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One.
Luo Yining has a problem.
She realizes that on the spectrum of problems that a woman of her station could have, this is a very small problem.
For example, her husband — the marquis that he is — can insist on taking concubines.
Or she can have an overbearing mother in law who criticizes her every move.
She has neither. Her husband’s only relative is his nephew, who looks at her in awe.
(She still refuses to allow him an audience with Da Jie Jie.)
No, Yining’s problem is that her husband is entirely too gentle.
Her husband, the feared Marquis Anbei, Lu Jiaxue, commander of the imperial guards, with a reputation so powerful that her father sputters before him.
Her husband, who thinks nothing of breaking her out of prison, holding her in his arm while fighting off prison guards with his other arm, touches her like she’s made out of porcelain.
She supposes it’s guilt, about almost killing her (the second time) and not protecting her against Song shi the first time.
And she has no complaints about the state of her marital bed.
But she can’t help thinking back to the night he loomed over her, asking her if she was interrupting his investigation with those heavy lidded eyes.
Two.
The Luo family was hosting another poetry banquet, ostensibly in honor of the family’s literary past, but in reality a show of unity after it was found that da niangzi tried to kill qi guniang.
Her husband still cannot speak of her aunt without looking slightly murderous.
There’s a scar, now, on the side of her husband’s abdomen, marring his otherwise smooth flesh.
She had fought him, then. Lu Jiaxue, I don’t want to hear your explanation, put me down, don’t you dare hurt San Ge. Had held a sword to her neck, a threat, let me go or else. Until a guard took advantage of their argument to throw a dagger.
The dagger had been aimed at her.
He had thrown his body in front of hers, crumbling on the floor with blood staining the dark fabric of his robe.
He had looked at her, with those soft, desperate eyes. Isn’t this for the best? A life for a life. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you, Meimei.
The hand that had wiped the tears off her cheek was stained with his own blood.
She had stood outside his door as the imperial physicians rushed in and out, her skirts and sleeves still stained with his blood.
San Ge, Lu Jiaxue isn’t going to die, right? He can’t. He hasn’t explained himself to me yet.
A maid had approached her with a change of clothes. She had batted the tray away. I’m not going anywhere!
She had fallen asleep by his side, propriety be damned.
Lu Jiaxue, if you die without explaining yourself to me, I will never, ever forgive you. You hear me? I will never, ever, ever forgive you.
I didn’t know my Meimei had a face like a dirty little kitten. He had teased in a weak voice in the early morning.
The betrothal gifts to her family came a week later. It would be a while until the wedding, however. He needed time to recuperate.
He was, however, a worse patient than the first time.
Three.
Back when she was still Miss Luo , she could excuse herself from the gossiping matrons of society.
Now that she is a married woman, to a husband with a lofty title, she was no longer able to avoid such interactions.
In the distance, she saw her husband chatting with San Ge in the pavilion. She is glad that they have reached a truce of some sort, even if it was just for her sake.
And it turns out, the subject gossiped between societal matrons (even younger ones close to her age) is the marital bed. So-and-so’s mother-in-law is pressuring her husband to take his shu biaomei in as a concubine. So-and-so’s husband is spending too much time with a concubine. So-and-so’s husband is so busy with work that she never sees him.
“-- and mother-in-law is pressuring me to have a son. To be honest, it has been a relief that guanren had taken a concubine. The act of siring a child is so unpleasant.”
A few other matrons murmured their sympathies. Yining took a sip of her tea.
“What says you, Anbei Hou Furen ? You are recently wed. I hope your wedding night was not too unpleasant?”
Yining almost choked on her tea. She had not expected the question to be so … direct.
To describe her wedding night as not too unpleasant would be the understatement of the year.
There had been gentle kisses and soft touches, over clothing, when she was Xu Mei and he had been a mere unfavored young master of the Lu family.
After their reunion, he had been a grumpy patient, insisting on walking around when the imperial physicians had cautioned, your lordship needs rest . She had applied his dressing, her face uncharacteristically red as her fingers brushed against the hard ridges of his abdomen muscles.
He had kissed her then, lips gentle against hers. She had wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling in closer, wanting more, more, and more, until he broke away, cursing underneath his breath at his godforsaken wound.
