Forbidden: Epilogue
Title: Forbidden
Pairing: YunJae
Rating: NC-17
Length: Part 13/13
Summary: Jae is concerned about the attention his sister is receiving from a dangerous man but he isn't in any position to take care of it himself so he turns to the king. However, the King, Jung Yunho, presents unforeseen complications...
Yunho didn’t come. Not the next week, the next month or even the month after that.
By the third month, Jae was convinced he was never coming. He was going stir-crazy, rattling around in the palace in Ruan. JiHye and TaeHun had left a week after their arrival, headed for his family’s house, so he’d only had the Queen for company ever since. She was blissfully happy, being among her people, especially being able to reconnect with her mother and younger brother, and giddily anticipating every stage of her pregnancy. Jae was honestly happy for her, she deserved that happiness after all she’d been through, but it was hard to show it sometimes when his own misery was growing and festering like an untreated wound.
He’d never thought he could possibly miss or long for someone the way he missed and longed for Yunho. His sister, yes, that was a given, but even when he’d thought she was dead…it wasn’t at all the same. His heart had hurt when he’d thought he’d lost JiHye and he’d mourned her but there was a dull ache, like something was missing, when he thought of YunHo. He knew where he was, wanted desperately to see him, to touch him, but he couldn’t. Yunho had written letters, at first, inquiring about their welfare and keeping them abreast of the state of things back home, but they were always impersonal and to the point. Jae understood. He would’ve liked Yunho to send something that would let him know he was thinking of him, some kind of sign or phrase only he would be able to interpret, but he knew he couldn’t take the chance, just in case his correspondence fell into the wrong hands. But sometimes he wished Yunho was a risk-taker and he felt bad for being that selfish but he needed something, anything, to let him know that he wasn’t alone. He needed to know that Yunho still…loved him.
It amazed him daily that Yunho’s love had come to mean so much to him when he’d been embarrassed by it at first, unwilling to accept a romantic, loving relationship between two men. He marveled at how much he’d changed and grown as a result.
“I can’t stay here any longer!” he suddenly announced.
He was in the sitting room with the Queen, watching as she knitted yet another outfit for the baby that wasn’t going to arrive for another six months.
She smiled but didn’t look up from her needlework. “Why don’t you go take a walk in the garden? That usually calms you down.”
Jae shook his head as he began to pace. “It won’t work this time. I need to get out of here.”
Hearing how serious he was by his tone of voice, she set her needles down and looked at him.
“Jaejoong-ah… We’ve talked about this already. You can’t leave. Until Yunho says differently, we have to assume it’s not safe yet.”
“What’s taking so long?” Jaejoong demanded. “In his last letter, he said things were coming along nicely and he expected everything to be settled soon. That was a month ago. We haven’t heard from him since. Do we even know if he’s alive? I should go check.”
The Queen sighed exasperatedly. “I’m sure if anything had happened to him, we’d have heard by now. He’s only a two day ride away, not on the other side of the world,” she said wryly. Sometimes dealing with Jaejoong’s emotional tantrums was tiring. She hoped Yunho would come for his lover soon, preferably before they started snapping at each other. Things between them were good right now, they could even be considered friends. She wanted it to stay that way.
“I have to get out of here,” he said again.
“There’s nowhere for you to go. This is the furthest you’ve ever been away from your home.”
“But not the only place,” he said, suddenly remembering.
He could go there…
The Queen’s wariness grew as his expression relaxed, a calmness settling about him. “What are you thinking?”
“There is somewhere I can go.”
“Jae…it’s not safe.”
“It is,” he insisted. “No one would find me there. No one knows about it, except Yunho.” Technically, it was untrue but none of Yunho’s personal guards would ever harm him.
“Jae…”
She knew a lost cause when she saw one. She could tell by the look on his face that he was determined. Sighing again, she hoped that Yunho would forgive her.
