Both Sect Heads Wanted Out of the Marriage, So They Tried to Ruin the Town Together novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: One Bed and No Wall
On the one bed in the Hearth House, the wall of robes and the nine polite rules do not survive the night, and Luoyi sets the terms.
The wall of folded robes down the middle of the bed lasted until the second watch.
Zhuyuan had built it himself, neat as a border between two kingdoms.
On top of it lay a sheet of house rules in Steward Ma's beautiful hand.
There were nine rules, and all nine were about Mistress Tang being comfortable.
Next door, four goats breathed in the dark.
Luoyi lay on her side of the wall with her hands folded on her stomach and did not sleep.
On the far side, her husband did not move at all.
He was extremely good at being a man in a bed, which she found unbearable.
"Head Jiang," she said.
"Mistress Tang." He answered at once, wide awake.
"Read me the rules."
Paper rustled.
"One. The bed is Mistress Tang's," he said into the dark. "Two. The goats are Mistress Tang's. Three. Head Jiang keeps to the far edge."
"How far is the far edge?"
"About a hand from the floor."
"Four?"
"Four. Head Jiang will not snore, and if he snores, he will go and stand with the goats."
She laughed before she could stop herself.
Then she sat up, put her foot against the wall of robes, and shoved.
The robes went off the side of the bed in one soft avalanche.
The rules went with them, fluttering down onto the floor.
In the slice of moonlight from the window, she saw him go very still.
"Those were good rules," he said faintly.
"They were your rules," said Luoyi. "This is my bed. Rule three of your own list says I can throw any of them out."
"It does say that."
"Then here are mine."
She knelt up and looked down at him.
His hair was out of its silver cord and spread across the pillow, black on white.
His sleep robe had come open at the throat.
He had been married to her for half a day, and he had touched her for exactly the length of one red cord.
She had thought about his thumb on her pulse all evening.
"We're going to spend a hundred days in this bed," she said.
"I'm not lying awake for a hundred nights next to a man who looks like you."
His ears went pink so fast she could see it in the dark.
"I lead," said Luoyi. "You do what I tell you."
"Yes," said Zhuyuan.
He said it the way other men said amen.
"Lie on your back."
He was already on his back, so he lay on it harder, which made her laugh again.
She swung one leg over him and sat down across his hips.
Her sleep robe was thin cotton.
His was thinner silk.
She felt him under her straight away, already half hard and getting harder against the crease of her thigh.
"Oh," he said, to the ceiling.
"Hands on my hips."
His hands came up and settled there, big and warm, careful as a man holding a full bowl.
"Harder than that. I'm not porcelain."
His fingers closed into her hips.
She bent down and kissed him.
The first one was a test, her mouth pressed on his, and he went so still under it that she nearly sat up again.
Then he made a low sound and kissed her back, and he was clumsy, and then, a breath later, he was not.
He learned her mouth the way he learned the names of stallholders.
He tried something, felt what she did, and did more of whatever made her breathe out hard.
When she licked into his mouth he opened for her at once, and his tongue met hers, slow and then hungry.
She rocked her hips once, deliberately, down along the length of him.
His cock was fully hard now, a thick ridge under two layers of cloth, and the cotton between them was already damp.
Zhuyuan broke the kiss with a gasp.
"You're wet," he said, as though reporting a miracle to the Concord. "I can feel it through my robe."
"Then stop talking about it and hold on."
She ground down again, slower, dragging her pussy along his cock from root to head.
The friction caught her clit through the cotton, and a hot jolt went right up her spine.
She did it again.
His hands tightened on her hips and pulled her down into it, and she let him, because he did it exactly right.
"Like that," she said. "Exactly like that. Don't stop."
"I won't." His voice was rough already. "Luoyi. Mistress Tang. You feel incredible."
"Tell me what I feel like."
He swallowed.
She watched him decide to be brave.
"Hot," he said. "Wet through. You're rubbing your pussy on my cock like you own it, and you're so beautiful doing it I can't think."
Luoyi stopped moving for one heartbeat, astonished.
The most polite man in the valley had just said pussy in her bed in his calm Head-of-Sect voice.
Heat flooded her whole body, low and fast.
"Keep talking," she ordered, and rocked again, harder.
He did.
He talked the way he read a petition.
He told her the sound she made when she ground down on the head of his cock.
He told her the slick spot spreading on his robe.
He told her how her braid had come half loose and swung against his chest every time she moved.
"You're shaking," he said, wonderingly. "Your thighs are shaking around me."
They were.
She had been touched by men before, quickly and with less attention than they gave their dinner.
