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Lan Jingyi should have turned back long before he found her. “I’m sorry, furen, I didn’t mean to intrude—“
“No,” says Qin Su. “It’s alright, you can stay if you’re quiet.”
She is watching a rosefinch hopping among the branches of a nearby larch tree. Lan Jingyi takes a seat at the other end of the bench.
After a long moment, a big, dark beetle buzzes noisily across the sky, and the bird takes off in pursuit. Qin Su sighs. “They’re common, but I’ve always been partial to them. They used to nest in the eaves outside my bedroom in Laoling when I was a little girl.”
Lan Jingyi nods. “I’ve seen them on the back hill behind the Cloud Recesses,” he says.
“Common,” repeats Qin Su, “but still beautiful.” She studies him for a moment. “You’re friends with my nephew, aren’t you?”
Lan Jingyi is not sure anyone can truly be said to be Jin Rulan’s friend. He must hesitate too long. Qin Su laughs. “I know he can have a sour disposition. I won’t do him the indignity of asking you to be nice to him.”
“I’m not not nice to him,” says Lan Jingyi defensively.
Qin Su laughs again. She has an enchanting laugh, thinks Lan Jingyi. Like bells. Like birdsong. “Please, remind me. What was your name?” she asks.
“Lan Jingyi,” says Lan Jingyi.
“It is nice to meet you, Lan Jingyi,” she replies. His name sounds better on her lips, he decides. “Where are you supposed to be right now?”
It feels like it would be a crime to lie to her. Lan Jingyi can’t imagine how anyone could ever manage it. “A history lecture,” he admits.
“Ah,” says Qin Su. “You’ll probably be fine.”
She gets up from the bench. “Would you like to take a walk with me, Lan Jingyi?”
Lan Jingyi would like that very much. He gets to his feet and follows her, nodding.
She gives him a tour of the gardens - the rare plants brought from far away islands to the south and boreal forests to the north, collected here and carefully grown for the Jin sect’s enjoyment. “There are cultivators,” she explains, “whose entire jobs it is to tend the plants.”
It is more educational than any history lecture could hope to be, Lan Jingyi thinks.
Their wanderings do eventually bring them back to the halls of Jinlintai. Lan Jingyi sees juniors in various sects’ colors milling about the courtyard. He ought to join them. “Thank you for your company today, Lan Jingyi,” says Qin Su.
“It was my pleasure, Jin-furen.”
She frowns a little at that. “I would like for you to call me jiejie.”
Lan Jingyi’s face feels warm from his collarbone all the way up into his earlobes. “Thank you for the tour, jiejie.”
She smiles. Lan Jingyi would die on a field for her. “Enjoy your stay at Jinlintai.”
And then she’s gone, back into the gardens from whence she came. A tingle runs down Lan Jingyi’s spine; he squares his shoulders and goes to rejoin his classmates. He says nothing about his afternoon, and the rest of the evening passes without incident.
He is not even in trouble for skipping the history lecture.
After dinner and an astronomy lesson, Lan Jingyi and the the Lan cohort retire to their guest pavilion and quickly get ready for bed. Their borrowed rooms overlook a section of Jinlintai’s vast gardens featuring a burbling artificial waterfall, and the white noise from outside soon lulls any sleepy conversations into silence. Lan Jingyi’s bed is closest to the room’s small porch. He lies awake and studies the shapes the moonlight paints on the ceiling.
Outside, something splashes into the fountain. A shadow moves across the decorative screen.
Moving quietly, Lan Jingyi slips out of bed and out onto the porch. He looks down into the garden below. Past the concentric rows of rhododendrons in riotous bloom, there is a naked woman standing in water.
Qin Su turns her head towards Lan Jingyi and raises her hand, waving for him to join her.
He feels that in his cock. Barefoot and dressed only in his sleep robes, Lan Jingyi slips off the porch and picks his way down the short hillside into the garden. When he reaches the fountain, Qin Su is floating on her back and looking up at him through her lashes. A thin layer of steam clings to the pond’s surface.
She is very naked, he thinks, eyes sliding to the hard, dark points of her nipples and then lower, to the dark promise of her pubic hair, which dips suddenly beneath the water’s surface as she shifts forward, swimming to the edge of the fountain in just a few easy strokes. “Won’t you join me, Lan Jingyi?”
Lan Jingyi swallows dryly, mind racing. This must be a dream, he thinks, only he can feel the damp, mossy pavers beneath his feet and smell the petrichor of the waterfall’s spray bouncing off the rocks. If it’s not a dream, perhaps it’s a trap - but he feels no telltale twinge of demonic energy, only the moist night air.
Fuck it, he decides, shoving out of his robes. He slides in; the water is warm, almost imperceptible against his skin. He has no sooner found his footing on the pool’s loamy bottom than Qin Su is upon him, her hands on his jaw, her mouth on his mouth. Her lips taste like pond water. Her tongue is warm. She presses him up against the wall of the pool kisses him breathless.
