of Jae-hyuk's footsteps circling around. The rug gave under his weight as he knelt behind her. His knees touched the insides of her spread ones. A large palm settled on her buttock — and simply stopped.
The four square marks from the morning mirror would still be reddish. Jae-hyuk's palm didn't move on them for a long while.
At last a single fingertip began to trace the marks' edges, circling the square. It was as if he were counting over by hand what he had seen from the bench. When the pencil-callused finger skimmed the fevered flesh, the throb ran down the crease of her buttocks and spread toward her clit.
Jae-hyuk asked nothing. He pulled one cheek wide with one hand and pushed two fingers of the other into her cunt. They went straight in to the second knuckle.
"Drink."
Ha-yoon dipped her tongue again. Each time it scooped up water, the two fingers moved in and out of her cunt. The slap of her tongue on the water and the wet churn of the fingers stirring her took turns sounding through the room.
Jae-hyuk tilted his fingertips inside her toward her belly. The moment one spot of her front wall was scraped, Ha-yoon's chin struck the bowl's rim. The overflow ran down the bowl's side and soaked into the towel beneath.
His fingers quickened. Each time they drew out, the wet sound grew louder. When Ha-yoon swallowed the water and pushed her hips back, the two fingers drove in to the root, their knuckles bearing down on her folds.
"...You have to drink it all."
The words drink it all came out smaller than the first Drink. The end of the sentence blurred, and a short breath leaked out behind her. Laughter.
Ha-yoon stopped, tongue still dipped in the water. Through his fingers she felt him struggling to swallow it down. Inside her cunt, the two fingers trembled finely.
"Sorry. No, it's just..."
Jae-hyuk couldn't get the rest out. To him, perhaps, the command coming out of his own mouth had sounded like a line from a play. It was the words the Owner had used in the kennel corridor last night, telling her to drink, carried over with only the polite ending shaved off.
To Ha-yoon, that laughter was contemptible. The Owner who had said those words had not laughed. And yet the fingers shaking with held-back laughter were still inside her cunt, and Ha-yoon wanted to take this man into her arms entire — trembling fingers and all.
She set her stalled tongue moving again. So he wouldn't feel too foolish, she made a point of lapping the water up louder. Inside her, the fingers began to move again in time with the sound.
Jae-hyuk drew his fingers out. Shuffling around on his knees to her front, he knelt on the far side of the bowl and lifted Ha-yoon's chin with fingers wet from her arousal.
Straightening her arms, she raised her upper body. The water on her chin and her own wetness slid slickly beneath his fingers. Tilting her head a little, Ha-yoon licked the fingers cupping her chin. It tasted of her own cunt.
Jae-hyuk's breath stopped. Behind his glasses, he was looking straight into her face.
"Ha-yoon."
She remembered what the Owner had said — that when you speak a person's name, they return to being a person. Like a man who had never heard it, Jae-hyuk said her name once more and bent over the bowl.
His lips found hers. The frames of his glasses pressed into her cheekbone. He didn't take the glasses off, and he didn't pull his lips away. The hand at her chin slid down to catch her hanging breast, and the water in the bowl swayed between Ha-yoon's hands and Jae-hyuk's knees.
His tongue parted her lips. The taste of tap water still lingered in her mouth. He kissed her a long time, as though licking that taste up, and Ha-yoon trapped the invading tongue between her lips and sucked.
She lifted one hand from the rug and pushed it into the waistband of his lounge pants. His cock caught hot against her palm. Hard. The tip of the glans was already wet, slicking her palm.
Having leaked laughter and botched the imitation, Jae-hyuk's cock nonetheless stood stiff and full inside his pants. Without breaking the kiss, Ha-yoon stroked that column from root to tip. His breath broke into her mouth. When he pushed his hips into her hand, the cock swelled thicker in her palm.
Jae-hyuk whispered without pulling his lips away.
"Should we move to the sofa?"
He rose first and held out a hand. Without taking it, Ha-yoon nudged the bowl aside and crawled on all fours to the sofa. The insides of her thighs, wet with arousal, slid against each other. A beat late, the sound of his bare feet followed behind her.
Ha-yoon climbed onto the sofa and turned around. Lying back, she felt the armrest meet the back of her head. The lamp stood just beyond it, at her head.
Jae-hyuk pushed his pants and underwear down together and stepped out of them at the ankles. His freed cock stood angled up against his belly. He climbed up on his knees and settled between her legs, lifting her ankles one at a time over his shoulders.
With her legs over his shoulders, her hips lifted off the sofa. From her cunt, spread wide toward him, arousal ran down the crease of her buttocks. Jae-hyuk gripped his cock, dragged the glans once along her folds, set it at her entrance, and pushed in.
Into her folded body, his cock filled her to the root. Her ankles swayed above his shoulders. For the first few strokes Jae-hyuk moved carefully, in the rhythm he had always kept.
"Are you okay?"
It was a question she had heard for five years. Instead of answering, Ha-yoon seized the collar of his T-shirt and dragged him down. As he leaned in, the base of his cock pressed flush to her wet folds, and her knees — ankles hooked over his shoulders — came up beside his cheeks.
Jae-hyuk turned his head and pressed his lips to the marks on that knee. Fainter than in the morning, but still red. Ha-yoon hated that kiss. Yet for as long as his lips stayed there, the cock buried in her cunt felt tighter, fuller.
