The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis-Chapter 380: Love Without Words

He didn’t move at first. He just stayed, deep, hands on either side of her head, arms straight, spine long, eyes on hers as if they were standing in a field instead of lying on a blanket by a hot spring under lanterns.

Her hands went to his wrists. She didn’t squeeze. She held, like checking he was real.

"Here," he said again, softer now, and shifted enough to draw a sound out of her that went straight through him like the first time he had taken a city’s gate off its hinge.

He moved.

No tricks. No clever changes to show he could.

He kept a pace that belonged to them and no one else, a clean, even stroke that walked them together across a distance that felt both short and endless.

He let his weight settle when she tried to climb into him.

He lifted when she needed space to breathe. He found the angle that made her mouth lose its shape and held it, held it, held it, until her nails bit into his shoulders and her eyes went soft and wild in the same second.

"Look at me," she said.

He did. It opened something in him he did not show to other men. He did not look away.

"Harder," she pressed. "Give me everything. I promise I can take it."

He gave her harder. The blanket bunched under her hips. The lantern nearest them swung once on its hook and steadied.

The steam hung between them like a veil and then went thin as their skin began to slick. He did not speed to chase a finish.

He went deeper to find it. And when he did, he held her there while he took it, not with a shout, not with a curse, only with a long sound in his throat that would have terrified enemies and now blessed no one but her.

She came first, sudden and clean.

He felt it take him and let it. He let go inside her because there was no other place in the world that let him put it down. He didn’t collapse.

He lowered his upper body carefully, to keep the weight just shy of too much, and set his mouth to hers again like the safest act he knew.

They stayed pressed together, heat soaking back into their bones.

He kissed the wet at her hairline and the line of her cheek and the corner of her mouth and the hollow under it. His hands didn’t stop moving—slow rub at her back, slow stroke down her arm—as if the worst thing that could happen was stillness, and he would not let it happen to her.

She slid a palm over his chest and let it rest there. His heart ran hard under her hand. She liked knowing it could. She liked knowing she could make it.

"Good?" he asked.

"Perfect."

"Pain?"

"No."

He nodded in satisfaction and rolled to his side, still inside her, and gathered the blanket up over them with a practiced flick.

He put her hand on his throat and left it there. It was not a game. It was a trust. She held lightly. He closed his eyes.

"Again," she said after a minute, surprised at herself and not at all sorry.

His mouth curved. "As the Empress demands."

This time he set her on her knees and pulled her back onto him with hands sure at her hips, guiding her, letting her set the pace, holding her when her thighs shook.

He put one hand between her legs and worked her clit in concert with his thrusts until she gave up on words and let gasps be enough.

He didn’t say a single word, but his body told her everything by refusing to hurry the parts that mattered.

When she tried to run from the edge, he held her there with a palm at her belly and she stayed and broke sweetly and hard, clenching around him until the sound in his throat was not a sound at all but a low vow he didn’t know how to phrase.

When his cock softened, he eased them down onto their sides without leaving her. The blanket slid with them. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

He tucked a fold under her head and a fold over her shoulder and then lay still with his face tucked against the place under her ear that belonged to him.

"Hungry?" he asked, later.

"For what?" she purred, the same question as before, but different now.

"A third round," he chuckled. "And fruit."

She laughed. "Fruit first. Then me."

They shared a pear, savoring every part of it. He fed her. She fed him. He wiped her lip with his thumb once and then kissed the place he had wiped like he had given himself permission to be soft and intended to enjoy it.

When they were done, he eased out of her finally, slow as a tide.

He pulled her close at once to fill the space that left. She let herself be gathered, let herself be the smaller shape inside his arms, not because she was small but because he loved her this way and because she could love him better when she allowed it.

"Stay," he said.

"I am here," she answered.

He drifted. Not asleep. Longzi didn’t sleep when Xinying was so close.

But his breathing slowed and the lines along his mouth eased. She watched his face from under her lashes. He looked fierce even like this. He looked gentle too. He put her hand on his chest again and kept it there with his own.

A small rustle came from the path. Not close. A bird. A branch giving up a leaf. He turned his head toward it, listening without moving any other part of his body. When the sound didn’t repeat, he let it go.

"Do you want words?" he asked, eyes still closed.

"Do you?" she asked back.

"No."

"Then no."

He hummed. It counted as a smile. He kissed her hair through the red cord and then untied it with his teeth. He shook her hair out and covered both their faces with it like a tent kids make with blankets. He laughed once—low, rare—and she felt it with her lips against his throat.

"Longzi," she said.

"Yes."

"I like you like this."

"Good."

"Possessive."

"Yes."

"Careful."

He said nothing. He didn’t need to. She felt the answer in the way his palm curved over the back of her head and held.

"Again," she said, not a question.

He rolled her under him and gave her the slowest kiss of the night, the kind that starts a fourth life after two have already been lived.

He took his time getting hard again, not because his body needed time but because he liked the way she moved against him when she knew what was coming.

He slid into her like returning somewhere he had left on purpose to appreciate properly upon return. He rocked them both, unhurried, until she found a rhythm that wasn’t the first or the second, but something else that belonged to this exact place on this exact night.

Down the hill, a lantern guttered and then steadied. The steam kept rising. The night didn’t ask for them and they didn’t offer it anything back.

He finished with his face in her neck and his hands under her shoulders, lifting her into him as if the air had suddenly gotten heavier and he would not allow it to press on her.

She finished with her mouth open on his name and her heels biting into the blanket. Neither of them apologized for how it sounded.

They lay side by side after the fourth time and let the quiet put its hand on their heads like a blessing.

He was the first to move. He got up, naked and unashamed, and stepped into the pool.

He rinsed his hands. He cupped water and brought it back to her. He let it pool in her mouth.

She drank what he offered and then caught his wrist and licked a last drop from his thumb in a way that told him nothing about politics and everything about marriage.

"Longzi," she said, softer now.

"Xinying."

"Take me home."

He lifted her again, the whole of her, blanket and all, like the easiest thing he had done today. He wrapped her and carried her to the steps.

He dressed her enough for the walk. He dressed himself with the same economy with which he killed. He picked up her shoes and his belt and the red cord and the empty pear basket because he didn’t like leaving traces of them anywhere the world could find.

At the top of the path, he stopped. He scanned once left, once right. Nothing human moved. He started forward.

"Longzi," she said, still wrapped in him and the blanket both.

"Yes."

"Thank you."

He didn’t answer. She never had to thank him for anything, especially not for seeing heaven with her like that.

He tightened his arms around her for three steps and then loosened them again so she could breathe just the way she liked.

When they reached the hidden door of the palace, he did not set her down at the threshold.

Instead, he carried her over it.