“Have you ever been with a woman before, Lan Jingyi?” she asks, fingertips playing along his jaw. Her whole body is pressed close to his; the head of his cock presses against her stomach.
“N-no.” This is all very overwhelming for Lan Jingyi. He feels compelled to a truly embarrassing level of honesty. “I’ve never been with anyone but my own hand, jiejie.”
She laughs, but not unkindly. There is a hungry gleam in her eyes. “Let’s ruin that,” she says, lips moving against his. One of her hands trails down his chest, down his torso, and up the length of his cock.
Lan Jingyi shudders.
“Try to contain yourself,” says Qin Su.
“I’ll try,” says Lan Jingyi.
“Good boy.” She pushes his legs apart with her knee and straddles his thigh. It takes him a moment to register that the heat he feels is her cunt. She leans forward again, lips grazing his cheek, his ear. “Use your hand. Feel me.”
Lan Jingyi reaches down, slides his fingers over her hair until he finds her lips, and then he presses in. He finds, quickly, a different kind of wetness. Following it to its source takes him deeper. He tests her tightness and pushes into her with two fingers.
Qin Su gasps. The sound goes straight to Lan Jingyi’s cock. She grinds against his hand and he pushes harder to meet her. His other hand she moves to her breast, and he rolls her nipple beneath his thumb, exploring how it hardens beneath his fingers. Her breathing quickens in his ear. “Lan-didi,” she says, “I’m ready for you to fuck me.”
Lan Jingyi’s heart thuds in his throat. He slides his fingers out of her cunt, and her wetness clings for a moment before the current carries it away. She repositions herself, legs wrapping around his hips, her arms bracing against the edge of the pool, and then sinks down onto him with a soft groan, her head tilted back, her throat bared.
He wants to kiss the tight line of her jaw - so he leans forward, and he does. She laughs, and he feels it ripple up through her throat. “Lan-didi,” she says with a roll of her hips. “You have to tell me before you finish.”
“I will,” says Lan Jingyi, chasing her mouth.
“It’s important,” she says into the kiss.
“I’ll tell you, jiejie.”
She rolls against him again. “How do I make you feel?”
She is warm and tight around him, a thousand sensations at once. She regards him with a hungry look.
“Incredible,” says Lan Jingyi.
Something in her expression seems satisfied by that. “Good,” she says and kisses him again. She grinds her hips against him, and he thrusts up to meet her, and soon he finds a rhythm that they get lost in, foreheads pressed together and breaths coming in puffs of steam.
“I’m so close, jiejie,” he barely remembers to say.
Her response is quick - she heaves off of him and takes his cock in her hand, gives him a few nimble pumps, and then - with a wholly indecent noise escaping his lips and his face tilting forward into her shoulder of its own accord - he finishes, spill quickly carried away by the water.
She holds his length until it softens, then lifts his chin in both her hands. “Did that feel good?”
Lan Jingyi nods.
“Do you want to make jiejie feel good?”
He nods again. She lets go of him and hops up onto the edge of the pool, her legs apart. Her cunt glistens wetly, and Lan Jingyi has read enough smuggled spring books to know what she wants. He presses his mouth easily to her, tracing her contours and reaching for those sweet depths. His focus narrows to just this sensation; he is only vaguely aware of her hand clenching in his hair, of her other hand smothering her gasps.
He knows when she comes, feels her clench against his tongue, his lips. Gradually, her grip on his hair eases, and she lets him pull away.
“Did I do well, jiejie?” he asks. She is beautiful looking down at him.
“Didi did very well,” she says, and hesitates for a moment. “I haven’t felt like this in a long time.”
“Does your husband not—?”
She wets her hand and swipes it over his face, wiping her taste from his lips. That hungry look in her eyes is gone now, replaced with something that makes her seem very far away even as she sits before him. “I’ve lost his interest,” she sighs. “Or someone took it. Or I never had it. Or never should have. It’s not for you to worry about.”
She scoots away and gets to her feet, off to retrieve her robe from where it rests draped over a rhododendron bush. Lan Jingyi gets out of the water. He puts his robes back on, and they stick to his wet skin. He looks up towards the guest house; the rocky hill seems much higher now that he’s not thinking with his cock.
Qin Su rejoins him. “There are stairs,” she says, pointing. “That way.”
“Thank you,” says Lan Jingyi.
She leans forward and presses a kiss to his cheek. “Stay on the beaten paths, alright, Lan-didi? Some flowers here have thorns.”
From the look she gives him, he does not think she means plants.
“I will,” says Lan Jingyi. “Good night.”
He looks back at her only once, from halfway up the stairs. She has turned away from him, and in her pale yellow robe beneath the moonlight, she almost seems to glow.