Chapter Text
“Don’t deny it now.” Changyu stared him down, her eyes stern, as though forbidding him from lavishing all the world’s treasured on her. As though they were still just Fan Changyu and Yan Zheng from Xigu Alley, tucked away in the unblushing marital bed. As though he wouldn’t command the heavens to darken when she slept, to stop the snow from falling if she asked. As though he wouldn’t spend every waking moment shouldering her burdens for her. As though he hadn’t forced his lust upon her, denied her the sweetness she deserved for their first night. He smiled fondly, hiding the bitter bleed of guilt, holding her hand to his lips.
“I won’t,” he promised. Unspoken, secret, a new vow bloomed urgent and fervent in his chest. Into his words, he wove his commitment – his eternal devotion – quickly, into silken purpose. “If you won’t let me give you the wedding I want for you, then at least let me give you the wedding night you deserve.”
She scoffed at him. No blushes from his warrior bride, no artifice. Just as he had always loved her: bold, unrelenting, unserious to a fault. To her they were now as Yan Zheng and Changyu, in their next life together. Incomprehensibly, his.
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “Our wedding was months ago, even though you were injured. We didn’t need this then. Last night was just...” he waited for her to find the words, gaze resting on her eyes, her lips, her ear. “It was just the thumbprint.” She demonstrated, gently pressing her thumb to his lips. The seal of ownership on every word, every breath left in him. The promise which can’t be taken back. Signing herself on the contract for his life, forever. He gave it willingly.
“Well,” he entreated, kissing the pad of her thumb tenderly – for how else do you seduce a tigress – “in which case, let me give you the wedding night I’ve been imagining for us.” He saw her cheeks pink a little, and a brazen smirk peeked out at him even as he saw her subtly rearrange her arms sheepishly.
“Ah, was last night not up to your high standards, Marquis?”
That name again. He fixed her with his sternest expression, the effect dampened a little by the unstemmed adoration that radiated from him. He caught the slip of her waist, the gauze of her fine sleeping gown whispering against their skin, and bore her back down onto the bed until he had her pinned down with the breadth of his body. Her breath was light, sweet on his cheeks, and her eyes wide and bright.
“It wasn’t,” he replied honestly, and he held back a smile at her indignant noise. Hiding from the offended pinch of her brow, he kissed her jaw, silencing her with a palm on her other cheek, treasuring her against his mouth. He continued a slow, intentional path of kisses down over her neck, sweeping his nose gently across her pulse point. Not silenced for long, she grumbled at him.
“Don’t feel the need to lower your standards on my behalf, my lord,” she said. Her words were so petulant that this time he couldn’t help but laugh at her, leaning up and over to catch her lips with his. He kissed her glacially, leisurely, allowing them the chance to finally take from one another without interruption, no threat of silent daggers at their windows. He had dreamt of their first night for so long, had crafted it in his mind for months – lovingly practising and weaving acts of worship through obsessive, worshipful fantasies, adamant above all things that he would see her deified above him in glory, blissful glory – more than once, depending on the fantasy – before finding his own absolution.
Yet another injustice wrought by the undeserving hands of the puppeteers in court. He had been so feverish with desire last night, plying with her with heady kisses in a mindless pursuit, as though fueled with the desperation of a madman. He had whispered his obsessions, his prayers to her into her neck, cornering her into his arms while he frantically chased his own lust, claiming her with his body, pouring himself into and over her. She received him, met him even, and seemed to take some pleasure, but he had wanted more for his indescribable bride than a manipulated haze of lust – more than the single-minded rutting of the loyal dog it had reduced him to. He would put it right.
“On the contrary,” he murmured, his voice rough and promising as it skimmed the crease of her smile. “It’s your standards I failed to meet. You should have,” and here he punctuated each word with a kiss across her cheek, her eyes, her nose, “the highest – possible – expectations.” He returned to her clavicle, seeing the flutter of her heightening pulse and feeling his spike in response. He swept along her collarbones with his nose and lips, tasting the jasmine of their shared bath, and pressed her to the bed.