She had then laughed. I think you are the reason Fang Taiyi is retiring. He laughed in return, the corner of his eyes crinkling, looking so much like the Lu Jiaxue in her memories that she almost stopped breathing.
What is it? He had asked with concern.
She had shaken her head. Nothing. Although you’ll have to stop calling me Meimei, or people will ask questions.
How about … Ning’er? Ningning?
She had wrinkled her nose. Sounds wrong.
Then you are … Yining. I’ll call you Yining.
Sunlight had dappled through the room. It felt like a new beginning.
His wound gradually began to heal until he longer needed daily dressing, although the physicians cautioned him to rest, your lordship, please. And then there were more kisses, kisses that became more heated than the last, until she found herself grinding against the hard bulge under his trousers.
He had let her move against him and take her pleasure. She had blushingly admitted to him that the motion was pleasurable, but it left her body seeking more.
One day, he showed up at her store. She was about to open her mouth and chide him about resting , and he knelt before her and told her that he has a solution for her need for more. And then gently removed her undergarments and sealed his lips over her aching bud, tasting her like he was tasting his favorite dessert.
She came, legs hoisted over his broad shoulders and clutching his hair for dear life.
A lifetime of etiquette books told her that this was wrong. But if Yining had no problem with pretending to be Xu Mei and spending all her afternoons alone with the unfavored young master of the Lu family, she certainly would not have any problem with spending her afternoons in the back of her shop, her fiance’s head buried between her legs as he gave her unimaginable pleasure.
For Yining, her wedding night was not fear but anticipation .
She had glanced at the copper mirror in their wedding chamber. The sight of her husband’s bare, muscled back, golden from the candlelight glow, and his hands that held her thighs open as he pleasured her only heightened her arousal. There had been pain with the initial joining, for he was big and the small splatter of blood on the white silk had been proof, but that moment had been brief, as his hands, strong and calloused from fighting, wandered reverently across her body and stroked the sensitive bud between her legs.
After they were both satiated, he had gently wiped the inside of her thighs with a warm washcloth, and gathered her into his arms. I have no elders, he had said with a soft kiss to her brow, so we can sleep in as long as you want .
“Furen?”
Yining jolted back to the present.
Fortunately, others took the heat in her cheeks for shyness.
Maybe she can escape the party and convince her husband to join her in her old room.
Four.
Yining leaned against her husband’s chest, yawning as she turned over another page in the accounting ledger she was reading.
“Lu Jiaxue?”
“Hmm?
“What do you and San Ge talk about in your weekly weiqi sessions?”
The first time she and Lu Jiaxue paid her respects to the Luo family after her wedding, she had all but dragged her husband to the Weiqi table, and told him in no uncertain terms that she expects him and San Ge to get along. You should be calling him San Ge, as well, Lu Jiaxue. Her husband looked like he swallowed a lemon.
He was silent.
She turned and poked at his chest.
“Lu Jiaxue!”
“He takes issue with the fact that I tried to kill him.”
“You also tried to kill me!”
She regretted those words the instant they came out.
“I know I did.”
The imperial physicians had dosed him with opium. Thankfully, the dagger avoided major organs, but he had lost a lot of blood.
Qi Meimei, go back to the house, San Ge had tried to console. I’ll stay with him.
San Ge, I can’t leave him. I’m staying. You can’t make me leave.
Cheng Lang had found her, sitting on the steps outside of his room with her arms around herself.
He had held a cloak to her. She could tell by the brocade that it belongs to Lu Jiaxue.
My uncle wouldn’t want you to be cold.
She had wrapped the cloak around her, breathing in his scent.
Cheng Lang then handed her a wooden box. Here. In case you still doubt his intentions.
The box had been lined with wooden dolls, hand carved, all because she had teased him once upon a time that she bet he could not carve a wooden doll.
There were moments where I thought my uncle would be driven mad by grief. Maybe he already had been.
Yining had remembered the way Lu Jiaxue looked at her as she held the pipa in her hands. Eyes filled with madness, yearning, and desperation. Had looked at her that way since. Had begged her for a chance to let him explain. Had been willing to break her out of jail. Had looked like he was willing to burn down the world for her, even if he set fire to himself in the process.
For the first time since falling off that cliff, Yining cried. Big, ugly sobs that wracked her whole body. Sobs for Xu Mei and their tragedy. Sobs that contained all of her yearning for Lu Jiaxue that she had buried.
