The silence between them stretched for three full seconds.
"You’re going to—" She stopped. Her throat moved. "You’re leaving." Sothing in the word leaving arrived with an edge she hadn’t expected. A tightness. She recognized it with profound irritation because she knew exactly what it was and she was not going to acknowledge it.
She was not.
"For the Trial," he said. "It’s a few days."
"I know what it is," she said, even though she didn’t, not entirely. "I just—" Her jaw moved. "I thought—" She stopped again.
Cang stepped toward her.
She held her ground, which had beco the most reliably available form of dignity. His hand ca up—not to her face, not to her jaw—to the front of her silk, fingers finding the curve of her breast through the fabric with the casual familiarity of soone accessing sothing they own.
The sound she made was quiet and imdiate and mortifying.
"—Ahn—"
"You’re going to miss it," he said.
Her head ca up. "No."
"No?"
"No," she said again, with conviction that was trying harder than it was performing. "I am a rchant’s wife, I am a—I was a—" She stopped. Tried again. "You cannot simply tell I will miss—"
He squeezed. Her back arched. Her knees locked.
"—Nngh~—"
"You were saying."
Her hands had co up to grip his forearm with the sa grip she’d been using since midnight—tight, desperate, fingers pressing into the muscle below the sleeve like they could stop him through sheer friction. They could not. They never could. She knew that by now.
"I thought," she said, and her voice had dropped to sothing quieter and without the armor the previous version had been wearing, "that you would leave in the forest."
He looked at her.
"I thought—" She pressed on, because if she stopped she would not start again. "I thought I was the extra one. The one who was here because you ran out of—" She stopped. Pressed her lips together hard. "I thought you would leave ."
The forest was quiet around them. Sowhere, distantly, she could hear Xiao Hua’s voice asking Zhen Ying sothing, and the snake woman’s unhurried answer.
"iling," Cang said.
She looked at him.
"Spread your legs," he said.
She stared at him.
"I’m going to give you sothing to carry," he said, "so your body rembers I’m coming back. Even when your mind is making up stories."
Her throat worked.
The silence lasted two heartbeats. Three.
Then iling turned.
She found the pine at her back—wide trunk, rough bark through the silk of her dress when her shoulders pressed against it. Her knees bent slightly, the automatic adjustnt of a body that had been repositioning itself for the last twelve hours according to this man’s preferences and had developed a disturbing fluency for it.
Her hands found the hem of her silk skirt. Lifted it.
The morning forest light was very honest.
Her fingers found the lacing at her hip—a single silk cord, ornantal, the kind of fastening that had seed important when the dress was assembled and felt absurd now. She worked it loose. The fabric fell slack.
She reached beneath.
The last piece of modesty she had ca away in her hand—thin cotton, wedding-day clean, completely irrelevant. She let it fall.
The air was cool.
She was not.
She stood with her back against the pine, skirt raised, knees still bent, the heat between her thighs broadcasting itself with the cheerful disregard of a body that had stopped consulting its owner for significant decisions.
Her face was scarlet.
"Please," she said. The word ca out smaller than she’d intended. More genuine. "Do—" Her throat moved. "Whatever you want."
Cang’s eyes moved over her with the expression he wore when he was assessing sothing—unhurried, precise, the slight narrowing of a man registering specifics. Her inner thighs. The wet, swollen pink of her. The evidence of twelve hours that her body wore openly and with no ability to conceal.
He said nothing for a mont.
Then he reached for his belt.
He did not wait.
His cock erged into the morning air and iling’s eyes went to it with the imdiate, reflexive attention of soone who had developed an entirely involuntary relationship with the sight of it—and her hips tilted back against the pine before she’d processed the motion. The bark caught at her silk. Her skirt rustled.
He pressed against her entrance.
She was already wet enough that the first inch found no resistance.
"—Oh—"
Not a moan. Not one of the sounds from last night, the screaming desperate muffled ones. Sothing quieter. The sound of a woman whose body had expected absence finding presence instead.
He pushed in.
PAH.
"Ahn~—"
Her hands flew back to grip the bark behind her—fingers finding purchase in the rough pine, splinters she would notice later and not care about now. Her thick hips pressed forward to et him, the unconscious roll of a body that knew this motion by heart already, from twelve hours of being taught it over and over until it was the only muscle mory she had left.
His hands ca up to her breasts. Still through the silk. He found her nipples by their precise location—he knew exactly where they were now, had known since approximately the second hour of the previous night—and his thumbs and forefingers closed.
PINCH.
"HNGH~!"
Her back arched off the pine. Her hips drove forward. He was deep enough that the motion pulled a sound from her that she felt in her collarbones, a low gutted moan that the forest accepted without comnt.
PAH PAH PAH.
"Ahn~—Ahn~—Nnh~—"
Her legs were shaking. They had been shaking since the landing. It made no difference—he had her pinned between himself and the tree, the rough bark against her shoulders, the full insistent length of him working into her with the unhurried authority of a man who is not trying to impress anyone, simply completing sothing.
His hands rolled. Both nipples, simultaneously.
"OUNGH~—!"
She bit down on the sound half a second too late. It had already escaped into the trees. She pressed her face sideways, cheek against the bark, jaw working, and tried to locate so remaining piece of herself that was not entirely owned by what his hands were doing to her chest and what the rest of him was doing below.
She found nothing.
His mouth ca to her temple. Then her jaw. He tilted her head with one hand—fingers leaving her breast for the three seconds required to take her chin and rotate it toward him—and his mouth found hers.
She kissed him back.
She did not think about this. She did not decide. Her mouth simply opened and her hands ca away from the pine and wrapped around the back of his neck and she kissed him with the sa helpless conviction that her body had been expressing for the last twelve hours—the particular, devastating honesty of a woman who has been entirely known and is now incapable of pretending she hasn’t been.
PAAH. PAAH. PAAH.
"—Mmph~—Hngh~—"
The sounds were caught between their mouths now. She made them anyway. Each deep thrust rolled her thick hips upward, her heavy breasts swaying with the force of it—she could feel them jolt with each PAAH even through his hands—and her legs had given up pretending they were structural and were simply along for the motion.
Her inner walls clenched.
"Nnh~—close—Ahn~—" The broken whisper ca against his lips. "—I’m—Mmm~—I’m going to—"
PAAH. PAAH.
"HNNGH~—!"
The orgasm arrived without asking. It moved through her in a single deep wave, hips stuttering forward, toes pressing into the forest floor through her silk slippers, a sound coming from her throat that was not pretty and was not perford and was entirely her.
He kept moving.
Through all of it. Through the wave and the clench and the broken whimper that followed, through the oversensitized shaking of her body trying to process one more thing on top of everything, he simply kept his rhythm, hands back on her breasts, mouth at her jaw now.
"Tell when," he said.
"When—" She was not tracking sentences well. "When what—"
"When you want to fill you."
Her breath stopped.
The instruction arrived and sothing in her responded to it from a region that was entirely past embarrassnt—deep, animal, the sa place that had been running the show since midnight. Her thick hips worked against him without input from higher functions.
"Now," she heard herself say. "Please—now—"
He drove in.
PAAAH.
"KYAAA~—!"
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