This wasn't what Luan Nian expected.
He had turned Shang Zhitao down, meaning to end things with her for good. But the moment his fingertips brushed her hot, soft earlobe, he wanted something else entirely. Something urgent, something with the force to break her apart, something that wanted to crush her.
Shang Zhitao had told herself just yesterday that she would never sleep with Luan Nian again. Today, hearing him invite her back to his place, she froze, staring at him, saying nothing at all.
Luan Nian's fingers moved against her earlobe. "I've decided your proposal isn't such a bad idea," he said.
"What?"
"Being regular partners." He reminded her, then started the engine and said nothing more. He drove faster than usual, fast enough that Shang Zhitao felt they wouldn't even need foreplay. Even the strange silence in the car was enough to stir her.
She couldn't explain what was happening to her. The desire rising in her chest frightened even herself. She pressed her lips together, the word "stop" sitting right on her tongue, but she couldn't force it out no matter how hard she tried. Getting out of the car mattered less to her than staying beside Luan Nian. She understood something now: whoever falls in love first is the one who ends up routed, utterly defeated.
She never quite knew how it happened after that, only that Luan Nian swept over her again, first in the garage, then in the car itself. Afterward, Shang Zhitao would wonder how they'd gotten so desperate that they couldn't even make it out of the car.
Luan Nian's tongue traced her earlobe, then pressed in deeper. Her hair carried a faint, warm fragrance, and her quick, shallow breaths sounded just like her usual quiet self. He pressed harder on purpose, forcing a soft cry from her throat, then murmured against her ear: nice. After that her voice wouldn't hold still, light and breathless, with the occasional sound that melted straight through anyone listening.
From the car to the bedroom, then to the bathroom, Luan Nian only grew more relentless, and Shang Zhitao lost all sense of anything else. She didn't have time to wonder whether this was right. She only knew that all week, every time she'd closed her eyes, it had been him she saw. Once a young woman lets desire through the gate, it doesn't close again. It wasn't that she wanted anyone else. She simply felt she hadn't had enough of him, as if she needed to devour him whole before she could even think about moving on.
Water ran down her shoulders, washing off the sweat, washing off his scent. Shang Zhitao thought that meant it was over. It wasn't close. The shower ran hot enough that she could barely breathe. His scent would wash away and then return, as if he refused to let her go.
At her most defenseless, she wanted his kiss. She cupped his face in both hands and kissed him again and again.
This time it was complete, every part of her filled with pleasure. She lost track of how long it took before her breathing settled. Reaching instinctively for the blanket, her hand brushed against his by accident, and she snatched it back at once, even after everything else they'd done, as if holding hands were somehow more unforgivable than sex.
Luan Nian passed her the blanket. They lay at opposite ends of the bed, just like the last time.
I've really lost my mind, Shang Zhitao thought.
Luan Nian, have you lost your damn mind? Luan Nian thought.
Neither of them spoke. Neither knew what to say. One of them had sworn off this just yesterday. The other had turned down her offer to be regular partners only days before. Both of them had gone back on themselves.
"I don't think Sunday works very well," Shang Zhitao finally said, after a long silence.
"Hm?"
"I have work Monday, and the marks are still pretty obvious." She hadn't thought to stop him in the moment, but afterward she realized Luan Nian liked leaving marks on her. "By the next day they still haven't faded. If it were Friday night, there'd be time for them to go down. Or, next time, could you just not leave any on me?" What she was really thinking was that Sunday cut into too much of her time. She still had English class on Sundays. If she came over Friday night after work and left the next morning, her whole weekend would stay free.
Hearing Shang Zhitao discuss scheduling with him so seriously, Luan Nian found the whole thing a little absurd. He'd had two or three relationships before, but never a regular partner. He never would have guessed that in this particular matter, she'd be the one taking the lead. Are girls this open these days?
He didn't answer. He got up, dressed, and walked out of the bedroom, went downstairs and poured himself a glass of cold soda water, drinking it down in one go. It cleared his head instantly. He didn't like the feeling of being steered by someone else, even over something this trivial. He poured a second glass for Shang Zhitao, and she drank it down too, the cold going straight through her.
"Awake now?"
"Awake."
"Then head home. Don't you have work tomorrow?" He was showing her the door. That stung. Shang Zhitao had no idea her words had bothered him, that he wanted to compete with her now, though over what exactly, even he couldn't have said, probably just over which of them could act more unbothered by all this.
"Oh, okay." Shang Zhitao got up to dress. She heard him on the phone. "Master Liu, could you send someone over..." She lunged for the phone, but he locked her against his chest, held it up over his head, and tilted his chin toward it. "Yes, at my place."
"..." He hung up and let her go. "What's wrong?"
"The company doesn't allow employees to date each other." She was a little panicked, mostly because she couldn't face Liu Wu.
"We're fuck buddies. Not dating." Luan Nian tossed the words at her.
She said nothing.
"That doesn't help either... tell Master Liu not to come." She scrambled to grab her phone, meaning to slip away, but he was quicker, snatching it out of her reach. "Beg me."
Damn it.
"I beg you." She pressed her palms together and bowed at him, asking him to let her off, to leave her a little dignity.
Satisfied, Luan Nian called Liu Wu back. "Master Liu, no need to come. She's leaving on her own. Get some rest." He still had her phone in hand and made no move to give it back.
