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Shen Yurong had been a decent lover for the first year or so of their marriage: passionate, devoted, dutiful, a little too earnest at times, but pleasingly responsive to her touch. She'd thought she'd be with child sooner rather than later at the rate they were going, but it hadn’t happened, and she'd felt a strange mixture of relief and disappointment stirring in her gut. She gave him all that she could. He said it was enough.
Later, his eyes had become sad and distant, his body stiff, like a puppet waiting for someone to jerk on his strings. Of course, by then Wanning’s barbs were already deep in him. He was a fish on the line, hooked and ready to reel, and even right to the end Xue Fangfei had somehow thought their vows still mattered.
Towards the end, he touched her rarely and when he did come to her, the need poured out of him in an ungainly rush and he jerked and convulsed then collapsed on top of her, leaving her barely satisfied. She’d tried all sorts of tricks to arouse his interest, and Shen Yurong often went along with it in a bid to appease her. It had, at least, encouraged her to get experimental and provided some useful knowledge of how a man could be touched and given pleasure.
When she assumed Jiang Li’s identity, she had initially tried to treat bringing herself to orgasm as a purely mechanical activity, carried out efficiently and only when needed. But when she closed her eyes, alone in bed, there before her loomed the great black empty grave like an open mouth, the swing of the shovel, the impending blow. The sweet memories of their newlywed passion had all turned to ash, and remembering them made her want to choke with fury. Sometimes she remembered waking to see the stranger beside her in her marriage bed: his hands on her, her senses dulled, confusion turning to horror. Fear like ice. The taste of dirt in her mouth. So she touched herself and tried to think of nothing at all.
It didn’t work very well, so she was forced to construct a fantasy scenario where she was neither Jiang Li nor Xue Fangfei but instead had transformed into an alluring and anonymous courtesan with legendary martial arts prowess who had a poisoned needle concealed in her hairpin and a secret lover, a man from the jianghu, whom she met up with now and again. In her daydreams, this unnamed lover fucked her from behind and kissed her neck tenderly, then he pulled out, washed himself, and left, leaving her sore and satisfied. She had thought for a while that if not for the risk of pregnancy and the general tendency of men towards violence, it might be a very practical and pleasing arrangement to have something like that. No feelings involved whatsoever.
Now she was engaged to Xiao Heng, of course, everything was different. She wanted him terribly and he encouraged it.
They let some of their biggest truths sit unspoken between them. It was a kind of a game or an act of trust. I know who you are. And every time he came through for her, each leap of faith that paid off with interest, each time she raised her eyes to his and found them watching her -- assessing, caressing, surprised, knowing, wanting -- she found it harder and harder to wait the few short weeks to their wedding night.
It wasn’t hard to get time alone with Xiao Heng in Su Mansion. If anything, she would say that Lu Ji and Wen Ji were encouraging it.
After dinner, Xue Fangfei had walked airily into his bedroom as if she were already mistress of the house, to see if he followed her straight in or let her explore by herself.
He seemed content to watch from the doorway as she opened his wardrobe and ran her hand over a pile of robes.
“Any that you like?” he asked.
“You look best in red,” she told him.
That pleased him; he raised his eyebrows and looked down at himself, the red robe showing under the black outer jacket. She crossed the room and straightened the fabric so it fell neatly, like a wife might do before her husband left the house for the day’s work.
“So, you like what’s underneath better.”
She pretended to think. “I like all of it.”
She was going to have to do something to fluster him, otherwise she’d get flustered herself. But he was too quick-thinking and took the initiative first, putting his thumb on her chin to tilt her face up.
She breathed in sharply.
“Why so shy? Haven’t you been touched by a man before?”
Xue Fangfei looked him directly in the eyes. “When we’re married, you’ll soon learn that I’m not shy at all.”
He smiled, his gaze roaming over her, making her feel warm all over and strangely breathless. “My wanton little civet.” But she could see, from the way he swallowed, that he was affected.
She took his hand and pulled him with her to his bed, sat down, acutely conscious of the warm line of his body as he sat beside her. Her mouth was dry. If she swallowed, he’d notice. She drew her legs up onto the bed.
“Stop it,” she said, laughing, as he ran his hand over her skirt. He flipped the bottom of the fabric aside and his cool fingers touched her ankle. Her eyes slipped closed and she sighed.
“Xiao Heng,” she said softly.
“A-Li. If I kiss you, will that make it better?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “Much, much worse.”
His lips parted and she felt caught in that one long breathless moment as slowly, he began to lean towards her.
Her whole body ran hot at the thought of the kiss being offered. Her eyes darted towards the door. For some reason, her fists were tightly clenched.
