✨Saby133✨

It was some hours later when he was melting in the heat he never did well in, alone in his office. Truly wishing he could open windows for a breeze, but that would only attract court ladies and make his life harder still. That really was most of the problem the stuffy hell that his entirely closed office created in the heat, and it was a problem Maomao luckily came to free him from. Holding a covered silver tray, she simply set on his desk waiting for him to acknowledge her. It was rather nice to have a moment just look at her, observe her with out her knowing so explicitly that’s what he was doing. “What is this?” he asked. “Something to cool you down,” she explained, having him remember what he had asked her for earlier. “I remember you had asked me to make a similar treat for you once before,” she said revealing the ice cream if he recalled what she had called it, she had made it for Lolan… “I see, thank you,” he smiled at her and she too quickly looked away, “but I think you should try it first, just to be sure,” he sparkled like he used to in an interaction that was simply just fun, and removed from the weight of a title he now had to bare once more.

She just might have looked like the poor woman about to be ravished if it wasn’t for the wicked grin also on her face. Jinshi threw off his outermost robe as she pushed up towards the headboard, loosing her footing on the sheets finer than anything she had ever touched. Something he took advantage of grabbing her ankles and dragging her back across the bed, knees dangling over the edge as he took a place standing between them, forcing them further apart. His body came forward, almost caging her, as his face came to match hers. She could feel the desire radiating out of him no better than the heat of his skin, something she knew also flowed off of her, out of her. Still she hated the way her body instinctively preened, her back arcing up, pressing their chests together. “You have no idea all the things I have thought about doing to you,” he teased, voice dark and almost whispered into her ear, a tone that had her shiver a wave of cold washing over her at the potential threat. “I was so close to sneaking into your room that night west,” he confessed and the blood only further drained from her, “I just about opened that door, but then… well, sense returned.” He explained, and her heart pounded so hard in her chest she almost couldn’t breath. “How many times I barely kept my hands from wandering when you were so close, when you were asleep in my arms,” his words getting heavier with each desire revealed, his breath flooding with weight.9 His hand started trailing up her side, resting just off of her breast, not that she had much of any. He was almost cupping her from the side, a thumb extending to rest underneath her, she could press into him and he would be… “Tell me to stop, tell me this was a mistake, that you don’t want it because I can’t hold back another second,” he begged in whispers that she almost cut off as she stole in a kiss.

A want for Basen and for Maomao warring inside of him and disgusting him as their coexistence of these two sets of want were proving something that he had long denied, long thought himself incapable of. To want them both meant he was capable of managing multiple consorts, meant he might someday meet a women he’d want as much as Maomao. It was a thought that came to him late at night, most often. A thought that reared its head now surely because of the harsh pulses of blood all throughout him Basen caused. One that was hard to soothe. He told himself that it was different. That there was something that Basen had that no one else did, something that changed things — Basen would never leave him. Maomao ran away from him on that bench, and he was trying to give her the space she deserved, that she needed. She still hadn’t answered him and he didn’t even know if she was back in the capital yet. He had heard Lakan’s wife, her mother, had died, so more time was added to what he would tell himself she needed. Even if she didn’t consider that courtesan her mother, it was a good justification to his cowardice, to Jinshi’s fear that she would reject him plainly. He could live with obfuscation, he didn’t know if he could deal with plain rejection with no room for potential, devoid of anything. And if anything in this world were true, it was that Basen would never leave him. Basen was wonderfully safe in all the ways that Maomao was terrifyingly not. So being here with Basen, half naked and sweating and blissfully alone it was hard to not let his mind think of to the feeling of those flexed muscles he could not hurt as he could hurt Maomao pressed hard against him. The feeling of his entire body pressed against him without the clothes that had existed in those kisses secretly shared in moments much like this, when things aligned right.