Chapter 52

So soft.

Sheng Huaixi narrowed her eyes slightly, holding her breath as she listened to the frantic rush of Jiang Chao’s heartbeat by her ear. The droning white noise tugged at a faint tremor deep in her chest.

She could not escape desire.

Leaning in another breath’s distance, Sheng Huaixi stripped away every trace of expression and feeling. She poured the tremor of her heartbeat toward what she wanted, all of it turning into a thin, delicate kiss.

Sheng Huaixi closed her eyes. Her lips stayed still where they were, while pleasure curved her eyes, as if she had pressed a kiss to a tuft of fluffy snow; that softness, that fine delicate texture, lifted and scattered like grains in a warm wind.

Each grain rejoiced in that tenderness, stirring a storm in Sheng Huaixi’s heart.

Snow was cold, and Jiang Chao felt the same to Sheng Huaixi right now.

The searing heat rising from both within and without blurred Sheng Huaixi’s mind; the cool softness beneath her lips felt like a handful of just-right drops of water, falling lightly onto the surface.

With a soft pop, the water burst into spray, and a misty haze rippled through Sheng Huaixi’s chest.

The teasing desire did not ease at all; if anything, it burned even fiercer.

Kiss her. Kiss her. Kiss her more deeply....

Her throat moving faintly, Sheng Huaixi’s soft, wet tongue stirred restlessly inside her mouth. The desire coursing through her blood urged her to act on the truest thoughts in her heart.

She wanted to reach out with the tip of her tongue and tangle with Jiang Chao’s; she wanted to invade the breath that belonged to Jiang Chao, wanted to wrap around that soft tongue and suck hard....

She wanted to French-kiss Jiang Chao.

Sheng Huaixi stared without blinking at the quiet, obedient sleeping face before her, inching her lips little by little, carefully and cautiously, into a new position.

The instant the kiss landed, her heartbeat lost its balance.

Sheng Huaixi could hear nothing else. At that moment, she could only focus on holding her breath, her gaze intent as she felt, little by little, the texture of the other pair of lips.

Her lashes lowered. Sheng Huaixi shifted a little of her weight downward; petals of moisture dropped onto those lips, her scorching body temperature gently wrapping around the cool warmth as the soft snow quietly melted.

Her long lashes trembled involuntarily as the chill receded. Sheng Huaixi silently stole the warmth from between Jiang Chao’s lips, then smeared her own breath and heat across Jiang Chao’s mouth.

The pace wasn’t fast at all; if anything, it was unhurried.

Bit by bit, Sheng Huaixi traced the shape of Jiang Chao’s lips, eyes half-lidded as she clearly felt their contours, sensing them through the brush of her tongue.

Wet, cold, warm, sticky... all of it gradually blended and drew from one another beneath the kiss she offered.

Her breathing growing ragged, Sheng Huaixi endured the temptation as desire surged to the point of wildfire, then quietly pulled back.

The damp, sticky breath felt scalding. Sheng Huaixi lowered her eyes, and desire reddened them.

Desire kept her awake all night.

The next day.

When Sheng Huaixi said, "You’re a little overheated," at the breakfast table, Jiang Chao instinctively paused and touched her lips, then nodded in reluctant agreement.

"Yeah, a little."

Since waking up today, Jiang Chao had occasionally felt a faint pain in her lips; even while scrolling on her phone, she’d unconsciously pressed them together a few times, as if she were responding to something.

But she had never had this habit before. It was strange.

Her fingertips touching her lips, Jiang Chao lowered her gaze and remembered that when she washed up this morning, the reflection in the mirror had shown her lips looking darker and deeper in color than before.

As if they had been coated with a layer of muted red lip gloss. When her tongue brushed over them, it felt even more obvious.

After thinking it over, Jiang Chao blamed all these strange symptoms on the lack of sleep caused by the emotional swings Sheng Huaixi had put her through.

"It’s all your fault," Jiang Chao shot Sheng Huaixi a glare and decisively pinned the blame for her overheated lips on her. "If not for you, I definitely wouldn’t be overheated."

