Chapter Text
It was unseasonably warm for autumn, or so Jinshi would say. The truth of it was simply that he was warm.
As of late, he fell asleep face pressed into a pillow he had stained and scented with bitter herbs. It took him too long to find the right combination that smelled of Maomao, longer for it to smell lived in, as perpetual as it smelled on her. The problem was that most nights, he did not simply fall asleep to that smell.
He had wanted her for so long, and so desperately that having the smell of her in his bed, he could help but imagine the real thing behind closed eyes. Pressing his face into that herbal smell of hers, taking his hard cock in his hand, rubbing into his silky sheets, the image of her behind his eyes.
Glazed eyes, flushed cheeks, and wet lips glowering down on him beneath a moonless sky. A scathing look, judging him so very harshly for that failure of an encounter they had shared years ago now. When things were resolved and there were no longer the issues that would arise from relations shared with her, would she make that same face of hers?
Was it wrong to hope so, to want it as he did? It was hard enough to restrain himself, but the thought of snapping even a little and being pinned under her cruel eyes was…thrilling, to say the least.
It wasn’t all he thought of, even if that cold glare was a fixture of his imagination. There were so many memories of her that spurred his fantasies, and the smell of her in his bed unleashed something possessive, and carnal. It gave him this need deep inside of him to have her, to know she was his. She had tried to engage him in such acts lately, and he couldn’t, he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop himself once they started, regardless of what she might want and not bring herself to say.
All thoughts and desires that only served to make him feel like a monster.
He slept so much better after the release, especially so compared to when he tried to ignore such urges. She was always advocating he sleep more, she cared a great deal about his sleep, she would be glad to know he was. Even if she would despise the reason. She’d glare at him like he was less than dirt and call him a pervert, and she’d be right, it was awful of him to do this at all, much less to thoughts of her.
Tonight was far different to other nights for one very important reason, the smell he created to approximate Maomao was hidden away, where she would hopefully never find it. His mind and soul and desire instead fueled by the woman herself, in his bed. Worse than that, she was in his arms.
They had shared dinner, and spoken of their time apart, hardly a week and mostly work, and she was so clearly tired beyond reason. She should have cancelled their plans, he had told her as such, but she had she wanted to see him. That admission alone would have his heart racing to late into the night. It was a foolish decision to implore her to sleep in here. He had meant in his residence in general, but she had decided to sleep in his bed. Just another thing warming his blood.
She was so exhausted, she must have been, she fell asleep so quickly, almost as soon as she had lain down. It was almost always him who had fallen asleep around her, he had only held a sleepy Maomao in his arms once before.
Tonight, she was asleep and reaching out for him, holding onto him like he was a comfort, nuzzling her face into his arm. She was seeking an assurance he only hoped he was in fact giving her.
Looking down at her, the reason for his lack of sleep twitched, the collar of her top hanging loose enough he could see further down it than he should have looked, than she would be okay with him looking. She wasn’t wearing her doduo, and he could see the entirety of her chest. She said it wasn’t anything to look at, but seeing her like this now, he was sure he could hold her entirely in his hand, he wondered how much he could fit of her in his mouth.
Both thoughts that sent chills of pleasure through him.
He couldn’t handle it. She was too close, too soft, too alluring pressed up against him.
She’d never know anything he did so long as she didn’t wake.
It was a traitorous thought, but one Jinshi was giving into as his free hand, the one Maomao wasn’t pressed against, carefully moved, terrified to wake her. Worried about giving her any idea of what he was doing, what he was about to do, as his hand snuck into his pants.
He hissed a breath as his hand wrapped around the base of his shaft, squeezing his hard member as he knew she would, as she had. His head lulled to the side, looking down at Maomao, one of her hands hidden under the blanket much like his. Imagining the murmur released in her sleep, not something meant for her dreams, but a dismissal of his size as she had years ago given.
He wet his hand with the fluids already leaking out of him, beads of desire that only grew with every thought of her he had. Slowly, painfully slowly, he dragged his hand over himself, collecting the wetness that formed at his head.
Maomao was like her namesake in many ways, and Jinshi worried that, like a cat, she would stir if she felt his movement. If she knew what he was doing now she’d leave, she’d never come back to his bed, or worse she’d convince him to do something more, something with her. He squeezed himself hard, it hurt, but it was all he could do to not buck his hips into his hand at the idea of her noticing and swinging her body over his.
He choked back the moan at the thought of her disgust with him, even through eyes half lidded with sleep. It caught thick in his throat, and filled his senses ever more with her. He returned to movements, straining to keep time with his breaths. In effort of keeping his breaths deep enough to not wake the woman sleeping in his side, he pressed his head as carefully as he could to the top of hers. His lungs filling with her. Desperate for the longest, fullest breaths he could take.
She grumbled, and his body went cold. A shiver of fear, and something almost like excitement shot through his spine, feeling himself twitch against his hand. All born from the worry that he would be caught. He didn’t stop his slow strokes, even as his breath stuttered, almost like the flutter, the jolt in his heart.
She shifted against him, he stroked himself faster. The horrifying thought that she was awake, that she knew what he was doing. Yet what she did was worse than simply waking, or if she had insulted him, berated him, glared at him like he was nothing or worse than. Her leg, which had been loosely lying over his, seeking out his warmth, had shifted up to earnestly wrap his hip.
Her knee pressed into his hand, he had a traitorous thought to remove himself from his pants, rub himself against her leg. That would be too much. But she seemed to sleep a lot more soundly than he had worried, which gave him an idea just as bad.
