Shoutout to Alinaza for the commission!
When he asked that, Jiang Se actually remembered some old things.
She and Fu Yun had almost kissed.
She forgot which date it was, only remembered it was about a year after they got engaged.
That night in Beicheng, the first snowfall had just fallen.
They came out of the hotel after dinner, intending to go to the parking lot and head home separately.
Maybe because Jiang Se looked at the snow outside for a moment longer, the always-attentive Fu Yun suggested: “Do you want to go out for a walk?”
Jiang Se had nothing urgent that night, so she agreed, considered it a way to digest dinner.
Outside the hotel was a beautiful Twin-Moon Lake, the shapes of two crescent moons, with a stone arch bridge in between. They leaned against the bridge, watching the lake and the snow, and the conversation was far more pleasant than it had been at the dinner table. You could call it harmonious and cheerful.
Perhaps the atmosphere was right, Fu Yun suddenly leaned toward her.
Though they were tools of a family marriage, and not familiar with each other, Jiang Se had indeed thought that once they married, she would try to manage the marriage well.
So when Fu Yun lowered his head, if not for the few children who suddenly ran past from the lakeside, she wouldn’t have avoided the kiss.
In the end, Fu Yun’s lips brushed lightly past the corner of her mouth and landed on her cheek.
Maybe because of the way she turned her head, Fu Yun misunderstood her as unwilling. In the dates after that, he was always polite, never overstepped, and even the occasional physical contact was merely social courtesy, a light support at her waist.
But strictly speaking——
“He kissed me.” Jiang Se looked at Lu Huaiyan, smiled, “Not only Fu Yun, Fu Jun also kissed me.”
Lu Huaiyan was about to turn off her bedside lamp. Hearing this, he cast her a sideways look and sat back down.
“Where did they kiss you?”
The man’s voice was calm, his lips even carrying a faint smile.
Jiang Se sat up, hands behind her, head tilted: “Does it matter where they kissed?”
Lu Huaiyan stared at her without blinking, suddenly thinking of her expression earlier in the walk-in closet at the villa and just now when she was half leaning back against the wardrobe.
She seemed to quite like that.
The man let out a soft laugh, lifted her blanket, pulled her onto his lap, one hand pressing her lower back while the other held her chin, his thumb rubbing her lips.
“Here?” He brushed her eyelashes and earlobe, “Or here? Or maybe—”
His fingers moved down, tracing the line of her long neck, brushing over her collarbone and the curves of her body, moving all the way down, slipping under the hem of her nightdress. His voice turned slightly hoarse: “These places? Sese, did they ever use their mouths on you?”
Jiang Se’s body was more sensitive now than ever.
His fingertip pressure was gentle, like a dragonfly touching water, yet she still trembled lightly, as if a small spark of electricity shot through her.
She instinctively tried to lean back, but his hand at her lower back felt her intention and not only refused to let her retreat, but even pressed her slightly forward.
Jiang Se parted her lips and drew in a breath.
The man’s eyes were dark as ink, the possessiveness in them like heavy clouds blotting out the sun.
Jiang Se simply didn’t avoid, her beautiful almond eyes glossy with moisture, yet the gaze she cast at him was quiet and clear.
She curved her lips and smiled: “They were all once my fiancés, isn’t it very normal to do some intimate things?”
Normal, of course it was normal.
In their circle, having s*x after getting engaged was the most normal thing. Even Cao Xun and Jian Ruyi, who never got along since childhood, had done it.
She and Fu Yun, Fu Jun hadn’t even gone to the last step. Compared to most people, they were much more restrained.
Lu Huaiyan replied to her unhurriedly: “It is quite normal.”
Jiang Se looked him over, “Lu Huaiyan, are you… jealous?”
Lu Huaiyan didn’t answer her. He lowered his head and took her lips into his mouth, catching the warm breath from her lips. Only when Jiang Se’s ten fingers dug tightly into his arm did he release her lips, watching without blinking as she breathed sharply like a fish deprived of oxygen.
The man waited for her breathing to slowly calm before pulling his hand out from beneath her skirt, and with a smile asked: “Your former fiancés never went this far with you, so what does that make our relationship now?”
