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"Dongfang Qincang!"
The Moon Supreme - emperor of the Cangyan sea, lord and saviour of the Moon Tribe, strongest in the three realms - was gently trailing his hands all over Xiao Lan Hua's body, tracing light circles over her breasts, his fingers roaming down to her stomach, her hips, dipping between her thighs...
"We're trying to have a conversation..." she protests, even as her body arches involuntarily upwards, towards his touch. The One-Heart curse had been lifted centuries ago, but she still feels their bodies are connected, feeling each other's every want, every desire.
"I told you, my little flower spirit, I will take you all day - every moment - till you tell me to stop."
Their bodies were pressed together on her master's bed at the Xilan Arbiter Hall replica, the bedding a crumpled mess at their waists from the hours of torture it had endured since the morning. He lifts himself up on his elbows till his head is over hers, and she's staring into his dark eyes, as inscrutable as ever. His mouth curls into the tiniest hint of the smirk. "And you did not tell me to stop..."
She pushes his face away playfully, and sits up on the bed. It had been perhaps been a half-day since he had been back, but to her it still felt like a fever dream, one she'd dreamt relentlessly for five hundred years. She lightly traces her hand over his fore arm, carefully remembering the feeling of his skin under her fingertips, making sure it was real - this was real.
He notices her wandering hand and deftly catches it in his own, their fingers intertwining. "What is it that you wanted to talk about?" he asks gently, kissing the hand that is still interlocked with his.
"I-I wanted to discuss..." she hesitates for a second, before ending firmly, "...our wedding.'
He looks at her for a second, a look she can't quite fathom, but has seen many times before - when he came to her after three days of proving her love in the Fuju cave; when he woke her up at dawn after she spent the night at his door, worrying about his Bone-Devouring Salt Nails; the moment she proposed... It was marked with a tenderness he displayed to no one but her, and a tinge of disbelief - as if he couldn't believe his luck that she was there.
Then he shakes his head slightly and smiles - a truer, deeper version of the one she taught him many moons ago - one that travels all the way to his eyes.
"Always beating me to it, aren't you, Xan Huayao?"
His hand unlocks from hers to trace her cheek, his thumb lingering underneath her lower lip, swollen from his morning affections.
"I know you're impatient, goddess, but if it's the pleasures of the wedding bed you're looking for..." his hands travel downwards once again, running a a hard line around her nipples, his mouth dipping down to her ear, as he takes her lobe between his teeth - "...Ben Zuo doesn't need a marriage to give them to you."
This time she doesn't protest.
----
Later, much later, as the last rays of the evening begins to set upon the rolling hills of Xilan, they sit, barely clothed, in the garden, entwined in one another - his chin nuzzling her neck, his arms wrapped tightly around her, as if he's too afraid she might disappear if he didn't hold on. She feels the same way, leaning into him to take in the tell-tale warmth of his body - a marker of the fire that ran through his veins - smelling in that familiar scent of wood, smoke and the faintest hint of metal that always reminded her of him.
"About the wedding," she tries again. "We can do it...tomorrow? We can have a simple feast - I can make those flower cakes you like so much - and invite those closest to us: Jieli, Xunfeng, Shang Que." She pauses. "We have to let them know you're back...", voicing the unspoken pact that had been made the moment he returned: to have a day to themselves before they let the world in. "I know it's not much time, but we don't really need anything but a few witnesses..."
Try as she might, she could not keep an edge of desperation out of her voice. There was a time when she had felt this same urgency, to get married - to claim him - before a war irrevocably changed the course of their existence, their very identities. She had waited five hundred years for a second chance, and she would be damned if she left things unfinished ever again.
As if he senses her distress, he pulls her in closer, closing the last inch of space between their bodies.
"There is nothing more I want in this world than to call you my queen, my little flower spirit," he responds in her ear, "but I made a promise to my people the most magnificent wedding in all the three realms. It's only what you deserve as the Moon Queen." His voice quivers a little. "I remember what you had to go through to earn that title, and Ben Zuo will not let that go to waste."
"But I'm no longer only the Moon Queen, I'm also the goddess of Xilan."
"All the more reason for us to have a grand celebration. You're the protector of the three realms, a symbol of hope. A wedding between the goddess of Xilan and the Moon Supreme could provide the foundations of peace and stability for millennia to come, and it might just be enough to keep those Shuiyuntian hypocrites in their place, once and for all. Besides," he says, settling even deeper into her chin, "I want to proclaim our love to the world."
She chuckles. "I think you giving up your life to change my fate in front of the entire world was enough of a proclamation, Da Mu Tou."
He sighs comfortably at the familiar nickname, wrapping his arms tighter around her. "Well, it's been five hundred years. People might need a reminder that you're still mine. Only mine," he adds in a low growl.
"Well, Lord Changheng might disagree," she teases. "After all, I was still married to him till about a hundred years ago, when Lord Yun Zhong's annulment finally came through."
"Ah," he replies blandly. "I was wondering if we could get through the day without his name coming up."
