Chapter 15
Ye Hua~
“Brother-in-law, are you still celibate?” I cringed beneath my composure. She brought up something she shouldn’t have, and the question landed like an accusation, casually yet pointed in its delivery. Had the servants overheard her, the whispers would have made it across all eight realms by noon.
The silence from my brother grew interminably awkward, but she continued to press him nevertheless. “You and Bai Qian were spectacular together. Thank you for an unforgettable birthday performance.” Her lips curled into a mischievous smile, exposing her impeccably aligned teeth. The light caught the sharp gleam of her earrings swaying from her earlobes.
Her unabashed and unapologetic demeanor laid bare exposing her audacity without a trace of discomfort or shame.
I remembered when it was once innocent and charming. Back then, Bai Lianhua’s blunt honesty was endearing and entertainingly forgivable, because of her youth and naivety. I felt proud watching her grow into herself. Having started her early life as a mortal, she was like a newborn as she discovered the eternal realm for the first time, eagerly absorbing its lessons like a dry desert soaks up rain.
That was three hundred years ago, and now she is the Heavenly Empress. Enough time has passed for her to fully grasp the significance of her words, intentions, and actions, which serve as a model for others. Yet, she now uses them with a deliberate carelessness that has long lost its charm.
“Has brother-in-law broken his vows?” She asked again. Had we been alone, I would have gently chided her, but Mo Yuan prefers I let her be. Yet I can’t stop the subtle annoyance morphing into distaste that curled through me. Of course, she wanted to know and rejoice about something that never happened.
Bai Lianhua detested being in the company of Mo Yuan and me when our conversations fell into silence. She couldn’t grasp the connection shared by twins, the seamless bond that allowed us to communicate without words. To her, the peaceful quiet we found so soothing was maddeningly unbearable. She often remarked that death was approaching her soon enough, and our wordless exchanges were a dreary glimpse into the monotonous afterlife.
I had found it peculiar when she insisted on serving us tea today, but her true intention soon became clear. She was impatient to question Mo Yuan about the previous night when he and Qian Qian had spent time alone in the Hall Of Beautiful Youth. Bai Lianhua was convinced something significant had transpired there. Her eagerness for gossip was palpable. Yet I knew my brother better, and I knew Qian Qian as well. Nothing happened. Neither of them would disrespect me in the way my current wife was doing with her insinuations and unfounded suspicions.
My restraint felt like a scratchy wool coat, too tight across the shoulders and chest, each fiber a tiny, irritating prickle against my skin. Uncomfortable. It took effort to control it. My lip twitched holding back a scowl. This caused a shadow of a smile to momentarily flicker on Mo Yuan’s face. I was glad someone was amused.
“Am I celibate? Depends who’s asking.” He replied, as his gaze lazily dragged from his teacup to her face. “Is Di-mei flirting with me and hinting I abandon my vows for you?”
“No!” She scoffed, her fingers curling possessively around my shoulders, and retorted with a piercing gaze that seemed to drill a hole into my brother’s face as he teased her. “Unlike another,” she declared and began innocently enough, yet the underlying insinuation was unmistakable. She was drawing an obvious line, setting herself apart from Qian Qian, who loved both Mo Yuan and me. Her voice resonated with unwavering certainty, like a bell tolling in the quiet, affirming her place and her intent with clarity and determination.
“For me, there is only Ye Hua,” she proclaimed.
“Yes, with you.” Mo Yuan replied, placing a soft but definitive emphasis on the words with you. “There will only be Ye Hua.”
A triumphant smile lit up her face as his comment, indirectly pointing out that unlike Qian Qian, whom we both desired, only I desire her, sails past unnoticed. Should this please me? Perhaps. But for a man like me, there was a secret satisfaction in knowing others coveted what I’ve claimed. Flaunting my prize was a dark thrill, once hardening me like steel fueled a jealous intensity, a need to possess her utterly, to claim her devotion solely for myself.
Bai Qian
“If we keep meeting like this, people will say we are in love,” he quipped, his voice laced with the kind of flirtatious charm he thought could erase the memory of last night.
Li Peng approached me with his characteristic warmth, but I wasn’t in the mood for his usual antics. I fixed him with a piercing, hostile glare, a silent reprimand for his betrayal of the sacred friend code by leaving me alone with Ye Hua. Where was his loyalty to friend code? Nowhere. He seemed to have forgotten, “Never leave your friend with an ex”—some rules are unbreakable.
