The End of Gods (A Welcome to the Underworld Novel, Book 4)

by Con Template

  “You piss me off by existing.”

  He faked a dagger to the heart. “You have an ‘insult-of-the-day’ flashcard in your mind or something? You can do better than that.”

  Soo Jin chewed her lower lip. She had a witty one-liner to say, but given his recent insult, she kept it to herself. She would rather respond by punching his neck.

  Tae Hyun laughed as though reading her mind. “Let’s train together. I can teach you a few things.”

  He struck the bag again, and it swung at her like a wrecking ball.

  Without hesitation, Soo Jin punched it like a tether ball, and it flew back to him. As his retaliation, Tae Hyun triple-kicked the bag with brute force.

  Boom!

  The punching bag caught Soo Jin off guard when it slammed into her and caused her to crash to the ground.

  What the fuck?

  She breathed in disbelief. Did she just let her opponent knock her off her feet, and with a goddamned punching bag, no less? A fiery rage swept through her when she peered up at Tae Hyun.

  He offered her an apologetic smile while hugging the punching bag. “Sorry about that.”

  Soo Jin clenched her fists. She would most certainly make him sorry.

  Hungry for his blood, it was Soo Jin’s turn to catch him off guard. With an angry growl, she leapt up in the air and kicked the bag with an intensity so brutal that it sent Tae Hyun slamming into the squat rack behind him.

  Boom!

  Soo Jin feigned an apologetic smile as she watched him tear away from the squat rack.

  “Sorry about that,” she murmured, mocking his previous words.

  “It’s alright, baby,” he uttered, unexpectedly propelling up and striking the punching bag right into her stomach.

  Boom!

  Although Soo Jin did not tumble over, the force was enough to knock the wind—and the pride—out of her. She hunched forward and pressed her hands into her stomach to assuage the unanticipated pain.

  “I’m the one who should be sorry,” he finished with a breathless whisper. He laughed to himself and appraised her injured state. “Is that how easy our historic battle is going to be? Do I have to go extra easy on you?”

  “You piece of—!”

  Unable to control herself, she rocketed forward, grabbed the punching bag, and then swung it at him. The bag blasted into him like a cannon, whacking him off his feet.

  Although he was on the ground, his taunting laughter did not cease. “Someone’s mad.”

  Still pissed off, Soo Jin seized a fifteen-pound dumbbell and chucked it in his direction.

  Displaying amazing dexterity, Tae Hyun evaded the flying dumbbell.

  Boom!

  As the heavy weight crashed into the wall behind him, he rammed into Soo Jin and thrust her onto the floor.

  “Bad girl,” Tae Hyun crooned, easily pinning her writhing form to the ground. “That dumbbell could have knocked me out cold.”

  “I could knock you out cold,” she snarled before head-butting him.

  Bam!

  “Aw, shit!”

  Tae Hyun recoiled from her after their foreheads nearly split open. Blinking to clear his vision, he stumbled off of her and crashed into the weights beside them. Before he could surge to his feet, Soo Jin raced over to him and kneed him in the solar plexus, sending him flying back onto the weights.

  Boom!

  A long, thunderous crash infused the room. This time the remaining weights on the shelf came crashing down, falling onto his unmoving body with pitiless force.

  An unsettling silence spread over the room after the last of the weights hit his body. It was so eerily quiet that chills started to materialize on Soo Jin’s body.

  “Hey,” Soo Jin called, staring at him with apprehensiveness. He was lying face-first on the ground, breathing quietly. “You alright?”

  Tae Hyun remained silent. Apart from the slow rising and falling of his back, he did not move an inch.

  “Tae Hyun?” she called out with a louder voice. Soo Jin’s pulse raced once she realized that he was not moving at all. Shit, did she go too far? “Stop playing and get up.”

  When he still did not respond, Soo Jin started to panic.

  “Shit!” She sped over to Tae Hyun with the intention of helping him up. She was three inches from him when he unexpectedly whirled around, swung his leg, and stole the ground from her feet.