After a few strokes, Jae-hyuk stopped with his cock half-buried. His glasses had slipped a little down the bridge of his nose. Looking down at her, he spoke.
"When the boss took your leash... I hated it. But your face—"
He didn't add the rest. He looked down at her face for a moment, drew back until only the glans still caught, then slammed in hard. The force that had never once arrived, no matter how she urged him on, came this time before she could urge at all.
Pressing her heels into his back, Ha-yoon drew his cock deep into her cunt and looked up at him. On the face looking down at her there was not a trace of the laughter that had leaked out of him on the rug.
His cock struck the end of her. Ha-yoon's back arched off the sofa. Keeping that same force, Jae-hyuk gripped the ankles hooked over his shoulders and drove into her with his whole weight behind it, until her knees pressed against her breasts.
This was a house where she was allowed to speak. Harder — don't stop. The words she always used with him rose to her throat and stopped there. Mouth open, Ha-yoon let out only moans and slid one hand down to rub her clit.
Jae-hyuk gathered both her ankles together over his left shoulder and wrapped his left arm around her legs. With her thighs pressed together her cunt tightened, and with every stroke his cock dragged her swollen folds in with it. A low groan tore from deep in his throat.
Over her gathered legs, Jae-hyuk looked down at her. Without slowing his hips, he asked.
"How far did Su-rin touch you?"
Looking up into his eyes, Ha-yoon answered in the gaps between thrusts.
"She didn't put anything inside. She spread my cunt with two fingers and, scooping up my arousal with her middle finger, rubbed it over my clit."
Jae-hyuk's eyes, behind the glasses slipping down his nose, were fixed on her mouth. The hips moving in and out of her sped up. Not avoiding those eyes, Ha-yoon went on.
"I came from just that. With my forehead pressed to the mat."
Jae-hyuk drew his hips far back and thrust in harder still. When their pubic bones met, her folds were pressed and parted, and the arousal running down them soaked into the sofa's fabric.
His free right hand pinched Ha-yoon's nipple. When she drew in a sharp breath, the fingers loosened at once.
"Can I squeeze harder?"
Instead of answering, Ha-yoon covered the back of that hand with her free one and pressed down hard. Jae-hyuk squeezed her nipple only as hard as she pressed.
Ha-yoon thought she knew what kind of face he had made when the words died. The face of a man who had nodded the instant the leash passed into the Owner's palm and hadn't managed to take it back. The sound of cock striking cunt piled up fast in the living room.
With every thrust the crown of her head pressed into the armrest. Ha-yoon took both hands off her clit and the back of his hand, reached above her head, and braced them on the armrest. Once she braced, her body stopped being shoved away. She took each driving stroke full on, and his pubic bone ground down on her clit.
His breathing turned rough. The cock pulling out stroked the inside of her in reverse. Glasses slipping, Jae-hyuk never took his eyes off her face. He fucked her staring straight into the face the Owner had never once looked at in the kennel — a look that was his alone.
The sofa legs scraped inch by inch across the floorboards, creaking. Her knee, pressed beside his cheek, grew slick with his sweat.
Ha-yoon's toes curled beyond his shoulders. The depths of her cunt tingled and surged along each driving stroke, and strength gathered in the hands braced on the armrest. She pushed off it, throwing her own body back onto him. With his cock buried deep, Ha-yoon came.
Through the length of her climax she clenched around him, holding his cock as it tried to slip out, all the way to the end. Her hips bucked all on their own, and both legs shook above his shoulders. The sound she used to swallow into the mat, forehead down, in the kennel — this time Ha-yoon let it ring out into the living room.
Jae-hyuk's hand left her nipple, and both his arms wrapped around her gathered legs. He hammered in deep one last time and held his breath. Each time his cock pulsed inside her, something hot filled her depths.
When he finished, Jae-hyuk drew out at once and lowered her legs from his shoulders. Both legs sank limply onto the sofa's fabric.
He perched on the edge of the sofa and caught his breath. He stared for a long while at the palm that had gripped her ankles, then used that hand to push his slipped glasses back up.
He didn't reach for tissues. He pulled over the blanket draped across the sofa's back and laid it over Ha-yoon's belly. Beneath it her thighs were still trembling, and from her spread cunt his semen seeped out slowly.
Jae-hyuk's hand closed over the top of her foot where it emerged from the blanket's edge. That tenderness made something twist in Ha-yoon's gut. And still she didn't pull her foot away — she pressed the top of it deeper into his palm.
With the back of her head still against the armrest, Ha-yoon turned her face.
The bowl was still there, exactly where it had been. The lamplight trembled on the water.
Slipping a hand under the blanket, she stroked her knee. Over the faded marks, the spot where Jae-hyuk's lips had touched minutes ago was still damp.
He's a good man. And yet—
The thought stopped there. Jae-hyuk was getting down from the sofa, lifting the bowl, dish towel and all.
Cradling the bowl in both hands so the water wouldn't spill, he turned toward the kitchen. His steps were headed for the sink.
"Leave it."
Jae-hyuk stopped. When he turned, the lamplight caught in his lenses. He stood holding the bowl for a long moment, then bent his knees and set it back down on the rug.
In the middle of the rug, on the folded towel, the half-remaining water swayed once and went still.