Xiao Heng pulled back and considered her silently, waiting for her to decide.
She'd wanted him for so long, and the dance had been so carefully choreographed: they might tease, they might offer comfort, but the wild thing inside stayed firmly leashed. After all, you could follow all the rules and still be ruined, but if you broke one, you were a sitting duck. So she’d decided after some thought that they would dutifully play out this final charade and wait for their wedding night, as if she truly were sweet and pure Jiang Li, the legitimate daughter of a wealthy official, rather than a vengeful and disgraced dead wife who’d left a trail of victims on her way back from the grave.
She could be patient, she could be good, but somehow, in her calculation of risk versus reward, she had failed to account for how terribly safe he made her feel. And he was too tempting, sitting next to her, deliberately relaxed but with a tinge of flush on his cheeks. She swung herself decisively around and sat in his lap.
He breathed in sharply, unprepared for an armful of her, and she pushed at his shoulders until he fell back onto the bed. Next, she took his wrists and arranged them so his arms were splayed over his head. When she settled herself more comfortably on top of him, she could feel how hard he was. He shuddered minutely. His fists were clenched, knuckles white, eyes wide and dark. His mouth hung open. He was working very hard to be still.
She wanted to rub her face all over his clothes like a cat.
“A-Li,” he croaked.
“I know,” she said, and lowered her head, elbows planted on either side of his face, until their warm breaths were mingling. She kissed him. It started as a slow brush of lips but didn’t stay that way for long. She took the lead and he let her, opening up to the curious brush of her tongue against his and mimicking her, learning from her. Just as she was planning to come up for air, he surged up beneath her and rolled her over, pinned her hands above her head and seized her mouth, biting her lip until she cried out.
“Let me take this off for you,” he said, panting a little, fingers careful in her hair.
She’d worn it in a simple style with few adornments, but it was still a relief when he removed the pins. His fingers brushed her cheek and she leaned into his touch on instinct.
“You too,” she said. It felt strangely solemn to remove the guan and see him massage his scalp, his hair falling down about his face. He kissed her fingers.
“Xiao Heng,” she said. “Our wedding night...”
He nodded.
Absurdly, she felt a little shy. The words were hard to find. “I want it to be a night that we always remember. So...”
“You want to wait,” he said gently.
“Do you want to wait?”
He pursed his lips. “I don’t care if my wife is pregnant when she makes her bows, so long as it’s my child.”
“What kind of answer is that?” She punched his shoulder, pulling her blow at the last minute when she saw the laughter sparking in his eyes. “So you want to have me right now, just like any man. Tell me honestly.”
“A-Li,” he said, pleading. “I’m -- I’m the virgin here, right?” He looked away, embarrassed to have said it so plainly.
“And?”
“And how can I possibly think straight when you kiss me and talk to me like that?!” He scowled. “Of course I'll wait. But I can't tell what you want. Do you want me to ignore you while you tease me? I can do that too.”
“Ah,” she said, “okay, okay. How about this? You won’t take me as a husband does until our wedding night, but we’ll do all the other things.”
“The... other things."
“Your mouth,” she explained. “My mouth. Or hands. I can show you.”
“Your mouth,” he echoed.
She shrugged. “Since I’ve already been ruined, I might as well enjoy myself.”
“You don’t have to say it like that,” he said quietly. He put his thumb to the pad of her lip. “It’s your show. You decide when we reach the climax.”
She closed her eyes and nodded, letting his thumb slip into her mouth and sit on the pad of her tongue. Gently, she closed her teeth around it.
“Unless you keep doing that,” he muttered. “I-- I might--”
She let her lips stretch in a grin and pulled away.
“Will you take this off?” She tugged at the sleeve of his robe.
Stiffly, he got to his feet. Xue Fangfei stretched out on the bed to watch as he began to remove the layers one by one, revealing his slim, well-muscled body, scars tracing his back.
When he turned back towards her, it was in nothing but his light cloth trousers, very visibly tented.
She felt dazed. “What about those?” She waved her hand at the offending trousers. “Shouldn’t I see what I’m signing up for?”
He stared at her for one incredulous moment then silently pulled them off, leaving his clothing piled on the floor, and came to her, naked. He lay beside her on the bed, propped on one elbow, hard enough that she thought it must hurt and big enough that she was sure she’d feel it for the rest of the day the first time he took her.
She stared at his cock for a long time. Xiao Heng rested his hand on his chin and let her look. His bare chest rose and fell with his shallow breaths. His tongue wetted his lips. Even setting aside the fact that she was deeply in love with him, he was objectively a very fine specimen of manhood. He was beautiful, untouchable, but not to her. He was hers.