  “Ugh!”

  As Soo Jin fell towards the floor, Tae Hyun repositioned himself and caught her in time. With a satisfied chuckle, he laid back down on the ground and pulled her with him so that her legs were on either side of his body.

  “You have a death wish, don’t you?” Soo Jin asked after she registered the precarious position he placed her in. She was sitting on his abs while he was smiling up at her.

  “I like you on top,” he drawled before repositioning himself so that she was under him. He leaned on his forearms and gazed sensuously down at her. When he voiced his next words, she felt this primal need stir inside her. “But you should know that I can be dominating with my positions as well.”

  “I should skull-bash you again,” she gasped, uncertain of how much longer she could resist him.

  “But you were so worried about me,” he countered with a knowing laugh.

  “Why were you playing dead?”

  “Because I wanted to see how worried you would be.” He chuckled, leaning down and favoring her with a kiss to the cheek. “Were you worried?”

  Heat swarmed her cheeks.

  She said nothing.

  “I heard it in your voice that you were worried,” he insisted, hovering his lips over hers.

  She continued to say nothing as she felt his tempting body press closer to hers.

  His breath was a hot whisper against her fiery skin. “Should I play dead again?”

  His laughter became warmer in her silence.

  “Are you playing dead now?” He suspended his lips over hers. “Should I wake you up, baby?” Her silence did not make him relent from his advances. If anything, it only spurred him forward. “Please wake up, baby. You’re too pretty to play dead.”

  What transpired next was a distorted haze to her.

  She was ignoring him one second, and before she knew it, she had shoved him off of her, propelled to her feet, and pushed him against the wall. She had every intention of breaking his nose. Yet, all control was lost when he smiled at her and said, “You are the sexiest and most stunning thing when you’re mad.”

  Instead of punching him as she intended, she hurtled herself to him and pressed her lips against his.

  When she realized her error and tried to break away, he tugged her closer and deepened their kiss. To her horror, Soo Jin found that she could no longer deny this walking aphrodisiac. He might as well lace his lips with an addictive drug. The more their lips met, the more she wanted him—the more she yearned for him. She was out of her league and had been since she lost the shooting challenge to him. Resigned to the fact that it was fruitless to deny herself this intoxicating moment, Soo Jin did what she had been dying to do: she ran her hands over his statuesque body.

  The sensual concession did not sate her needs. If anything, the indulgence only served to worsen it. As she felt his muscles undulate beneath her touch, she became drunker with need. An unstoppable inferno consumed her, and it took all her power to maintain her sanity.

  “You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this.”

  The very guttural sound in his voice caused an excess of heat to shroud over her. Anymore of this, she was sure she would faint from a lack of oxygen.

  “You ready?”

  “Ready for what?” she gasped, slowly coming out of her intoxicated state now that he had pulled his lips from hers.

  The smile he gave her was pure sex. It was a smile that excited her and scared the living daylights out of her at the same time.

  “You’re sharing my bed tonight, baby.”

  “It is the only thing that makes life worth
living.”

  18: Only Yoori

  “Perverted lunatic!” Soo Jin shouted, bouncing on Tae Hyun’s bed after being pushed onto it.

  She cursed to herself. She had really reached a new level of idiocy. How the hell did she manage to go from beating Tae Hyun’s ass to being his new sexual plaything?

  To make matters worse, she could not blame alcohol for her loss of better judgment. She was sober, completely and utterly sober. She allowed Tae Hyun to disarm her. He utilized his goofball side as a placebo to make her comfortable—to tear away the last of her resistance. In truth, she had no one to blame but herself. She had given into his seduction, and because of this travesty, the gorgeous bastard took it as his open invitation to invite her into his bed.

  Soo Jin muttered another expletive. It did not escape her how dangerous this very moment was for her. Kwon Tae Hyun was a master at seduction. He oozed sexual magnetism with little to no effort. The very fact that he was making an effort to get her into his bedroom only meant one thing: he was done with foreplay. He was determined to put their complicated relationship to bed—literally.

