Chapter 45
“So cute.” I want to kiss her…

Her legs trembled, her hands unable to steady herself.

Her knees were pried apart—a position she dared not dwell on.

Though only her lower legs remained above the bathwater, Si Jin felt as though she were drowning, gasping for air.

Unceasing sounds permeated every corner.

Xiao Rong had honored her request not to be gentle, his invasion so intense it seemed he truly meant to devour her whole.

When her weakened body trembled and slid down, Xiao Rong gently encircled her waist, catching her securely.

Si Jin collapsed against his chest, which heaved even more rapidly than her own.

Though her entire body had gone soft, she mustered enough strength to bite down in frustrated retaliation.

“Mmm…” Xiao Rong grunted in pain, holding her as he lowered his gaze.

The corners of his eyes were flushed red, his lashes glistening with moisture—whether from steam or elsewhere.

After releasing her bite, Si Jin began to lift her head, only to have Xiao Rong press his hand against the back of her skull.

“Xiao Jin, lick me too.”

“I love it when you lick me.”

Some time must have passed, yet Si Jin felt the bathwater remained scalding hot.

Xiao Rong had always been one to push his advantage.

He pulled her hand toward him, their breaths mingling back and forth between their lips.

Seated on his thighs, Si Jin felt the hot water threatening to seep into the valley through parted crevices.

Yet Xiao Rong remained motionless, his gaze burning into her.

“You… you come closer…”

She rarely took the initiative to invite him, for Xiao Rong was usually the impatient one.

Now, though his entire body was taut, veins visible along his arms and hands, he merely held her waist, his grip restrained.

“Do it yourself,” he rasped, anticipation evident in his eyes. “Didn’t you want to play with me? Now, it’s your turn here.”

Si Jin pressed her lips tightly together, fearing any slack would let sounds escape.

The man before her was utterly mesmerizing.

Droplets clung to him as if he were glowing, his flushed cheeks seeming truly ruined by her.

His handsome face, wrapped in desire, was filled with an alluring expression.

But…

“Wah… I can’t… You… you do it.”

She couldn’t lower herself, couldn’t move—her body weak yet acutely sensitive.

Si Jin’s helpless hands unconsciously tangled in Xiao Rong’s hair, her fingers threading through his strands as if already entwined.

“Grind against me first.”

Xiao Rong gripped her waist, guiding her, teaching her how to tease him.

After just a moment of direction, he loosened his hold.

Si Jin arched her neck, unable to decide which was more unbearable: being unable to descend or the shame of grinding.

Though the man before her appeared entirely at her mercy from start to finish, the control in her hands felt precarious.

Along with it, the bathwater’s surface swayed.

Undulating, back and forth, grinding, twisting.

Si Jin had thought this would be unbearably frustrating, yet she unexpectedly began to find pleasure in it.

She’d never experienced this before.

Usually, it was his fingers and tongue, and the initiative never rested with her.

Gradually growing more adept, Si Jin narrowed her eyes slightly, lips parted, arms looped around Xiao Rong’s neck, swaying with insatiable hunger.

The man who had never relaxed even slightly breathed even more heavily.

Xiao Rong’s eyes reddened, his jawline repeatedly tightening.

“Xiao Jin, had enough fun?”

“Wasn’t it you who told me… to grind?”

The tone shifted at the tail end, as if Si Jin had found a comfortable position.

Xiao Rong’s brow twitched violently, his Adam’s apple bobbing fiercely.

Suddenly.

His grip tightened uncontrollably around her waist, as though he meant to break her.

Si Jin’s body was abruptly lifted into the air, then dropped heavily.

A startled cry, a tremor, yet her breath seemed almost frozen.

After a low, hoarse sigh, Xiao Rong held her by the waist and kissed her smooth neck.

“You came right away—do you like it like this?”

Her breathing, now restored, was rapid and chaotic. Si Jin’s vision blurred, almost too hazy to make out Xiao Rong’s face.

The sensation of his fingertips stroking her lower abdomen, mingled with the sloshing bathwater, was slow and ambiguous.

“I’m here.”

He pressed gently.

“With you.”

