Page 50 of Damian & Jun: Episodes 1-4
Jun looked toward the coffee bar. Promising. At least it wasn’t a chain and there were actual beans in the grinders. It didn’t look closed down yet. They were probably used to people coming and going from all kinds of time zones and commitments. “Please.”
She chuckled, shrugged off her coat and handed it to him, then strode toward the counter. Jun took another look around the room. To the side, protected from view of the windows by a wood screen and some indoor trees, was a collection of couches and chairs across from an electric fireplace.
He dropped onto the leather coach diagonal to the fireplace. Mi Hi came trotting back. “Message for you.” She thrust her phone at him.
It was from Damian.
Jun: He looked around. Was he not where he was supposed to be?
Damian texted back at once.
Ugh. No. Just no. It was one thing to know that Damian had a dom and a lover, but to meet them, dressed in a skirt, without Damian around?
There was a slight pause on Damian’s end.
Great. Just great. Damian was not giving this up. Jun’s cheeks burned. Damian had always been open-minded, but who was to say that his boss/dom/lover was the same. It was already ridiculous that they’d both flown around the world just because he was in trouble. This might be a step too far. He wasn’t a white knight riding in to save a K-pop star. He was coming in for Jun. Just Jun. His music career had crashed and burned the moment he had jumped out that window. He was a mess, a legal nightmare, a homeless man with no job in his twenties with no family. A man who was not even dressed like a man.
Jun snapped a picture of himself and sent it.
Damian was Damian, though. He wrote back at once.
Jun blinked down at the screen, finger hovering over the send button. Wearing women’s clothes did not make him uncomfortable. But he wasn’t an idiot. He knew what other people would think of it. And the last thing he wanted to do was mess anything up for one of the people who had been kindest to him in his life.
He erased what he typed and replaced it with and sent it. He stared at the screen some more, chewed on his lip. How honest should he be? How smart was Damian? He’d always been so in tune about everything, so thoughtful when it was just the two of them, but maybe that was them. How good was Damian at reading other people?
He added:
Damian’s reply came a beat later, like the man had typed without thinking.
Gender-fluid? He wasn’t gender-fluid. Hopefully that wasn’t something Damian wanted. Because he was man, all man, no matter how nice the tights felt or how good the skirt looked.
Taking a risk, he shot back two emojis, followed by There, that was mostly honest. Without Damian right in front of him, he didn’t know how to be more honest without typing up a book full of questions.
Damian shot back a reply.
Goddam, Damian was in protector mode. Jun huffed, typing back:
He was just going to have to see this through, then. It wasn’t like he hadn’t met important or powerful people before, but Richard Reevesworth was in a very small class of his own. Meeting him was like meeting the head of a chaebol family or a high-ranking government official. Jun rubbed his palm on his thigh. Fuck. Somehow, with distance and not having access to the internet, he’d been able to mostly ignore who Damian slept with when he wasn’t with him; well, not only slept with but worked for. Technically consulted for, but really, he worked for Richard.
Somehow, meeting Richard felt more intimate in terms of being in a relationship with Damian than sleeping with the man. Well, maybe not more intimate but less controlled, less…fantasy and more…real. No one but the two of them could see what happened in those rare, secret hours they snatched in hotel rooms late at night or in the early, early hours of the morning when Damian’s schedule aligned with his. But this…this was meeting the family, more than meeting the family.
He doesn’t know me well enough for this. What is he going to want in return? There’s nothing I can give him that can compare. This is too much. Maybe if it had just been Damian, but Richard Reevesworth, too? Damian made sense, not much sense, but some sense. They had spent time together, small bits of time, but important time. But Jun had never given Richard Reevesworth anything.
Richard Reevesworth walked into the lobby, eyes scanning the space. He was tall and lean in a way that was still broad. Dark hair, strong jaw, clean-cut features. He was one of those people who actually looked like their photographs. Behind him followed two bodyguards, one who looked Swedish and one who looked Samoan, maybe—it was possible the man was some mix of African and Asian as well—and a diminutive Korean woman with an e-tablet in her hand.
Richard’s eyes slid over Jun, paused for a moment, then moved on. The skin on Jun’s arms and legs prickled. Fuck.
Fuck. Fuck!
There was no way Richard Reevesworth hadn’t known who he was. He’d sent Damian a picture, and Richard’s eyes hadn’t paused on anyone else.
The business tycoon walked smoothly to a couch across the room and sat, leaning back. The Korean lady with him went off toward the counter, and his two bodyguards took up inconspicuous positions nearby.
The urge to put his head in his hands and groan was almost overwhelming. He couldn’t do this. Every nerve in his body was screaming. He should run. Run now, and run far. Find some place rural and small and backward, without technology, and just dig ditches or something for twenty years until the world forgot Gang Junseo existed. He was just running away from one powerful man to an even more powerful man. If Damian wasn’t even this man’s primary lover, if there were other men in Richard’s life, if Damian, gorgeous, talented, educated, bilingual Damian with his multiple advanced degrees, wasn’t enough for Richard, then what was he going to require of Jun to allow him to be in his orbit?
Bak had wanted Jun flat on his back for some old creep and on stage for the world, performing on command. Would Richard want something worse? Or would he give Jun time to prove his worth in some new way, like Damian had?
Jun swallowed up-churned stomach acid. He should find out. Now. Before Damian got there. Damian seemed to think Richard Reevesworth was some sort of caring, giving example of moral rectitude. And maybe Damian was valuable enough that Richard Reevesworth kept his claws sheathed around him. But Jun needed to know for himself. How would Reevesworth treat him when Damian wasn’t around to impress? If he was like Bak and so many others, he said one thing to those he wanted to keep close and another to those he only cared to intimidate.