“Let me serve you, dearest wife,” he breathed against her skin. He felt a prickle of her hair as a wash of goosebumps pebbled under his lips. To his surprise she complied, settling back into the pillow wordlessly. A chance like this couldn’t be squandered. “If I’d only known,” he looked up at her, one thumb painting a soft line across her cheek, “that this would make you so obedient, I’d have made good on our marriage vows long ago.” To his delight, she laughed openly at him.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, live-in husband. I’m just enjoying a rare lie-in. Besides, you’re the one who vowed obedience, not me, remember?” This set-down drew out a surprisingly strong stab of lust in his gut, which he had to set his jaw against to maintain his slow, unyielding attentions. Her eyes had closed, eyelashes fluttering a little under the soft purposeful designs of his hands and lips. He moved up to cover her lips with his again, gathering up the heavy thrum of his desire and threading it into their kiss, sharing it with her tongue on tongue. Unhurried, and with hands as steady as he could manage, he pulled the coverlet from her body. Changyu had managed to just about dress them in some plain gauzy underclothes before sleep took them, but hers had fallen open enough that his knuckles grazed the tip of one of her breasts. Her breath shuttered into his mouth, and he stayed his hands for a moment as she acclimatised to the slight chill of the room, even as he kissed her mercilessly. He indulged, drinking in the softness and the heat of her mouth, as she shifted beneath him, and hazily he longed for lazy days of peace, spent here at her beck and call. Her nipples feathered across his chest a few times, even though he had braced himself a few inches above her, and it wasn’t until she was straining up towards him, chasing the contact, that he relented. Vaguely, he recalled he was trying to bait her with his words as well, and as he moved down, breathing and laving kisses, trailing his teeth – the devotee in him couldn’t help but look back up at her, where the heavy obsidian of her eyes stripped him away to nothing more than the hungry, jealous ache in the pit of his soul – he sighed over the rosy point of her nipple.
“Then, wife, allow your obedient husband to serve you. Grant me, my lady,” one delicate lick, “my,” the softest tease of his teeth, “humble,” and a soft breath fanned across, followed by the softest kiss of his tongue just at the very peak, “wish.” His nose drew a circle around the pretty pinch of pink, and he observed – meditative and reverent – her breathy hitch. A buzz of satisfaction settled around his throat, and his midriff, and he angled, kissing the other nipple with sweet devotion, noting her sighs and twisting movements as would a diligent historian. He closed his mouth around it, pert and cold against the fire of his mouth – trying to resist the call of his own need, allowing himself only a little moan of contentment as she arched up into him, a hand threading into his hair. He would not make this about him, he reaffirmed silently, and instead ghosted the shape of her body with reverential hands. Changyu was growing more restless under his weight, offering encouraging pressure and rolling beneath him. She finally stilled a moment when she managed to bracket her legs at his hips with the coverlet flush between them, and the ready need of him pressed hard up towards her, obvious and seeking. The padding of the blanket was a bittersweet relief, just enough to feel how she angled her hips to the promise of his attentions but blocking her heat, the warmth of her welcome. Xie Zheng forced a steadying breath, forehead against the rising and setting of her chest, steeling himself against the surge of need lighting up his blood.
Unbearable, tantalising and tempting, but he was a man of discipline in all things. A rough, gravelly rumble peeled from his throat, not loud – but it buzzed in her ribcage and she answered with her own pleased sigh. Whatever friction he chased seemed to have been a spark to tinder, and she tried to beckon him up with her pleading hands. Her legs fought with the blanket vainly.
“Mrs Fan,” he whispered with some desperation into the planes of her toned body, palms grasping at the span of her ribs, “will you please be still for me?” She huffed, dropping hers to the bedding frustratedly, and he pressed his grateful thanks into the dip of her bellybutton.
He sat back on the heels at the end of the bed, looking across at his ravaged, flushed wife. All light and shade; an impossibility of hard edges meeting soft smudges – made from the fabric of space where the force of the sun met the benevolence of the moonlight. His eyes roamed with unashamed pleasure, eyes covetous and heavy, lingering on the perfect bud of her lips, bruised and popped open in her hazy state. Her hair was amuss, and she had such dark anticipation in her eyes his resolve nearly crumbled.
He met her gaze with equal intensity, heart hammering – twin stars, twisting fate to their will, illuminating and balancing the universe. His voice was worshipful; barely a whisper.
“Changyu.” He addressed her seriously, intently, keeping his eyes on her face as his gaze mapped out her body, slowly, slowly, and he thought perhaps his heart might give out as he committed all the light and shade of her to memory. She beheld him with her cautious, steady eyes; silently, waiting.