His tone is even, but she can feel him bristling. Clearly five hundred years had done little to temper his possessiveness.
"He was a good friend to me all this time when you were -" she pauses, her throat constricting. She cannot bring herself to say it. "- gone," she ends instead. "I don't know what I would have done..." her voice breaks a little, and she stops. She cannot bring herself to speak about the years of waiting, the centuries of trepidation tinged with the barest glimmer of hope, the endless yearning that threatened to pull apart her soul. Not now, not yet.
He turns her around gently - she had forgotten how gentle he could be - and plants a soft kiss on her forehead. "I know," he says, his voice warm like honey. "I know, and for that I'm forever grateful."
She places her head on his chest, traces a line against his collarbone, trying to draw in strength from his litheness, the taut muscle around his shoulders. For a while, neither of them speak, soaking in each other, trying to fill in five hundred years' worth of longing into one long silence that engulfs them like hellfire.
"Why don't we - " he says finally, "...have two weddings? One tomorrow, the intimate ceremony you suggested, and one again in a months' time, when we return to Cangyan Sea, to celebrate with our people, and mark your coronation as the Moon Queen?"
"But...two weddings to the same person? Is there a precedence for such a thing? Is that something anyone from the Moon Tribe has ever done?"
"No one from the Moon Tribe has fallen in love with a goddess before, either," he replies smoothly. "And besides, what Ben Zuo wants, Ben Zuo gets."
She sighs indulgently. He might have suffered through enough to master Glazed Fire - the all-encompassing fire of mercy - but sometimes, he was still the Dongfang Quincang she remembered, always so used to getting his way. And the fates have mercy on those who told him otherwise.
"We-ell, it could work," she muses. "And we will need time to review our duties - you taking over from Xunfeng as the Moon Supreme, and I, making sure I'm able to keep the peace in my new role."
"Hmm..." he murmurs, dipping his head to touch her forehead, "duty is important." His fingers wind their way through her hair, gripping her head lightly. "As long as it doesn't interfere with Ben Zuo's other interests."
She tries to ignore the heat from his fingertips, tracing patterns against the nape of her neck. "And it would be nice to have time to incorporate some Xilan customs in the wedding. Preferably something without any blood..."
He is listening, but his hands are now deeply interested in the sink of her collarbones, his thumb pressing down in a way that sends a sudden bolt of desire through her. For a second, she is thankful that she no longer needed a heart-hiding pin to disguise her innermost thoughts.
But her body must have betrayed her somehow, because his eyes turn dark as he senses her desire, and his lips curve up in the slightest hint of a smile. He enjoys what his touch does to her, her mind flashes - enjoys the power he wields over her with only his proximity.
The heat rushes to her cheeks and she struggles to find a distraction, if only momentarily. She grasps at the only thing that will needle him enough to divert his attention. "I'm not convinced that's the only reason you want to have two weddings, though."
He stirs. "What do you mean? I would marry you not twice, but a thousand times over."
"Or is it to keep score? Since Lord Changheng married me twice."
He's definitely paying attention now, but not enough to stop his hands from wandering. "And what of it?" he replies nonchalantly. "He knew on each of those occasions that you belonged to me, with me." She's surprised at his self-possession, till he adds,"And if that were really my intention, I would marry you once every year - and make sure he is present to witness every one."
She is suddenly reminded of a kiss, stolen out of spite in front of Changheng, a million lifetimes ago. She smiles at the memory.
"Tsk, tsk, Da Mu Tao," she teases, "to treat your own sworn brother this way..."
"Xan Huayao," he warns sternly, his fingers winding tighter through her hair.
"Even when he's been nothing but noble, and kind, and selfless towa-"
Before she can finish her thought, Dongfang Quincang swoops in to devour her mouth - roughly, desperately - with a fire that matches the one building up in the pit of her stomach. His kisses are like him - unabashed, unyielding, so very sure of themselves.
"My little flower spirit," he murmurs, his voice dangerously low in her ear when he finally stops to take a breath, leaving her gasping for more. "If you keep praising him in front of me this way, I believe I really will have to teach you a lesson."
As if to demonstrate his point - which couldn't have been clearer to Xiao Lan Hua, really - he leans her into the silken grass under them, his body looming over hers, and catches both of her wrists in one large hand, pinning them over her head. She struggles against him halfheartedly, but he refuses to let go, bringing his lips down into another rough kiss, pressing into her till she moans and writhes under him.
"It seems you're eager," he smirks. "Always such a good pupil, my little Orchid."
She wants to retort but she is too impatient for what's to come. Because she is only now acknowledging what she had long realized - that she enjoys letting him hold this sword of desire over her, she likes surrendering herself to the Moon Supreme.
So she says what she said to him a lifetime ago, when she surrendered to his arms, thought she would be parted from him forever.
"Dongfanfg Quincang, you're so infuriating. But I still love you."
He doesn't reply but only pulls her into him, till their bodies, breaths and souls become one.
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