It hurts so much. Kiss it again.
Judging by the frequency of the WeChat messages, Bu Yao probably hadn’t slept the entire night. Even now, her sleep was fitful. Her face was deathly pale, drained of color, and her body radiated the cold chill of the ice.
Generally, only snakes with severe injuries, who couldn’t be given anesthetic, would bury their wounds in ice to achieve a numbing effect. This was common for snakes who had been gutted by a blade, or whose tails had been crushed under car wheels. No matter the accident, it was a hundred times more painful than molting.
Xing Yue walked to the glass tank and slowly crouched down, unconsciously holding her breath. Her hand reached inside, pushing aside the small mountain of ice on top. Even though she had imagined many scenarios, when she saw the tail, stripped of clumps and clumps of snake scales, her hand still trembled in shock.
The wound had clearly been packed in ice for some time; the snake flesh was blanched white. The once coldly gorgeous, magnificent tail now bore two palm-sized wounds. One at the junction of the snake’s belly, one on the tail’s surface. Both were pitted, uneven, and covered in ulcerated, torn flesh.
Xing Yue couldn’t bear to look any longer and piled the ice back on.
The snake tail twitched, whether from pain or something else. Bu Yao turned from her prone position, her voice languid. “What took you so long to get here?”
Her grumbled complaint was like a girlfriend waiting for a date, and the girlfriend was late—a little pufferfish in a sulk.
Xing Yue didn’t answer, countering with her own question. “What happened to your tail?”
Just last night, she had been lamenting the single snake scale Bu Yao had dented, a mere slight crease that had already sent her heart racing.
Such a beautiful tail, cosseted like a flower bud. Even a slight crease made her, someone who wasn’t even the tail’s owner, ache with worry.
Let alone this. Injured this badly, so severely, it was no longer just about feeling sorry for the tail. She was more concerned about how Bu Yao had endured last night. She’d sent her so many crying emojis. She must have shed who knows how many tears in her room.
So what Bu Yao had said on WeChat was true. “I want kisses, can’t get them, gonna die.” She had actually thought Bu Yao was just acting spoiled. With no one to help her ease the pain, she could only hold her own tail, licking the wounds while typing those words to her.
Bu Yao still had sleep marks on her face. Her soft, round cheeks were plush. She murmured, “Pulled them out with pliers.”
Xing Yue’s pupils sharply contracted. “Who pulled them out?”
Her heart was wrapped in soft threads, but if they tightened any more, her heart would be sliced apart.
Bu Yao, however, just picked up an ice cube, tossed it in the air, caught it, tossed and caught again, repeating the same motion, playing with the ice.
“I pulled them out,” she said, leaning her upper body closer. Her snake tongue licked the corner of Xing Yue’s lips, and she even placed the ice cube she’d been playing with into Xing Yue’s hand, as if inviting her to play along.
The room’s air conditioning was on. The sweltering summer heat hadn’t melted the ice prematurely. Xing Yue’s palm froze red, slightly numb.
She put the ice cube back into the glass tank. Surging anger crashed over her like a landslide, apocalyptic. “Why would you do this? Who told you to use pliers to pull out your scales? Don’t you know they won’t grow back once they’re torn out? Just because we argued yesterday, you’re unhappy, you’re angry? So you throw a fit and do this?”
As soon as she finished speaking, Xing Yue suddenly recalled Butler Li mentioning in the car that Madam Bu was seriously ill and bedridden. A suspicion seemed to dawn on her. Her chest filled with an unresolvable tangle of complex emotions.
In the end, her hand pressed against the glass tank, her knuckles clenching with immense force, wanting to shatter the glass itself. “What I said to you last night… I was hoping that when your mom ridiculed me, you’d say a couple of things in my defense, stand up for me. Not for you to use this kind of method to threaten her! Your body isn’t an object. Was it worth hurting yourself like this over a small matter?”
Xing Yue was going mad with fury. The membrane of her pupils was swelling, her head spinning.
Bu Yao couldn’t understand why Xing Yue was so angry. What did she mean, “a small matter”? Something that would make Xing Yue remember it for ten years—how could it be called “a small matter”?
She tilted her head up slightly, her bright eyes filled entirely with Xing Yue’s reflection. “But… aren’t you doing the same thing?”
Wasn’t Xing Yue also using her to retaliate against her own mother? Since her body wasn’t an object, why was Xing Yue doing it too?
This was why she couldn’t understand Xing Yue’s anger.
Bu Yao’s gaze was pure. She wasn’t upset about Xing Yue’s little scheme, even tacitly accepting that Xing Yue used her to vent her displeasure at Madam Bu.
Such a look made Xing Yue feel utterly ashamed. Silent and wordless, her hand suddenly lashed out, slamming against the glass tank. Even through the thick glass, the ice cubes inside scattered and rolled, a testament to the force used.
Xing Yue had always been gentle. Even when angry, it was just a change in tone, never showing any destructive force. Losing control like this was unprecedented.
The back of that hand quickly bruised, and the thin, delicate skin over her knuckles even split a little.
She took a deep, ragged breath, the swelling of her pupil membranes uncomfortable. “The nature of it is completely different. I didn’t harm your tail, and I don’t need you to do this.”
Bu Yao leaned against the edge of the glass tank and let out an “Oh,” not arguing the point. She extended her snake tongue to lick the back of Xing Yue’s hand, focusing intently on the bruised area.
Seeing how furious Xing Yue was made her upset too. She lifted her arms towards Xing Yue, wanting to be held.
When Xing Yue stood rooted to the spot, her small hand tugged at the leg of Xing Yue’s white trousers, then stretched up again, lifting her arms as high as they would go.
