“I have no demands of you whatsoever.” Xue Tong’s words were neither cold nor detached.
After savoring them, Officer Lu tasted the indifference within. That feeling casually stirred the patience she had spent four years learning, pushing her temper to the brink of a volcanic eruption.
She did not want Xue Tong to cast her aside.
Even in Shanghai, even just downstairs—this indifference was unacceptable.
She threw a question at the retreating figure: “Why no demands?”
Xue Tong took a page from Officer Lu’s book.
She answered with silence.
Seeing herself ignored, Officer Lu panicked. She stood up from her chair, shoved the seat back, and followed. “You still haven’t told me where I’m sleeping.”
“Up to you. Hotel, the street, the sofa, the doorstep, the car. Of course, if you want to sleep in my bed, I don’t mind either.” Xue Tong’s pace didn’t slow as she climbed the stairs alone.
“So do you want me to stay or not?” Lu Shimiao stepped up two stairs, trying to confirm the other’s intentions. She wanted to hear an answer, to gauge her own place in Xue Tong’s heart.
Xue Tong’s footsteps halted. She spoke slowly: “Hard to say.”
Hard to say? Lu Shimiao frowned.
That word was a lure, a check on her competitive desire.
Her heart felt like it was steaming in a pot—scalding, aching, itching to be scratched but unreachable.
“If you really wanted to leave, I couldn’t keep you.”
Xue Tong bent down, set the water glass on the floor, and turned back down the stairs.
Lu Shimiao stood frozen, her eyes tracking Xue Tong’s every move, her expression stiff on her face.
Xue Tong walked to the same step where Lu Shimiao stood.
She drew closer, step by step, placing both hands on the railing behind Lu Shimiao, trapping her within the circle of her arms. “But if your mouth says you want to leave while your heart wants to stay, how would I know?”
Lu Shimiao was caged in Xue Tong’s embrace, that familiar scent rushing at her again. The stairwell light was dim, her vision shrouded by that scent, blurring on Xue Tong’s face, beneath her nose, the center of her lips.
“Hm?” Xue Tong’s trailing note was delicately sweet, the single word flaunting its teasing intent.
Damn—her chest suffocated, her breath stalled.
The addiction mechanism Xue Tong had unlocked in Lu Shimiao began to activate again. Rebellious thoughts broke through the soil. She wanted to become someone uncivilized; for a moment, she didn’t want to be the restrained, civilized person she was. She couldn’t endure this ambiguity. The thought of a fleeting taste hovered on her lips.
Xue Tong pressed forward another fraction, nose tip to nose tip.
She watched the kid’s expression sink deeper into desire for her, and her possessive heart found absolution.
Lu Shimiao’s ears buzzed, her breath caught.
She finally understood the cases she had processed, where those criminals’ impulsive thoughts came from.
People are impulsive creatures. Her disappointment had been too obvious moments ago, and the obsessive need to possess had seized the high ground of reason.
She wanted so badly to kiss her.
Just to try.
Lu Shimiao leaned her head forward, only to unexpectedly meet empty air.
Their faces misaligned, Xue Tong heard the kid’s ragged breathing by her ear.
Just hearing it felt so good.
“There are guest rooms upstairs and downstairs. Toiletries too.” Xue Tong withdrew her hands and stepped back, widening the distance between them.
…
Lu Shimiao stood frozen, chaos reigning in her heart.
She realized the flustered, infatuated state she’d just fallen into had been used as payback. Her body, scorching hot now turned to emptiness, felt like it had been waiting for a reward and inadvertently received punishment instead.
She felt as though Xue Tong’s face was telling her—See, in the end, you’re still infatuated with my body.
Xue Tong slowly walked up the steps, bending to retrieve the water glass, but never expected her arm to be seized.
The water glass tipped over, tumbling down the stairs.
Lu Shimiao yanked Xue Tong’s arm forcefully, dragging her toward the landing. Xue Tong stumbled, trying to pull her arm free, only to find she couldn’t break loose at all.
“Lu Shimiao.” She was being hauled along effortlessly.
Lu Shimiao couldn’t hear a thing.
All she wanted to know now was why Xue Tong’s body could so easily create distance from hers. Why was there no disappointment on Xue Tong’s face? Why did she ignite the fire only to douse it? In these four years, hadn’t she missed her at all?
Why did she come back?
Why did Xue Tong have to come back…
The second floor was unlit.
The first floor blazed with light.
Between the half-floors, faint light seeped through.
A sports bra and T-shirt pressed together once more.
But this time, there was no shyness, no restraint.
Lu Shimiao directly stripped off Xue Tong’s jacket, seized both her hands, raised them above her head, and pinned her against the wall with brutal force. Xue Tong’s close-quarters combat had won awards in Hong Kong, yet it crumbled entirely against Lu Shimiao.
“You’d better not make a single sound.” Lu Shimiao knew Xue Tong’s body like she knew the multiplication table.
Xue Tong was highly sensitive. Any touch would draw sounds from her involuntarily. For four years, Lu Shimiao had relied on memories of this body’s sensitivity in the dark of night to resolve her own physical needs. She refused to believe this person would have no reaction.
Lu Shimiao’s lips invaded. At first contact, there was a slight unfamiliarity, but the moment she tasted that flavor, she became unrestrained.
Xue Tong’s breath was ripened by the kid’s kiss. Every inch of skin quivered in response. Sparks raced across her heartbeat. Desire, imprisoned in the silent night, surged outward in waves. The emptiness in her body couldn’t be grasped, yet couldn’t find ground either.
“Don’t…” Xue Tong bit her lip with all her might, suppressing the urge to press their bodies closer.
Lu Shimiao seized the gap to speak. “Didn’t you say it didn’t matter if I slept in your bed?”
Xue Tong couldn’t withstand the kid’s wild, impatient, fervent kisses at all. The moment she felt those hands on her waist, she knew tonight was lost.
She had calculated accurately that Lu Shimiao would be provoked into fire by her words. She had calculated that Lu Shimiao’s affection for her hadn’t yet dissipated. She had calculated that she wouldn’t leave tonight.
But she had forgotten that Lu Shimiao was now twenty-seven.
She had provoked this fire.
Xue Tong knew all too well how to preserve something she wanted. Loving too fiercely reduces the odds of keeping it. Good things should be saved for the last bite—that’s when they taste best, when you learn to cherish them.
She didn’t want to become fast food in Lu Shimiao’s mouth. She would only allow herself to be a flavor the other would crave, a rarity to be savored. She didn’t want to derail the plan because of her own indulgence and, in losing everything in the end, find the pain inescapable.
“What can’t be kept is what one most longs to be worthy of.”
“Wait a moment.” Xue Tong blurted out Cantonese in her desperation. “Just wait.”
But Lu Shimiao didn’t listen at all. She kissed in a frenzy of chaos.
Xue Tong was held captive by the violence. The more she struggled, the more sensitive her body became. Lu Shimiao wedged her thigh between Xue Tong’s legs, pressed close, and locked her in place. The final kiss landed on a sensitive collarbone.
Heat surged through her body, and she couldn’t hold back the sound.
Xue Tong suddenly felt her obsession with this body had reached its limit. This loss of composure seemed cruel to witness. Her mind went blank for a moment. She dropped her tone.
“Is this the proper way for a student to behave toward an instructor?”
“Is this what you meant by our so-called relationship in Hong Kong?”
…
Lu Shimiao’s grip slackened instantly, a look of catastrophe on her face.
Xue Tong pushed Lu Shimiao away, flung off her hands, picked up the clothes from the floor, and fled upstairs.