Nobody had ever told her what they saw.
She pulled the tie of her robe loose and shrugged it off her shoulders.
The cotton slid down to her waist.
Zhuyuan stared at her tits in the moonlight with his mouth open.
He looked like a man handed a map of a country he had only read about.
"Touch them," said Luoyi.
He sat up under her to do it, one arm hard around her back.
His other hand cupped her breast.
His thumb brushed her nipple.
It went tight at once, and he watched it happen and made a helpless sound.
"Look at that," he breathed. "You're perfect. You're so perfect here."
He bent his head and put his mouth on her.
He sucked her nipple slow and warm, and she arched into it with her hand in his loose hair.
Every pull of his mouth went straight down to her clit.
She was still rocking on his cock, but the angle was wrong now, sitting up, and she was too worked up to be patient.
"Your hand," she said. "Put your hand between my legs."
"Yes."
He did not fumble with the robe.
He pushed it up her thigh with his palm, all the way, and slid his hand under it.
His fingers found her bare and soaking, and he groaned into her breast.
"You're so wet," he said against her skin. "Gods, Luoyi, you're dripping on my hand."
"Higher. There. Small circles."
He found her clit and rubbed, too lightly at first.
"Harder."
He pressed harder.
"Slower."
He slowed.
He did exactly what she said, the instant she said it, and he got it right faster than any man had a right to.
By the fourth order he had stopped needing them.
He had learned the rhythm she liked, and he kept it, steady and maddening, while his mouth moved to her other breast.
"Put a finger in me," she said.
He slid one long finger into her pussy, slowly, and her whole body clenched around it.
"Oh," he said. "Oh, you're tight. You're so hot inside."
"Two."
He gave her two.
They filled her, and she rode them, rocking down onto his hand while his thumb stayed on her clit.
"That's it," he murmured. "That's it, ride my hand. You're so good at this."
"I know I'm good at it."
"You're better than good. You're taking my fingers so well, and you're tightening every time I touch you here."
He touched her there, a slow press of his thumb, and she cried out.
The goats bleated in the next room.
Neither of them looked.
Luoyi grabbed his shoulders and moved faster, chasing it, her forehead dropping against his.
He did not speed up to match her.
He held the same steady rhythm, deep and slow.
He was right, which was infuriating.
"Look at you," he said quietly, right against her mouth. "You're about to come on my fingers. I can feel it. Your pussy's squeezing me."
"Don't you dare stop."
"I won't stop. I'll do this all night if you tell me to."
The pressure built in her belly, hot and tight and too much.
He curled his fingers inside her and pressed his thumb down on her clit at the same moment.
She came with a sharp cry into his mouth.
It went through her in hard pulses, her pussy clenching on his fingers again and again, her thighs locking on his hips.
He kept his hand moving through every pulse, gentler and gentler, until she twitched and pushed his wrist away.
He took his hand back at once.
She sagged against his chest, panting.
His heart was hammering under her cheek.
His cock was still hard as a post under her, and he had not moved it once.
"You didn't come," she said, when she could speak.
"No."
"Why not?"
"You did not tell me to," said Zhuyuan, with great dignity, and with his voice shaking.
Luoyi lifted her head and stared at him.
He was flushed to the collarbone and his hair was wild.
The two fingers that had been in her were still wet, resting on her thigh.
He looked like a man given the best present of his life, trying not to make a fuss about it.
"Lick your fingers clean," she said.
He did it, slowly, holding her eyes, and his ears went red from the top down.
"You taste better than anything at that wedding," he said.
She was going to have to watch out for this man.
She rolled off him, pulled her robe back over her shoulders, and lay down in the middle of the bed, where the wall had been.
"Tomorrow night," she said, "I might tell you."
"I'll be ready," said Zhuyuan, to the ceiling, and she heard him smile.
She lay in the dark with her body still humming and thought about the man beside her.
A man who made rules that polite wanted the whole town to love him.
A town that loved its Head would never fail.
So someone was going to have to be unlovable on his behalf.
She slid out from under the quilt at the first grey light and stepped over the fallen house rules.
She went to sit among the goats with a brush.
PLAN TO FAIL, she wrote, and under it, 1. Wine.
The worst thing Jade Kettle made was a spirit wine called Rowdy Tiger, harsh enough to strip a boat.
Her apprentice, Lian Xiaohe, was already in the yard, nineteen and round-cheeked and washing pigeon droppings off the well.
"Xiaohe," said Luoyi. "Send to the Hall. I want three hundred jugs of Rowdy Tiger at the market today."
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