The sharp snap of my fan was my silent response, echoing through the air like a whip. I tilted my head to one side, letting my chin fall to my chest, and delivered a stern, motherly shake of my head with every step. My eyes locked onto his to ensure he fully understood the depth of my discontent. “I’m not angry. I’m merely disappointed. Ghost Lord Li Peng, the way you scampered off, I would believe it if you told me you were a mouse spirit.”
With a throw of his hands into the air, a carefree gesture as if scattering the weight of guilt to the wind, he wore a smile so wide it deepened his infamous dimples. His expression was an unabashed attempt to solicit forgiveness and to be utterly disarming in its boyish charm when he asked, “Can you blame me, Qian Qian?”
“Oh, yes!” I hooted back, rolling my eyes to add dramatic effect, my voice tart like freshly ripened plums on the verge of sourness. “Most definitely! I blame you for being a fair weathered friend.”
His shoulders lifted in a comical shrug, feigning innocence though he knew well of his mischief and the victim left in its wake. “Then why are you in the Demon Realm? The place I live?” The question rolled off his tongue with the ease of long familiarity. “You could have gone home and punished me by keeping your beautiful self hidden from my hungry sight?”
I sneered my best smirk, attempting to suppress my laughter at his antics, which unfolded with a predictability that never failed to entertain.
Instead of returning home, I came here. I yearned to shake off the lingering awkwardness from the night before and, even more urgently, to quell the unruly cascade of my own thoughts, which proved far more challenging to silence than the hushed whispers of Ye Hua and Bai Lianhua’s evening escapades. Their passions, overheard by several Celestial Swans, had been relayed to the servants who attended to me in the Nine Heavens. The whispers floated through the air like a persistent breeze, impossible to ignore, bothering my ears with their insistent chatter.
Hearing of their affections, this didn’t surprise me, but knowing he was intimate with her after she offended me most egregiously was a feeling only wine would stifle and the distraction from the hallucinating effects would eat away at my embarrassment.
I spoke with my sweetest sing-song voice, so sweet I could have drizzled it over haw berries to candy them. “Because you have endless wine and I need to get drunk.”
He put a hand to his heart to amplify the effect of flattery aimed at him and mused, “How can I say no to a beautiful woman asking for my help?”
The wine granted me delicious liberation and moral relief the moment it warms my insides. Li Peng’s wine is the most potent I’ve tasted, more so than any I’ve known before. It goes down like a thick herbal tonic, dense enough to be chewable, and distinctly potent in its effects. He did have the most magnificent collection. My head spun delightfully as if clouds cushion it with softness, and I dangled my feet in the cool pond, watching the ripples that mirror my blissful intoxication.
It was a perfect setting, sitting back to back with him while lazily passing the bottle, imagining us this way forever doesn’t seem that unpleasant. “Maybe I should marry you and stay in this blissful state,” I remark with a carefree laugh that echoes through the calm air, the wine loosening my inhibitions beyond what I thought possible. “We are friends… we could be more.”
The idea was absurd enough to amuse him, to make him chuckle as he glances over his shoulder, playful and thoughtful as always. “Your children would never allow that.”
“What do you mean? My children do not dictate how I live.” A sharp edge pierced my voice despite myself.
I turned enough for our arms to touch, feeling a lost sensation, the thrill of human connection, of wanting to be wanted. “Li Peng, do you want to kiss me?”
His body was frozen in sudden stillness, a hesitation that burns my cheeks. I know he may not think of me this way, as anything more than a friend. But if not, why does his body lean toward mine with increasing urgency, gradually but undeniably? Why does his hand hover so closely, so intimately, over my thigh, as if he is preparing—almost yearning—to caress it? Why do his eyes search mine with an intensity I’ve never seen before, lingering before shifting to my lips, as if waiting for an invitation to do the very thing he hesitates to do?
“Qian Qian, don’t ask this of me.” He warned me with his raspy, hoarse voice, which cracks with sincerity.
“Come on.” I rose to my feet, unsteady and wobbling slightly from the wine I drank too quickly, and reach out toward him. The world around me seemed to spin ever so slightly as he stood slowly, perhaps just as unsteady as I am, his eyes wide and startled like a rabbit cornered by a Fox. “Let’s take this to your room,” I said, my needy voice a touch too insistent, my tone tinged with a hopeful longing that borders on desperation.
