CHAPTER 1 – ENGINE TEETH
(| 18+ | n soul-shredding tension)
The rain never really stopped. It just turned into mist that clings to skin like a second curse.
Koh Lanta, 3:14 a.m., three hours after the race, three hours after Sea claimed his prize on the hood of his own car while the island watched and learned a new religion.
Keen is bleeding in the passenger seat of the Silvia.
Not from the cut on his ankle anymore. From the fresh crescent moons Sea's teeth left across his throat, his collarbone, the soft skin just above his heart. The silk shirt is ruined (torn open, soaked in sweat, cum, and engine oil). His thighs tremble every time Sea shifts gears. The seatbelt cuts a red line across his chest like a seatbelt made of razor wire.
Sea drives one-handed, knuckles white on the wheel, cigarette glowing between his teeth. The other hand rests possessively on Keen's bare thigh, thumb tracing the sticky mess leaking out of him. Every press makes Keen twitch, half-pain, half-pleasure, all surrender.
Neither has spoken since the cliff.
They don't need to. The island speaks for them: cicadas screaming like witnesses, thunder rolling in the distance like applause.
Sea takes a hidden dirt track up the mountain, past abandoned rubber plantations where ghosts hang from the trees like forgotten laundry. The Silvia's suspension protests, but it obeys. It always obeys.
Keen watches him drive. Really watches.
Sea's profile is carved from violence: sharp cheekbones, busted lip from some fight last week, eyes reflecting the dashboard glow the color of oxidized blood. The kraken tattoo moves when he breathes, tentacles curling around his ribs as if trying to drag his heart into the deep where it belongs.
Keen's voice is raw when he finally uses it. "You always fuck your winnings this hard?"
Sea doesn't look over. "Only the ones who beg for it."
Keen laughs, hoarse and wrecked. "I didn't beg."
"You said 'breed me' in three different languages, rich boy. That's begging in my book."
Keen shifts, winces as the movement pushes more cum out of him. "Stop calling me that."
"What should I call you then?" Sea's hand slides higher, two fingers slipping back inside without warning. Keen's breath hitches, hips jerking involuntarily. "Slut? Mine? Little prince with a crown made of my teeth marks?"
Keen's hand clamps around Sea's wrist—not to stop him, just to hold on. "Call me Keen."
Sea's fingers curl, nail that spot again. "Keen," he repeats, tasting it like blood. "Pretty name for a pretty corpse."
They reach the safehouse just before the sky splits open again.
It's an old fisherman's shack on stilts above a mangrove swamp, half-rotted, half-fortified. Solar panels stolen from a resort, windows barred with rebar, door secured by a chain and a pitbull named Tsunami who greets Sea with a wagging tail and Keen with a low growl.
Inside smells of gun oil, weed, and wet dog. A single bulb swings from the ceiling, casting shadows that crawl.
Sea shoves Keen against the wall the second the door shuts.
Round three starts standing up.
No prep. No mercy.
Sea spins him, yanks his head back by the hair, bites down on the shell of his ear until Keen whimpers. Then he's inside again, raw, deeper than before, one hand clamped over Keen's mouth to muffle the screams that would wake the dead.
Keen's palms slap the wall, nails scraping paint. His cock is trapped between his stomach and the rough wood, leaking steadily. Every thrust drags a broken sound from his throat.
Sea's voice is a growl against his spine. "You feel that? That's ownership. That's me rewriting your blood with my name."
Keen comes dry this time, body seizing so hard Sea has to hold him up. Sea follows seconds later, burying himself to the root and staying there, pulsing, claiming.
When he pulls out, Keen slides down the wall into a boneless heap.
Sea crouches, cups his chin, forces eye contact. "Color?"
Keen's voice is barely air. "Green… fuck, green."
Sea's thumb smears a streak of cum across Keen's swollen lips. "Good boy."
He carries him to the mattress in the corner (old, stained, perfect). Lays him down like something precious even though they're both animals.
Tsunami curls up at the foot, guardian and witness.
Outside, the rain returns full force, drumming on the tin roof like machine-gun fire.
Keen falls asleep with Sea's fingers still inside him, plugging him shut.
Sea doesn't sleep.
He sits on the windowsill, smoking, watching the storm tear the island apart.
At 5:07 a.m. his burner phone buzzes.
Unknown number. One message.
**50,000,000 baht. Dead or alive. Bring me the boy's ears.**
Attached photo: Keen, age sixteen, smiling at some gala, untouched and golden.
Sea deletes it. Crushes the phone under his boot.
He looks back at the mattress. Keen is curled on his side, knees to chest, Sea's bite marks glowing livid against pale skin. He looks small. Breakable.
Sea lights another cigarette with shaking hands.
He's killed for less than fifty million.
He's never killed for love.
Yet.
The storm laughs.
The island licks its teeth.
And somewhere in Bangkok, a father loads a gold-plated pistol and smiles like a man who's never lost.
He's about to learn
The rain is a war drum on the tin roof.
Sea hasn't moved from the windowsill in forty-three minutes. The cigarette burned down to his fingers; he didn't flinch. Tsunami growls low, ears flat, staring at the door like it owes her money.
Keen stirs on the mattress, mumbling something in Bangkok-rich-kid English. Sea's bite marks have turned purple-black, a necklace of violence around his throat. Cum still leaks slow from his swollen hole, staining the sheet darker.
Sea's eyes never leave the mangroves.
Headlights.
Three sets. Coming fast up the dirt track. No sirens. No mercy.