She held her hand out to him. "I really need to go." Acting deaf to her, he tucked her phone under his pillow and closed his eyes.
"So am I going or not?"
"Sleep in the guest room."
"Oh."
Shang Zhitao climbed onto the bed, reached under his pillow, and pulled out her phone, then turned toward the door. Two steps later she stopped. "Then how am I getting to work tomorrow?" She was genuinely trying to work it out.
Luan Nian ignored her, eyes shut, saying nothing, until his stomach betrayed him. He was hungry. He'd played ball all afternoon and then spent all that time with her, and he still hadn't eaten. He opened his eyes, pulled on a T-shirt, and found her still standing there like a complete fool.
"Hungry?"
"..." She meant to say no, but she was too hungry to keep up appearances, so she nodded.
"Then go cook."
"I only know how to boil noodles." Whatever noodle skills she had, she'd picked up in her school dorm.
"Fine, that'll do."
They rode the elevator down together, and Shang Zhitao suddenly asked, "Why don't you have a housekeeper?"
"Not used to it."
"What?"
"Not used to having strangers around."
You don't seem to mind strangers when you're having sex, she thought, keeping it to herself. Downstairs, Luan Nian, true to form, poured himself a small glass of red wine, settled onto a barstool, and tipped his chin toward the kitchen. "Go on, then."
Fine. She'd go.
Shang Zhitao dug through the fridge and pulled out tomatoes, eggs, a few vegetables, then found some noodles. She looked competent enough washing vegetables and lighting the stove. She poured a little oil into the pan, and that was where her competence ran out. At school she'd only ever cooked with a small electric pot, never an open flame. When she scattered in the scallions, oil splattered everywhere and the pan caught fire. She jumped back half a step, startled.
Luan Nian nearly choked on his wine. He hurried over and turned off the burner, frowning at her. "You know how to boil noodles?"
"Ah..."
"What else do you claim you know how to do?" He was done believing anything she said she could do. She'd said she could drive, and crashed his car. She'd said she could cook noodles, and nearly set his kitchen on fire. He pushed her aside and made a pot of vegetable noodles himself, quick and practiced.
Last time it had been steak and pasta. This time, vegetable noodles. It turned out he could actually cook. She stood off to the side watching him work, a little surprised, feeling a bit useless.
"You can cook."
"I'm picky."
Luan Nian had been picky since he was small. In kindergarten he hadn't liked the food and would rather go hungry than eat it. Later, after his parents moved the family to the United States, he never took to Western food, and takeout wasn't any better, so he started cooking for himself now and then. What he made was terrible, but it was his own cooking, and he could stomach it. Over time he'd picked up a little skill.
Shang Zhitao wasn't picky at all. She loved everything, including the bowl of noodles he'd handed her out of pity. She shoveled a mouthful in and suddenly thought: if Kitty knew her beloved boss had slept with me, and even cooked for me, would she skin me alive? Grind my bones down? She already didn't like me to begin with.
She kept eating and letting her thoughts wander, practically writing herself a whole drama in her head. They finished the noodles in silence. Then, a little awkwardly, she asked, "Do you have a spare toothbrush?"
"Yeah." He took her upstairs and pulled a spare toothbrush and toothpaste out of a bathroom drawer for her.
"What about a towel? A bath towel? Pajamas? A contact lens case?" She suddenly thought of a dozen things at once. "If I'm coming to sleep here every Friday night from now on, I'll need all of that."
"So we've settled on Friday nights now?" he asked.
That caught her off guard, and before she could think of a comeback, he added, "Can't you just bring your own?"
"Am I supposed to carry it all with me every single time? Or is there somewhere here I could just leave it?"
Luan Nian understood what she was really asking: whether it was appropriate for her things to be there, whether his other women would mind finding them. He didn't answer. He wasn't in the mood to argue the point, and picked up his toothbrush instead.
She stood there thinking it over, then asked, "Do other women from the office come here?"
He spat out a mouthful of toothpaste foam and asked her, cold. "Why, planning to go compare notes?" He said neither yes nor no.
"No need, no need."
On this point Shang Zhitao knew exactly where she stood. She just didn't want to be someone's mistress. So she asked plainly, "You're not seeing anyone right now, are you? Because if you have a girlfriend, this wouldn't be right at all."
Now he was genuinely irritated. Was there something wrong with her head? If he had a girlfriend, would he really bring another woman back to his own house? He dropped his toothbrush in the cup, turned, walked into the master bedroom, and shut the door on her ridiculous questions.
Shang Zhitao pouted, brushed her teeth, washed her face, and went to the guest room. Luan Nian really did have good taste. The bedding he'd chosen was extremely comfortable. She hadn't paid much attention to it the last time, but tonight, lying there, she noticed how different his bed felt from her own. She was tired. She turned off the light and fell into a deep sleep in his guest room.
She woke early the next morning and found the door to his bedroom already open, though he wasn't inside. By the time she finished brushing her teeth, she saw him coming upstairs drenched in sweat. He worked out every single morning.
She checked the time. So this man gets up at six? My god. He pulled off his workout shirt and walked into the bathroom bare-chested, lean and solid, and caught her gaze lingering on his abs. He grabbed her by the collar, pulled her out of the room, shut the door, and went to shower.