Ruan Li threw her a look, though it was hard to tell if it was resentment or helplessness.
An amnesiac was practically a blank sheet of paper. Yet, Ruan Li couldn’t just scribble whatever she wanted on it; she could only whisper in her ear, tempting and coaxing her, unable to change the girl’s underlying nature.
Her cheeks were still damp…water left behind after being wiped clean…feeling much fresher than before.
Ruan Li had watched plenty of kissing scenes in movies and TV shows. Two mouths gnawing at each other, as if fighting for air, like fish pulled out of the water flopping against one another. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow, sometimes light, sometimes heavy. Watching it, she’d never thought much of it. Stripped of all the romantic sentimentality attached to it, it was just two pieces of flesh rubbing together.
How dead wrong she had been.
She owed her younger, foolish self an apology.
Her lips were still numb, burning and itching as if she’d just eaten something spicy, hot to the touch compared to the rest of her skin. The entire inside of her mouth felt like it had been scraped over several times; every tiny nerve ending had been thoroughly crushed, curling up in retreat until her mouth hardly felt like her own anymore. Ruan Li hadn’t even known a tongue could reach so deep, moving as nimbly as a finger, almost dragging her own tongue into the other girl’s mouth to devour it whole.
Kissing… so this was kissing.
The culprit behind the crime was still looking down at her, blinking innocent eyes. A few golden strands of hair drooped into her view, which she casually flicked back like tossing out trash.
They stared at each other for a long while.
It was only when Ruan Li finally snapped back to reality that she remembered she hadn’t answered Xu Mengzhou. A single kiss…a kiss brought on by sheer provocation…had felt like poison, completely stripping her of basic critical thinking. Her mind was like a small boat tossed on a stormy sea, swept up by raw, overwhelming physical sensations, pitched up and down with zero control.
She closed her eyes, opened them again, shoved the sensory overload to the back of her mind, and pushed up on her elbows, attempting to sit up.
A sudden force pressed down on her shoulder, pushing her right back down.
It was like the habit of a feline…the moment they see something move, they swat it down first and ask questions later.
Xu Mengzhou possessed that exact same thick skin. Not feeling the slightest bit guilty about what she had just done, she actually had the nerve to ask first, “Where are you going?”
“Taking a shower,” Ruan Li replied.
Her voice was still raspy, slightly gravelly, like she had just swallowed a packet of Pop Rocks.
Taking a shower was proper business.
Xu Mengzhou let out an “Oh,” her eyebrows drooping as she pushed against Ruan Li’s back to help her sit upright. Her mood seemed to act like a telltale tail…perking up when she was happy and drooping when she wasn’t.
Trying to find something to say, she added, “Right, it is about time for your evening routine.”
Ruan Li steadied herself against the nightstand, making sure her feet were planted firmly on the floor before turning toward the bathroom. After taking just two steps, she paused and turned to the person trailing behind her.
“Could you heat up the wellness soup for me, please?”
“…Wife?”
Ruan Li tilted her head slightly. A flush of pink lingered at the corners of her eyes, resembling fresh peach blossoms dropped into a glass of milk…dazzlingly pink.
Those two words acted like a spell, locking Xu Mengzhou in her tracks. If her fingers hadn’t still been tugging at the hem of Ruan Li’s clothes, she might have actually floated off into outer space.
Head of the household. Wife.
She cleared her throat, trying her best to suppress the corners of her mouth from turning up, and put on a pretentious tone. “Fine then, I guess I’ll take a look for my dear wife.”
She deliberately placed a heavy emphasis on “wife,” highlighting the difference between the winner and the loser of their little bet.
Ruan Li didn’t back out and simply agreed. She even smiled softly and replied, “Thank you, darling. My soup is on the second shelf. Be careful when turning on the stove…don’t burn yourself.”
Losing a dare and getting a deep kiss in return, or winning the dare and earning the title of the head of the house…
No matter how she looked at it, Ruan Li couldn’t see how she had lost out at all.