The Concubine Who Was Supposed to Die in Chapter Three novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: Third Bell
At the hour she was meant to die, Zhiyao takes the Emperor to bed and sleeps with him for the first time, slow and then not; dawn horns announce the Holy Maiden's first audience.
The Emperor's bedroom was bigger than the apartment she had left behind.
It had a bed the size of a boat, hung with dark blue curtains.
The window opened on nothing but stars.
He set her down at the foot of the bed and stood in front of her with his hands at his sides.
He was waiting.
It took her a second to understand that he was waiting for her.
"Take your time," Ji Wuyan said.
"I've got fifty-one minutes."
"Then take fifty of them."
She laughed, and the laugh shook on the way out.
She reached for the sash of his robe and pulled it loose.
The indigo silk fell open, and she stopped laughing.
His chest was broad and hard and dusted with black hair, and old white scars ran across it in long lines.
One crossed his ribs.
Another ran over his stomach and down below the line of his belt.
"Spear," he said, when she touched it. "Three thousand years ago. I was a foot soldier."
"You're beautiful," she said, before she could stop herself.
He looked startled.
"I have never been called that."
"Then everyone you've met is an idiot."
She pushed the robe off his shoulders.
It dropped to the floor, and he stood naked in the lamplight with his cock already thick and heavy against his stomach.
It was big.
It was a lot bigger than the four dates had prepared her for.
She wrapped her hand around it, and her fingers didn't meet.
He sucked in a breath through his teeth.
"Careful," he said roughly. "It's been a long while."
"Is it going to hurt?"
"Not if you tell me what you need." His thumb brushed her jaw. "I'll go as slow as you want."
"I don't want slow," Zhiyao said. "I want you to go slow at first, and then I want you to stop being careful."
His eyes went black.
He picked her up by the waist, turned, and laid her on the silk with her head on his pillow.
He undid her green robe one tie at a time, and when it fell open he stayed very still.
She was lean and long, with small breasts and a flat stomach.
A pale scar ran along her left hip, one she had not known about until now.
"Is it all right?" she heard herself ask.
It was a stupid question.
It was not her body, and it was.
Wuyan bent his head and put his mouth on the scar.
"It's a very good body," he said against her skin. "It's yours. Tell me what you like."
"I don't know yet."
"Then we'll find out."
He kissed her hip, and the soft skin below her navel, and her ribs.
He took one nipple into his mouth and sucked, and her back came off the silk.
"Yes," she said. "Like that."
He did it again, slower, with his tongue moving in circles.
His free hand cupped her other breast and rolled the peak between two fingers.
Her whole body was humming.
She was still wet from the pillar.
When he slid one hand down between her legs, she was slick to the knee.
"You're ready," he said.
"I've been ready for an hour."
"Then say it."
"Fuck me, Wuyan."
He lifted himself over her, and she felt the thick head of him against her entrance.
He did not push in.
He held there, shaking slightly, and looked at her face.
"Look at me," he said. "I want to see you."
She looked.
He pushed in an inch.
Her breath stopped.
He was wide, and hot, and the stretch was enormous.
It burned a little, and it felt like being opened.
"Breathe," he said, very gently.
She breathed, and he eased in another inch, then another.
His forearms were braced beside her head, and the muscles in them trembled with the effort of going slowly.
"God," she whispered. "You're so big."
"You're taking me beautifully."
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're doing everything."
He sank the last inches in and stopped, fully seated, with his hips flush against hers.
For a long moment neither of them moved.
She felt him inside her all the way up, thick and pulsing.
Her own body clenched around him in small helpless waves.
Her eyes stung.
"Zhiyao?"
"I'm okay," she said. "I'm just... I'm alive."
He held her face in both hands.
"Yes," he said.
"I'm really alive."
"Yes. You are."
He kissed her, deeply and slowly, and then he began to move.
He pulled almost all the way out and slid back in, long, easy strokes that dragged against everything inside her.
Each one made her gasp.
The pleasure built from low in her belly and spread outward.
She hooked her ankles behind his thighs to pull him in.
"Harder," she said.
"Not yet."
"Wuyan."
"Not yet," he said, and the command in his voice made her pussy squeeze around him.
He saw it, and the corner of his mouth lifted.
"You like that."
"Shut up."
"You like it when I say no."
"I like it when you say anything in that voice," she said, panting.
He gave her a slow, deep, grinding thrust, and then another, and she moaned out loud.
"Good," said the Emperor. "Louder."
The bed began to creak.
She wrapped her legs around his waist and dug her nails into his shoulders.
Every stroke now had his full weight behind it.
He hit a place deep inside her that lit up the whole room.
She tipped her head back and said his name over and over.
"Now," she gasped. "Now, you can stop being careful."
He growled.
It was a real sound, low and animal, and it went straight through her.
He put one hand under her knee and pushed her leg up toward her shoulder.
He drove into her at a new angle that took her breath away.
"Oh," she said. "Oh, fuck, oh..."
"There."
"Right there, don't..."
"I've got it."
He fucked her hard and deep, with the headboard knocking against the wall.
The bed shook, and her breasts bounced, and sweat ran down his chest onto hers.
She watched his face above her.
All the dry composure was gone.
His eyes were half closed, his lips were parted, and his beard was damp.
He looked like a man who had been starved and had just been fed.
"You're perfect," he said hoarsely. "You're so tight. You feel so good around me."
She slid a hand between their bodies and rubbed her clit.
"Yes," he said. "Do that. Come for me."
"I'm close."
"I can feel it. You're gripping me."
"Wuyan, I'm..."
Far above the Jade Terrace, a great bronze bell began to ring.
It was the third bell.
It was the bell that was supposed to be the end of her.
It rang once, and a wave went through her that started in her toes.
It rang twice, and she cried out and arched up off the bed, and her pussy locked down on his cock.
It rang a third time as she came, hard and long, shaking so violently that he had to hold her hips down.
"That's it," Wuyan said through his teeth. "That's it, that's my girl."
He drove into her twice more, and his whole body went rigid.
He buried his face in her neck and groaned.
She felt him pulse, deep inside her, hot and heavy, and a long shudder went through the big body above her.
He came for a very long time.
Then he collapsed to the side, pulling her with him.
They lay tangled together with the bell still humming in the air.
Zhiyao started laughing.
Then the laugh broke into crying, and she couldn't stop either.
"I'm sorry," she said into his chest. "I'm so sorry. That was my... that was supposed to be me."
"I know."
"I heard it ring, and I was alive."
"You were alive," he said. "You are alive."
He wrapped a huge arm around her and tucked her head under his chin.
He stroked her short hair, over and over, with the flat of his hand.
"You're warm," he said, after a while, as if it surprised him.
"You're very warm."
"I've been cold for a long time."
She wiped her face on his shoulder and looked up.
His eyes were wet, too.
Neither of them said anything about it.
They lay there until the lamp burned low and the stars paled in the window.
Then, from the far side of the palace, a long brass horn sounded three times.
Zhiyao felt him go still.
"What is that?"
"The morning audience," said the Emperor. "The Holy Maiden is to be received at court at dawn."
His arm did not loosen.
That was the second thing about this night that was not in the book.
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