Chapter Text
She knows the cramps are bad because the musculature of the older woman's entire abdomen pulses, abrupt and staccato - knows the the pallor and flush of her cheeks, the way her bare back suddenly glistens. Wanning doesn't tell her the cramps are bad in words.
Wanning buries her face in her knees and grinds her teeth.
"Does it hurt?" Taxian-jun asks, rubbing the exposed lower back, thumbs circling the dimples of venus.
For a moment Wanning ignores her. Then her stomach twitches again - Taxian-jun can hear the faint noise of the liquids sloshing around inside her. She bites her lower lip and nods, black hair damp with fragrant sweat, eyes shut tight. Taxian-jun makes a little performance out of checking the analog timer on the nightstand anyway, keeps the display turned away from her pet's range of vision, hums in a considering tone. Normally she would use her phone timer but she doesn't bring that device into Wanning's rooms.
There are no timepieces within these walls. Earlier on, Wanning used to carry and reset the little kitchen timer over and over to its maximum of two and a half hours whenever she was awake - trying to keep track of the intangible, exercise control by measuring it - so Taxian-jun took it away from her.
"Bear with it just a little longer. Fifteen more minutes," Taxian-jun says, like it's very kind of her to let Wanning know, like she's sharing a secret. She's lying. There are twenty minutes left.
After exactly fifteen minutes, Taxian-jun gets what she wants - what she anticipated, a little frission of excitement racing through her blood, coiling in her hips. Wanning breaks her silence. Wanning makes a tiny, quiet noise of suffering, low and sweet and pretty, curled up around her swollen belly on her bed of furs. Right on time. It's amazing, Taxian-jun thinks, how - even now - some defiant organ of her kitten is relentlessly quantitative. Amazing and infuriating.
"Shh, I know, I know," Taxian-jun croons, eating up the way the other woman's shoulders quiver under her touch, savoring the moisture gathering in the corners of those reddening eyes, weighing down the long black eyelashes. She trails her fingertips down Wanning's spine. There are four minutes and twenty-three seconds left on the clock. "Two more minutes," she says, nice and encouraging.
The pathetic whimpering continues. A wordless little protest. As though Wanning could possibly know for sure that the Lord of heaven, the god who tramples immortals, this venerable one, is lying about the time. It's futile, like all of her wife's protests. And, like all of her wife's protests, it's very arousing.
When the alarm finally sounds, Wanning chokes on a sob. Taxian-jun makes shushing noises, soothing and gentle. Her right hand plays in the slick between her pet's legs. Her left releases the air valve of the plug inside her other hole, letting it deflate before pulling it out.
"Ah -!"
A noise of fear, protest. Wanning reaches out for her master's arm before she can think to stop herself, cute and involuntary, grabbing Taxian-jun's bicep with a shaking hand. Once she realizes what she's done she bites her lower lip but she doesn't take her hand back. This is almost as good as hearing Wanning beg. It makes the hot, coiled thing in the pit of Taxian-jun's stomach twist.
This part of their routine is really... so much fun.
It began almost by accident. When Taxian-jun was keeping her pretty bride in her pretty chastity belt at all hours, and making her ask (often weeping with rage) for permission to use the bathroom, every single time. Back then, in the immediate aftermath of the wedding, lit up with the high of victory, drunk with power, Taxian-jun always locked Wanning's collar, wrists, ankles, and thighs to the metal frame she built around the toilet before unlocking the belt for her and watching her void her bowels. There was a bidet attachment, naturally - the control panel was out of Wanning's reach, so her benevolent and generous master operated it for her and gently patted her dry again before locking her up and releasing her from the frame.
(There was another frame, for the bathtub, made out of sturdy lightweight plastic. Originally intended for adult stroke victims and other high risk patients who couldn't be left in a tub unsupervised without potentially drowning. Taxian-jun modified it so that she could strap Wanning down securely before removing her collar, cuffs, and belt, and then physically lift the whole thing up - wife and all - and lower it into the hot bath water. She had to be absolutely certain that Wanning couldn't touch herself. She needed to demonstrate that Wanning's body - every flawless, squirming inch of it - belonged only to her, destroy any concept of privacy.