She wanted it inside her very badly.
Xiao Heng knew when to wait and when to act. It was one of her favourite things about him. Seeing her struck dumb with lust seemed to have restored some measure of composure to him: now he simply watched her, like a tiger whose prey has by sheer chance wandered into its den, seeing no rush to pounce.
“Well? Is the examination complete? Or would you like to check more thoroughly?”
He was doing a pretty good job of hiding how badly he wanted her to touch him, she thought with affection.
“Actually, I think I’d like to try it out,” she said.
“Oh?”
She nodded and wetted her palm thoroughly with her tongue.
His whole body was tense with anticipation and he cried out when she wrapped her hand around his cock. She rubbed her thumb over the head, smearing moisture down the shaft, and gripped him, jacking him lightly. She nestled in close to him and kissed him messily, feeling drunk on adoration that he was cradled naked in her arms and falling apart from her touch. Already his movements were turning jerky as he pushed up into her hand -- she'd thought this wouldn't take long -- and she tightened her grip and worked him fiercely, rolling him onto his back, their legs tangling, elated at the wildness of their need, thinking: at last, at last, at last.
He came with a choked-off groan, his release spurting through her fingers and on her clothes. She kissed his face and neck and gentled him through it. It’s his first time, she thought. That’s mine now.
She settled beside him. Xiao Heng blinked his eyes open and turned towards her, red-faced and astonished. “It can feel like that?” he said. Then he swept his eyes over her, taking in the dark patch where his come had stained the delicate green silk of her hanfu.
She lifted her hand, which was also covered in his release, to her mouth, and began to delicately lick it clean. “Like what?” she said.
“You’re still wearing clothes,” he said. “Why are you--” and then he shook his head and leaned in and kissed her messily. “Take all of it off,” he said into her mouth.
She sat up and began to fumble her way out of the layers one by one. Xiao Heng didn’t help at all, only watched ravenously. When she was naked, he swept it all to the floor and pulled her towards him, eyes drifting up and down like he couldn’t decide where to look. She’d wanted him, wanted this, so much it had felt like she was dying, but somehow she hadn’t known that having it would feel like being inside a whirlwind. Like burning up.
“A-Li, what do you need? Tell me, tell me how to touch you?”
“No--” she began breathlessly, feeling that she should pull back from the brink, trying to gather herself together.
“No?” All of a sudden he seized her shoulders and she landed on her back with a thump. She shrieked, and he clapped a hand over her mouth. Laughter gurgled in her throat. Xiao Heng loomed over her, hair askew, face like thunder. “What do you mean, no?”
She made a muffled noise and widened her eyes, and he sighed and removed his hand.
“We should-- you don’t need--”
“Don’t I have the right to take a look, since I let you check the wares so thoroughly?”
“I--” she writhed beneath him. It was a convincing argument, and besides, she was so dizzy with want that it was hard to think straight.
He waited for her answer. After a few more seconds of staring down at her with cold, furious authority, and then with increasing desperation, he slumped on top of her and pressed his forehead against her shoulder. “A-Li,” he mumbled. He dragged his mouth over her skin and began to kiss her breasts.
She patted his shoulder. “Do you beg me?”
He lifted his head... “Please, A-Li. Just my hand, like you did. I know you like my hands.”
“You don’t want to taste?”
He jerked his head up. “You want my mouth?”
“Mn.” She widened her eyes at him, a challenge. Somehow, they were both grinning at each other like fools as he bent his head to take her nipple into his mouth. She put her hand in his hair and tugged him down and he went readily, kissing a trail down her belly.
“Take a good look,” she said indulgently, spreading her legs and using her hands to pull her thighs further apart. “It all belongs to you.”
“Already? You're not my wife yet.” He was teasing, but there was a distant tone to his voice: his focus was all on her entrance and the soft folds that surrounded it. She was aching to be touched, clenching around nothing, unfurling like a flower blooming after long months touched by frost. “You’re so--” he began.
She was absolutely soaking wet for him, which she assumed he was about to remark on.
“You’re so beautiful.”
She made a soft, inarticulate sound of need and rested her hand in his hair again. At the first, tentative touch of his tongue, she shuddered and tightened her hand into a fist. He lapped at her, inexpert, but she was already halfway to falling apart and when he pushed his tongue inside her she nearly sobbed.
“More,” she said, “More, please, please, come on,” and, frustrated at how inarticulate she had become, she shoved her hand down to where she needed it and rubbed desperately. She came like that, his tongue fucking into her, waves and waves of it that she rode out with her legs thrown over his shoulders while his fingers gripped her thighs hard enough to bruise.
