That afternoon's tea ended in an unexpected release of long-held tension.
Mrs. Qi broke down as soon as Wenyin finished speaking. Tears ran unchecked down her cheeks.
"I thought you'd hate me. I thought you'd turn away. That's why for so long I only dared to watch you from a distance—I couldn't bring myself to come near."
"I was afraid you wouldn't recognize me as your daughter."
Watching her so distraught, Wenyin reached out with a few tissues. "Family is family. Blood's thicker than anything."
When Mrs. Qi finally calmed, she moved quickly, businesslike, to the next step: how to bring Wenyin back into the family fold. She planned a grand dinner in the social circle to publicly announce Wenyin's identity. These procedures were all too familiar to her.
Wenyin thought of the first days after she returned to the Wen household—how everyone had looked at her with scorn, how careful and frightened she'd been, how easily the spotlight had been stolen by Wen Zhi. Wen Zhi had strutted around that banquet like a peacock; the real heroine had been left to the rafters. But that would not happen again. She was no longer the timid girl she'd once been.
When she finished the story, Shao Yinan tightened the hand he had around her waist, drawing her closer. He planted his head on her shoulder, chin almost tucked into the space beneath it.
"So you two just had a nice chat and that was it?" he asked, voice mock-offended. As he said it, realization dawned on him and his look toward Wenyin softened with something like wistful hurt. "You didn't tell me right away…"
Wenyin smiled; the small, golden retriever look he wore made her laugh. "I tried to tell you at dinner the other night, but—did you forget what you were doing then?"
His face cleared. Of course he'd been busy—the wedding preparations had him swamped. He'd been cutting back his work hours, but the planning was still a beast. "It's fine to tell me now. I only need to be at the Qi household for the dinner in a few days."
He nodded, and the warm press of his breath on her shoulder made her flinch. "Are you planning to speak to me like this forever?" she teased, pushing lightly at his chest.
He clung like a big dog, lazy and possessive. "I kind of like it."
She pushed him again—gentle, ineffectual—but his large hand closed over hers, holding it fast. When she looked up, he had lifted himself from her shoulder and was looking at her with an intensity that made her stomach flutter.
"Now that you've finished your business, why don't we talk about other things?"
There was a new, dangerous heat in his dark eyes. Wenyin bit back a smile, pretending innocence. "Oh? Like what?"
He tightened his hold and drew her closer; the two of them could feel each other's heat through the thin fabric between them. "Don't be ridiculous. The steak will get cold."
She'd taken care to make the meal special. Before she could protest, he nipped at her reddened earlobe with precise, playful teeth.
She blushed scarlet and curled into him like a prawn shrinking into its shell. "Shao Yinan…"
Her protest melted as his mouth found hers, decisive and claiming. She could only make a small, muffled sound. He was all animal—urgent, invasive. She tried to push him away, but one of his hands had captured both her wrists easily.
Her eyes widened. The gesture was rough, but when he sensed her discomfort he pulled back enough for air. She thumped him—lightly, halfheartedly—and kept panting against his chest. He came at her again, lips finding hers.
When was the last time they'd been like this? Lately they’d been so busy—work, planning—that these moments were scarce. He lifted her and laid her down on the bed. For a moment she blinked at him.
"Weren't we supposed to eat first?" she said, a little scandalized and more than a little breathless.
He sank to one knee at the bed's edge, untied his tie with a casual, dangerous slowness. The gesture had a purity of denial about it—restrained, yet laden with intent. "You want dinner first, but I want you first," he said.
Heat rose to her face. She felt herself swept into his rhythm, responding when his mouth and hands wanted her to. She tried once, twice to stop—her protests dissolved into caught, intimate sounds that he swallowed like tidewater. For a moment she wanted to cry, half from embarrassment, half from the helplessness of being so thoroughly desired.
Just as he was about to go further, her hand shot out and clasped his wrist. She shifted her gaze away, cheeks hot, and slipped a small, square box into his palm as if hiding something secret between them.
He looked at the box, eyebrows lifting. "A-Yin?"
His voice dropped low, rough with restraint. "Do you know what you're doing?"
He moved toward her like a coiled predator. The storm behind his dark eyes made the air electric. Wenyin hooked a finger under his tie, lips curving. "Of course I do."
The answer was all the undoing he needed. The last bit of control in his movements vanished. He took her with the kind of intensity that left them both breathless; she rode the waves of him until tears—partly from exertion, partly from too much feeling—glistened at the corners of her eyes. He kissed them away with a tenderness that softened the fierceness out of him.
Afterward, with both of them flushed like ripe peaches, he pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead and, exhausted, fell asleep in her arms. Wenyin, equally spent from his rough affection, drifted off not long after.
She woke with a muddled half-smile and thought, as she curled toward him, that this man—this shameless, possessive, impossibly loving man—was truly a dog.