Those precautions turned out to be necessary, after all. The first few days after the wedding, when Taxian-jun released individual limbs in order to wash them one at a time, Wanning often tried to lash out at her. Wanning was easy enough to physically overpower but it could have been very dangerous to do that in the bath. Taxian-jun might have lost her temper, might have held Wanning's head underwater until the hitting and kicking stopped.)
Anyway - one afternoon during their honeymoon Taxian-jun had left a fussy, sulking Wanning chained up on top of the toilet after she'd finished. And while Taxian-jun was entertaining herself by playing with the position and pressure settings on the bidet, primarily due to her wife's amusing faces, she had discovered something interesting. When she used the highest pressure setting and repeatedly pulsed warm jets of water directly into Wanning's rectum, the cunt inches away began to ooze a strand of clear, viscous fluid, dripping all the way down to the surface of the water in the bowl.
Unable to look down with her collar locked to the brace, Wanning had flinched violently when Taxian-jun reached between her thighs and gleefully brought the substance out to show her, not understanding what was happening until she saw the glob dangling on her master's fingers. She had felt the location of the touch, of course - she turned white, then red.
"My wife is so talented," Taxian-jun praised her, playing with the mucous-like material and enjoying the texture for a little while before licking it up. The flavor was milder than usual - a little diluted, perhaps. "I wonder why your pussy likes it so much. Is it hitting your cervix from the back?"
"Mo Ran... why are you doing this to me?" Wanning stammered instead of answering, face red, pretty phoenix eyes leaking saltwater misery.
Taxian-jun hummed and openly admired the view after sucking her fingers clean. Wanning's cunt was still leaking. "Why not?" She smiled in a way she knew was beautiful and cruel, and pushed two fingers into the place that dripped, mixing her own saliva into the fluids.
It didn't matter what Wanning's brain thought about their marriage. This other drooling body part clearly approved of it.
"... Laoshi, do you know why women get wet when they see a rape?" she murmured. Wanning's expression was a combination of outrage and horror. Taxian-jun narrowed her eyes, voice lowered to something quiet and dangerous. "To protect you from being injured. Because you're next."
A few days later, before leaving to work for a few hours, she gave Wanning a slim volume of enema recipes. It was a thoughtful gift, considering there were no other books in her wife's chambers. When she'd returned, the book had already been ripped to fine shreds. This did not particularly surprise her. Taxian-jun had purchased an electronic copy as well, just in case. In response she simply chose one of the most potent, "violent and impossible to hold, suitable for punishment" recipes from the book and made Wanning retain two quarts of it until she was sobbing incoherent apologies and begging on her knees for her master to make it stop, her pretty cunt soaking wet.
That first experience forcefully controlling what came out of Wanning's body, just as totally as she controlled everything that went into it... It had been an intensely vivid string of days for Taxian-jun, rich like an exquisite cut of marbled beef, like a ripe fruit on the verge of rot. Every color bright with rage, every emotion sharp and singing. She had made Wanning retain two quarts of the same recipe for at least half an hour, every night, before rinsing her out and fucking her, until a replacement copy of the destroyed book arrived in the mail.
After the first few nights Wanning started to cry before it was even inside her. Twice she even tried to run and Taxian-jun got to chase her through her rooms, her slender body naked except for the bondage she was kept locked safely inside when her master wasn't using her. Like a wolf hunting a wounded deer, or blood in the water to a shark, the brief chase, the futile struggle only whetted Taxian-jun's appetite.
On the day the replacement copy arrived, when Taxian-jun came home, she was pleased to discover that the book was still intact. It was obvious from the way Wanning burst into tears at the sight of the bag and hose that her wife did not understand this could be mutually enjoyable - she probably hadn't read the thing at all. But she hadn't destroyed her master's gift a second time, and Taxian-jun was not as angry anymore. Nine days of thoroughly tormenting her pretty little thing had taken the edge off the rage, calmed her down significantly. The god-trampling venerable lord could be lenient.