Si Jin didn’t want to admit it, but the feeling of holding the initiative was good—maintaining self-control, preventing herself from drowning uncontrollably in the pleasure.

Yet returning the initiative to Xiao Rong brought a different sensation, one that felt almost unbearable, yet she truly did as he said.

She couldn’t deny she liked it.

Facing each other in an embrace, the water enveloped them invisibly, yet it couldn’t hinder the sensation of their bodies pressed together.

Xiao Rong’s thighs supported Si Jin’s body.

She was far more petite than him, not only weightless to him but also easily encircled completely in his arms.

“You’ve been teasing me for too long. Let me go deep just once, alright?”

Si Jin’s eyelashes fluttered. Even though it hadn’t happened yet, she already felt scorched.

Her mind wandered, unintentionally recalling the very first time.

Back then, she had thought it was just their reunion after a long separation—over a month or more—before they became intimate again.

It was too hazy, too overwhelming; she couldn’t even grasp the feeling of swelling to the point of pain before being swept away by a surge of heat.

Back then, Xiao Rong didn’t always say things like wanting to fill her up.

He simply acted, often becoming frustrated and ashamed from loss of control and sudden release.

Clumsy and disorderly, he had no mind for other tricks.

Now, thinking back, it wasn’t that it had been a long time—it was that it had never happened before.

The recklessness of the first time, and the eager exploration that followed.

He was like a diligent, well-behaved child, improving noticeably each time.

But the progress seemed only in those theoretical techniques; in practice, even now, he wasn’t much better, crumbling at the slightest provocation.

Si Jin’s arm moved slightly, brushing faintly against his waist before rising to his chest.

Like an involuntary caress in the throes of passion, without any purpose.

Si Jin, slightly taller, looked down, taking in his current state from above.

The lost memories of his past remained elusive in her mind.

But the memories she had truly experienced now were etched clearly in her mind, every detail.

She remembered his pupils losing focus, the way he couldn’t suppress his heavy panting.

She remembered his face flushed red, staring at her as if he wanted to devour her.

And now, his entire body tense, yet as if he might collapse and drown at any moment.

Si Jin’s fingers continued upward until they pressed against his prominent Adam’s apple.

A muffled groan.

Xiao Rong instinctively reached out and grabbed Si Jin’s hand, holding her trembling.

“I like it.”

“I like you so much.”

“Xiao Jin, I love you so much.”

“Tell me about the first time we met.”

The courtyard was silent in the deep night, yet the bed inside the room had only just quieted down.

Si Jin nestled in Xiao Rong’s embrace, faintly feeling a growing warmth, but she did not pull away.

Her gaze fell on the strands of hair draped over his chest, and she began to twirl them around her fingers, mimicking how he often played with hers.

Xiao Rong remained silent for a long while.

Si Jin looked up and saw his eyes open, still awake.

She didn’t press further, simply waiting quietly.

Xiao Rong wasn’t refusing to answer, nor had he forgotten.

The memories brought up surfaced vividly in his mind in an instant.

It was just that these images were lost to Si Jin, preserved only in his own recollection.

“I was punished for a mistake, beaten until my body felt as if it would fall apart. Only under the scorching sun did I feel a burning sensation, so I stood for a long time in the courtyard, where there was no shade.”

Si Jin’s breath hitched, and her fingers tightened involuntarily.

“If you remember, I’d like to ask why you came up to speak to me back then.”

“What… did I say to you?”

“You asked me if I was admiring the fish.”

Si Jin froze for a moment, the tension easing as a faint curve touched her lips.

Though she couldn’t recall, it felt like something she would have said.

“I replied, ‘Not admiring the fish, but listening to music.'”

Si Jin’s eyes widened in surprise, and she sat up slightly, her interest in his hair forgotten as her thoughts were captivated by the memory Xiao Rong had evoked.

“What music?”

Xiao Rong lowered his gaze, looking at her with a serious expression. “On sunny days, the pond fish sing.”

Si Jin blinked in bewilderment, her expression momentarily frozen as if deep in thought.

After a long pause, she asked softly, “Really?”

As soon as the words left her lips, a low chuckle sounded from in front of her.

