The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis-Chapter 379: The Quiet Flame (Longzi)

Steam rose off the water in soft ropes, almost obscuring the view of the pool.

"Here," Longzi said, and held out his hand.

While his name and legacy caused many grown men to pee themselves, Sun Longzi had always been the most... shy and reserved of all her guys.

More than Yaozu, he liked to hide in the background, watching, always watching what was going on, and he would never approach Xinying without some sort of reassurance from either her or one of the other men.

That was what made these date nights all that much more special.

Longzi planned everything, down to the last detail. True, he planned it like a war campaign, but that was besides the point. This was his plan, his initiative, and Xinying was all for it.

Taking his offered hand, Xinying smiled up at him brightly.

He led her along the stone path without hurry, one step at a time, the way he did everything. It was like the ground belonged to him and he was commanding it to behave for her.

Lanterns hung from hooks on the rock face, the light low and steady, adding to the atmosphere instead of taking it away.

The hot spring itself was old, cut into the hillside long before either of them. A low wall, a bench, a folded blanket. No servants. No echoes of court or palace. Yaozu had walked the perimeter an hour ago and left to guard off in the distance.

If anyone came close, no one would hear them in time to be a problem.

Longzi stopped at the edge and looked at her. Not asking if she was sure so much as wanting to confirm that she was ready.

"Always," she whispered, the single word disappearing in the darkness the moment it left her lips.

He untied the cloak at her shoulders and set it over the bench without breaking eye contact.

He didn’t talk. He didn’t need to talk. He pushed her hair back from her face like a man checking his weapon before a long march and then let his thumb trace once along her jaw.

"Sit," he grunted, seemingly having trouble forming sentences.

She sat on the bench at his direction.

He kneeled at her feet to slide off her shoes, his thumbs firm at each ankle as if the world might try to take her from him through her feet. He set the shoes side by side, straight, then smoothed his palm over her shin.

"You planned this," she said, voice low.

"Yes."

"For how long?"

"Long enough."

He stood and untied her sash. Pulling her robe open, he didn’t pull it off. Instead, he let the robe fall into a puddle at her feet.

If he had a prayer, it was in that look.

"Turn," he grunted.

Xinying smiled as she obeyed him. He gathered her hair and twisted it into a knot at her crown.

"Water," he said.

He helped her down the steps, one hand around her hand, one at her waist.

When the heat took her shins, she breathed out. When it took her thighs, she breathed in again. He stepped in after with no sound at all. He drew her deeper until the water crept up her ribs and the world narrowed to heat and his palms spreading over her hips.

"Hold," he said.

He came in closer until his chest met her back, until she could feel his breath on her neck and the beat of him through both palms. He pressed a kiss under her ear, not soft, not rough, just a mark that said: here.

"Take," he said, and lowered her slow until the water took her weight. She floated in a world that seemed to belong to just the two of them.

He held her. He made it easy to fall and easier not to think.

She let her head tip back against his shoulder.

He lifted her higher with a palm in the small of her back so the water cradled her breasts. He covered one with his hand and left the other to the heat.

She sighed. He didn’t answer with a sound. He answered by adjusting his grip half an inch to the place he knew. She went quiet. The lanterns hissed and said nothing anyone cared to hear.

"Good?" he asked.

"Yes."

He kissed the top of her shoulder and then the side of her neck where her pulse ran hard.

He held her in the center of the pool and made the pool feel like a bed. When her legs floated up, he let them rest against his thighs. When she slid, he corrected with a press of fingers and a pull at her hip.

He did not ask her to come to him; he brought himself to her. Each small change asked a small answer. She gave them without thinking.

"Turn," he said again, and rolled her toward him with a strength that, on anyone else, would have been frightening.

On him, now, it was comfort. She wrapped her arms around his neck; he picked her up out of the water like he was lifting nothing more than steam.

He set her on the low ledge where the heat still wrapped her without stealing her breath.

"Here," he said, standing between her knees.

She opened for him because she wanted to and because she liked the way he watched her when she did.

He braced his hands on the stone at either side of her hips and lowered his mouth to her throat. He tasted her there and then lower, tasting the line from throat to breast to the place under her ribs where breath caught.

He marked nothing. He needed no proof. His proof was his presence. Always had been.

"Say it," he murmured, low.

"Please," she said, easier than she had expected. "Longzi."

He went lower.

His mouth was slow at first, not tentative, methodical.

He did not tease. He simply gave her what she wanted. His tongue asked in simple terms and she answered with her breath and with her hands sliding into his hair and with the way her knees tightened at his ribs.

He listened. He adjusted. He did not speak when she made a sound that wasn’t pretty. He simply gave her the exact thing that had asked to be given.

"More," she said.

He gave her more. He gave her pressure without hurry, depth without force, patience without pause.

He kept one palm flat on her belly to feel how her body collected his work. He liked that feeling. He raised his head once to look at her face. She met his eyes and forgot for a moment to be careful with what her face said.

He put his mouth back where she needed him and finished the thought he had started.

The first shiver went through her like a fast line of light under skin.

He kept the rhythm she had chosen with her hands on his head. He pressed down when her fingers tightened. He eased when they loosened. When she went tight all over and then loose in a single long sweep, he only shifted his grip on her thighs and held her there through it.

"Again?" he asked when her breath came back.

"Yes," she said at once, not an ounce of hesitation in her voice.

He stood, water running off his body in lines that didn’t break.

He pushed his hair back. He looked down at her. The heat had put color in his cheeks. It made him look young and ancient all at once. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

She held out both arms like a child and a queen. He came into them and lifted her from the ledge with that careful strength that made her feel like something precious instead of something fragile.

"Where?" she asked.

"Here," he said, and carried her to the wide flat stone at the edge of the pool where he had already set the blanket.

He laid her down on it. He didn’t rush to follow.

He took a moment before he set one knee on the blanket and then the other and came over her slow so nothing spooked.

He kissed her mouth at last. His mouth was heat and patience and the taste of water. She opened to him and let him take the rest of what the day had left closed.

"Tell me if you want slow," he said.

"I want you," she said. "How you want me."

He shut his eyes once, like he was filing that sentence away where damage could not find it. He reached down with one hand, guided himself, and pressed into her with the same steady inevitability he used on doors that forgot who owned them.

He watched her face, not to check if she hurt—he would have felt it before she knew it—but because he wanted to see the moment her body recognized him from the inside.

It happened at the last half inch. He felt it. She felt it. They breathed the same breath for a beat. Then he slid the rest of the way home.