Content Warning: This chapter contains explicit sexual content.
Ji Zongting kissed her deep and heavy, as if he meant to make up for twenty-nine years of deprivation in a single night.
Wen Li was pinned in his arms, the back of her head held steady by his large palm, nowhere to retreat. His presence swept over her, layer after layer, the crisp pine scent mixed with scalding male heat, until the last clear thought in her head dissolved into mush. Her tongue went numb. Her lips, ground under his, ached faintly.
She instinctively tried to shrink back, but the hand at the back of her head only tightened, leaving her no room to escape.
Wait. I’m supposed to act out! I can’t let him kiss me senseless.
Wen Li thought it fuzzily, but the dull ache on her tongue jolted her a few degrees back to clarity.
This guy really has no skill.
Her last life had been the same. He kissed her fierce and clumsy, like he was trying to swallow her whole.
Wen Li made her move on the spot. She raised her hands, and her ten sharp, long nails dug unceremoniously into his back.
Ji Zongting grunted. The hand cupping her head loosened slightly, and he drew back half an inch. His dark eyes, steeped deep in desire, fixed on her. His throat worked. His breathing came uneven.
Wen Li, kissed into a daze, her eyes shining, a thin mist gathered in them. The corners were wet and red. Her lips, red and swollen, made her look like a peach blossom crushed to pieces.
She sniffled and lodged her complaint, voice sweet and soft, threaded with tears. “It hurts… you were too rough.”
Ji Zongting looked down at her like this, and his eyes darkened further. His gaze lingered a moment on her red, swollen lips. Then a low laugh hummed out of him, deep in his throat, gritty with rasp, unbearably stirring in the quiet bedroom.
“You can’t even take this, and you still came to provoke me.”
Wen Li glared at him. Unfortunately, with her eyes rimmed red and water still clinging to her lashes, the glare had no bite at all. She looked like a bristling little animal throwing a tantrum. She pressed her red lips together and held her ten glittering nails up under his nose, giving them a shake, her voice fierce. “You’re not allowed to hurt me, or I’ll scratch you to death.”
There’s no way he can take this. He’ll probably shove me off the bed, right?
Ji Zongting’s gaze swept over those ten crystal-studded, long, sharp nails. There wasn’t a trace of fear in his eyes. If anything, something deeper had been stirred. His throat worked again, his voice scraped down to almost pure breath.
“Then scratch.” He bowed his head, the corner of his mouth curving, his lips against her earlobe, scalding breath pouring into the shell of her ear. “My kitten loves to scratch.”
Before Wen Li could retort, his kiss came down again. Her lips were caught and ground under his, over and over. Her tongue retreated step by step under his domineering, clumsy assault, until even her breathing came in broken pieces. His large hand closed over her waist, through the thin pajama fabric. The heat of his palm was frightening, his grip so tight it felt like he wanted to crush her and fit her into his body.
Wen Li was kissed until she was dizzy, unable to catch her breath. “Mm… Ji, Ji Zongting…”
A fine whimper hummed out of her nose. She raised her hands instinctively to claw at his back. Her nails dug in through the robe’s fabric. She wasn’t playing around. She was really clawing. She could feel her nails sinking into his flesh. But Ji Zongting didn’t let go. Instead, he seemed to grow more excited.
“Be good. I’ll kiss you gentler.”
The kiss softened. He was no longer biting her tongue the way he had been. But… his skill was still beyond description. Wen Li was kissed until her vision went black, and her heart raced with impatience. In her last life, it had taken over a year before he improved. Did she have to start from scratch all over again? Why should she?
She couldn’t take it anymore. Wen Li steeled herself, planted both hands on his chest, and shoved hard. She flipped and straddled him. Ji Zongting was startled by the sudden movement. He lay back against the pillow, looking up at her. The desire churning deep in his black eyes hadn’t faded. His expression held a note of surprise.
