Chapter Text
He had thought that he’d already endured every torment this ridiculous girl could inflict upon him. He’d thought nothing could be more distracting than her tears. But this feeling he was forced to share now—this intolerable longing, this ache. He knew it to be desire, if for nothing else than the way it affected his loins.
It was unbearable. He couldn’t concentrate on anything. And all she was doing was sitting in her garden, staring into space with her chin in her hands and an indiotic look on her face. He was lucky he couldn’t see her thoughts as well. What could she be thinking of to inspire so much passion, other than her inestimable Changheng?
He snuck up behind her in the garden, startling her from her fantasies with a guilty jolt. “What are you thinking of so busily, Xiao Huayao?” he demanded.
The way he flustered her… Her cheeks turned red as apples as she peeked up at him. Her guilt and embarrassment flooded through him. He grit his teeth to bear it.
“I wasn’t thinking of anything!” she squeaked. She jumped to her feet. “Just the Destiny Book!” She brushed past him with her eyes averted, fled from the garden, and shut herself up in her room.
He shut his eyes and sighed. He’d hoped the interruption would distract her, would shake her from whatever lewd train of thought had been keeping her so entertained. But the flames of her desire continued to singe him, and now her shame weighed on him too.
At least now, locked in her room, she would certainly address the problem manually. He braced himself for whatever that would feel like. But the pleasure, the climax, the relief never came. It seemed as though all she was doing in the privacy of her bedroom was nourishing her lurid daydreams. It was intolerable. When would she tire of this wasteful indulgence? And did she have to feel everything so strongly?
He reached his limit. He transported himself into her room. She had tucked herself neatly into bed. Ridiculous. Her eyes were closed, and her mouth was curved into a happy little smile. Except for the flush of her cheeks, the bitten red of her lip, she looked peacefully asleep. What a pretty little picture she made.
“Xiao Huayao,” he growled. Her eyes flew open, and he was sadistically pleased to feel her shock of fear. “Why are you avoiding me today?” he asked. As if he didn’t know the answer.
“You— You’re— I’m not!” she complained. “I just wanted to lie down for a while. I’m not feeling… myself.”
That was one way to put it. He stifled a sigh as he carefully sat on the edge of her bed, then leveled a heavy gaze at her. She pulled the blankets up higher, hiding behind them. “Who told you you could come in, anyway?” she grumbled, muffled by the blankets.
He ignored her question. How was he going to navigate this? For a moment he thought about telling her the truth: He could literally feel her lust, and it was driving him mad. The feeling did not abate with his presence like he’d hoped. If anything, beneath her discomfort, her longing grew stronger, a troubling detail which he tried to ignore.
But it gave him his next absurd idea, which was to simply take matters into his own hands. How difficult could it be? He understood her anatomy—in theory. The libraries of Silent Moon Palace contained manuals on the art of pleasing women which had not escaped his notice as a boy. He could still remember every lurid diagram. And he could feel every damn thing she felt. He would know what pleased her and what did not.
“Xiao Lanhua…” he said carefully. She was silent beneath the blankets, but he knew he had her complete attention. “It’s unacceptable for you to feel any discomfort that can be addressed. Nor can you hide anything that you’re feeling from me.”
“How would you know what I’m feeling?” she demanded.
“I know exactly how you’ve been feeling all afternoon,” he snapped. “And if you don’t take care of this yourself, I’m going to take care of it for you.”
She tore the blankets away from her face. “Daqiang, have you gone crazy? We can’t do anything like that. We— We—”
She became so flustered, she gave up on reprimanding him and simply pulled the blankets back over her face. Her discomfort was becoming acute, irritating. But beneath it, he was a little stunned to feel her growing excitement, her flush of curiosity.
“I’ll only use my fingers…” he said to the pile of blankets, testing the waters of her emotions. “Your innocence will remain intact. I won’t even need to undress you.”
“How can you talk about this so casually!” she wailed.