  “You were the one who kissed me first,” Tae Hyun retorted, climbing onto the bed like a tiger on the attack. Tempting muscles corded to life with his every predatory movement. His dark eyes glittered with tantalizing promises of the pleasures to come. “You started this. Why can’t I finish it?”

  Instinctively, Soo Jin began to back away on the massive bed, using her hands to pull her body away. Unluckily for her, Tae Hyun was mirroring her retreat with his own advancement.

  “Finish what?” she asked stupidly.

  A lazy and seductive smile embellished his face. He continued to move, his muscles flexing gorgeously. “Seducing my girlfriend.”

  “Oh God, this is insane,” she complained after her back met the cold headboard. “This whole trip has been insane.”

  “How is it insane?” Tae Hyun murmured after he reached her. He leveled his eyes with hers and rested his big arms on either side of her. The heat from his body stirred over her like an open flame, silently beckoning her to touch him. “You’re the one who started this.” A smirk perched on the edge of his lips. “You were the one who lost the challenge.” He laughed at the reminder of how he had won—how it was a duck that sealed the deal for him. “Embarrassingly so, if I may add.”

  “You know that wasn’t fair,” Soo Jin argued in a rough breath. She desperately pressed harder against the headboard. Even though it was against the laws of physics, she was hoping that if she pushed hard enough, she would find a secret tunnel within the headboard to escape into. “You only won because that stupid duck appeared out of nowhere and screwed me up. I demand a rematch.”

  His laughter intermixed with the soft quacking of the ducks outside.

  “Rematch?” He shook his head and rested his hands on the headboard, locking her between his arms. He raised his glorious body up into a sitting position and faced her with a devilish look on his face. “I’m sorry, but I’m not a saint, Princess,” he apologized, his smooth voice coursing over her like honey. “I’m simply a guy who’s going crazy for his girlfriend right now.”

  “This is such a ridiculous conflict of interest,” Soo Jin vented with exasperation. She maintained control of her hands while the heat from Tae Hyun’s body continued to tempt her. “I trained years upon years for you. I fought with everything I had to reach this moment in life. I’ve given up everything for you, and the epic battle—the epic God—I’ve been waiting all my life to challenge is seducing me? Oh God, this is irony at its best.”

  Tae Hyun arched a pleased brow.

  “You see me as a God?” he crooned gently, feathering his lips over her red-hot cheek.

  When she didn’t say anything, he forged on by pressing his scorching body forward. He nipped his nose with hers before leisurely moving his lips to her earlobe. Soo Jin gasped when he skillfully took her earlobe into his mouth and began to nibble on it. “What kind of God, Soo Jin?”

  Sex God, she wanted to answer, but kept her mouth firmly sealed. She was afraid if she opened her mouth, nothing but appreciative whimpers would pour out. Her “Sex God” was already driving her crazy with his teasing. She refused to give him more ammunition by letting him know how much she was enjoying his advances.

  Tae Hyun grinned at the tense anxiety engulfing Soo Jin. He shifted his lips from her ear and grazed them over the corner of her trembling lips.

  “I can’t seduce someone who doesn’t want to be seduced,” he whispered, holding her gaze when their eyes locked. After appraising how much effort she was exerting into not making a sound, the seductive air he emitted thinned marginally. Perplexity troubled his once carnal eyes. “Why do you hate me so much?”

  “Because you challenge my existence,” Soo Jin answered at long last.

  The mystification mounted in his eyes. This was the last answer he had been expecting. “What?”

  Soo Jin was initially resolved on not divulging the reason to him. Nevertheless, when she felt the answer bubble in her throat, it felt too much like a burden to not release it.