The moment he asked that, Lu Huaiyan knew his patience really was, as Mo Jichen had said, growing worse by the day.
He knew this girl couldn’t be pushed.
It wasn’t as if he could hold gold mountains and silver mountains, create a few scenes of worldly romance, swear to the heavens with sweet words, and coax her into being with him, into being his woman.
When it came to things he wanted, whether objects or people, Lu Huaiyan always had excellent patience.
Slowly plotting, step by step closing in.
Slowly luring her to get used to him, unable to leave him, and then fall in love with him.
And now, let alone loving him or needing him, even getting used to him was difficult for her.
Asking her at this moment to clearly define what they were was indeed being too hasty.
She was right, he had indeed drunk a bit of sour old vinegar, enough that he asked an inappropriate question at an inappropriate time.
But since the words were already spoken, naturally he needed an answer.
After all, she knew better than anyone that he wanted her.
After he asked the question, his gaze remained calm. Even if he was jealous, he wouldn’t lose control like other men.
He lowered his eyes to her, waiting for her answer.
Jiang Se’s brows and eyes still carried the remnants of pleasure, yet as his words landed, her lightly trembling eyelashes paused.
She lifted her eyes to him, her hazy gaze gradually cooling.
A moment of silence.
Jiang Se turned her face slightly and said: “Fu Yun kissed my cheek. When he kissed me, I felt nothing inside. As for Fu Jun, when he leaned down, I avoided it, he only kissed my hair. After that I splashed him with a cup of coffee. I actually don’t like overly intimate contact with people, for example, like this.”
She lifted her chin and took the initiative to kiss him with her soft lips. After a light touch, she pulled back and continued: “But I don’t reject doing these things with you. I might even say I enjoy it. My Little Aunt used to say I’ve locked myself in a cage, that one should live as freely as one wishes, who knows what will happen tomorrow. I think she’s right. When you want me and I happen to want you, we take a secret ride together. Isn’t that good?”
Lu Huaiyan lowered his eyes, watching her beautiful petal lips open and close as she spoke infuriating words.
After she finished, he smiled and asked: “What counts as taking a secret ride?”
Jiang Se slowly smiled, her brows and eyes clear and striking: “We enjoy the moment, go where we go, and when we inevitably have to part ways, we part peacefully.”
In the end, she didn’t want a relationship, only a journey one boards and leaves at will.
To put it plainly, it was a casu.al friends-with-benefits relationship that could be stopped at any time.
Lu Huaiyan raised his brow at her: “What if, when the time comes, we can’t part peacefully?”
“We won’t.” Jiang Se placed her hand on his face, her lips curved in a smile, “We grew up in families like that. We’re born to be people who don’t cling and beg.”
Whether it was Cen Minghong and Ji Yunyi, or Han Yin and Lu Jinzhong, their marriages were filled with betrayal and unmentionable filth.
Love fades easily, marriage is hard to build.
They grew up in such families; there was a natural coldness in their bones. How could they ever be the type to cling desperately in love?
Lu Huaiyan lowered his eyelids, looking at her. Her face still held the blush he created, soft pink cheeks, cold yet bewitchingly beautiful, like a mermaid walking out from the riverbank that night.
Bewitching, enticing.
He didn’t respond, as if tacitly agreeing with her words.
Jiang Se lifted her eyes to his face, almost overwhelmingly handsome.
Beneath her palm was the sharp outline of his jaw, the skin she had shaved for him a few hours ago now pressed intimately against her hand.
In the elevator earlier that evening, reason told her she should press the down button and leave.
Her fever had broken, her bad mood had settled, she should have left.
But inexplicably, she felt unsatisfied.
She knew he was waiting outside the elevator, waiting for that bit of lingering desire in her to defeat her rationality, so she could continue entangling with him.
In the end, she pressed the door-open button.
When she stepped out of the elevator, she thought it through clearly: what harm was there in entangling a bit deeper with him?
Who knew how long she would live, who knew if she could win?
Jiang Se lifted her head slightly and pressed her lips to Lu Huaiyan’s again.