“I love you.” He said it without pretty prose, the sum of his feelings needing no adornment. She knew him, and he her, and he wanted her to know his unshakeable love so fundamentally that she would never again feel insecure. Not in front of him. Not in front of anyone. She was a warrioress, fearless and fearsome. But unmistakably nervous now, before him; her legs had slid closed demurely, and he saw the hesitant stutter of embarrassment in her eyes as she chewed her lip a little. That in itself was, he was certain, not intended to be coquettish, but at the sight he had to temper another blooded tide of desire. He fixed his eyes on hers, steadfast, chest heaving. Feeding all his love for her into that look, that she would let her body come to know how it feels to trust. He moved slow, entreating, lowering himself to her belly as calm hands parted her legs, and his cheek came to rest on the flat of her stomach. Kisses fell from his lips across her; petal blossoms scattered in the awakening of spring.
He murmured her name again, naming not just her but the wash of love, the aching desire, the warmth and ache that felt like a hungry kind of happiness. His needy eyes bore into hers, capturing her focus while he shifted her legs up and about his shoulders as though she was astride his neck. At a pace which agonised him and enflamed him in equal measure, he delivered first a kiss to her thigh. With no sound but the shallow wisps of her breath painting the air, he pressed another, and another, floating a little closer to her apex with each precious, precise touch. Her legs, already shaking a little, were soon braced by his arms, and his warm hands swept across her abdomen, consuming, learning, mapping the leylines under her skin. Little tufts of goosebumps followed.
The first kiss he planted at her was so chaste it was almost prim. Transfixed as he was on her, he couldn’t have missed her fractional gasp, the way she held her breath. The way her eyelashes fluttered.
Another kiss, lingering and plush, and then the third was followed by a tentative sweep of his tongue up and through her. The first real taste of her, not just of her skin, or her mouth, was so vivid – a vital fresh tang, accompanied with a scent which was purely Changyu – and she made a startled little noise, almost funny in her surprise. The heady combination of her taste, her smell, her sounds, and feeling the threads of her muscles twitch beneath him, Xie Zheng groaned and took a deep swipe from her slit to her curls, finding that desperate little nerve bundle. A guttural moan seemed to well up from deep within her, reverberating in his hands and she broke their eye contact to drop her head back to the pillow. He looked down, the deafening eclipse of her displayed before him: the vibrant, needy result of his teasing, shining and gods, so inviting. He managed to crook his hands so he could thumb her lips apart, just to take her in, feeling a dark maw well up of wanting, hot and thirsty, as close to animal as he’d ever felt; a greedy instinct to claim and brand and drink and take and devour-
He pressed his tongue back to the flat of her, demanding and inexorable, wringing sighs and murmurs from her with methodical intent.
Her hips bucked, but he denied her the relief, keeping her fast and helpless against his inescapable attentions with one arm. The other drew back, balancing the focus of his tongue and lips as he slowly, deliberately threaded his hand towards that same white-hot star. His thumb circled at her entrance gently, soon slick, moving up and down with terrible patience. Changyu’s noises began to overlap, a landscape of music he could feel right to his bones, and her wildness bled into her limbs with frantic movements. Her hands tangled in the sheets, in her hair, scratched at the wooden frame of their bed, but it wasn’t until one knotted right into his scalp that his vision blurred with need. He swept the knuckle of his middle finger against her hot, devastatingly wet opening, and dipped through the syrup of her desire. Her breath was quick now, loud and beautiful, and at last he pushed his finger in, all the way in, up until he could pulse his knuckles up against the core of her, and then when he fastened his mouth to pull at her peak, tongue dancing and swirling, her neediness became a symphony – she the instrument and the music, he the composer and the audience. She seemed to grow long and taut like a bowstring: quiet, in wait, barely breathing until with a sudden crack of her voice, she broke like a raging fever against his mouth, feral and enthralling, his name spilling like honey from her lips, her fingers winding into in his hair so strong it prickled under his skin. Her thighs clamped and shook over his shoulders while she rode and writhed against him, pulling and pushing desperately, and he was aware that he was echoing her moans into her again. She was like living hardwood; sinew and ancient passion woven together – the incarnation and the formation of the earth, raw and powerful life, precious and overwhelming. If there was ever a fate he wanted, it was to deliver his body and his mouth up to her whenever she asked, to be used by her until she wanted nothing to do with him. He watched as, like the sun winking out its final rays, Changyu fell limp and spent, her breath heaving, her voice viscous and thick with aftershocks.