That night she rinsed Wanning out with water, first, and followed it with a solution of four cups of warm water and one cup of plain yogurt. Once it all vanished inside that tight pink hole, Wanning's body swallowing it all up, Taxian-jun was careful not to overinflate the plug. Then she carried Wanning to bed and laid her down on her side, holding her from behind. Caressing all the skin she could reach, gentle with the swollen lower stomach, she had Wanning retain it for an hour.
Dwarfed in her master's embrace, Wanning trembled. Once she noticed it wasn't the "violent expulsion" recipe - during the first rinse - she stopped crying and tried to endure in silence. During the hour of retention she was totally bare apart from the plug, sweating, pressed against her master's body for warmth. The contrast between the dark furs covering their bed and her lovely, shaking flesh was beautiful on its own, but Taxian-jun liked her very much like this - humiliated, defeated. Meek and grateful.
"Is it painful?" Taxian-jun mumured into her delicate ear, making her wiggle, breath catching in her throat. When she answered her voice was very, very quiet. It made Taxian-jun's heart itch.
"No..." She watched the crests of those sensitive ears turning red. "Not really, just full..."
The literature claimed that the yogurt recipe was very soothing. She'd had her doubts about the absence of pain - wondering if it would still be effective - but this more mild kind of anal stimulation, Taxian-jun confirmed with her fingers, still made Wanning's pussy wet. It seemed to have a soporific effect on her nerves, as well. She relaxed in her master's arms, no begging or thrashing, wobbly on her feet when she was walked to the bathroom again. After letting her empty herself out, Taxian-jun gave Wanning a final rinse with warm water and carried her back to bed like a boneless doll.
Her wife was beautiful that night, dazed and exhausted and yielding. As though lost in a hypnotic trance, Wanning did not attempt to forbear in silence when Taxian-jun pushed her thighs apart and started licking her. The kittenish mewling that came out of her throat - the way her hands kneaded the furs, instead of covering her mouth. The way her face didn't hide anything at all. It was the first time Taxian-jun saw her totally intoxicated with pleasure - the first time Wanning submitted to being fucked without a struggle. Wanning always tastes good - like fruit wine, somehow - but that night was different. Everything about her became delicious.
The experience is burnt into Taxian-jun's mind like a mirage in the desert, always hovering somewhere out of reach. A hallucination of happiness. Her very own fortuitous encounter with a peach blossom spring. On some level she is always trying to find her way back to it.
Today she's glimpsed it again, hiding in the labyrinth of Wanning's suffering, darting away when Taxian-jun tries to grasp it. Perhaps paradise is genuinely nearby. Perhaps it's thousands of miles away, and the sun is bending the light to draw her into a waterless hell. Either way she will pursue it, incapable of making any other choice.
"What's the matter?" she asks, gazing at her pet, at the delicate hand still clinging to her bicep. "Can you hold it inside by yourself or do you need me to carry you?"
Another shudder wracks the smaller frame, another sweet, whimpering little cry escapes the bitten-red lips. A pair of thoroughly bullied eyes gaze up at her through tears.
"... Jiejie," Wanning sobs. "Jiejie, help..."
It's enough. That's all it takes for the magma building up beneath Taxian-jun's skin to burst through the cracks, spill up and out, destroying the shell of indifference. When she inhales she can practically smell the oasis - taste it hovering in the air, feel it brush across her skin like heavy fog. The satisfaction of victory bathes her in warmth. This is why she does it - why she pushes and pushes until Wanning breaks, why she gives Wanning pain and then takes it away again. It's all for this. For the moment of yielding.
Arms gather up her wife on autopilot, careful not to jostle the tender little stomach. Taxian-jun gets her settled comfortably on the toilet before four quarts of burning, soapy liquid come gushing out of her irritated red hole. This was one of the punishment recipes. She cannot always be lenient. If she were always lenient Wanning would never be grateful to her for making it stop.
After that Wanning still needs the soap washed out of her. Her master attends to it with thorough diligence, getting her nice and clean as quickly as possible. The water is cool, but not cold. The punishment is over but Wanning doesn't stop crying, clinging to Taxian-jun's arms, to the ends of her hair. The tears well up like a bottomless fountain. Wanning is oddly quiet, apart from the occasional sob.
