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Chapter 9 Jealousy
Chapter 9 Jealousy
By the time they got back to the apartment on the river it was eleven. Fang Qitong showered first and washed the oil-smoke and the laughter out of her hair. When she came out Zhou Yu was still sitting on the living-room rug. Two buttons of his shirt were open. The television was not on. He was only looking at the floor-to-ceiling window. There was no rain on it now. Only the lights on the opposite bank. She sat down beside him and laid a towel over his shoulder.
"Your turn," she said. "Go wash. Or talk first. Director Lin's pat is still hanging on your face."
"I'll talk first." His voice had already gone level, level in a tight way. "It isn't that I don't trust you. When you moved your leg away, I trusted you. What I'm jealous of is the scene. Everyone thinks the place beside you is a vacancy that can be discussed. They measured you with Duan Fei. Now they measure me with age. I sat there like I'd been put into your portfolio as a scale bar. The fact that I'm twenty-seven was said three times tonight. Every time I smiled. After I smiled I felt dirty myself."
Fang Qitong listened and did not argue at once. She drew her knees up, set her chin on them, looked out the window a while, and then looked at him.
"You're right," she said. "I was the one who took you. I thought if I said the word partner hard enough, other people would follow and say it hard. They won't. They have their rotten habits. I underestimated that. That is my fault. The other half is not a fault, and I need to say it clearly. I will not hide you from now on because you're jealous. Hiding you would make you even more of an accessory. If you are my person, you sit at tables that have oil-smoke and knees. Sitting there will be hard. We come home and it's hard. The hardness can change the method. It cannot change into not seeing people."
"I wasn't asking you to hide me." He rushed the sentence, then lowered his voice. "I'm afraid that one day you'll get tired of hearing it, and feel it's easier to find someone their age. An easy person won't stand in an elevator and ask whether admiration is against the law. A person like me will. I'll make your projects harder to do."
"Director Lin will not cut a scheme because of one clean sentence from you. What he wants is the effect, and face. Today I left him half the face. The other half I left to you." She leaned in. Her forehead rested against his temple. "Zhou Yu, I choose you not because young is fresh. Fresh expires. I choose you because in the elevator you still asked whether I could wait. If one day you stop asking, and you only care about winning at the table, then I will reconsider. Right now I am not considering anyone else."
He closed his eyes. The tightness finally loosened a little. He turned and drew her into his arms, his face buried in the hollow of her neck, his breath hot and disordered. "I was jealous. Badly. I wanted to knock his glass over. I didn't. I still came back wanting to hear you say you are mine. You said it. I still want your body. Not in order to win against him. In order to push that table out of my head. If you think that's too mixed, we'll only sleep."
"It isn't mixed." She took his face in her hands. "I want you too. I want you badly. Go and wash. When you're done, come to the bed. Tonight I want you heavy. Heavy is not a punishment. I want to feel all of your unhappiness turn into touching me, and not into distance."
The water ran for more than ten minutes. In the bedroom she smoothed the dark green sheet and turned the bedside lamp to its lowest. She herself wore only an old T-shirt of his. There was nothing under it. When he came out his hair was wet, a towel around his waist. Seeing her, his step stopped.
"Come here," she said.
He walked over. The towel fell to the floor. Her hand closed on him directly and stroked slowly, until he was fully hard, hard and burning, clear fluid seeping at the tip. She lay down, drew him onto her, and parted her legs. She was already wet. She reached the condom at the head of the bed herself, put it on him, and guided him in. When he entered, both of them sighed, as if a whole evening of being at odds had finally found an outlet.
"Heavy," she said. "You can. I want you heavy. Look at me. Don't run off by yourself to fight Director Lin. You are inside me."
He began to thrust. At first he still remembered to be slow. After a few dozen strokes her nails pinched his back, and then he really was heavy. Every stroke struck the deepest place. His balls slapped her skin. The sound was dense and loud. The head of the bed tapped the wall lightly. Her legs were held in the crook of his arms. Her body was folded. The angle made her full and pleasured. Inside the pleasure there was a little panic at being completely taken, and after the panic a hotter wanting. She did not call a stop. She looked at his eyes. She saw the jealousy still there, and the love there too, the two things sweating out of him together.
