Chapter 79
Chapter 79
The situation was strange.
Shen Qingyu should have controlled this deliberately constructed marriage. Yet Qiao Ying, her personal emotions suppressed, had silently taken command.
She blinked sluggishly and repeated without inflection, “We must remove our clothes.”
Her eyes remained open and fixed upon him, as though she would not sleep until he obeyed.
But newlyweds were supposed to sleep together on their wedding night. How could she refuse to sleep?
Shen Qingyu touched the front of her robe. The instant his fingertips reached her collarbone, they stopped. He instinctively tried to withdraw, but Qiao Ying held his hand in place.
“Continue.”
She was actually instructing him.
An inexplicable emotion rose within Shen Qingyu. He could not understand it, but then remembered yet again that Qiao Ying called him the most powerful person beneath the heavens. He should understand everything.
And so he withdrew his hand, lay flat, and smiled with self-satisfied cleverness. “Yingying is lazy. You don’t want to undress yourself, so you expect me to do it. I won’t be fooled.”
He had heard men in the marketplace boast about a husband’s authority. If he obeyed her every wish, he might lose his own.
Shen Qingyu did not understand what that authority was, but if human men feared losing it, it had to be important in marriage. He did not wish to lose it either.
He restrained himself and ignored Qiao Ying’s demand. When rustling sounded beside him, he pretended not to hear.
Then a warm, soft body pressed against him beneath the quilt.
Shen Qingyu’s fingers trembled. As he turned, all that warmth entered his arms.
His hands inevitably touched her. Fingertips brushed smooth skin, and an odd sense of confirmation filled him.
She truly could not compare with the mountain cubs. She had very little fur.
Soon, her hands explored his chest and clumsily opened his robe.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Removing clothes.”
Shen Qingyu still could not understand why marriage had made Qiao Ying so enthusiastic about undressing.
They had merely married. What did clothing have to do with it?
But her hands were strong. She tugged his robe open in confusion, exposing much of his chest.
As a child, Shen Qingyu had once had his clothes torn away before being thrown into the snow to crawl. Yet now, inside a warm room, having his clothes pulled open made every part of him feel even stranger.
He instinctively wanted to close his robe, but before his hand moved, someone settled atop him.
Qiao Ying lay motionless against him. Skin met skin, every curve of their bodies clear through contact, until their heartbeats gradually matched.
Shen Qingyu lay still upon the bed. Knowing nothing of intimacy, he resembled a piece of fish upon a cutting board.
Fortunately, Qiao Ying became quiet once she lay there. She stopped causing deliberate trouble. Shen Qingyu’s tense body slowly relaxed, and peace was about to return when her tormenting voice sounded again.
“Why won’t you kiss me?”
Shen Qingyu said nothing.
His hand instinctively reached out to feel her cheek and ears. “Yingying, you aren’t sick.”
“You need to kiss me,” Qiao Ying said.
Shen Qingyu did not always wish to work as her physician for free. Perhaps she had infected him too thoroughly; every recent treatment left him even more seriously afflicted.
But Qiao Ying was asking so stubbornly. As her husband, he should not refuse.
He cupped her face and kissed the corner of her mouth.
He intended only one kiss, for his own illness was already severe. Qiao Ying, however, refused to release him.
Like a temptress draining a man’s vital essence, she caught his lips and pressed closer until his breathing dissolved into chaos.
The air around them changed.
Shen Qingyu’s breath grew unsteady. Responding out of habit, he suddenly made a broken sound and caught her wandering hand beneath the quilt.
In a daze, he asked, “Why are you touching me?”
“I want to touch you too.”
An unfamiliar emotion shot through his heart, part excitement and part anticipation. Imitating her, his own hand explored beneath the quilt.
Only then did he learn how different men and women were.
She was warm.
When he was a child and the square window had not yet been blocked, he had lain against the wall and reached for a strand of sunlight. It had been just as warm.
Her voice was beautiful too, far sweeter than the birds clamoring in the forest. Each sound resembled a spring breeze stirring ripples across a still lake.
The young man swallowed and instinctively rolled above her. Their positions reversed. His tall body covered her completely, white hair spreading across most of the bed like a dense net meant to capture every trace of her, leaving nothing for anyone else.
“Removing clothes, kissing, touching… Yingying, what else do you want?”
He lowered his head and rubbed his cheek against hers. His hoarse laugh still tried to sound gentle, yet the intimate whisper gained an unconscious power to seduce.
The flawless face reflected in Qiao Ying’s dull eyes now carried desire, making his beauty richer and more bewitching.
What ordinary young man could possess such allure?
But she was a mortal bewitched by a beautiful ghost, already caught in his trap without realizing it. She raised her hands, cupped his face, and whispered, “Shen Qingyu, I want you.”
She wanted neither his fur nor his flesh and blood.
She simply wanted him.
The young man swallowed again and covered her lips with his.
The authority of a husband, he decided, could not be anything worthwhile. Obeying his new wife in everything brought far more pleasure than preserving such authority.
Whatever she asked, he should satisfy.
Outside the bed curtains, wax tears fell from the red candles, one drop after another staining the stands dark crimson. Within, the red quilt rose and fell, folding every heated intimacy into the absurd night.
Only then did they truly become husband and wife.