Wen Li sat astride his waist, her pajamas loose, her long hair tumbling messily over her shoulders. Her small face was flushed, her lips swollen, a layer of water still pooling in her eyes. She was a wreck, and yet she lifted her chin, wearing the air of a sovereign surveying her domain.
“Ji Zongting, you kiss terribly!” She pressed a hand to his chest and announced it from on high. “Let me do it instead!”
Ji Zongting’s eyes flickered dark for a beat. He tugged the corner of his mouth, then simply lay back further, arranging himself in a pose of willing surrender. His expression hovered between a smile and something else. “All right… wife.”
Wen Li was as good as her word. She bent down at once, her lips against the corner of his mouth, demonstrating bit by bit what a real kiss was. Her lips were soft and wet, catching his lower lip and grinding gently. Her tongue traced the line of his lips, then slowly slipped inside, teasing, drawing near and pulling back.
Ji Zongting’s breathing grew noticeably rougher. The hand at her waist tightened and tightened, his knuckles going white. His throat worked without pause, as if he were fighting to hold something back. But Wen Li kept teasing him without ever truly satisfying him.
She was just getting into her lesson when her waist tightened. The world spun, and she had been flipped back underneath him.
“Learned it.” He bit her earlobe, his voice rasped as if scraped by sandpaper. “Now… let’s practice.”
And then Wen Li was practiced on.
She proved, through firsthand experience, what “the student surpasses the master” really meant. Ji Zongting was the most terrifying student in the world. Show him once and he had it. Show him twice and he had it down cold. And his stamina was astonishing.
She clawed at his back. Useless. She sobbed and called him husband. Useless. She whimpered and begged for mercy, and he only grew more excited.
“Husband… please, let me go…”
Wen Li was turned this way and that, kissed over and over, her toes curling helplessly, her voice shaking. Her throat had gone hoarse. Her tears had soaked a patch of the pillow. Those ten nails she had so carefully prepared for her mischief had raked crisscrossing red lines down his back, and he didn’t care at all. Even when she clawed hardest, he would only lower his head to her ear and laugh low and deep. “Wife, harder.”
Pervert! You absolute pervert!
In the end, Wen Li couldn’t hold on any longer. A flash of white burst across her vision, and she sank into the dark. She had actually passed out from exhaustion.
She didn’t know how much time had passed. Hazily, she felt herself being lifted, a warm towel passing over her cheeks, her neck, her arms. But she was far too sleepy, too sleepy to even open her eyes. Only a formless, unnameable resentment propped up what little consciousness she had left.
Wen Li raised a limp hand and, by pure instinct, swatted the face of the person holding her.
Take that, you bastard!
A faint hiss of breath came from above.
Wen Li hummed in satisfaction and dropped into dead sleep.
The next morning, sunlight speared through the gap in the curtains that hadn’t been fully drawn, striking Wen Li across the face.
She managed to crack one eye open. Every part of her felt like it had been run over by a truck seven or eight times. Arms sore, waist sore, legs sore. Even her fingers were weak. She tried to turn over, and the moment she moved, an ache that reached all the way to her marrow shot up and forced a sharp inhale out of her.
The other half of the bed was empty. Ji Zongting had probably left long ago.
Wen Li stared at the empty pillow for two seconds, then ground out through her teeth. “Beast!”
Her throat was hoarse too. She coughed dryly.
She groped for her phone on the nightstand. It was past nine. The screen showed seven or eight missed calls, all from her company assistant, Zhao Yan. The most recent had come in five minutes ago.
She called back quickly. Zhao Yan’s voice came through the line. “Ms. Wen, are you coming in to the office today?”
“Yes, I’m on my way.”
Wen Li finished in a hoarse voice, hung up, took a deep breath, and threw back the covers to get out of bed.
The moment her feet touched the carpet, her knees buckled, and she nearly dropped straight to the floor. She just managed to catch herself on the nightstand, averting disaster.
Wen Li steadied herself against the edge of the bed, took a deep breath, and squeezed a sentence out between her teeth.
“Ji Zongting, you absolute farm animal!”