"What's the matter?" Taxian-jun asks, feeling something like fondness, warm and bittersweet, wafting through her lungs. The last of the water has come out. Wanning obediently parts her thighs so that Taxian-jun can dry her off.
"... Why are you so mean to me?" the other woman mumbles. Genuinely confused, sitting there naked and shivering. As though her bones have been cracked open and this is the marrow of her, a helpless animal. When she's like this all of Taxian-jun's anger melts away, leaving only the desire to possess. It would be nice if Wanning was always like this.
"Jiejie isn't mean to you," Taxian-jun coaxes. Something stings, like a cracked dry lip in winter - her free hand spasms, almost forming a fist. "Silly girl. You haven't been eating your vegetables."
"... Don't like okra," Wanning says, eyes lowered to the floor.
When they first married, her wife was significantly underweight. Taxian-jun had calculated the exact intake Wanning needed and carefully padded the amounts with an eye toward balanced health, but for the first three months, to her fury, Wanning's weight only fluctuated up and down a few hundred grams. Somehow without having any access to the nutritional information - simply by looking at the food Taxian-jun prepared for her, and mentally calculating, estimating exactly what she should avoid - Wanning had managed to stay exactly the same weight. It was as though Taxian-jun was failing to reach her, despite owning her and possessing her in almost every way that mattered. As though Wanning had found a way to circumvent that ownership. As though nothing in the world could possibly reach her, or make her change.
It makes Taxian-jun sick with fury, to think that Wanning is out of her reach - to discover that there are pieces of Wanning she cannot grasp. Fighting against her wife's eating habits has resembled the clash of an irresistable force against an immovable object. It's getting better, though. Wanning has managed to put on a little bit of muscle, a thin layer of fat - her hair and skin and fingernails all look healthier. She's been relatively obedient. This was only a minor lapse, a minor punishment.
"If you don't like your vegetables," Taxian-jun says, "you tell me, and jiejie will make you something else. How about it? Will you stop crying now?"
Chu Wanning looks at her and blinks, trying to focus. The tears roll from her eyelashes like shards of glass, like falling rain. Reason, judgement, and rejection seep back into her gaze as she pulls herself together. It's bitter for Taxian-jun to observe it - it's something pulling on a scab, threatening to tear open a wound. Something resembling defiance returns to those phoenix eyes and the illusion of peace wavers.
Fine. So her wife is disobedient and willful. Breaking her in is part of the fun.
Unbidden, the desire to kill whispers in the back of Taxian-jun's mind, like a demon luring travelers into the water to drown them. She tries not to let it show on her face. She smiles.
"If I was mean to you I wouldn't let you use the toilet," she says. "I would lock you up naked in a dog kennel and leave you there in your own piss and shit until you learned your lesson. I would use a hose to clean out the cage and I wouldn't let you out first. You would have to ... eat out of a bowl with your hands," she continues. "You couldn't straighten out your body. It would cut into your knees, there would be nothing to sleep on -"
For a brief visceral moment the phantom odor of scented candles (and urine and feces and vomit) overpowers her sense of smell.
When it goes away Wanning is looking at her with something like pity.
"... I'm very nice to you," Taxian-jun says.
Wanning lowers her gaze to the floor again. Back to her senses, closed-off and inacessible. She seems exhausted.
The phantom oasis vanishes, just like that. Smoke in the breeze. It was never really there.
Taxian-jun can feel the smile distorting on her face, feel a vein throbbing in her forehead. Ah. She wants to fuck Wanning until she cries and then keep going until she can't even cry, just lay there and let her master take her. She wants to wipe that pitying look off the stupid slut's face forever. She wants to tear Chu Wanning into pieces and swallow them whole.
"By the way, laoshi," she hears herself say. "Our wedding anniversary is next month. Mengmeng insists on seeing you in person. I've been making excuses but I can't put it off anymore."
The body of the woman in front of her goes rigid with tension. "... Xue Meng is my student," she says quietly, as though trying to delay the choice that Taxian-jun is about to give her.
"So was I," Taxian-jun says, sweet and charming and light. If she can't have peace she'll have war. It's always fun baiting her wife like this. It's like pulling an earthworm in half and watching both pieces squirm. Which half will stop moving first? "But I don't know if you can behave yourself. Can you really be a good, obedient wife for me in front of Mengmeng?"