Three days had passed since his arrival at the cottage and he was going crazy again. He hadn’t seen a person or animal, except the horse he’d ridden on, since he’d been there. He didn’t know why he was surprised since no one ever went there except Yunho and if Yunho was too busy to come to Ruan to see him, chances are he hadn’t been making a lot of trips to his sanctuary lately either. For a moment, he regretted sending the guard the Queen had insisted accompany him away. Just for a moment. He knew that, in his current state, he was better off alone. He imagined he’d probably started to wear on the Queen’s nerves by the time he left. Besides, the guard would be returning for him in four days so they’d be reunited sooner than he’d be united with Yunho again, he was sure.
Throwing open the cabin door, he slowly started making his way down the short hill. It was a beautiful, sunny day. A slight breeze ruffled his loose hair. There was freedom in being stranded alone. He didn’t have to adhere to the overly strict social norms of their society, so he’d started taking a few liberties, his hair being one of them. When he got to the edge of the woods, he started towards the stream. He had the course memorized by now. He’d been there with Yunho on two occasions and every day, several times a day, since he’d moved into the cabin.
He was almost at the stream when he heard the sound of hooves thumping the earth. They were headed in his direction. Was someone coming to the stream?, he wondered. Had someone found out about Yunho’s cabin? Perhaps one of the guards sought its use for some reason. He blushed as he remembered what had happened there the second time and wondered if any of the guards, MinWoo and JunYoung perhaps, had used it as their secret getaway.
Curious to a fault, he quietly continued towards the stream, stopping to hide behind a tree every few feet. When he got to the edge of the stream, hiding behind the last tree, he saw a man kneeling beside the water, splashing his face while his horse drank next to him. He walked out slowly, quietly, until he was about five feet away from the man. He was just about to clear his throat when the man suddenly spun on his knee, locking eyes with Jae.
Jae’s eyes widened in disbelief.
“Yunho?”
At the sound of his name, the tension immediately drained out of Yunho. A smile was slowly spreading across his lips when he found himself knocked to the ground on his back by Jae’s slight body, his slender arms tightly wound around Yunho’s neck. Chuckling, he wrapped his arms around Jae and held him close, breathing in the unique scent that was simply Jae. He’d missed it, him, so much.
“I thought you weren’t coming,” Jae said, his words muffled as his face was pressed into Yunho’s neck.
“Of course I came. I’ve been going crazy without you. When I went to Ruan and you weren’t there, I was beside myself with anger and worry. When they told me you were here, I jumped on my horse and rode as quickly and as hard as I could.” His voice became stern. “You shouldn’t have left, Jae. Not until you’d heard from me.”
Jae pushed up, straddling Yunho’s hips as he glared down at him angrily. “And exactly how was I supposed to know when that would be? I’d already been waiting three months, was I supposed to wait three more? I was about to start bouncing off the walls, I had to get out.”
Yunho frowned, worry still evident in his eyes. “If anything had happened to you…”
Jae framed Yunho’s face with his small hands and leaned in until there was just a breath of space between them. “But nothing did.”
They gazed into each other’s eyes, both looking for and finding what had been missing in their lives for the past three months.
Jae closed the distance between them, pressing his lips to Yunho’s as he initiated a kiss for the first time since they’d become lovers.
Yunho was taken by surprise, pleasantly so. As much as he enjoyed leading Jae, introducing him to the wonders that awaited him as they continued to explore what existed between them, it felt good to not be in control for a change. As he felt Jae’s probing tongue at his lips, he parted them and sucked him in when he entered. Jae moaned into his mouth and he pulled him closer, his hand threading in Jae’s hair as he lost himself in the kiss.
It wasn’t long before things got heated, his mouth deviating from Jae’s to rain kisses down his neck to his collar bone, which was exposed as his robe was belted loosely.
He didn’t know what came over Jae but one minute he was considering rolling Jae onto his back and getting a taste of what he’d been missing for three months and the next, Jae was moving down his body, again surprising him as he took control. He watched him intently, watched as his robes were parted while Jae made his way down his body and when his trousers were lowered and Jae took his already hardened flesh into his hands and then his mouth, Yunho groaned so loudly that it echoed through the woods, sending the birds flying off in alarm.
