Her First Fit of Spoiled Temper

But she still reached out.

Her movements were awkward, even a little rough. The inkstick scraped against the inkstone, making an unpleasant "shick, shick" sound.

Lin Xuan finally looked up at her. His brows furrowed slightly, as though he was displeased.

"A maid should act like a maid," he said coolly. "Keep your wrist steady, apply even pressure, and calm your mind. At this rate, are you trying to grind right through my inkstone?"

"I... I don't know how!" Guo Fu was angry and aggrieved, and her eyes reddened.

"If you don't know, I can teach you." As he spoke, Lin Xuan actually set down his brush.

He rose and walked behind Guo Fu. His tall frame immediately enveloped her in his shadow.

He didn't touch her, but the distinctly masculine presence about him, tinged with virility and aggression, was like an invisible net, wrapping tightly around her.

Guo Fu's body instantly stiffened. Even her breathing stopped.

Lin Xuan reached out and covered the small hand holding the inkstick.

His palm was broad and warm, with a thin layer of calluses from years of martial arts practice. It contrasted sharply with the soft, delicate back of her hand. His scorching warmth seemed to seep through her skin and reach straight to her heart.

"Watch closely." His voice sounded right beside her ear, his warm breath brushing her sensitive earlobe. "The force comes from the wrist, the intent precedes the ink. When the mind is calm, the ink will flow evenly; when the breath is steady, its fragrance will emerge."

Guiding her hand, he began to grind the ink slowly and rhythmically. His movements were gentle yet firm, and the harsh scraping gradually became smooth and harmonious. A faint, clean fragrance of ink spread through the air.

Guo Fu's mind went blank.

She no longer felt humiliated or angry. All her senses were focused on the man behind her and the scorching warmth of his hand.

Her heart pounded like a drum, and a strange, tingling softness unlike anything she had ever felt spread from her spine to her very limbs.

After a while, Lin Xuan let go.

"Got it?"

"I... I got it." Guo Fu's voice was softer than a mosquito's, trembling with a quiver she hadn't even noticed.

"Good." Lin Xuan returned to his seat as though nothing had happened. "Pour the tea."

Like a puppet whose soul had been taken from her, Guo Fu mechanically set down the inkstick and picked up the purple clay teapot beside her, filling the empty cup before him. In her flustered state, her movements were clumsy. A few drops of scalding tea even splashed onto the back of her hand, leaving a red mark.

She hissed in pain, but Lin Xuan didn't so much as raise an eyelid. He simply picked up the teacup, blew on it, and took a sip.

"The tea's too hot. It's lost its flavor. Be more careful next time," he remarked flatly.

Guo Fu's grievance nearly spilled over as tears. This devil! This bastard!

She was just about to lose her temper when Lin Xuan continued, "Bring me that troop deployment map."

Another order.

Suppressing her anger, Guo Fu found the map among the pile of documents and handed it over.

Lin Xuan took the map and fell into thought again. He studied it closely, his brows tightening and relaxing by turns as his brush continually marked something on it.

Time passed by, little by little, in this strange atmosphere: one man absorbed in official business, one aggrieved maid standing at his side.

As Guo Fu waited, her anger gradually gave way to a complicated feeling.

She watched his focused profile in the lamplight, his eyes deep as the stars, and the symbols beneath his brush, each representing thousands of soldiers... Suddenly, she realized she had never truly understood this man.

The Lin Xuan she knew was the spirited young man who led the generals and soldiers in Xiangyang City; the Junior Brother who traded barbs with her on the road and sometimes played little tricks; the "Little Zhuge" who could slay generals and seize flags on the battlefield with a laugh, like a god or demon.

But now, he showed her a different side: his depth, his discipline, and the bearing of a great general who cared for the world, his country, and its people.

This man was like an endless mystery. Just when she thought she had seen one side of him, he would reveal another, leaving her forever unable to fathom him—and yet unable to stop herself from being drawn to him.

"Come here."

Lin Xuan's voice sounded again.

Guo Fu came back to herself and walked over without thinking.

"I'm a little tired. Rub my back for me." As he spoke, he leaned forward and rested his upper body on the desk, presenting his broad back to her without the slightest guard.

Guo Fu's face reddened again.

Grinding ink and pouring tea were ordinary servant's tasks. Rubbing his back, however, carried an intimacy she couldn't quite describe.

She hesitated, making no move.

"What is it? Does my little maid want to disobey her master?" Lin Xuan's voice held a lazy hint of amusement.

"Who... who's yours!" Guo Fu retorted indignantly, but she still raised her delicate little fists and tentatively set them against his back.

