Chapter 265: Only Quiet When His Clothes Were On
When I woke up, everything hurt.
Not my leg, because Luo Xin had fixed that, and thank God for small miracles. The rest of me, however, felt like I had picked a fight with a mattress, lost, then asked for a rematch seven more times because apparently I had no survival instinct when Yuche was involved.
For a few seconds, I stared at the black canopy above me and tried to decide whether moving was worth it. I shifted my weight just a bit, and got my answer.
It wasn’t.
Unfortunately, breathing was also on the list of things that made me hurt. Who knew that something so simple as filling your lungs with air was enough to make me aware of muscles I had not personally approved for use.
So, to recap, I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t.
I closed my eyes again and considered going back to sleep just out of spite, but my body had already betrayed me by becoming conscious, and once that happened, other thoughts started appearing.
Rude ones.
Accusatory ones.
Very, very specific ones involving an eight-pack and a dark smile.
But really, I only had myself to blame. I had initiated this. I had been the one standing in my living room, hands on my hips, demanding to know what a girl had to do to seduce him.
I had said it out loud. With my actual mouth. Like some kind of sleep-deprived lunatic who had decided subtlety had failed and public self-destruction was the next logical step.
And apparently, it had worked.
Unfortunately, success had consequences.
I shifted one inch and immediately stopped breathing.
My body filed another complaint.
I slowly turned my head, because if I was going to suffer, I at least wanted to know whether the cause of my suffering looked smug about it.
Yuche was beside me, already awake, and looking at me like he hadn’t bothered to sleep at all. His arm was wrapped around my waist, not tight enough to trap me, but firm enough that my body had apparently accepted him as a structural support beam at some point during the night.
I narrowed my eyes. "Why are you staring?"
"You woke up," he replied.
"That happens to people who sleep."
"You made a sound."
"I woke up after being used as a chew toy for several hours. Sounds are allowed."
His mouth did that tiny almost-smile thing and I hated how much I liked it.
"I did not chew you. In fact, I made a point of not using my teeth at all."
"You are focusing on the wrong part of the complaint."
"I was careful."
I stared at him and he stared back at me with a half smile that screamed he was already up for round eight.
The worst part of it all was that I had also already decided he would be given the chance. But that wasn’t information he needed to have. Ever.
I looked away first, because apparently I had survived an apocalypse, a second life, Jiang Meilan, broken bones, creepy zombies, and a plant child with teeth, only to be defeated by morning-after eye contact.
So embarrassing.
"Are you hurt?" he asked.
There it was. He started the morning with things that should not be mentioned if he wanted to keep on living.
I turned my head back toward him very slowly. "If you offer me water right now, I will bite you."
His gaze dropped to my mouth which wasn’t fair at all.
That was not what I meant, and from the look in his eyes, he knew it perfectly well.
"Rouxi."
"No." I lifted one finger between us, which was harder than expected because my arm had apparently become one with the blankets wrapped around me. When did that happen?!? "Do not use the concerned voice. I am not injured. I am not dying. I do not need Luo Xin. I do not need Commander Li. I do not need anyone inspecting me like I am a building after an earthquake."
"You are sore."
"That is different."
"You still need water. Hydration will help with the lactic acid buildup."
I closed my eyes and inhaled through my nose.
Betrayal.
Actual...physical... betrayal.
"Jian Yuche," I said slowly, "I am trying very hard to have a soft romantic morning, and you are ruining it with hydration."
"You threatened to bite me."
"That was romantic for me."
His chest moved under my cheek, and for one horrifying second, I realized he was laughing. Not loudly, because apparently the man still had some sense of self-preservation, but enough that I could feel it. The low vibration moved through him and into me, and my traitorous body immediately decided that was also attractive.
Wonderful.
Apparently I had discovered a new problem.
I had spent days thinking Yuche was the quiet one, the calm, collected one that didn’t so much as blink when the world threw a curveball.
It turns out, he was only quiet when his clothes were on.
That seemed deeply unfair, because if he talked like that outside the bedroom, I would never be able to walk again for a reason other than broken bones and legs.
"You are thinking something bad," he said.
"I am always thinking something bad."
"About me?"
"Do you want honesty or peace?"
"Honesty."
"That was a mistake."
His mouth curved a little more and I glared at him because smiling at me in bed before breakfast should have been illegal. There were rules in a civilized society. Probably. I had never cared about them before, but I was willing to invent some now if it meant stopping him from looking at me like that while I had no pants, no dignity, and no clear escape route.
His hand moved slowly over my side, then paused.
I knew exactly what he was looking at before his expression changed.
The marks he had left over my body... and there were a lot of them.
I could feel some on my hips. Probably my waist too. Maybe my neck. Definitely other places that I was not going to inspect while he was watching me like I was both a medical concern and a personal achievement.
"Do not start," I warned.
His thumb brushed lightly over one mark. "I left too many."
"You say that like you are sorry."
His silence answered before his mouth did.
I narrowed my eyes. "You are not sorry."
"No."
"At least pretend."
"I am sorry if they hurt."
That answer landed somewhere I did not want it to land. Very rude.
I looked away again, because if he kept being careful and honest after being absolutely unfair the night before, I was going to develop feelings about it, and I already had enough problems. Feelings were like mold. If you ignored them long enough, they spread into walls and became expensive to get rid of.
And I hated the idea of getting rid of him.
"I’m fine," I muttered.
"You always say that when you are not fine." Yuche studied my face for another second before he nodded his head. "Fine. I’ll believe you this time. Tell me if that changes."
See?
That was the problem.
He said it like a command, but the command was not about controlling me. It was about making sure I had room to stop him. It was about listening. It was about him being the kind of dangerous that turned gentle only when it mattered, which was absolutely unacceptable because I could not make fun of it without sounding like an ungrateful monster.
So I did the only reasonable thing.
I changed the subject.
"Where is my shirt?"
His eyes flicked toward the floor.
I followed his gaze.
My oversized T-shirt was lying near the foot of the bed like a defeated flag. One sleeve was inside out. The hem was twisted. It looked like it had gone into battle and lost badly.
I could relate.
The bedsheets weren’t doing much better. One pillow had disappeared entirely and the blanket was halfway off the bed. The room itself was untouched, but the bed looked like it had personally offended us and paid the price.
I stared at the mess for a long second.
Then I looked back at Yuche.
"You did this."
"I did not do it alone."
My face heated.
Bastard. He wasn’t supposed to point that out.
I opened my mouth to say something cutting, but Yuche shifted beside me and reached toward the nightstand. For one stupid second, I thought he was going to touch me again, and my body, traitorous pile of bad decisions that it was, immediately forgot every complaint it had filed since waking up.
Then he picked up a bottle of water.
I stared at it as he held it out to me. "Drink," he said.
I took the bottle with all the dignity of a woman betrayed by romance, hydration, and her own poor taste in dangerously attractive men.
"I hate you," I muttered.
"No, you don’t."
I opened the bottle and drank because disrespecting supplies was wrong, even when the supplies were being used against me.
Yuche watched me drink, calm and satisfied, like he had won something.
Unfortunately, he had.
And that was probably going to become a big problem.