Unsurprisingly, he didn’t last long. It had been so long since he’d been with Jae, and this was an entirely new experience for him, so only a few minutes passed before he felt the tightening in his sack that signalled his climax. He gently placed a hand on Jae’s head, trying to warn him to pull up and off, but Jae held fast, working his tongue almost expertly considering that it was his first time, and Yunho lost himself in the moist heat of Jae’s mouth.
He took a few minutes to collect himself, amazed at the self-satisfied smirk Jae wore as he licked his lips, before he grabbed Jae under his arms and flipped him.
“My turn.”
He made short work of removing Jae’s clothes until he was fully nude, then he made love to his body. First with his mouth, drawing out Jae’s cries and moans until he begged for release, then, afterwards, with his own body, as he joined them together for the first time in what felt like forever for them both. Yunho took his time, re-familiarizing himself with the tastes and textures of Jae’s lithe form. The slender frailty of it; the pale, smooth luminescence of his skin; the hot, tight, silken glide of his canal.
The most staggering part of it all, for Yunho, was the fact that Jae looked into his eyes the entire time. He held his gaze, his fingers gently brushing Yunho’s cheeks as he moved with him, fluidly, in the smooth rhythm he’d set. That was another first. Jae had always been too shy before, or too unwilling to acknowledge and accept the depth of Yunho’s feelings for him, so he’d always closed his eyes when they made love. But this time, even as his breath caught, even when Yunho felt Jae’s muscles tighten around his shaft as he orgasmed again, he never once broke eye-contact. Yunho felt the love he had for Jae double as he looked into his eyes and saw the same openly and honestly reflected back at him.
Jae’s fingers tips tenderly stroked Yunho’s bottom lip. “I love you,” he whispered.
Closing his eyes, Yunho buried himself deep one last time, and with Jae’s love declaration replaying in his head over and over, he set himself free.
“So…where do we go from here?” Jae asked.
His head rested on Yunho’s shoulder as he absently stroked his chest. They’d made love twice already and were taking a break, he assumed. The time they’d spent apart seemed to have awakened an insatiable hunger inside of Yunho, not entirely different, but definitely stronger, than the thirst for Jae he’d had before. Though he was sore, Jae couldn’t deny that he felt the same. As soon as Yunho touched him, fireworks exploded beneath his skin.
Yunho sighed, the hand that was stroking the fall of Jae’s hair tightening and pulling him closer.
“I don’t know. Things are under control, for now. I don’t see that changing any time soon but anything’s possible. For the sake of the child, the Queen will stay in Ruan for the rest of her pregnancy. As for you…”
“I want to come home,” Jae insisted.
Yunho smiled to himself. “I know… There’s no real reason that you can’t, except my own paranoia. Everyone who knows about your part in Minister Lee’s death is on our side and can be trusted to keep their silence. Whatever rumours, if any, that were spread about us have since died down. Everyone’s just happy that JiHye’s alive after what that ‘horrible Minister Lee’ did to her.”
Jae’s hand stilled at the reminder of what his sister had endured.
“I’m sure it must be hard for her at times, seeing the pity in other people’s eyes, but she’s a brave young woman and Taehun adores her. They seem to be doing very well, by the way.”
“I miss her,” Jae sighed.
“I know… That’s why, if you really want to, you can come back with me today.”
Jae jumped up, his excitement obvious. “Really?”
Yunho laughed and pulled him back down on top of him. “Yes. But you have to forgive me if I keep you close to me for a while.”
Jae cocked a brow. “How close?”
Yunho slid a hand to Jae’s smooth derriere, cupping it as he pressed Jae into his growing erection. “Very close.”
Jae blushed as he felt himself stir again. Forcing his desire down, he said, “Let’s go home.”
Yunho nodded. “We’ll go home. But first…” And sliding his hand to the back of Jae’s head, he brought his lover down for another kiss before rolling him onto his back and going for a third round.
Home, Jae thought. Such a small word with such great significance. For most of his life, he’d never considered the palace home. Now, it was. How quickly things change…
But when Yunho slid into him, filling him as his back arched and a cry escaped his lips, he realized he was already there. Because Yunho was home.