He leaned in closer, gripped the edges of the blankets, and peeled them away from her burning red face. “Xiao Huayao,” he whispered. He held her gaze. She couldn’t look away from him. “I think you want this more than you will say.”
She looked scandalized. She yanked the blankets all the way over her head, hiding, but he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was right.
“Fine,” he said. “You can stay under there while I work.”
She whined in protest, and started to uncover her face again, but he reached up and pinned her wrists through the blankets, stopping her. “Stay,” he commanded. She tremblingly obeyed, keeping the covers in place. Her reactions were staggering him. He was exciting her. She was anxious, mortified. But she wanted this from him.
A part of his own mind was insistently protesting this turn of events. He didn’t need things between them to become any more complicated than they already were. But he suddenly seemed ruled by lusts of his own. Damn this infuriating girl. He shoved the blankets up over her thighs and hips. A wave of fresh desire swept through her and into him—he felt his body painfully respond. And yet, as he slipped his hand beneath her skirts, he had to steel his nerves against her rising panic. How did she stand being torn between all these disparate feelings all the time?
“Relax,” he snapped, but his sharp command only made her more anxious. Of course. He shut his eyes, fighting back his irritation.
“You try relaxing like this,” she groused from under the covers. Snapping back at him lifted her spirits considerably. He nearly smiled.
“Xiao Huayao,” he said, voice low and insistent. “Let me do this for you.” His hand was exploring the soft skin of her inner thigh, slowing in its course to the core of her. This would be easier if he could see what he was doing— but he’d already told her he wouldn’t undress her. “Relax,” he said again, more softly. She didn’t, but his words, his touch so close brought both of their attention sharply back to the throbbing ache at the center of her.
“Daqiang…” she whispered. Again she started to lower the blankets from her face, and this time he gripped her hand through the fabric, pinning her in place beneath the covers. He did not want her to see how this experiment would surely affect him.
Beneath her clothes, she was already hot and wet with wanting, soft and slick beneath his fingers. He acutely felt her lingering shame and tentative pleasure as he explored her, feeling for the part that he knew would allow him to ease her pain most easily. He knew instantly when he’d found it from the jolt of raw feeling that passed between them. She gasped. Her fingers gripped his reflexively where he held them through the fabric of the blanket. He bit back his own rough breath, stunned that this too would be shared between them with perfect clarity.
After that, all thoughts of the library’s detailed manuals fled from his mind, unneeded. He felt everything with her. Her own desperate urges guided him, and it was far too easy to chase this marvelous pleasure with her, as easy as pleasing himself. He bit back the groan that threatened to spill out of him, but Xiao Lanhua was not so careful, and her little whimpers piqued his interest in a way he had not expected. He longed to tear the blankets away from her face, to see her expressions as he did this thing to her.
“Harder, Daqiang,” she pleaded. He could only obey, and her breathless little request stirred something in him, a feeling that was all his own. This was a dangerous thing he was playing with, he told himself, but he brushed his misgivings aside with ease. All of his attention was narrowed down to this tiny organ between her legs and the haze of sensation it produced for him when stroked. He could feel the peak of her pleasure approaching, the horizon looming for both of them, but she held them back, inhibited, afraid.
“Let go, Xiao Huayao,” he begged her, low and rough. His command was her undoing. She came for him with a cry, and the release, the relief, was pure euphoria. All he could do was bow his head and let it detonate through him, trying to maintain at least a thread of control. Her delicate fingers were gripping his tight, and somehow the contact helped ground him, helped him remember that they would emerge as two separate people from this.
Then there were many long moments of pleasant empty-headed quiet, punctuated by her panting breaths. But as the haze of pleasure faded, the weight of what he’d just done caught up with him. This had surely been a mistake. He had to put some distance back between them. She was pushing the covers away from her face.
“Daqia—” she started to say. But he was already standing and sweeping from the room. He left without a backward glance.