Xing Yue’s chest was still heaving. Looking down, she saw the glass tank full of ice. Bu Yao was sitting in the pile of ice, her snake tail buried within for pain relief. Such a shocking sight… it made her feel like her heart was bleeding.
And this woman didn’t even seem to care.
Xing Yue bent down and lifted Bu Yao out. Those arms instinctively wrapped around her neck.
Who knew how long she’d been in there; her entire body was shockingly cold. Her long hair, the color of a fading sunset, was covered in a fine layer of frost.
Xing Yue carried Bu Yao to the bed.
As soon as she was set down, Bu Yao asked her, “Is the door closed?”
She glanced subconsciously at the door that had swung shut behind her. “It’s closed.”
In the next second, that ice-cold snake tail burrowed into Xing Yue’s embrace. Bu Yao grabbed a pillow and covered most of her face, hiding a suspicious blush.
Though she said nothing, the writhing tail’s meaning was clear. It kept crawling and shrinking into Xing Yue’s embrace, messing up her top and loosening several buttons.
Xing Yue slapped the uninjured part of the tail. “No licking. Let it hurt. Let it be a lesson.”
Even after the slap, the tail still pressed close to Xing Yue, rubbing and seeking comfort, unbelievably docile.
Bu Yao’s small face fell. She pulled her uncooperative tail over and, right under Xing Yue’s nose, extended her pale pink snake tongue to sweep over the wound. The secreted mucus slowly cleaned the wound a second time. The soft, forked ends pressed against the wound, licking back and forth as if no one was watching.
That snake tongue, soft as a feather, seemed to scrape against Xing Yue with every flick, as if licking not the tail, but the corner of Xing Yue’s mouth.
Bu Yao licked for a while, but it seemed psychologically ineffective. Her tail wrapped around Xing Yue again, the soft snake belly rubbing against her face. The snake scales gently pressed against Xing Yue’s lips. She moaned in pain, her eyes growing moist, insistent that Xing Yue help her.
As the icy coldness faded, her temperature—already higher than a human’s—gradually rose even more, making Xing Yue’s face flush with heat.
Her coaxing had worked. Finally, those red lips parted slightly. Even fearing she might tire her out, Xing Yue pressed her tail down onto the bedding and bent down to peck and kiss.
The entire room was filled with the frequent, rustling sound of a snake tongue flickering. The fragrance of camellia flowers unknowingly permeated the air, filling Xing Yue’s senses.
Bu Yao, lying on the bed, made soft sounds of pleasure. Seeing Xing Yue pause, she immediately called out petulantly, “Not enough, not enough! It hurts so much. Kiss it again!”
Xing Yue took off her frameless glasses from the bridge of her nose, casually placing them on the bed. She leaned closer, directly cupped Bu Yao’s face, and kissed her lips. The moment their snake tongues touched, both let out satisfied murmurs from their throats at the same time.
Kissing was an extremely intimate and comfortable thing for snakes. The most nerve-rich part of their entire body was their tongue. French kissing allowed them to strongly perceive each other’s scent, equivalent to a form of possession in a sense.
The tail involuntarily pressed against Xing Yue. The originally fine-textured skin, as they pressed closer, suddenly became smooth and hard. She could vaguely feel a decreasing sense of layers every fingernail’s width apart.
Bu Yao froze. She pushed Xing Yue away and grabbed the source of the strange sensation. A section of sapphire blue snake tail was clutched in her hand. She tugged at it, puzzled. Had she lost so much blood that her tail changed color?
Strange… this didn’t seem to be hers either…
Bu Yao lifted the unfamiliar tail with both hands, lowered her head, and bit it.
Her pupils dilated in shock. It’s paralyzed! No feeling at all!
Startled, Bu Yao quickly bit the tail again.
Xing Yue let out two muffled grunts. The snake tail curled and shrank. “Where are you biting?!”
The sapphire blue snake tail, bitten twice in succession, slipped from Bu Yao’s grasp and burrowed pitifully under the blankets.
Only then did Bu Yao realize. This tail was actually Xing Yue’s! No wonder she felt no pain… it was Xing Yue who had been in pain.
She licked her lower lip, a trace of embarrassment on her face, and threw herself into Xing Yue’s arms. “When did it grow out? I… I wasn’t prepared…”
Her voice trailed off, fine as a mosquito’s buzz at the last sentence. Thinking of something, she was too shy to look up, nuzzling Xing Yue. Her hand secretly fumbled under the blanket, searching for the tail she had innocently bitten twice, which was now hiding.
Xing Yue didn’t understand. “Prepare for what?”
Bu Yao bit her lower lip, her face hot enough to smoke. “It’s just… I didn’t prepare that… ring gauze… It could cause pregnancy…”
If snakes wanted to take protective measures during mating, they needed to place a small ring-shaped gauze in the groove at the tail end. It could largely filter out active mucus from contacting a partner.
Otherwise, the exchange of active mucus with a partner could easily lead to pregnancy.
Hearing this, Xing Yue’s face burned hotter than Bu Yao’s. She hadn’t even considered that. Nervous, she stammered incoherently. “Prepare… prepare that for what? I’m not planning to… right now… It was the tail that came out on its own, it’s not like I wanted…”
She still couldn’t control it well. While kissing Bu Yao, she hadn’t even noticed when her snake tail had emerged.
Bu Yao let out a long, meaningful “Oh,” transformed back into her snake form, and burrowed under the blankets. In the pitch-black environment, she touched the other snake tail with her tongue, getting familiar with the scent.
Wherever she came closer, that tail would retreat an inch. Her serpentine body directly crawled on top of it, coiling around it, leaving the other nowhere to shrink back.
Feeling the little fire snake meticulously exploring her tail, Xing Yue’s whole body tensed. She pressed down through the blanket, stopping Bu Yao. “Stop playing around…”