A/N: Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed your, um, stay? lol
Pairing: YunJae
Rating: NC-17
Length: Part 13/13
Summary: Jae is concerned about the attention his sister is receiving from a dangerous man but he isn't in any position to take care of it himself so he turns to the king. However, the King, Jung Yunho, presents unforeseen complications...
Yunho didn’t come. Not the next week, the next month or even the month after that.
By the third month, Jae was convinced he was never coming. He was going stir-crazy, rattling around in the palace in Ruan. JiHye and TaeHun had left a week after their arrival, headed for his family’s house, so he’d only had the Queen for company ever since. She was blissfully happy, being among her people, especially being able to reconnect with her mother and younger brother, and giddily anticipating every stage of her pregnancy. Jae was honestly happy for her, she deserved that happiness after all she’d been through, but it was hard to show it sometimes when his own misery was growing and festering like an untreated wound.
He’d never thought he could possibly miss or long for someone the way he missed and longed for Yunho. His sister, yes, that was a given, but even when he’d thought she was dead…it wasn’t at all the same. His heart had hurt when he’d thought he’d lost JiHye and he’d mourned her but there was a dull ache, like something was missing, when he thought of YunHo. He knew where he was, wanted desperately to see him, to touch him, but he couldn’t. Yunho had written letters, at first, inquiring about their welfare and keeping them abreast of the state of things back home, but they were always impersonal and to the point. Jae understood. He would’ve liked Yunho to send something that would let him know he was thinking of him, some kind of sign or phrase only he would be able to interpret, but he knew he couldn’t take the chance, just in case his correspondence fell into the wrong hands. But sometimes he wished Yunho was a risk-taker and he felt bad for being that selfish but he needed something, anything, to let him know that he wasn’t alone. He needed to know that Yunho still…loved him.
It amazed him daily that Yunho’s love had come to mean so much to him when he’d been embarrassed by it at first, unwilling to accept a romantic, loving relationship between two men. He marveled at how much he’d changed and grown as a result.
“I can’t stay here any longer!” he suddenly announced.
He was in the sitting room with the Queen, watching as she knitted yet another outfit for the baby that wasn’t going to arrive for another six months.
She smiled but didn’t look up from her needlework. “Why don’t you go take a walk in the garden? That usually calms you down.”
Jae shook his head as he began to pace. “It won’t work this time. I need to get out of here.”
Hearing how serious he was by his tone of voice, she set her needles down and looked at him.
“Jaejoong-ah… We’ve talked about this already. You can’t leave. Until Yunho says differently, we have to assume it’s not safe yet.”
“What’s taking so long?” Jaejoong demanded. “In his last letter, he said things were coming along nicely and he expected everything to be settled soon. That was a month ago. We haven’t heard from him since. Do we even know if he’s alive? I should go check.”
The Queen sighed exasperatedly. “I’m sure if anything had happened to him, we’d have heard by now. He’s only a two day ride away, not on the other side of the world,” she said wryly. Sometimes dealing with Jaejoong’s emotional tantrums was tiring. She hoped Yunho would come for his lover soon, preferably before they started snapping at each other. Things between them were good right now, they could even be considered friends. She wanted it to stay that way.
“I have to get out of here,” he said again.
“There’s nowhere for you to go. This is the furthest you’ve ever been away from your home.”
“But not the only place,” he said, suddenly remembering.
He could go there…
The Queen’s wariness grew as his expression relaxed, a calmness settling about him. “What are you thinking?”
“There is somewhere I can go.”
“Jae…it’s not safe.”
“It is,” he insisted. “No one would find me there. No one knows about it, except Yunho.” Technically, it was untrue but none of Yunho’s personal guards would ever harm him.
“Jae…”
She knew a lost cause when she saw one. She could tell by the look on his face that he was determined. Sighing again, she hoped that Yunho would forgive her.