Her touch was so soft it was no different from a tickle.

Lin Xuan chuckled quietly. "Didn't you eat? Put some strength into it."

Guo Fu gritted her teeth and hit him harder.

By the time she had worked up a sweat and her arms had grown sore, Lin Xuan finally sat upright.

At some point, the tension had completely eased. Their earlier standoff, sharp as drawn swords, had long since melted into a tender warmth like flowing water.

Lin Xuan set down his brush and turned around, looking at her quietly with his deep eyes.

"You ground the ink, poured the tea, and rubbed my back," he said softly. "My little maid did a good job today."

His gaze flustered Guo Fu, and she instinctively tried to step back, but he caught her by the wrist.

"What... what are you doing?" she asked in alarm, her voice trembling.

"The wager has only just begun."

A mischievous smile curled Lin Xuan's lips. With a slight tug of his arm, Guo Fu cried out as she lost her balance and fell into his broad, warm embrace.

"Let go of me! You bastard!" Guo Fu put up a token struggle, pounding his chest with her fists, but her blows were weak and powerless.

Lin Xuan let her hit him, only tightening his hold. He lowered his head to her ear and murmured in a voice full of magic:

"Senior Sister, don't move. Let me hold you for a while."

His voice held a trace of exhaustion, yet its gentleness was impossible to resist. Guo Fu's struggling truly stopped.

She stiffly leaned against him, feeling his strong heartbeat and breathing in his pleasant masculine scent. Her pretty face was so hot it might as well have been dripping blood.

Then she felt one warm, large hand begin to wander over the graceful curve of her back, caressing her lightly and slowly.

His hand seemed to possess a strange magic. Every caress was like a note in a beautiful melody. A peculiar warm current, both yin and yang, flowed steadily from his palm. It seeped through her thin clothes into her skin and coursed through every limb.

This was the allure of the Yin Yang Deficit Supplementation Technique. It could stir a person's most primitive desires directly and dismantle even the strongest defenses.

Guo Fu felt her body growing softer and hotter by the moment. A hollowness and longing unlike anything she had ever known rose uncontrollably from deep within her tender lower abdomen.

"No... don't..." she murmured in a dreamlike, feeble moan. It sounded less like a refusal than an invitation.

Lin Xuan gently lifted her chin with his other hand, forcing her to look into his eyes.

"Senior Sister," he said, his gaze as deep as a whirlpool, as though it would draw her very soul inside, "look into my eyes and tell me: do you really want me to stop?"

Guo Fu stared into those eyes, her mind in turmoil. Reason told her to push him away, but her body's instincts and the feelings that had long since taken root deep in her heart were screaming at her to draw closer to him, to make him hers!

In the instant she hesitated, Lin Xuan's lips pressed against hers, domineering yet touched with a tentative tenderness.

"Mmph!"

Guo Fu's eyes flew wide open.

It was a sensation she had never experienced before. His lips were warm and soft, carrying a faint fragrance of tea. At first, he only brushed against hers gently, as if savoring a priceless treasure. But soon, once he was sure she wasn't resisting fiercely, that gentleness became an assault like a raging storm.

He parted her teeth and pressed forward, pursuing, tangling with, and claiming the sweet, untouched territory within her.

Guo Fu's mind exploded with a "boom," going utterly blank.

She forgot to resist and forgot to be shy. She could only respond to him instinctively and clumsily. Under his forceful yet skillful teasing, her body quickly went limp as mud, melting into a pool of spring water.

When the kiss ended and their lips parted, a glistening thread of saliva caught the candlelight, lending the scene an especially alluring air.

Guo Fu panted, her gaze hazy and her cheeks flushed a heart-stirring red. She clung to Lin Xuan; if he hadn't been holding her, she would have slid to the floor.

"Senior Sister." Lin Xuan looked at her alluring, yielding appearance, and his Adam's apple bobbed. His voice turned hoarse and low. "Could it be... that you don't like me?"

Those words were like a key, opening the last gate in Guo Fu's heart.

Was it true that she didn't like him?

From their first meeting until now, hadn't this man gradually occupied and filled her proud heart? Her happiness, anger, pride, and worry—which of them had not been stirred by him?

"I... I..."

She wanted to say more, but Lin Xuan didn't give her the chance. He swept her up in his arms and strode toward the broad bed in the room, covered with a hibiscus-colored quilt.

He laid her gently on the bed, then lowered his tall frame over her.

"Don't... Lin Xuan! No... mm..."

Guo Fu's last resistance was broken and feeble. It was soon drowned beneath another, even more passionate round of kisses and caresses.