He knows the silhouette of the lead truck—black Toyota Hilux, roll cage, mounted floodlights. Belongs to a crew out of Krabi who call themselves the Saw Sharks. They cut ears for trophies and sell the rest to the dogs.
Fifty million baht just bought Keen a death warrant with express delivery.
Sea moves like smoke.
He yanks Keen up by the arm. "Up. Now."
Keen blinks awake, dazed. "Wha—"
"Company." Sea shoves a Glock 19 into Keen's shaking hand. "Safety's off. Point and squeeze. Don't think."
Keen stares at the gun like it's a foreign language. "I've never—"
"Tonight you learn."
Sea pulls on jeans, no shirt, grabs the sawed-off Ithaca 37 from under the bed. Tsunami is already at the door, hackles razor-sharp.
The first truck skids to a stop outside. Doors slam. Six men. Machetes. AKs. One with a chainsaw like it's a fucking toy.
Sea kisses Keen once—hard, teeth clacking, tasting copper and fear.
"Stay behind me, rich boy. You die, I die. That's the deal now."
Then he kicks the door open and steps into the storm.
The floodlights blind everything white.
Sea fires the shotgun one-handed. The closest Shark drops, chest blooming red. Tsunami launches, teeth sinking into another's throat with a wet crunch.
Keen stumbles out behind him, barefoot, silk shirt flapping like a broken sail. The Glock shakes in his grip.
A Shark charges Sea with a machete. Sea ducks, slams the shotgun butt into the man's knee—crackle of bone—then pumps a round into his face.
Keen screams as someone grabs him from behind. Knife to throat. Cold steel kissing the bruises Sea left hours ago.
Sea spins.
Time slows.
The Shark's mouth is moving: "Fifty million, pretty boy. Ears first."
Keen's eyes lock on Sea's. Not fear. Trust.
Sea smiles, slow and terrible.
He drops the shotgun, pulls a rusty diving knife from his boot, and throws it underhand.
The blade buries to the hilt in the Shark's eye socket. One wet thud. The body drops.
Keen staggers free, blood spray across his cheek like war paint.
Another Shark raises an AK.
Keen lifts the Glock with both hands and fires.
Once. Twice. Three times.
The recoil slams him back into Sea's chest. The Shark folds, holes in his neck bubbling pink froth.
Silence except for rain and Tsunami ripping something that used to be human.
Three Sharks left. Running.
Sea lets them go. Message sent.
He turns to Keen.
The rich boy is shaking so hard the gun rattles. Blood drips from his hairline, mixing with rain. His pupils are blown wide, lips parted, chest heaving.
Sea cups his face with hands that just murdered four men.
"You okay?"
Keen laughs—wild, broken, beautiful. "I just killed a man."
"Yeah," Sea says, thumb smearing the blood across Keen's cheek like ceremony. "Welcome to the island."
Keen drops the Glock, grabs Sea's face, and kisses him like drowning men kiss air. Teeth, tongue, desperation. The storm swallows the sound.
Sea backs him into the shack, slams the door with his foot.
Inside, the bulb still swings. Blood pools on the floorboards.
Sea shoves Keen under the shower pipe in the corner—cold island water, no hot. Turns it full blast.
Blood and gunpowder swirl down the drain.
Keen's silk shirt clings transparent. Sea rips it off, buttons pinging like bullets.
Knife play starts slow.
Sea presses the same diving knife—still wet with another man's life—flat against Keen's throat. "Color?"
Keen's voice is steady for the first time all night. "Green."
Sea drags the blade down—careful, reverent—leaving a thin red line from collarbone to navel. Not deep. Just enough to bead crimson.
Keen's cock jumps against Sea's thigh, hard again, insatiable.
Sea drops to his knees in the shower spray, mouth following the cut, licking blood and rainwater. Keen's fingers tangle in his hair, pulling hard enough to hurt.
Sea stands, spins him, bends him over the sink. Knife pressed to the back of Keen's neck.
"Hold still."
He fucks him raw again—slow this time, every thrust deliberate, knife tracing spine, hips, thighs. Marking every inch he owns.
Keen sobs into the cracked mirror, breath fogging glass. "More—"
Sea bites his shoulder till it bleeds, thrusts deeper. "You're mine now. Not your father's. Not the money's. Mine."
Keen comes untouched, striping the sink, hole clenching so tight Sea sees stars.
Sea pulls out, spins him, lifts him onto the counter. Slides back in face-to-face.
Their foreheads touch. Water pounds down.
"Look at me," Sea whispers.
Keen's eyes—storm-gray, shattered, reborn.
"I'd burn this whole fucking island for you," Sea says. "Say the word."
Keen kisses him soft, tasting blood and gunpowder and forever.
"Then burn it," he whispers back. "Starting with my father."
Sea comes inside him with a broken sound that might be a prayer.
After, no towels. Just Sea's leather jacket around Keen's shoulders, both of them dripping on the floorboards.
Tsunami drags a severed hand inside like a gift.
Sea lights two cigarettes off the stove burner, passes one to Keen.
Keen takes it with steady fingers now.
Outside, dawn bleeds through the mangroves, pink as fresh meat.
Sea's burner buzzes again. New message.
**100,000,000 baht now. Bring the racer too. Dead.**
Sea shows Keen the screen.
Keen smiles—slow, sharp, royal.
"Let them come."
He flicks ash onto the dead man's boot.
"Next time I pull the trigger, I won't miss."
Sea kisses the blood from his lips.
Round four starts on the mattress, slow and worshipful, while the island counts bodies and sharpens its knives.
The war has begun.
And they just crowned their kings.
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**END OF CHAPTER 1