Sheng Huaixi gave a light hum of acknowledgment, accepting Jiang Chao’s accusation. The smile on her face deepened, and her gaze slid over Jiang Chao’s slightly swollen lips; her lashes gave a pleased little tremble.

"Mm. It really is my fault."

Her fault for getting addicted to kissing her; for not being able to stop after the first round, and then repeatedly taking Jiang Chao’s lips into her mouth to kiss her again and again.

The breath by her ear was long and even. Every time Sheng Huaixi kissed her, the sound of breathing vanished in an instant; she openly blocked it with her lips and used the tip of her tongue to hook it away, deliberately disrupting Jiang Chao’s breath.

Not too light, not too heavy; just enough to make sure Jiang Chao’s breathing was thrown off by her sucking.

At the same time, Sheng Huaixi had to restrain herself, restrain the surging desire that screamed at her to kiss harder, deeper.

Several times, Jiang Chao’s breathing had already become a complete mess, and faint, broken gasps had even slipped between her teeth. Sheng Huaixi’s ear twitched; suppressing the restlessness pressing at her lower abdomen, she pulled back.

In the dark of night, her gaze flickered with a blazing gloom. Sheng Huaixi bent over, one hand covering her lips tightly, her breath pouring into her palm in a hot, chaotic rush.

Their breathing briefly matched, sounding together in Sheng Huaixi’s ear. When she realized that, her brows and eyes curved with delight, and her breathing only grew more tangled.

Sheng Huaixi hadn’t bothered to count how many times she had kissed Jiang Chao; it was already impossible to count.

The night had been nothing but kissing, and there was plenty of time.

Again and again, Sheng Huaixi’s kiss fell and lifted; when her soft tongue withdrew from Jiang Chao’s lips for who knew how many times, Sheng Huaixi saw the state of Jiang Chao’s lips at that moment.

Kissed swollen.

Kissed wet.

Sheng Huaixi had kissed to her heart’s content.

Her fingertip lightly tapped Jiang Chao’s lips; the temperature beneath it was no longer the cool warmth it had been at the start, but had turned hot because of her, dyed with her own heat.

A strange illusion rose in Sheng Huaixi: Jiang Chao belonged to her.

"Mm, she’s mine."

"?"

Jiang Chao paused in the middle of tidying the dishes and looked at Sheng Huaixi in confusion, not understanding why she had repeated it twice.

Was her fever gone? Was she feeling better? Had her mood improved too? To actually go along with such an obvious attempt to shift blame and repeat it along with her.

Jiang Chao glanced over again, following Sheng Huaixi’s gaze to her lips, and her fingers brushed lightly across them. Visibly, the smile on Sheng Huaixi’s face bloomed even brighter.

"You’re insane," Jiang Chao said with a laughing scold, not bothering to guess what was going on in Sheng Huaixi’s head. No matter how she guessed, it would only be an unsolved riddle; how was she supposed to figure it out?

At the very least, Jiang Chao didn’t want to waste time prying into Sheng Huaixi’s thoughts over something so unimportant right now. Whatever she guessed would only come up empty.

Sheng Huaixi rested her chin on her hand and watched Jiang Chao’s retreating figure. Her thick lashes blinked, casting a gray shadow over her eyelids, and the corners of her eyes lifted in pleasure.

"Insane," Sheng Huaixi licked the roof of her mouth and, copying Jiang Chao’s tone, scolded herself once. Her lifted brows drooped, and she pouted a little, feeling rather bored.

It still sounded better when Jiang Chao said it.

When she said it herself, it didn’t have that feeling at all.

Those brief two words crawled up from her lower back, a dense, numbing current shooting straight along her spine until even her heart felt like a huge piece had caved in.

Sheng Huaixi narrowed her eyes and stared fixedly at Jiang Chao’s back as she cleaned up, her fingertips lightly tapping her lips. Then she suddenly curved her mouth, her brows and eyes relaxing in comfort, like a heavy ink wash painting that had come vividly to life in an instant.

Sheng Huaixi felt she was truly beyond saving.

Just looking at Jiang Chao, the only two words in her head were: want to kiss.