The moon hung high overhead, its cool radiance spilling like liquid silver across the whole of Xiangyang City.

The towering outline of the city walls loomed in the night like a sleeping beast. The Han River shimmered in the moonlight, reflecting a few scattered stars on the horizon. The clouds of war had temporarily receded, and the clamor and slaughter of the day had fallen silent.

Only the night watchman's clapper echoed through the still streets—"Clack... clack-clack..."—carrying a hint of desolation and vigilance.

Yet in a corner of a tavern in this iron-blooded city, a boudoir bathed in warm yellow candlelight was utterly unlike the cold, grim world outside. Within it unfolded a scene of springtime passion, enough to melt steel.

One garment after another fell away.

The silks that had once wrapped her in haughtiness and pride now lay in a disordered heap beside the bed, like petals scattered by the wind, no longer able to hide her breathtaking beauty.

Guo Fu was like a white lotus newly blooming beneath the moon. Every inch of her skin gleamed like jade, giving off the sweet, delicate fragrance unique to a young woman. Her youthful body, never before touched by a man, trembled faintly in the cool air and beneath Lin Xuan's scorching, devouring gaze.

Mortified with shame, she instinctively raised her arms to cover her eyes, as if that might shut out everything. But her faintly trembling body and the lovely blush brought on by her nerves betrayed the anticipation and unease in her heart.

Lin Xuan's eyes held an undisguised, blazing possessiveness. He admired and reveled in the peerless beauty blooming before him, meant for him alone.

He bent over her, warming her cool skin with his own burning chest.

His kiss carried a soothing magic as it gently settled on her lips.

Like the finest spring rain, that kiss traveled downward, lingering over her graceful swanlike neck, brushing her delicate collarbones, then moving on to her smooth, rounded shoulders...

At last, his lips came to rest on her newly matured, pert and astonishingly supple breasts.

"Ah..."

An unprecedented tingling pleasure, like an electric current, burst from her chest and coursed through every limb!

Guo Fu could no longer hold back. A captivating moan escaped her throat, melodious and soul-stirring, with a hint of suppressed sobbing, like a spell that ensnared the soul.

Lin Xuan's thin lips moved tenderly over her nipples, sucking them. His soft tongue teased and wound around them, now and then taking the sensitive red bud into his mouth and sucking again and again with an almost greedy tenderness.

Each time he drew upon her, Guo Fu's body arched sharply. Without realizing it, her fingertips had gripped the quilt beneath her, crumpling the soft fabric beyond recognition.

His tongue seemed to draw her in with its magic, magnifying every sensation. The tingling current raced down from her nipples, flowing without end, igniting a scorching desire deep within her body, as if it would burn her whole.

At that moment, the Yin Yang Deficit Supplementation Technique's effects reached their peak. Lin Xuan wasn't merely savoring her beauty; through this most intimate contact, he was also quietly infusing her meridians like a gentle stream, wearing away her last reserve and shame.

Under Lin Xuan's skillful, storm-like advances, Guo Fu's reason crumbled completely.

She stopped resisting and stopped feeling shy.

She raised both arms and, with all her strength, wrapped them tightly around his neck. With clumsy but ardent movements, she awkwardly answered his advances. Her legs unconsciously entwined, rubbing lightly together, yearning for... yearning to be filled more deeply.

Lin Xuan's kisses traveled downward, past her flat, firm abdomen, and finally reached the most mysterious and private valley.

His fingertips gently slipped in, tracing soft circles over her damp hollow and feeling its growing warmth and slickness.

"Mm..."

Guo Fu shuddered violently, a broken moan escaping her lips. Shame at being violated and overwhelming desire surged through her heart like two colliding torrents. She squeezed her eyes shut, her long lashes damp with tears and trembling faintly.

"Senior Sister, don't be afraid... Feel it."

Lin Xuan's fingertips teased her tenderly yet insistently, now lightly caressing her most sensitive bud, now testing her with shallow, retreating strokes. Guo Fu's body rocked helplessly on the bed like a little boat battered by waves, and involuntary, lingering cries slipped from her lips.

The tingling, emptiness, and yearning rose like a swelling tide, wave after wave, nearly drowning her completely. She began to twist her hips unconsciously, meeting his fingers, seeking deeper and more intense stimulation.

When Lin Xuan felt that she was completely ready, her tender secret place had blossomed like a flower coaxed open by rain and dew, slick and drenched with nectar waiting to be plucked.

He no longer hesitated. Slowly but with unwavering firmness, he guided his scalding, rigid desire, the embodiment of masculine vigor, into the mysterious, tight peach garden no one had ever entered.