San Ge had sat next to her with a sigh.
I know you hate him, San Ge. I know he tried to kill you. Please don’t make me choose.
San Ge had looked at her for a while, with that inscrutable gaze of his. He saved your life, Qi Mei. I owe him that, at least. For what it’s worth, I tried to kill him too.
Thank you, San Ge.
She wrapped her hands around his, and brought them to her lips, kissing the small scar from her scissors.
“Lu Jiaxue, take me to bed.”
There was an urgency to their lovemaking, their clothes haphazardly strewn on the floor. She clung to him, just as he clung to her, each touch, soft kiss on her body an apology, a benediction.
Five.
Yining woke to an empty bed. In her sleep, she felt the whisper of a kiss against her lips.
There was a jianzhi on the pillow, the thin red paper cut into the shape of a … cloud? Butterfly?
There was a note, in his strong script, now that the dolls have passed your standards.
Yining laughed. There was something comical about her husband’s strong, big warrior hands trying to maneuver delicate pieces of paper.
She heard the sound of a pipa playing in the distance.
She’s sure that it would be improper for a lady of her station to wander to her husband with her hair still unbound from sleep, but all thought evaporated at the sight before her.
Her husband, upper body bare, golden muscles gleaming in the sunlight, yielding a sword to the tune of Cheng Lang’s pipa.
Neither seem to notice her presence. She’s fine with that though, happy to be enjoying the view.
She walked up to her husband with a towel when the tune ended and wiped his brow. Cheng Lang, from lived experience, quietly retreated.
He pressed a soft kiss against her nose.
“I hope we didn’t wake you up.”
She looped her arms around his neck and kissed him on the lips. It’s morning and they are in the courtyard within a full view of anyone who can see them, but she can’t bring herself to care, not after everything they’ve gone through.
He pressed her closer to him and without breaking the kiss, picked her up and strode inside his open study.
She could feel the coolness of the column against her back as she clung to him, thighs wrapped around his hips and sparks of pleasure vibrated through her entire body as he ground his arousal against her.
He broke the kiss with a groan.
“There isn’t a bed here.”
She kissed him again.
“We don’t need a bed. I’m not going to break, Jiaxue, I promise.”
He looked away for a brief moment. She knew of his guilt and self loathing, of the regret from almost killing her a second time to lure out San Ge. The madness in his brain from hearing her voice but unable to confirm that the voice belonged to Xu Mei.
She had been a victim of that madness. But she had also relished in twisting that knife into his gut to hurt him, as much as she thought he had hurt her. Her perverse need to repeatedly see evidence of his love and reject it, so that maybe then, they’ll be even.
Until he had taken a literal knife for her. Until he told her that his greatest happiness had been seeing her face.
He lowered her on the floor, and she was about to think that his guilt had gotten the better of her until he knelt in front of her, lifting up her skirts and hooking one of her legs over his shoulder.
She let out a breathy moan when he nuzzled the crop of hair between her legs, followed by his tongue. She allowed him to lift her other leg over his shoulder. Holding on the column behind her as an anchor, she moved her hips until she was grinding against him, practically riding his face.
She came with a scream.
Lu Jiaxue stood up and gave her a heavy lidded smirk, the same one he gave her that night , when he loomed over her. Yet she has no fear now, and allows him to slip her beizi off her shoulder and untie her skirts until she’s bare. One strong arm listed her against the column and his other hand reached between her legs, teasing her with his fingers until she was practically begging him to enter her. When he did, it was at a pace harder and faster than their previous joinings, his hands gripping her in a way that would surely leave hand prints the next day. Her nails dug into his back, urging him to go faster, harder .
Still joined to her, he walked them both to this table and laid her down on her back. His thrusts are deeper now, his hand running down front of her body and pinching her nipples. She came again, screaming his name and relishing the moan against her neck as he found his release.
They are both drenched in sweat, still breathing hard.
She laughed. He gave her a mocking glare.
“Are you laughing at my performance?”
She brushed her lips against his.
“I love you, Lu Jiaxue.”
He intertwined their hands togethers and brought her hand to his lips.
“I love you too, Luo Yining.”
The sun was shining and the birds were chirping.
What a beautiful day it was.