NOVEL WEB Chapter 262: Together As One
I felt him the moment his hard cock found its way to my entrance. It wasn't a push, it wasn't intentional, but that was what made it even more perfect.
Circling my hips, I pushed myself up higher, my breath catching in my throat as I felt that impossible stretch.
He groaned overtop of me as he pushed himself in deeper, my pussy protesting with every inch that he gave me.
"So tight," he whispered, his head resting against my shoulder as his entire body strained forward. "So fucking tight."
I held back a smile, knowing that I had inadvertently taught the Crown Prince of Daiyu how to say fuck like he meant it.
"So fucking big," I groaned back as he fought for and won another inch. And yet, he still wasn't fully in.
With one harsh shove that stole the breath from my lungs and the words from my lips, he was finally seated inside of me.
"Perfection," he grunted, kissing me again. "Absolute heaven."
I hummed in agreement as the world around us narrowed down to just the two of us and the feelings that we invoked in each other.
We didn't rush anything.
Mingyu moved slow, then slower inside of me, because there was time, and we both wanted this moment to last.
My hips learned the count his body kept; his hands steadied the measure. He was careful when I wanted careful, unstoppable when I dug my nails into his back and demanded more.
The screen kept us in our half-lit country; the candles made constellations out of sweat on his temple. He whispered my name like a prayer offered because it is right, not because it will be heard.
If there was mist in me, it slept. If there was metal, it sang. My body gave and took, answered and asked. Each breath set a new pace; each pace crafted a new answer. We moved until thinking was just another room far down the corridor, until the day's thunder was a story I would remember later and not now.
He said, "Tell me," against my mouth, and I did—small words, the kind I had never allowed to be heard by anyone else, the kind that taste like surrender only if you have never needed a home.
He gathered each one like a thing he would keep in his palm and not spend.
Pleasure rose like a cresting wave I could see even with my eyes closed.
The build wasn't a climb so much as a widening, edges falling away until there was nothing left to balance on but the center we shared. When it took me, it was quiet and total, a breaking that didn't hurt, an undoing that left everything precisely where it belonged.
I heard my own voice—just my name for him, and the sound he made in answer, low and fierce and full of relief.
He followed me into that bright dark place, not ahead, not behind—beside. The way you walk a dangerous trail with someone you trust to keep step even when the wind tries to push you apart. His body shuddered, he held me tighter, and then everything settled, all the loose pieces of the day landing softly.
After, there was only heat and breath and the sheet tangled around a knee, the tick of cooling wax, the way his chest rose under my palm. He tucked me under his chin and I listened to his heart count out the same calm numbers it keeps in council when he is deciding to spare a kingdom or not. The numbers meant nothing and everything: I am here. You are here. We did not leave each other in the harder rooms.
I traced the edge of his shoulder with a fingertip and felt him smile against my hair.
"Wife," he said, tasting the word like wine he had saved for a night when the city finally slept.
"Say it again," I murmured, eyes heavy and unwilling to close, because closing felt like a luxury and I had not learned how to keep luxuries yet.
"Wife," he repeated, and I felt it settle into me, a small, bright weight I had chosen to carry.
We lay there while the candles burned lower and the palace pretended not to notice that its emperor and empress were not where ceremony wanted them to be. Somewhere far away, a drum talked itself down to silence. Closer, the screen caught a draft and creaked like an old tree remembering a storm. Shadow—devil that he is—huffed once in the outer room and then decided we were exactly where he approved of us being.
"You're warm," I said, into his skin.
"You burn," he answered, not as an accusation and not as praise. Just a fact that made the corners of his voice turn content.
I hummed in agreement, more than satisfied with him. My eyes started to get heavy, but I didn't want to sleep, not yet. I wasn't ready for tonight to already be over with.
"Xinying," he said softly, as if he had been inside my head and seen the weather change, "sleep."
"You're ordering me now that I said I was yours?" I asked, without teeth.
"I am reminding you," he corrected, mouth against my forehead the way it had been hours ago, when he tucked me into a different bed and went to move pieces on a board for me.
"Of what?" I asked, already halfway to that deep place where even mountains stop talking.
"That this is the life you chose," he said. "And that I am going to keep choosing it with you."
The last thing I felt before sleep took me was his hand over mine, our fingers laced, the simple, ordinary grip of two people who have done extraordinary things and intend, for a few hours at least, to be nothing more complicated than a pair.
The palace could have its stories. The court could have its breathless talk.
This was the part that belonged to us.