Lu Huaiyan didn’t move. When she parted her lips, holding his lower lip and trying to slip her tongue in, his Adam’s apple rolled, but he still didn’t respond to her.
Jiang Se slowly blinked. After kissing for a moment and seeing he didn’t react, she was just about to pull away when he suddenly let out a soft laugh.
“No patience at all, Sese.”
His voice slipped out from between their touching lips. Jiang Se paused, and the next moment he pressed the back of her head down, biting her lip, prying open her teeth, beginning to tangle with her.
He kissed her deeply, fiercely.
It was a violent kiss.
Jiang Se closed her eyes, then suddenly opened them again, pushing at him. He loosened his grip slightly, allowed her a breath of air, then continued kissing her.
He was wearing a black bathrobe, and Jiang Se’s knees were right against his waist, her skirt trailing down on both sides of her thighs.
Sitting pressed close to him, she could naturally feel the tense lines of his thighs with perfect clarity.
In such an intimate posture, anything they wanted to do would be very convenient.
When he let go of her lips, the instant Jiang Se saw his eyes, her heart thumped heavily, she thought he would take advantage of this position and go at it with her again.
But he did nothing. He simply lifted her up and set her back on the bed, then stretched out an arm to switch off the light.
Her eyes were thrown into darkness all at once. After a bit of rustling, the mattress at her side suddenly sank.
“Alright, then let’s ride together for a while.”
The man’s voice drifted over slow and lazy, tinged with a hint of careless amusement.
Jiang Se was just about to turn and look at him when his callused fingers had already pinched her soft cheek, leaning over, his lips coming down hard.
When the goodnight kiss ended, he said with a smile, “Sleep, Miss.”
Jiang Se lifted her lashes, and in the dim room gave his blurred face a faint glance. Soon she closed her eyes and fell deeply asleep.
A dreamless night.
The curtains in the room weren’t fully closed, and a strand of morning light falling on her eyelids woke her.
That strand of light also woke the man lying beside her.
They opened their eyes almost at the same time.
Both were people used to sleeping alone; even sharing one bed, they each occupied one side with an arm’s distance between them.
Yet in that arm’s-width of empty space, two intertwined hands lay abruptly across it.
Jiang Se’s lashes trembled. From the corner of her eye she saw her right hand, loosely curled into a fist, resting against his palm.
She had always slept very properly, however she fell asleep was how she woke. Last night, her hand had clearly been under the covers.
The man’s palm was very warm, with a faint roughness, wrapping from all sides around her hand and half her wrist.
In her morning grogginess, a strange illusion rose in her, his warm hand felt like a kind of shackle.
Her thoughts were still frozen when her long fingers were suddenly pried apart, the pads of his callused fingers slowly threading through the base of hers, reaching her scarred palm, unhurriedly interlacing their fingers together.
Jiang Se blinked and lifted her gaze, meeting Lu Huaiyan’s calm and deep eyes.
He had long been awake; she didn’t know when he had turned his face toward her, watching her quietly.
The dark-blue thin quilt lay over his waist. His upper body was bare, the lines of his collarbones jutting like a mountain range. Beautiful muscle lines, like the veins of a leaf, spread from his chest to his waist.
There were several red scratch marks on his shoulder, marks she had made when her hands clung to his shoulders and she lost control.
In her daze, Lu Huaiyan’s low, husky “Good morning, Sese” fully woke her.
Jiang Se’s throat felt tight; she wanted water.
“Good morning.” Her voice also carried a bit of hoarseness.
Pulling her hand from his palm, she was just about to get up when the doorbell suddenly rang sharply.
You didn’t need to guess who it was.
Aside from Lu Huaiyan, only Han Xiao had the keycard to the top-floor suite.
Jiang Se’s brow twitched.
Her coat and the intimate clothing he had stripped from under her skirt last night were all on the shoe cabinet.
She turned her head toward Lu Huaiyan: “My clothes are at the entryway.”
Lu Huaiyan clearly also remembered what exactly was lying there, yet he didn’t hurry. Leisurely, he leaned over, pressed his face to her ear, kissed her temple, and said with a smile in his voice, “What are you nervous about? I won’t let Han Xiao see those clothes of yours.”
