Shoutout to Alinaza for the commission!
When it came to this, Lu Huaiyan had always been patient.
No matter how urgent he was, he could suppress all the restlessness, and like playing the piano, lay down the prelude gently and precisely before gradually speeding up the rhythm and progressing step by step into climax.
But this time, there was no prelude, no buildup, he went straight to the theme.
The moment his lips fell, Jiang Se frowned and let out a sound.
The dark car cabin was sealed, the air thin.
It wasn’t long before Jiang Se had to part her lips to breathe, her brows knitted and unknitted, her wet eyelashes sticking together in little clumps, trembling nonstop.
Last time at Xinhe Residence, she had bitten Lu Huaiyan’s shoulder hard, angry he had stirred up her wavering thoughts. When he asked why she was angry, she said he had hurt her.
He had laughed and said he hadn’t even used his full strength.
Now, Jiang Se was truly feeling his full strength.
And she finally understood how much he had held back before, and how much he had lost control this time.
They even still had their clothes on. The leather seatback behind her gave off rustling sounds from the friction of fabric, shaking in the cramped dimness.
Her long black hair spread out, and her thoughts, like the muffled sounds in her throat, were cut into shattered pieces.
For a moment she thought of the dizziness of curling up in that wooden boat as a child; the next, she thought of Guo Qian holding that little erotic comic, asking if someone could really be ruined into a rag doll.
In her haze, she felt like she was about to rise with the roller coaster inside her to the highest point, only for everything to abruptly stop right before the weightless plunge.
Lu Huaiyan brushed aside her hair, lowered his head, and kissed her lips.
Jiang Se lifted her eyelids, her chest rising and falling, breathless from lack of oxygen and from anger.
He was deliberately refusing her.
Jiang Se lifted her foot and kicked at his shoulder: “Are you going to continue or not!”
The car had only one reading light on, and the warm yellow glow spread from the front seats.
Her entire face was flushed with dampness, her usually cool brows and eyes eroded by desire, like a fallen moon dragged from the high heavens into the dirty, muddy mortal world.
“Continue? Why wouldn’t I continue?” Lu Huaiyan grabbed her ankle, shifted, and leaned to her ear. “Just one sentence is that hard? Your body is so soft, but your mouth is so hard.”
Jiang Se wanted to lift her other foot to kick him, but the next second she suddenly lost her voice, her beautiful arch of a foot knocking hard against the window glass.
Lu Huaiyan was enduring even harder than she was.
He had never been a man with much mercy in his bones. Once the ruthlessness in him burst free, it surged like a dam breaking.
Both of them were losing control.
Jiang Se bit his shoulder and collarbone through his shirt, her voice trapped deep in her throat, soft like the crying of the wind.
This time, it wasn’t the weightlessness of falling from the sky.
She felt like a delicate porcelain piece falling off a cliff into an abyss, dropping and dropping, cutting through fog and cloud, shattering into pieces.
Outside the roll-up door were faint talking voices and the sound of car tires gripping the ground as they passed by.
And wave after wave of river tide.
Oxygen was consumed bit by bit, and the window glass fogged over.
When the car door opened again from the inside, Jiang Se was wrapped in a large men’s suit jacket, being carried out by Lu Huaiyan.
The sky had already darkened.
The air outside the car was cool with the chill of a late-spring evening. The moment the wind touched her damp neck, goosebumps rose. She buried her face in Lu Huaiyan’s shoulder, her breaths still shaky.
Lu Huaiyan quickened his steps, twisted the doorknob to the garage door, and carried her inside.
Connecting the living room and the garage was a laundry room; the heating in the house was already on.
Lu Huaiyan held a foil packet in his left hand and pressed her against the door.
“Where are you going?” His voice was hoarse with a slight rasp.
Jiang Se lifted her head from his shoulder. Her sweat-dampened black hair clung to her cheeks, her eyes rimmed with a faint rust-red.
