Remarriage (1v1, H) - 17
Lu Xiniang stood rooted for a moment.
The set of Chong-ge’er’s shoulders told her everything: he carried a stone in his chest.
Yesterday he had gone to her ruined courtyard first; the ache must still be raw.
She returned early to Linhui, ate alone, and (memory guiding her hand) poured two cups of sweet osmanthus wine.
In her old life the guihua and apricot trees behind her moon-gate had perfumed every autumn jar.
Tonight the taste felt like coming home.
While Chunmei and Chuntao combed her hair she said, casual as dusting powder,
“I have a word for you both.
No matter how we spoke at the Lu house, here we keep our tongues still.
One careless syllable and the whole mansion hears it.
Grandmother herself warned me.
Understood?”
The maids dipped in perfect unison.
No wonder Madam acts reborn, they thought.
The dowager must have drilled the fear of heaven into her.
They asked no questions; their world was combs and hot water, not secrets.
Wang Chong did not appear.
A nurse guarded the gate, yet worry gnawed.
A wife did not trail her husband like a spy.
Lu Xiniang paced three circles, heard nothing, and finally slipped out of her robes.
Yuexiang might be a featherweight drinker; Lu Xiniang had never tested her.
Two cups were her own lullaby.
She burrowed into the quilt, then kicked it off; heat crawled under her skin.
Half-dreaming, she loosened her shift, let cool air kiss her br3asts, and sank into wine-scented sleep.
Wang Chong returned long after the lamps burned low.
He washed in the outer room, water splashing softly, then pushed through the inner door.
Two celadon lamps glowed in the corners.
Inside the bed-curtains Lu Xiniang lay on her back, shift peeled open, br3ast-band loosened so one creamy globe spilled free.
The n1pple, flushed like rouge, stood proud in the cool air.
Lower, her lotus-embroidered drawers had parted; the crotch panel hung open.
A smooth belly, a faint scatter of curls, and between soft thighs the plump folds of her pvssy, sealed tight, guarding the tiny entrance beneath.
Wang Chong’s mouth went dry.
Three hours kneeling in that ruined courtyard, copying the Heart Sutra two hundred and sixty times, burning the pages with ghost-money—wasted ink.
On the ride home she had called him “outrageous,” the exact scold his foster-mother once used.
Anger had flared, then guttered.
Before she took him in, no one had cared if he starved.
She had bathed him, taught him characters, and when he sulked sent him to kneel on rice until his knees bruised.
Tonight he had knelt unprompted, copying sutras for a ghost.
A rough palm woke Lu Xiniang.
Callouses scraped her br3ast; fingers pinched the n1pple and tugged until it stretched, aching.
She surfaced through wine-fog, nose wrinkling at the scent of burnt paper clinging to his skin.
She squinted.
“You skipped washing your hair again?”
The n1pple twisted hard.
She yelped fully awake, eyes wide on his shadowed face.
“Aunt told me,” she blurted. “You hated baths as a boy. I—I dreamed it just now.”
The storm in his eyes eased.
No one else knew that childhood terror (dunked in a horse-trough, half-drowned, screaming).
She had dragged him to the tub every week, sleeves rolled, singing off-key until he stopped fighting the water.
He released the tender peak.
“Sleep,” he muttered, and lay down beside her, still smelling of ash and longing.