The Fox Demon Came to Repay the Monk Before His Vows novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Cold Pool
Yanzhi's first attempt at repayment is a ruined supper; at midnight the monk comes to cold-bathe in the upper spring and finds him in it, and two virgins learn each other with their hands.
The woodshed smelled of pine and old smoke, and Yanzhi decided in the first minute that he would repay the monk by supper.
A fox who owed a debt of life did not wait.
He found a pot behind the chopped logs and a sack of rice under a loose board.
He lit a fire on the packed earth.
Three hundred years in a den had taught him how to catch a hare.
It had not taught him what a cup of water does to rice.
By the time the moon cleared the pines, he had a black crust in the bottom of the pot.
Above the crust lay a grey, sticky paste.
He carried the whole thing across the yard with great ceremony.
The monk's cell was the last door in the long grey row, and a lamp burned behind the paper.
Yanzhi knocked with his elbow.
The door opened, and Jingmo stood there in his undershirt, with his scalp shining in the lamplight and his arms bare to the shoulder.
Yanzhi had never pictured a monk with arms like that.
"I made supper," he said.
Jingmo looked at the pot for a long moment.
"It's rice," said Yanzhi.
"Is it?"
Jingmo took the spoon from his hand and ate a mouthful of the grey paste, looking at him the whole time.
His jaw worked for a while.
"It's very hot," he said.
"Is that all?"
"It is very, very hot."
"You hate it."
"I have eaten worse," said Jingmo, and one corner of his mouth moved, so briefly that Yanzhi almost missed it.
Then he closed the door gently in Yanzhi's face, with the pot still inside.
Yanzhi stood in the dark yard and found that he was smiling.
He could not sleep, so he went looking for water.
A fox can smell water through a mountain, and this water was warm, a mile of stone away, and tasted of sulfur and cold pine.
He followed it up a narrow path behind the orchard until the trees opened on two pools, one above the other, cut into black rock.
The upper pool was icy snowmelt.
The lower pool steamed, pale green in the moonlight, and nobody was there.
Yanzhi folded his orange robes on a flat stone and slid in.
The heat climbed his legs and let go of every ache the nine thousand steps had put in him.
He sank to his chin with his hair floating around him and made a sound he would deny later.
"You can't be here."
He opened his eyes.
Jingmo stood on the rocks above the cold pool, with a white cloth wrapped at his waist and another over his shoulder.
The moon lit all of him.
Yanzhi had never in his long life seen a body like that.
The shoulders went on and on, the chest was as broad as a door, and the belly was cut hard with muscle.
A pale scar crossed Jingmo's right palm, and his hands hung open at his sides.
"I'm in the warm one," said Yanzhi. "You want the cold one. There's room for both of us."
"I come here every night."
"To do what?"
"To be cold."
"Why?"
Jingmo didn't answer.
His eyes had dropped to the water, to the line of Yanzhi's shoulders and the shine of his wet hair.
His throat moved when he swallowed.
Yanzhi understood it all at once and felt it everywhere.
"Oh," he said. "You come here to be cold because you're not."
"I come here," said Jingmo, very quietly, "because I am twenty-six years old, and I have never touched anyone."
"I came up this mountain at nineteen. I am a virgin. I have not so much as held a hand."
He said it like a man laying down a sword.
Yanzhi stared at him.
"I'm three hundred and forty-one," he said, "and I've never touched anyone either."
"That's not possible."
"The stories about foxes are slander. Come here."
"I told you not to touch me."
"You told me not to touch you."
Yanzhi rose to his chest in the water, and the steam slid off his skin.
"You didn't say anything about you touching me."
Jingmo made a low sound in his throat.
He came down the rocks one slow step at a time.
He stood at the edge of the warm pool with his toes in the water.
Yanzhi could hear him breathing.
"I'm going to take my vows," Jingmo said.
"I know."
"In three days."
"I know. Get in."
Jingmo let the cloth drop and stepped in.
Yanzhi had told himself he would be graceful about it.
He was not, because the water rose around that huge body, and he saw how badly Jingmo wanted him.
He looked, because there was nowhere else to look, and his mouth went dry in a pool of hot water.
"Yes," said Jingmo flatly, as if Yanzhi had asked a question. "That has been happening since the gate."
Yanzhi laughed, and it came out unsteady.
"Show me what to do," Jingmo said.
"Why would I know?"
"You said you were a fox."
"I said I was a virgin. Those are different qualifications."
Yanzhi took Jingmo's wrist, the one with the scarred palm, and his own hand shook.
"Here."
He laid that hand on his chest, where it had pinned him at the gate, and then he guided it lower.
The palm slid over his ribs and his stomach, and the heat of the water was nothing next to the heat of that hand.
When it closed around his hard cock, they both gasped.
Jingmo held his shaft, and Yanzhi arched his hips into that grip so hard that the water slapped the rocks.
"You're so hot in my hand," Jingmo said, hoarse.
"Heavens, yes. Tighter. Stroke me slowly. Don't you dare stop."
"I won't stop, Fox."
Yanzhi put his forehead against that broad shoulder and bit down on the muscle there.
Jingmo shuddered all the way through.
"Again," Yanzhi said into his skin. "Like that. Right there."
Jingmo listened to him with his whole body.
He learned Yanzhi's cock in the time it took to breathe.
He found the pace, and the twist of his calloused wrist over the wet head, and the spot on the underside that made Yanzhi's knees give, and he used all of it.
Yanzhi held on to his shoulders and said things he had no business knowing words for.
"You have such big hands. You have no idea. I want them on me every night."
"Tell me what else."
"Your mouth. Later. Not yet. Don't stop, I'm going to cum..."
"Then cum," said Jingmo, and his voice was dark and certain, the voice of a man who had spent years giving orders to the dead.
"Let go for me."
It broke through Yanzhi.
He came hard into Jingmo's fist with a cry against Jingmo's neck and shook in the water.
Jingmo held him up through every pulse of it, with one arm banded around his back.
When Yanzhi could see again, Jingmo was watching him with an expression he had never seen on anyone.
It was awe, and hunger, and under both a kind of fear.
"I'd like to learn the rest," Jingmo said.
Yanzhi didn't think he could be more undone, and then he reached under the water for Jingmo's cock.
He was thick, heavy and hot, and so hard it must have hurt.
When Yanzhi's fingers closed around the shaft and stroked, Jingmo's head fell back, and the moon shone on his bare scalp and the long line of his throat.
Yanzhi watched his face the whole time, because he had waited three centuries to see what a man looks like when he is wanted.
"Fox," Jingmo said. "Fox. I don't..."
"I know. Let go."
"I can't..."
"Yes, you can. Give it to me, Monk. I've got you."
Jingmo came with a hoarse, shocked groan, his cum spilling hot over Yanzhi's hand in the water.
Then he caught Yanzhi's face in both hands and put his forehead against his.
They stood there breathing.
Yanzhi felt the great body slowly stop trembling, and for a minute Jingmo did not seem to want to let go.
Then he drew back and looked at his scarred hand.
"That was a sin," said Jingmo.
"Do you regret it?"
He thought about it honestly, with his brows drawn together.
"No," he said. "I think that's the problem."
He climbed out of the pool, wrapped himself in the white cloth and stood with his back to Yanzhi and the moon on his head.
"I take my vows in three days," he said, without turning.
"I know."
"Nothing changes that."
Yanzhi slid under the water to his chin and let Jingmo hear him smile.
"Then we have three days."
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