His mouth hung open, the smell of her lingering in his warm mouth like taste, would her tongue taste the same as she smelled? She had tasted bitter that night on that bench, or maybe he just remembered it as such.
He released his grip on himself, and carefully took hold of her knee. She remained still, remained sleeping, unknowing. Holding her leg where it was, and grinding his hips into her softly to start with. She remained asleep, and his breathing picked up, the soft sounds of their clothes rubbing against each other and his heavy breathing all that existed in this room. It was all that he needed to be real.
With every roll of his hips into her leg that she slept through, he grew bolder, more wanting, more uncaring if she did wake as he chased a pleasure he could not in good conscience chase after in a waking Maomao. Stray hairs of hers sticking to his tongue as he panted. His face resting on the top of her head, humping her leg like an animal, like the feral beast he had told her he feared she turned him into, pushing up against the firm muscle of her well worked thighs.
He wanted to feel the tension in those muscles under his hands as he pressed them as far back as they would bend. Better yet, how tight they could wrap around him, maybe his face, would she allow him to take such liberties with her as he had read in some of her illicit books, as well as the taoist ones he maybe shouldn’t have been reading as an unmarried prince. The texts that explained countless ways to reduce a women to a boneless mess drawing ever drop of jiang from her.
Maomao saw sex as a way to serve, a product of her being born to a brothel, she would surely fight the idea of him wanting to pleasure her as he did. He chased his own now, but he knew with the actual act he would not be the same, he would become a slave to her want. It was for that reason that her never knowing this, her sleeping through this, was the best possible thing.
If she pushed while he was in his current state he would snap and take her.
He held her closer, gripped right under knee tighter, as his fantasies intensified with his pleasure. The thought of the weight she would press into him with that same knee, if he woke her, crushing his hard cock under her, even as light as she was, would hurt. Jinshi knew it would hurt even worse because it would shoot nothing short of pure pleasure through him, he would grow harder than he already was, so close to precipice.
Despite that thought, his climax came to him in surprise. His hips trying to buck off the bed and only held down as he pressed down hard enough with her leg to leave bruises on himself through her, bruising her too.
Oh gods, what would she think of such a bruise on her leg when she woke and noticed? The thought of her confusion come morning prolonged his release. What she might speculate but never say, the wetness that might pool between her legs at her own fantasies running through her, as his just had.
It was only after he softened and his breathing calmed, did the weight of what he just did settle over him.
He was a monster.
This was awful of him.
He had taken advantage of her by asking her to stay instead of simply ensuring she got home to her bed, only to do this. He could have insisted she sleep in another room, he could have simply controlled himself, he could have done any number of things that didn’t stain his pants with shameful seed.
He extracted himself from her leg, a gentle hand running over what he was sure he had bruised, then trailing further up, trembling only slightly as he checked if he had left evidence on her clothes. The tension that had welled in his body at his hate for himself, releasing as he was assured she would never know what he had done.
Deep breaths of her, that filled his lungs of only her, calmed him. The smell of her grounding him back to reality. Allowing him to feel uncomfortable not just in his mind, but also his body. The sticky fluid that clung to him and seeped into his pants something that he desperately needed to clean and fix.
He slowly, gently, lifted her off his arm, turning her carefully so that he could get out of the bed. He had already gone so far, but his eyes caught on her parted lips, and the smell of her that clung to his mouth was fading as he moved further away from her.
What was one more awful thing? He leaned in closer to her, almost in a trance at her soft and slightly wet lips, his tongue swirling his own with lingering desire. Feeling her breath on his lips, his heart racing, knowing that this was the closest he would come to waking her, the risk of such a thing exciting him far too much. He knew it was wrong, so very wrong, but there was something about the idea of her catching him desiring her as ardently as he did.
His tongue pressed into her mouth, pressed against the wet hotness of her, past the soft plushness of lips that almost pouted in blissful sleep. She hummed, and he almost pressed even further into her, a want to grip the back of her head tight and wake her up with pleasure, something he had to fight back into the darkest depths of his mind. He pulled his tongue out of her, almost in pain at leaving her.
She tasted of wine and herbs. He ran his tongue over his teeth, hoping it might let the taste linger in his mouth, gripping to his teeth and gums.
Would she taste the same the next time he kissed her?
Would she taste that way in the next one of these fantasies he dreamed without her here?
Would his heart ease or tighten in the morning upon the confirmation she would truly never know? He had no clue if he wanted her to know, to realise it, to confront him, demean him, or if he wanted her to live on none the wiser, truly.
All he would know right now, after he had cleaned his mess and returned to the bed that he shared with her tonight, was that he hated himself for what he had done, and that he desperately wanted to take liberties with her soft and sleeping body again. Spooning her body and holding her tight, to soothe the pains that now lingered in him at his deplorable behaviour, pressing as many parts of him to as many parts of her. Arms wrapping around her, Maomao grumbling like a cat but relaxing into him, entirely unawares.
He was a deplorable man, no different to the monsters she had her run ins with in the pleasure district really.
He now knew that he would be far too weak not to encourage her to sleep beside him in his bed. He wanted more than that pillow to satisfy him, he wanted her, and he couldn’t have her, and if she knew how close he had far he had gone, how far he would go again. She would only encourage him to that too.
This act had been one awful thing, but that would be a far worse one.
At the very least, right now she had no need to worry about any of those contraceptives she had spoken of. No need to burden herself with that weight so long as she never knew.
He would make it up to her, and she would simply think he was being his clingy self. She never needed know what happened tonight, and she never would.