  “I’ve been conditioned to be the best, and in our world, there is only room for one legend in a generation’s lifetime.” She looked at him unblinkingly, feeling the heat from their yearning bodies mingle together. “There could only be one champion in our era, and I want to be that once-in-a-lifetime legend in this world. I want to be the first Lord of our society. I want the generations to come to always remember my name, and I want to be alive—even after death.” Jealousy began to infuse into her eyes like a virus. “You challenge that very endeavor with your existence. Now I understand why Ji Hoon hates you so much. If you weren’t alive, then he would’ve been the favored one. Although my return demoted him to the third ranking, the simple truth is that this only means that I am just one rank above him—this only means that I’m still second to you.” She swallowed convulsively, physically choking down her jealousy. “I hate that—I hate you. I hate that you were never trained to be in this layer, yet you hold so much power over everyone. I hate that you’re arrogant, and I hate that you have every right to be because you are truly legendary.” She appraised him critically. “But what I hate most is that it is your throne to lose. On this stage, I’m merely a contender for the throne—the one fighting for something that has already been primed and ready for you.”

  “You can have this world,” he told her without hesitation. “I don’t want the throne.”

  “And this is why I despise you the most,” she gritted through her teeth. Fury vibrated in her words. “How dare you throw the throne away like it’s yesterday’s trash? How dare you belittle something that I’ve worked my entire life for?”

  “Because I want something else more,” he told her desperately, genuinely. “I do not want to fight you for it.”

  “I want to fight you for it,” she emphasized hatefully. She could feel her heart race in anticipation. “This throne means nothing to me if I don’t fight you for it. It means nothing if you simply hand it over to me. I did not train my entire life to win a throne by default. I trained my entire life to conquer another God for it.”

  He smiled sadly. It was evident that her words were cutting into him like a knife. “You will only be satisfied if you fight me to the death?”

  “Yes.”

  Albeit the anguish in his eyes was undeniable, the enduring love in his warm stare was also difficult to overlook. It was clear to Soo Jin that Tae Hyun could never hate her for anything she wanted to do. This concept flabbergasted her. Her own brother and ex-boyfriend would never be as forgiving. Any other Underworld King would not be as forgiving, and yet, here Kwon Tae Hyun was: staring at her like she was the best thing to ever happen to him. It was disconcerting to say the least.

  “What is it about Yoori that has you so hooked?”

  The words came out faster than she could have controlled them. She hated Yoori, despised any given moment where she had to be reminded of
the girl’s existence. Regardless of her hatred, she was fascinated that a simple girl like Choi Yoori could capture the King of Serpent’s heart to this degree. He was not only willing to give up his throne for her, but he was also willing to risk his life for her. What was so special about this girl?

  Tae Hyun lifted his hand up and began to stroke her face with a light caress. His eyes filled with warmth at the reminder of the love of his life.

  “She saved my life,” he answered quietly.

  Soo Jin laughed at the silly answer. “Oh, you mean at the warehouse with Ji Hoon?”

  He shook his head, not in the least bit offended by her laughter. “That’s not what I mean.”

  Soo Jin went quiet as he went on, his eyes growing lost in a reverie.

  “Before I met Yoori, I was living a very . . . numb life. I had all the money in the world, I had people who respected me—feared me, I had people ready and willing to bend to my every will, I had women throwing themselves at me, and on top of all of this, I was the King of this Underworld—the one every powerful entity the world was ready to kneel before.” He drew in a slow breath. “But there was something about that life that began to bore me. I was becoming more and more numb to everything. I started to realize that I was living too much of a solitary life. People constantly surrounded me, but I always felt alone. That’s why I moved out of the Serpents’ estate. I couldn’t handle sitting in my enormous living room alone, I couldn’t handle staring at the fireplace alone, and I couldn’t handle being in the big mansion alone. Everything about my estate reminded me of how alone I was—how alone I would always be.” He smiled to himself. “I thought things would change when I moved into my own apartment. To my disappointment, life still felt the same. I was still going through the motions, still watching the seconds pass me by. My life no longer felt meaningful. I no longer felt—”

  “Alive,” Soo Jin mindlessly finished for him.

  What he described felt too hauntingly familiar to her.