The tightly shut door of desire had been opened by Sheng Huaixi a sliver; the long-restrained yearning quietly poked its head out, and behind it surged everything else, overwhelming and impossible to bear.

Endure it.

Sheng Huaixi told herself over and over: endure a little longer.

"I’ll get you some lip balm. Put some on later."

The words came from behind her. Jiang Chao straightened up, the confusion in her eyes deepening.

When she’d rushed through her first proposal and gotten overheated from worrying, how come Sheng Huaixi hadn’t seemed this proactive about taking care of her then?

Could it be that she’d done something somewhere that had pleased this ancestor again? So Sheng Huaixi was being unusually attentive and responsible about her little overheated lips this time.

Jiang Chao shook her head and gave up trying to figure out Sheng Huaixi’s reason. She loosened her bitten lip, her brow faintly furrowing.

Her fingertip brushed her lips lightly. Jiang Chao didn’t know if it was just her imagination, but today her lips really did feel off.

A small bite hurt much more than before.

Was overheating supposed to do that too?

Jiang Chao didn’t understand; she could only hope things would improve after she used lip balm today.

After all, tomorrow she had to go to work, and another round of mental strain was about to begin.

Jiang Chao applied lip balm more than ten times in a day, yet she still couldn’t keep the next morning from being blown apart when Yuan Bai met her with a single sentence: "Who kissed you? Your mouth is swollen."

"Tsk, we haven’t seen each other in just two days, and you’re already fooling around with someone? Come on, tell me, tell me. I definitely won’t spread it...."

Jiang Chao’s brows twitched wildly. She did her best to resist the urge to throw Yuan Bai to the other side of the room and explained more than ten times that it was from overheating, but Yuan Bai simply refused to believe a single word.

"You’re that eager for me to have someone to kiss, aren’t you? You just keep going on and on," Jiang Chao said irritably, pushing Yuan Bai away as she leaned in.

Yuan Bai was shoved back, and when she heard that, she was not pleased at all. She grabbed Jiang Chao’s pushed-away arm and forced herself upright again, eyes wide.

"Heaven and earth can testify, I keep pestering you because I don’t want you kissing just anybody."

"You think I’m like you? Kissing any mouth you want," Jiang Chao shot back without mercy as Yuan Bai brought it up herself.

"My first kiss is still intact; please don’t spread rumors, thank you." Jiang Chao was practically one step away from raising a sign declaring her innocence and slamming it in Yuan Bai’s face.

After Jiang Chao denied it again and again, Yuan Bai’s brows knit together. She leaned forward suspiciously to inspect Jiang Chao’s lips.

The slightly swollen lips looked less like overheating and more like they’d been forcefully sucked on by someone. Add in the thin layer of balm Jiang Chao had just applied, and the glossy sheen on top made it look even more like someone had licked across them with their tongue.

The more Yuan Bai looked, the more convinced she became that these were definitely kiss marks.

From her experienced eye, she even guessed that these were the marks left after a deep kiss with a lot of sucking.

And yet Jiang Chao’s exasperation didn’t seem fake; she really didn’t think this was the result of kissing.

But Jiang Chao was a lifelong single, wasn’t she?

Yuan Bai came back to her senses and looked at Jiang Chao with even more suspicion.

Could she have been secretly kissed by someone and not even known it?

"Jiang Chao, come a little closer," Yuan Bai said, signaling Jiang Chao to lean in.

"What for?" Jiang Chao obediently bent down.

Yuan Bai hooked an arm around Jiang Chao’s shoulder, covered her own lips with her hand, and whispered into Jiang Chao’s ear.

"Have you been sleeping with Sheng Huaixi lately?"

Jiang Chao whipped her head around, pupils shrinking in shock. "How do you know?!"

She had only slept with Sheng Huaixi for one night; could she really still be carrying some kind of trace on her body? Why had Yuan Bai seen it at a glance!

Yuan Bai guessed what she was thinking and lightly tapped Jiang Chao’s lips with her finger.

"This was kissed by Sheng Huaixi, right?"

Jiang Chao: "???"