She had been unbearably hot in the car, and her dress had long been stripped off.
The dark gray suit jacket hung loosely on her, the sleeves too long. She slipped her hands out from the sleeves, and with cold fingertips touched his face.
One look between them was enough to know exactly what the other wanted.
“Here?”
“Mhm.”
Lu Huaiyan tore the foil packet open with his teeth and lowered his head to kiss her.
This kiss was gentle, the force held back.
Jiang Se ran her hands into his sweat-damp hair, her voice hoarse: “I want you like just now.”
Lu Huaiyan paused, lowered his eyes, and asked with restraint: “Doesn’t it hurt?”
In the car he had truly gone wild, using full force.
Like a beast trapped and driven mad by desire, losing all sense.
Unlike before, when he was afraid to hurt her, even in the deepest surrender he always kept a thread of rationality.
Jiang Se didn’t say whether it hurt or not; she only looked at him: “I like you that way.”
The little bit of rationality Lu Huaiyan had managed to gather was blown away completely by that sentence.
This girl knew far too well how to stir the madness in his bones.
Even with her whole body gone weak, she still dared to provoke him like she didn’t want to live.
Lu Huaiyan sucked in a hard breath and asked her, “You like watching me lose control that much?”
As he spoke, his hands were already on his shirt, undoing the last two buttons.
In the car earlier, she had bitten wherever was easiest, his shoulder one moment, his collarbone the next. Afraid the buttons would hit her teeth, he had undone the top ones and pulled his shirt aside for her to bite.
As soon as the shirt was peeled off, Lu Huaiyan didn’t want to wait even a moment. Bracing his arm upward to lift her higher, he pressed his lips to her ear and said in a low, steady voice: “If it hurts, bite me.”
Jiang Se frowned and blinked, her chin tightly pressing against his shoulder.
He was right.
She just liked seeing him lose control.
Liked it to the point her soul trembled.
The world in her blurry vision gradually broke apart, and not long after, Jiang Se closed her eyes and softly called his name, her voice urgent.
“Lu Huaiyan.”
A few seconds later, another call, more urgent—
“Lu Huaiyan.”
Each call made the veins at Lu Huaiyan’s temple throb violently, making him lose restraint even more.
By the time the laundry room door opened from the inside, Jiang Se could no longer speak.
Soft and limp, she let him carry her to the second-floor bathroom.
They didn’t continue in the bathroom. Water from the shower pattered down, and she didn’t even have the strength to lift her eyelids to look at him. After hurriedly rinsing off the sticky traces from both of them, Lu Huaiyan carried her to bed to sleep.
It was the best sleep she’d had since the two separated.
No need for anything else, just his body heat was enough to let her sink into deep slumber.
When she opened her eyes, she thought she had slept until midday.
But the sky was still dark.
The man’s hand rested beside her face; sensing she was awake, his fingers lightly brushed her earlobe. “Awake?”
His voice was clear, and so were his eyes.
Jiang Se hummed, her voice terribly hoarse: “You didn’t sleep?”
“No.”
Lu Huaiyan moved his hand to cover her eyes, sat up, and turned on a wall lamp. Only after her eyes adjusted to the light did he move his hand away.
“Thirsty?” he asked, lowering his gaze to her as he reached for the cup on the nightstand. “Want some water?”
It was his left hand he’d just used to block the light for her.
When he moved it away, the thin, long wound on his palm appeared clearly in her line of sight, like a streak of blood.
Jiang Se blinked, enduring her soreness as she slowly sat up. Lu Huaiyan lifted the cup to her lips.
She opened her mouth and drank small sips. After half the cup went down her throat, she raised her hand and pushed it away. “No more.”
Lu Huaiyan finished the remaining half, and just as he set the cup down, he heard her say: “Carry me to the bathroom.”
The man looked at her, pulled on a thin V-neck sweater, then lifted her out of the blankets and into his arms. As he walked toward the bathroom, he laughed lightly: “Still no strength?”
