Remarriage (1v1, H) - 10
Lu Xiniang froze, then stammered, “No… really, I can do it myself…”
Wang Chong had already plucked the jar from her fingers and tipped his chin toward the bed.
Daylight debauchery was unthinkable.
What had twisted her gentle Chong-ge’er into this?
Last night he was drunk; today his eyes were clear as frost.
She had drilled the classics into him herself: rites and morals were the spine of a man.
Yet when she counted the years (nineteen when he left for Xiangcheng, twenty-five now, childless and far from home), she softened.
A man could grow hungry in exile.
He studied her a long moment, then said, “Husband and wife are one flesh. No need for shame.
Though I confess, since the wedding you seem a different woman.”
Yuexiang had been spoiled rotten, never properly schooled; she and her aunt might have sprung from separate worlds.
Wang Chong, tempered by lonely magistracy and the Ministry of Punishments, read faces the way scholars read scrolls.
He had married beneath him for one reason only: the face of the woman who once rocked him to sleep.
Let this bride bear a son; he would raise the boy himself and keep him straight.
Lu Xiniang, still scolding herself for a failed mother, heard the quiet command and nearly leapt out of her skin.
Terrified he would spot the lie, she scrambled onto the mattress, lay rigid as a corpse, and fixed her gaze on the embroidered canopy.
She had no map for this marriage.
Cousin Yuexiang had met Chong-ge’er only at festivals; she had never bothered to learn the girl’s heart.
Eyes squeezed shut, she parted her thighs as ordered, fingers knotted in the quilt.
The pose (trembling, half-hidden) should have looked frightened.
Instead it looked like invitation.
A flicker of distaste crossed Wang Chong’s face.
“Open your eyes,” he said, voice low and rough.
Lu Xiniang blinked, confused.
She met his eyes and found no warmth, only winter steel.
Wang Chong scooped a thick ribbon of green salve onto two fingers, leaned close, studied the swollen seam for a heartbeat, then pushed straight in.
A white-hot stab.
She had braced for gentle circles; instead he speared her raw flesh.
Tears sprang before she could stop them.
Her rough boy had never learned tenderness.
Any other bride would have shrieked for her parents.
Marriages cracked on less.
His fingers stayed buried.
The tender walls, bruised from last night’s siege, fluttered and clung, barring any deeper breach.
“I’ll do it myself,” she whispered, tugging his wrist with wet eyes.
He stared a moment, lips thin, then withdrew.
He wiped his hand on the brocade cloth as though wiping away a mistake.
Under his silent gaze she scooped a careless dollop, smeared it across the outer folds, and dared not venture inside.
When she reached for her drawers, his voice cut the air.
“Leave them off.”
The hunger in his tone was unmistakable.
Even her boundless love for him recoiled.
Had she worn her true face, she would have marched him to the foot of the bed and set him copying the Heart Sutra a hundred times.
Instead she swallowed the reprimand, slid beneath the quilt, and turned away.
He did not pounce.
He simply lay beside her, still as a tomb.
Minutes bled into an hour.
Then a long, broken sigh slipped from his chest.
The sound pierced her.
Resentment melted; worry rushed in.
A duke’s coronet looked heavy from the outside, but who knew what thorns lay beneath?
She rolled toward him, eyes soft with unspoken questions.
His gaze met hers—lost, searching.
For three heartbeats the world held its breath.
Then his arm snaked around her waist, dragged her flush against him.
His palm slid beneath her shift, cupped one br3ast through the thin binder, and began a slow, deliberate knead.