Three days had passed since his arrival at the cottage and he was going crazy again. He hadn’t seen a person or animal, except the horse he’d ridden on, since he’d been there. He didn’t know why he was surprised since no one ever went there except Yunho and if Yunho was too busy to come to Ruan to see him, chances are he hadn’t been making a lot of trips to his sanctuary lately either. For a moment, he regretted sending the guard the Queen had insisted accompany him away. Just for a moment. He knew that, in his current state, he was better off alone. He imagined he’d probably started to wear on the Queen’s nerves by the time he left. Besides, the guard would be returning for him in four days so they’d be reunited sooner than he’d be united with Yunho again, he was sure.
Throwing open the cabin door, he slowly started making his way down the short hill. It was a beautiful, sunny day. A slight breeze ruffled his loose hair. There was freedom in being stranded alone. He didn’t have to adhere to the overly strict social norms of their society, so he’d started taking a few liberties, his hair being one of them. When he got to the edge of the woods, he started towards the stream. He had the course memorized by now. He’d been there with Yunho on two occasions and every day, several times a day, since he’d moved into the cabin.
He was almost at the stream when he heard the sound of hooves thumping the earth. They were headed in his direction. Was someone coming to the stream?, he wondered. Had someone found out about Yunho’s cabin? Perhaps one of the guards sought its use for some reason. He blushed as he remembered what had happened there the second time and wondered if any of the guards, MinWoo and JunYoung perhaps, had used it as their secret getaway.
Curious to a fault, he quietly continued towards the stream, stopping to hide behind a tree every few feet. When he got to the edge of the stream, hiding behind the last tree, he saw a man kneeling beside the water, splashing his face while his horse drank next to him. He walked out slowly, quietly, until he was about five feet away from the man. He was just about to clear his throat when the man suddenly spun on his knee, locking eyes with Jae.
Jae’s eyes widened in disbelief.
“Yunho?”
At the sound of his name, the tension immediately drained out of Yunho. A smile was slowly spreading across his lips when he found himself knocked to the ground on his back by Jae’s slight body, his slender arms tightly wound around Yunho’s neck. Chuckling, he wrapped his arms around Jae and held him close, breathing in the unique scent that was simply Jae. He’d missed it, him, so much.
“I thought you weren’t coming,” Jae said, his words muffled as his face was pressed into Yunho’s neck.
“Of course I came. I’ve been going crazy without you. When I went to Ruan and you weren’t there, I was beside myself with anger and worry. When they told me you were here, I jumped on my horse and rode as quickly and as hard as I could.” His voice became stern. “You shouldn’t have left, Jae. Not until you’d heard from me.”
Jae pushed up, straddling Yunho’s hips as he glared down at him angrily. “And exactly how was I supposed to know when that would be? I’d already been waiting three months, was I supposed to wait three more? I was about to start bouncing off the walls, I had to get out.”
Yunho frowned, worry still evident in his eyes. “If anything had happened to you…”
Jae framed Yunho’s face with his small hands and leaned in until there was just a breath of space between them. “But nothing did.”
They gazed into each other’s eyes, both looking for and finding what had been missing in their lives for the past three months.
Jae closed the distance between them, pressing his lips to Yunho’s as he initiated a kiss for the first time since they’d become lovers.
Yunho was taken by surprise, pleasantly so. As much as he enjoyed leading Jae, introducing him to the wonders that awaited him as they continued to explore what existed between them, it felt good to not be in control for a change. As he felt Jae’s probing tongue at his lips, he parted them and sucked him in when he entered. Jae moaned into his mouth and he pulled him closer, his hand threading in Jae’s hair as he lost himself in the kiss.
It wasn’t long before things got heated, his mouth deviating from Jae’s to rain kisses down his neck to his collar bone, which was exposed as his robe was belted loosely.
He didn’t know what came over Jae but one minute he was considering rolling Jae onto his back and getting a taste of what he’d been missing for three months and the next, Jae was moving down his body, again surprising him as he took control. He watched him intently, watched as his robes were parted while Jae made his way down his body and when his trousers were lowered and Jae took his already hardened flesh into his hands and then his mouth, Yunho groaned so loudly that it echoed through the woods, sending the birds flying off in alarm.