Knowing he had exhausted her, he lowered his voice to coax her: “I’ll rub it for you later?”
Jiang Se said nothing.
In the bathroom, she turned on the mirror light and had him set her on the vanity. She half-turned, opened the cabinet, and took out a medical kit.
“Hand,” she said, lowering her head to open the kit, taking out iodine and a cotton swab.
Lu Huaiyan looked down at her, a hint of a smile at the corner of his lips, and extended his hand.
The wound on his palm wasn’t deep, but it had split open several times while they were doing it. Her dress and his suit jacket were both stained with blood.
Last time in this room, he had applied medicine to her palm.
At the time, he even said she was ruthless with herself.
Today, the roles had reversed, it was her giving him medicine.
Lu Huaiyan had suffered far worse injuries since childhood and didn’t care much for small wounds like this.
While she treated him, he didn’t even spare his palm a glance, his gaze resting quietly on her face.
Only after she finished did he lower his head to find her eyes and press a heavy kiss to her lips.
“Didn’t hurt for nothing.”
“……”
Jiang Se packed the medical kit away, her eyes unconsciously shifting to his shoulder under the fabric.
She had bitten him there again until it bled.
Lu Huaiyan took the medical kit from her hand and put it back. “No need to treat that. I’m not that delicate.”
He said no, so Jiang Se truly didn’t bother.
He hadn’t treated it last time either.
When her gaze lifted, she asked him: “Where’s my phone?”
Back in the car earlier, Jiang Se’s phone was practically blown up by Guo Qian’s calls.
Lu Huaiyan had simply switched it to silent. His phone too.
“In the living room charging. Battery ran out from the calls.” Lu Huaiyan pinched her fingers. “Want me to go get it for you?”
“I’ll get it myself.”
Just as she was about to get down from the vanity, Lu Huaiyan pressed her waist to stop her.
Jiang Se looked up at him.
“Don’t ever say things about ending again, and don’t worry about Grandfather or my mother. They can’t control me.” Lu Huaiyan looked into her eyes. “As for everyone else, why bother with them? If anyone makes you unhappy, hit them. If you don’t want to hit them, I’ll do it.”
She wasn’t a canary in a cage, nor a parasitic vine.
Lu Huaiyan had seen her methods; he wasn’t arrogant enough to think she depended on him for everything or needed him to step forward every time.
As long as this girl decided she wanted to be with him, no one could shake her.
Jiang Se softly hummed.
Her eyes reflected his face, his refined features holding a quiet kind of beauty.
Lu Huaiyan’s Adam’s apple moved; he leaned down to kiss her forehead.
The Weibo post he had made, Jiang Se reread it again from the screenshot Guo Qian sent her after she turned on her phone.
【#Not engaged, not in an arranged marriage, my ancestor is hard to please and hard to serve, and I’m still pursuing her# @HalfJiangSeseHalfRiverRed】
Jiang Se focused on the phrase “hard to please and hard to serve.”
Guo Qian focused on: “Holy cr*p, Sese, Lu Huaiyan actually called you ‘ancestor’!”
What Guo Qian said came through as a WeChat voice message, and while it played through the speaker, the man beside her, on the phone, glanced over unhurriedly.
Jiang Se met his gaze for one second, then quietly put on her earphones to listen to Guo Qian’s wailing voice, while also opening Weibo.
The Weibo post Lu Huaiyan made had already cooled off, though earlier it had climbed all the way to hot search.
He had had rumors with Sun Wei before, was the heir of the Lu family, and had a face no one could forget.
As soon as this Weibo was posted, people started discussing who that “HalfJiangSeseHalfRiverRed” that Lu Huaiyan @’d was.
A young, promising, and excessively handsome heir to a wealthy family, gossip-loving netizens were most curious about his little affairs.
Everyone was guessing whether “HalfJiangSeseHalfRiverRed” was Sun Wei’s alt account.