“Li Peng,” I murmured, my voice trailing off into the air, carried by a haze of intoxicated anticipation, a potent blend of arousal and a yearning to rediscover the sensuality buried deep within me. “I’ll close my eyes, and you can take me anywhere you want,” I whispered, letting my eyelids flutter shut as a smile danced on my lips, feeling the warmth of his hands envelop mine. But the sweet moment is fleeting, evaporating like mist in the morning sun. His hands were yanked away from mine with a sharp swish, and a curt voice cuts through the air, “Scram. Get lost, Li Peng.”
Mo Yuan~
The moon hung low behind them making her glisten. Her skin, creamy and smooth as warm milk poured over silk, glowed softly even from this distance. Long, dark lashes, like delicate brushstrokes of midnight, framed eyes that seemed to shimmer. The elegant line of her nose, a flawless sculpture, was etched in my memory; each curve and angle sharply defined. I often watched her, my former student, feigning study as her eyelids drooped and she drifted to sleep, her chin resting softly in her hand, above an open scroll.
My gaze locked onto her luscious lips, glistening and alluring; a fiery heat bloomed in my gut, surging through my veins, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. The silken whisper of her dress rising, a cool glide against her skin, revealed smooth, bare thighs as she reclined provocatively against Li Peng.
Her face was a picture of intoxicated elation, her eyes half-closed and lips slightly parted, as if she were lost in a haze of more than just the wine she had been sipping. Anger churned inside me at the sight of her melding into him so completely. Their bodies were so closely that not even a sliver of light could slip between them. Her breathless, giddy laughter grated on my ears. But what fueled my fury the most was her bold, unmistakable request for him to take her to his room.
Rage boiled up inside me, hot and fierce. Jealousy roared through me like a tempest, an uncontrollable storm surging within. My body reacted on pure instinct, muscles tightening and propelling me forward before my mind could catch up. With a swift, forceful motion, I tore their interlocked hands apart and shoved Li Peng backward, my palm a solid barrier against his chest. “Scram. Get lost, Li Peng,” I growled, low and menacing.
Her eyes fluttered open, blinking rapidly, as if trying to clear a fog of confusion. Her brow furrowed, and she whispered in a voice tinged with disbelief, “Mo Yuan? Am I hallucinating?”
“No, I’m real, and what do you think you’re doing?” I snapped, each word laced with fury.
She swayed slightly. Her eyes, wide and unfocused, darted around like trapped flies, searching for clarity. She shook her head violently, a whirlwind of dark hair, as if to dislodge the intoxicating fog clouding her senses; She watched as in a daze as I with deliberate, calculated strides, closed the distance in three strides, the crunch of gravel under my boots a counterpoint to the frantic fluttering of her lashes. She stumbled walking backward. Her retreat ended abruptly against a massive, moss-covered boulder, its cold, unyielding surface a stark contrast to her heated body.
I stopped mere inches from her, the warmth of her breath ragged and panicked, a hot, humid wave against my skin. My voice, thick with jealousy and anger, “I’ve heard you’ve been indulging excessively in the Essence of Gu. I’m here to take you home.”
“You don’t have to worry about me. I’m a grown woman. I’m not getting dragged away by you, and you shouldn’t have laid hands on Li Peng.” Her voice gained a sharp edge, like a flame rekindled, and her defense of Li Peng sent a dull ache pulsing through my temples. Her words ceased as she notices my expression, her eyes widening somewhat, and strands of her dark hair cascaded over her forehead like ribbons of raven silk.
“Yes, you are a grown woman, but Li Peng must learn what he can and can’t have,” I retorted. I reached out, my fingers brushing aside the silken strands of hair clinging to her lips, the touch feather-light. Then they traced a slow, deliberate path down her neck, the skin warm and smooth beneath them, finally settling at the nape where a gentle but firm pressure lingered. Her skin smelled intoxicating—a heady blend of sun-ripened peaches and sweet honey, with a subtle, intoxicating whisper of wine that hung in the air, making my head swim.
Every part of her tense body radiated with an electric energy that called to me, like a blaring signal I could not ignore. My bones throbbed with a fierce urge to close the distance between us, as if drawn by an invisible force to the wild heat she exuded. I slid a hand down her side, feeling the curve of her hip through the thin silk of her gown. As I lifted her skirt, each inch of fabric pulled up to reveal more of her alluring form.