"Say you're jealous," she said, panting.
"I'm jealous." He bit her earlobe. Below, he was heavy and steady. "I get irritated when I see him look at your collarbone. When I see his knee I want to carry you off. You are mine. Not the table's. Qitong, you're sucking me inside. You want me too. Don't you."
"Yes. I want you. Not someone their age. I want Zhou Yu. A little heavier. Hit there. Yes. Don't stop."
He drove at the angle she named. One hand was padded under her waist so that place was scraped again and again. Her moans broke more and more, and at last, on one deep stroke, she came. The orgasm came sharp and fierce. Her whole body went taut. Her toes curled. Her walls clenched in waves. He did not come at once. He slowed and let her pass the sharpest of it, then turned her onto her side and entered from behind. In this position he could hold her. His palm pressed her lower belly so she could feel how deep he was. His mouth was against the nape of her neck. His voice was so low it was almost a plea.
"I won't be replaced. Say it once."
"You won't be replaced." She caught his hand and pressed it to her chest. "I choose you. Now, on this bed, in the place those people can't see, and in the places they can. Come for me. I want it."
He quickened. His breath disordered itself in her hair. The last dozens of strokes were deep and fast. When he came his whole body shook against her, and in his mouth her name repeated. She felt his pulse. The thing the dinner had tangled in her also came down and landed. They lay a long time in the joined position. The sweat cooled. His hand was still on her lower belly, smoothing, stroke after stroke.
"Did I hurt you?" he asked.
"No. I asked for heavy." She turned and kissed him. "If you hurt me, I would say so. I didn't say so. That means it was good. And the jealousy? Is it still there?"
"A little is still there," he said honestly. "But it isn't as big as just now. It has turned into a thing I know. Once I know it, I can hold it. Holding it, I won't smash your project."
"On Monday you still send the drawings to Engineer Wang," she said. "Work is work. I'll speak to Director Lin. I'll tell him admiration is allowed, a knee is not, and calling someone a little friend is not. I'll say it very politely. Politely enough that he understands."
"Shall I be there when you say it?"
"I'll make the call myself. You can listen beside me. After you listen, if you still want me, we'll go again. The night is still long."
He laughed low and buried his face back in her shoulder. "The way you comfort a person is to go again."
"Do you have an objection?"
"No. I only have hard." His cock was indeed lifting again between her legs. It had not fully softened before there was a new heat. "But this time I want it slow. Just now was driving the anger apart. Now I want to kiss you. From your back to your knees. I want you to know that the person who gets jealous also knows how to attend to you."
He really did begin at her spine. He kissed vertebra by vertebra, kissed the hollow of her waist, kissed her ass, kissed the backs of her thighs, then turned her over and kissed the faint line on her lower belly, very slowly, so slowly her eyes grew hot. He did not ask the story of that line. He only set his mouth there and stayed, as if to say this is you too, and I want it. Then he took her clit into his mouth again and, with an almost devout patience, brought her up once more. When she came she caught his hair. The cry in her voice was very light. This time she allowed herself a little of that sound. The sound was not for Duan Fei, and not for Director Lin. It was for this man who was willing to finish saying his anger before he touched her, and for the fact that she was actually being loved like this, though neither of them had yet said the word love out loud.
The second time he entered very slowly. Face to face. Her legs circled him. Every inch he came in, he stopped to kiss her. They went on a long time, long enough that the boats outside the window grew few. When they came together at the end, she said a very light sentence at his ear. "Jealousy can stay. Retreat cannot. I won't retreat either."
He came into the condom at the deepest place in her, and his answer was light too. "No retreat. I'm holding the key."
Later that night they still showered a second time. She leaned on his chest. The water carried off what was left of the sweet. She thought the dinner would pass, and Director Lin's laughter would pass, and the two words of age would come again. But as long as they returned to this apartment, they still had language, a body, and a key set on the nightstand. That was enough for her to keep living forward.