Before going to sleep, Jiang Se had asked Lu Huaiyan to remove this Weibo from the trending list. After waking up, she no longer saw related discussions.
Right now, the Lu Corporation’s official Weibo had pinned a post about their new collaboration with the Guan family.
In the update, aside from a group photo of the Guan brothers with Lu Huaiyan, there was also a picture of Guan Jiayi with Lu Xingqiu.
In the photo, Guan Jiayi was sitting right beside Lu Xingqiu, a string of ancient-style prayer beads on her wrist, those were the King Kong Bodhi beads Lu Xingqiu used to love playing with.
Lu Huaiyan had already finished his call. When he came over and saw her looking at the picture of Guan Jiayi with Lu Xingqiu, he pulled her into his arms and said lightly: “In a few days, Grandfather will host a recognition banquet at the old house. People from Beicheng and Hong Kong City will come, and several reporters friendly with the Lu family will also be there.”
Once such a formal recognition banquet was held, Guan Jiayi would become the Lu family’s god-relative.
Since she was becoming a god-relative, naturally the Lu family couldn’t let things get messy and allow any romantic scandal between Lu Huaiyan and Guan Jiayi.
Their relationship would be clean and proper.
Guo Qian’s string of voice messages had long finished playing. Jiang Se took off her earbuds and said: “I won’t go that day.”
She didn’t even have to think about it, Lu Xingqiu would definitely send her an invitation. That parrot of his had blurted out, in broad daylight, the nickname Lu Huaiyan gave her. How could Lu Xingqiu not guess Lu Huaiyan’s intentions?
Who knows how many times he’d made that parrot shout “debt collector” and “young miss” at home just to confirm it.
He hadn’t come looking for her these past few days likely because Lu Huaiyan stopped him.
“Your parrot, is it that when it hears ‘Jiang Se’ it calls debt collector, and when it hears ‘Sese’ it calls miss?”
Lu Huaiyan corrected her: “It’s Wolf Cub’s debt collector and Lu Huaiyan’s miss.”
“……”
Jiang Se looked back at him: “How did you explain it to Grandpa Lu?”
Lu Huaiyan said: “I told him you haven’t agreed to be with me yet. Grandfather said I deserved it.”
He glanced at her, then added: “He also said that ‘debt collector’ is a fitting nickname for you, and that I deserve to be chased for debts by you. I’ve already spoken with him, he can’t pressure you, nor disturb you. Otherwise, if I fail to win you over, he would be partly responsible.”
Old Master Lu wasn’t young anymore. His old friends were either dead or sick. He worried constantly about Lu Huaiyan’s marriage, wishing he could marry immediately and give him several great-grandchildren.
But blocked by Lu Huaiyan’s words, he restrained himself and didn’t have anyone go invite Jiang Se to the old house.
Jiang Se stayed silent, fiddling with the Bluetooth earbuds in her hand.
Lu Huaiyan tightened his arm around her slightly: “Don’t overthink. Whether we marry or not, whether we have children or not, none of that matters. I’ll handle everything with Grandfather. Even if he knows you’re sick, it won’t affect us.”
Jiang Se answered with a soft “mm”.
Seeing nothing unusual in her expression, Lu Huaiyan changed the subject and mentioned Cen Li: “After that Weibo post today, Cen Li called me several times. What do you want me to tell him?”
Jiang Se said: “Just say my illness hasn’t improved, and I don’t want to accept you.”
The account Lu Huaiyan @’d was her old alt account. Her main Weibo account had been the Hongsheng director account, which she deleted after leaving Hongsheng.
She hadn’t used this alt account since changing her surname, and only people around her who knew her well knew it was hers.
For example, Cen Li and Guo Qian.
And also Fu Yun and Zhu Mingli.
If Zhu Mingli saw that Weibo, she would probably panic even more.
Jiang Se slowly lowered her eyes.
Good.
She should panic. If she didn’t panic, how could she cooperate properly?