When she came on her own fingers, alone, there was often a hint of dissatisfaction as reality filtered back in, a sense of detachment at the mundane pragmatism of the whole thing. Now she felt contentment radiating through her body, the feeling of a job well done. Xiao Heng wriggled up the bed until they were lying face to face and grinned at her. His face was red and his lips and chin were smeared with her slickness. She pressed her body against his as she kissed him, wanting them to be touching everywhere. He was half hard again, she noted.
“Not bad,” she told him. “For a beginner.”
He looked deeply relieved. “I read some manuals, but they were very metaphorical. The only person I could talk to about this was the Emperor, and he--”
“Xiao Heng!” She kicked out at him. “You asked the Emperor's advice on how to please me in bed?”
“Who else is there? I can't talk about these things with my subordinates.”
“You should've asked me.”
“I'm asking now,” he said contritely.
“Fine,” she said. He wanted guidance? He would get it. “Lie back on the bed. Hands behind your head.”
He did as instructed, and she seated herself straddling his chest.
His slim, elegant face, his narrow, expressive little mouth, his neat teeth, the way he looked utterly entranced as he looked up at her: he was so dear to her.
“Lesson one,” she said. “A woman can find pleasure many times. Don’t think your job is done just because you brought me off once.”
Xiao Heng laughed, carefree. It was as if the outer carapace that he'd been wearing for a long time had cracked and fallen away, revealing beneath it a creature that was fresh and new and bright as a jewel.
She wondered what the Emperor’s sex tips had been -- to be fair, a man with a harem and a duty to produce an heir must have a considerable range of experience -- but decided now was not the time to bring it up.
“Open your mouth.” She positioned herself over him on her knees, hands planted on the wall in front of her, cunt directly over his mouth, and waited for him to figure out what was needed of him. Soon, he got it, his tongue flicking up. His eyes were closed. Xue Fangfei ground down against him, taking what she needed, and he made a low noise in his throat. The pleasure was building, radiating out from the core of her, and she took it at her leisure. He reached up to run his hands over her ass, encouraging her to ride him.
“Xiao Heng,” she gasped. His fingers dug into her.
I’m going to win, Xue Fangfei thought. I’m going to ruin you, Shen Yurong, I will make sure you get what you deserve, and after you’re dead and disgraced, I will claim this as my prize. He’s mine already. I won’t let him go.
She gasped, her lip caught between her teeth, and her hips bucked and he rubbed his tongue eagerly against her. She cried out, wondered if the servants would hear, and decided she didn’t care. It felt too good.
As she came down from it, she stroked Xiao Heng’s cheek with her thumb and tried very hard to banish the pale, anguished face of Shen Yurong from her mind.
She climbed off of Xiao Heng’s face and flopped onto her back.
“Wow,” he croaked. She fumbled for his hand and they lay side by side, breathing together.
She turned to look at him. It was the sight of him closing his eyes in contentment, the feeling of his fingers brushing hers, that undid her. She pressed in close to his body, tucked her head against his neck, and felt tears begin to slip from her eyes. A tremor shook her body.
He gathered her in close with his arms.
“A-Li?”
She smiled against his damp skin and sniffled. “It's okay.”
He ran a hand down her back, steady and soft. “Oh, my A-Li. I've got you.”
If she had nothing else, Xue Fangfei knew how to summon up the right words for the occasion. Give her the right audience, the right time and place, and she could bend the world to her will. But trying to express to Xiao Heng just how deeply, how widely, how specifically and overwhelmingly she loved him, was totally beyond her. Her mind went blank, and she could only hold him and press clumsy kisses to his skin, blinking the tears away.
But she thought there would be many chances to show him. She vowed to herself that she would not miss them.
It was Xiao Heng who finally stirred to get up, get washed and dressed, make excuses to the servants, and bring food and water to the bed, who cleaned them up and gave her his own robe to sleep in with a knowing smile.
She curled herself up and rested her head on his thigh, letting out a sigh of satisfaction when he began to pet her hair.
“I won't worry too much about the wedding night, then. I'll trust A-Li to show me the way.”
“That’s right,” she murmured. “I don’t think we’ll have any problems.”
Xiao Heng was a cuddler. He arranged them to his satisfaction under the covers, so that she was nestled securely in his arms, and then settled into stillness, his breaths quiet and steady. He would happily stay like this for hours, she knew. And after all, what was the rush? Here, on the cusp of marriage, startlingly happy against the odds -- she’d fought bitterly so that she could have moments such as this, and all that she could do when it came was submit to it, and be quiet, and loved, and held.