Unsurprisingly, he didn’t last long. It had been so long since he’d been with Jae, and this was an entirely new experience for him, so only a few minutes passed before he felt the tightening in his sack that signalled his climax. He gently placed a hand on Jae’s head, trying to warn him to pull up and off, but Jae held fast, working his tongue almost expertly considering that it was his first time, and Yunho lost himself in the moist heat of Jae’s mouth.
He took a few minutes to collect himself, amazed at the self-satisfied smirk Jae wore as he licked his lips, before he grabbed Jae under his arms and flipped him.
“My turn.”
He made short work of removing Jae’s clothes until he was fully nude, then he made love to his body. First with his mouth, drawing out Jae’s cries and moans until he begged for release, then, afterwards, with his own body, as he joined them together for the first time in what felt like forever for them both. Yunho took his time, re-familiarizing himself with the tastes and textures of Jae’s lithe form. The slender frailty of it; the pale, smooth luminescence of his skin; the hot, tight, silken glide of his canal.
The most staggering part of it all, for Yunho, was the fact that Jae looked into his eyes the entire time. He held his gaze, his fingers gently brushing Yunho’s cheeks as he moved with him, fluidly, in the smooth rhythm he’d set. That was another first. Jae had always been too shy before, or too unwilling to acknowledge and accept the depth of Yunho’s feelings for him, so he’d always closed his eyes when they made love. But this time, even as his breath caught, even when Yunho felt Jae’s muscles tighten around his shaft as he orgasmed again, he never once broke eye-contact. Yunho felt the love he had for Jae double as he looked into his eyes and saw the same openly and honestly reflected back at him.
Jae’s fingers tips tenderly stroked Yunho’s bottom lip. “I love you,” he whispered.
Closing his eyes, Yunho buried himself deep one last time, and with Jae’s love declaration replaying in his head over and over, he set himself free.
“So…where do we go from here?” Jae asked.
His head rested on Yunho’s shoulder as he absently stroked his chest. They’d made love twice already and were taking a break, he assumed. The time they’d spent apart seemed to have awakened an insatiable hunger inside of Yunho, not entirely different, but definitely stronger, than the thirst for Jae he’d had before. Though he was sore, Jae couldn’t deny that he felt the same. As soon as Yunho touched him, fireworks exploded beneath his skin.
Yunho sighed, the hand that was stroking the fall of Jae’s hair tightening and pulling him closer.
“I don’t know. Things are under control, for now. I don’t see that changing any time soon but anything’s possible. For the sake of the child, the Queen will stay in Ruan for the rest of her pregnancy. As for you…”
“I want to come home,” Jae insisted.
Yunho smiled to himself. “I know… There’s no real reason that you can’t, except my own paranoia. Everyone who knows about your part in Minister Lee’s death is on our side and can be trusted to keep their silence. Whatever rumours, if any, that were spread about us have since died down. Everyone’s just happy that JiHye’s alive after what that ‘horrible Minister Lee’ did to her.”
Jae’s hand stilled at the reminder of what his sister had endured.
“I’m sure it must be hard for her at times, seeing the pity in other people’s eyes, but she’s a brave young woman and Taehun adores her. They seem to be doing very well, by the way.”
“I miss her,” Jae sighed.
“I know… That’s why, if you really want to, you can come back with me today.”
Jae jumped up, his excitement obvious. “Really?”
Yunho laughed and pulled him back down on top of him. “Yes. But you have to forgive me if I keep you close to me for a while.”
Jae cocked a brow. “How close?”
Yunho slid a hand to Jae’s smooth derriere, cupping it as he pressed Jae into his growing erection. “Very close.”
Jae blushed as he felt himself stir again. Forcing his desire down, he said, “Let’s go home.”
Yunho nodded. “We’ll go home. But first…” And sliding his hand to the back of Jae’s head, he brought his lover down for another kiss before rolling him onto his back and going for a third round.
Home, Jae thought. Such a small word with such great significance. For most of his life, he’d never considered the palace home. Now, it was. How quickly things change…
But when Yunho slid into him, filling him as his back arched and a cry escaped his lips, he realized he was already there. Because Yunho was home.
A/N: Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed your, um, stay? lol