The overwhelming urge, a wildfire in my veins, to press my lips to hers—a fervent kiss that would smear her delicate rouge, bruise and swell her mouth—consumed me. I yearned to kiss away her perfect facade, revealing the messy, breathtaking reality beneath leaving no doubt in anyone’s mind to whom she belonged.
My knuckles gently brushed against her soft inner thigh, tracing a meandering path upward, like a slow river carving its path through the landscape. Her skin pebbled beneath my touch, and a soft, almost inaudible sighs escaped her lips, sent a jolt of electricity down my spine. I wanted to hear more of those sounds and greedily drink them in until I became intoxicated as her by her every breath as I drove her to the brink. My sex ached with desire, a need that I brutally suppressed, my focus solely on her.
I traced my fingers higher. The damp silk of her undergarments whispered against my fingertips, a cool contrast to the warmth of her skin. She gasped, her body betraying her even as she tried to maintain her defiance. Her hands gripping my shoulders, fingernails digging into the tense muscles beneath my robe. Yet, she remains there, her eyes wide and locked onto mine, a mix of rebellion and anticipation swirling within their depths. I slowly moved the thin fabric aside, finding her wet. My thumb circled her swollen clit with a feather-light touch. Her nails pressed deeper into my shoulders, leaving a trail of tingling pinpricks as a shiver coursed through my body. Her teeth sunk into her bottom lip, a futile attempt to suppress the intensity of her reaction. Her eyes reflected the warring emotions of defiance and lust.
“Shi qi, you will be mine,” I murmured, my voice a low rumble, like the distant echo of thunder. I kept my thumb pressed against her, drawing lazy circles, as I slowly eased a finger into her warmth. I added a second finger, curving them inside her as I leaned in to capture her lips in a searing kiss. She kissed me back with a fervor that matched my own, her tongue tangling with mine as she moaned into my mouth as I explored, stretched her depths with deliberate, tender strokes. I curled my fingers, searching for that hidden, intimate spot that made her breath hitch and her body responded with a feverish intensity.
I broke the kiss, my lips trailing down her neck as I continued to finger her, my thumb steady on her clit and rubbing in slow, deliberate circles. “Do you understand?” I asked again, my tone firm and commanding, tolerating no argument. I withdrew my fingers slowly, then thrusted into her with more force, my hand pressing against her clit, drawing out a whimpering moan from her lips. She ground against the heel of my hand, wanting more, and the scent of her arousal, sweet and intoxicating, made my cock throb with an almost painful intensity. I wanted to take her, to claim her as my own, but the sight of her, lips parted, heavy-lidded and flush with color, riding my hand with wild abandonment, was a spectacle too beautiful to interrupt.
With a sharp, breathless cry, she surrendered, her body quivering tightening around my fingers, her orgasm crashing over her like a storm. Her hands fell from my shoulders, her body going slack as I supported her weight, my fingers still nestled within her warmth, until every tremor subsided. I pulled out of her and pressed my thumb against her bottom lip, letting her taste her arousal, an intimate act that sent a fresh wave of lust coursing through me.
I pulled back my leg from between hers, allowing her dress to fall back into place. Tilting my head, I met her gaze, our eyes locking, and I tweaked her nose. “Now go home,” I told her. “Be good and don’t offer yourself to anyone else.”
She glared at me, her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling with a defiant fire. “Nothing will come of this,” she said turning her back to me. “You won’t go against Ye Hua.”
In a sudden, urgent twist, I spun her around, seizing her shoulders. The rough-hewn boulder pressed cool against her back as I held her, her breath catching in her chest. Sweat glistened on her brow, her body trembling slightly against mine.
“Don’t test me.” Reaching behind her, I twisted her long, raven silk tresses around my fist, the pull revealing the elegant curve of her neck—an irresistible sight. A violent shiver, an electrifying tremor, surged through me as my teeth grazed her skin, as a possessive guttural rumbling deep in my chest. The Dragon within me was incessant and impatient, a powerful thrumming that resonated through my very bones as it growled one primal word: “Mate.”
The world crystallized into razor-sharp focus, centering solely on her, a vivid, pulsing nucleus of existence. She was the one. My destined mate. The bite, a fierce, searing brand, marking my claim upon her skin, obliterating the error of past restraint and hesitation. This time, she was irrevocably, undeniably mine.