Si Jin seemed on the verge of realizing something, but her thoughts still lingered in hesitation.

In the next instant, her vision blurred as Xiao Rong pinched her chin and kissed her.

“Mmm… don’t…” Si Jin’s lips were unbearably soft, a result of being kissed repeatedly throughout the day.

In the darkened room, the slight swelling of her rosy lips was invisible, but as Xiao Rong held them in his mouth, even she felt as if they were trembling, delicate and plump.

Xiao Rong traced the outline of her lower lip with his tongue, his voice growing hoarse. “You asked the same question back then. After more than ten years, you still believe it.”

“So adorable.” I want to kiss you.

As Xiao Rong leaned in again, Si Jin covered his mouth with her hand.

“I just didn’t react fast enough.”

Once she processed it, she seized on the key point. “So you’ve been deceiving me since the first time we met?”

Xiao Rong’s voice was muffled against her palm. “I apologized to you afterward.”

“How did you apologize?”

“Sorry.”

Si Jin watched him, waiting quietly.

When it seemed that was all he had to say and he fell silent again, her eyes widened, and she tried to pull her hand away from his face.

But as soon as she moved it an inch, Xiao Rong caught her wrist.

He turned his head and kissed her palm, unusually refraining from teasing her with his tongue.

“You’ve already forgiven me. You can’t hold a grudge over this now.”

Si Jin felt both exasperated and amused.

At her current age, she wouldn’t get angry over a childish prank, but she couldn’t help thinking how her younger self had been so easily appeased by Xiao Rong’s insincere apology and forgiven him.

Si Jin met Xiao Rong’s gaze in the darkness.

“What happened after that?”

“After that, you became the only one willing to spend time with me and speak with me.”

“We met in every deserted corner of the mansion. You told me the banquets were dull, and so was I.”

“Yet you still had to attend various banquets with your family, and you would still come to see dull me when the banquet was halfway through.”

Xiao Rong’s breathing had unknowingly grown heavier, and he was staring just as intently at Si Jin.

He made no other movement, yet Si Jin could sense he was restraining the impulse to kiss her.

“They said my mother was insane, that since I was born from her womb, I must have inherited the same madness. Anyone who spoke with me would be infected by me too.”

Si Jin saw the light in Xiao Rong’s eyes darken, gloomy and icy, shrouded in the darkness, sending chills down one’s spine.

“But I never told you, nor did I want to.”

Xiao Rong reached out, his thumb stroking her chin.

Si Jin seemed to feel that his desire to kiss her had reached its limit of restraint, his fingers trembling slightly.

Yet he continued, “Seeing you rush over excitedly to meet me, I even wondered if those absurd rumors could be true. If so, if you were infected with the same illness as me, became the same as me, wouldn’t you have to stay with me, remain by my side forever?”

Xiao Rong lowered his gaze for a moment, his eyelashes casting a dark, swaying shadow beneath his eyes. “Even now, I still can’t help thinking this way.”

Even if she brought him the brightest light, he still wanted to shroud her in a filthy veil, trapping her in an inescapable darkness.

Selfish, despicable, vile.

That was just how he was…

“Mmm…”

Xiao Rong’s lips suddenly stung with pain, his thoughts abruptly cut off.

His brows instinctively furrowed, the darkness in his eyes shifting into a dazed confusion.

“Punishing you—are you daydreaming again?””

The dazed look in Xiao Rong’s eyes remained unchanged. His chest rose and fell once, and his breathing lost its rhythm.

The sensation on his lips stole his thoughts, leaving only bewilderment, making him unsure what else he could possibly think of.

The feeling around his lower lip gradually spread from a sting to a tingling numbness.

Xiao Rong unconsciously licked his lips, parting them as if to say something.

Si Jin, as if knowing he might say something like “I want to be punished again,” leaned in first and gently bit his lip.

The night stretched the soft, lingering sounds on the bed,

as if it were a kiss, yet not quite a kiss.

Xiao Rong’s Adam’s apple bobbed, his lips slightly parted, allowing the warmth and softness to melt the darkness in his heart.

In their interwoven breaths, Si Jin pressed against his lips and suddenly whispered, “Let’s go visit your mother together, alright?”