'Or shall I kill her, too?' goes without saying.
Because it doesn't need to be said. It's how Taxian-jun was able to talk Wanning into marrying her in the first place. Taxian-jun is very good at making people disappear.
"I'll be good, Mo Ran," her little pet kitten whispers.
"Mo Ran is dead, laoshi," Taxian-jun tells her.
That night she sleeps wrapped around Wanning like a burial shroud and dreams of fire, of ripping bodies apart.
At exactly half past six in the morning Wanning jolts awake and the sudden movement wakes Taxian-jun up. Still exhausted from what her master put her through the night before, Wanning is drowsy and incoherent, quickly falling asleep again. As usual, Taxian-jun remains fully alert upon waking.
No matter how Taxian-jun attempts to tamper with her wife's sense of the passage of time or how thoroughly she tires her out, her little human calculator has never slept through the morning. Not once. Always irritatingly punctual, too - the same time every day. The fact that Taxian-jun hasn't allowed Wanning to see a clock for months doesn't seem to have any effect on it.
It's pointless to try to fall asleep again, so Taxian-jun pulls away the blankets and arranges Wanning flat on her back. She licks and bites her way up the pale columns of the inner thighs, littering fresh bruises in the wake of her teeth - presses her face to the mound at the center. She spends a few minutes there, nuzzling and breathing. At some point she registers that Wanning has woken up again.
Wanning smells so good - this scent hits Taxian-jun like an intravenous drug, racing through her at the speed of her skyrocketing pulse. Wanning always smells good. Her body's natural odor is the best right after Taxian-jun takes off her chastity belt in the evenings, concentrated and thick. It would be stronger if she allowed Wanning to keep any pubic hair, of course, but that would make the belt more uncomfortable and make her more difficult to clean.
They haven't been using the collar or the cuffs for last few weeks. Recently Taxian-jun has only insisted on locking her into her belt when Taxian-jun has to leave for work. Just in case. It's unlikely that anyone could possibly breach the compound security, but if they did - if they managed it, and Wanning was not secure - if anyone, anyone else ever touched her -
Taxian-jun exhales, inhales deeply and hums. The delicate red petals of flesh spasm where they're crushed against her cheek. She can hear Wanning breathing harder, becoming aroused, and feels a little thrill of achievement.
"It's okay if you're a picky eater," she says, picking up the thread of their conversation from the night before. She pauses to nibble, listening to her wife's breath catch in her throat. "You don't have to eat foods you hate. You just have to eat."
When she pulls back to make eye contact Wanning blinks at her in silence. That's more or less an agreement. Taxian-jun smiles, runs her hands up and down her wife's soft thighs, thumbs at her hipbones. They're not as prominent anymore. Wanning has made some progress. Very, very slow progress, fighting every step of the way, but progress nonetheless.
The older woman murmurs something inaudible.
"... What was that?" Taxian-jun asks, pulling her mouth and attention away from the dripping pink hole for a moment to examine her wife's tense expression.
"... I will get my period," Wanning repeats, brow furrowing a little deeper. As though the idea upsets her. As though there's something repulsive about it. "If I keep gaining weight."
The absence of monthly bleeding has been noticed - truly, nothing about Wanning's pussy escapes the attention of this venerable one - but it did not occur to Taxian-jun that her wife might be doing it on purpose. For a moment she does not react.
"Is that why you've been on a hunger strike this whole time?" she asks, incredulous. "You didn't want to get your period?"
(She has punished her wife for refusing to eat more than once - at times very harshly. But Wanning constantly reverts to disobedience, dragging her feet and driving Taxian-jun crazy, provoking one rebuke after another. Was this always the problem? It would have been easy to fix it if Wanning had just said something about it - did she believe that starving was the only solution? Did she think her master wouldn't take care of it?)
Wanning looks caught, flushes a guilty shade of pink, and - to Taxian-jun's rising bewilderment - covers her face with her arms, mumbling something inaudible again. Unacceptable. Taxian-jun rises like a wave, surging forward until she's covering her wife's smaller body with her own. Her hands fasten around Wanning's wrists and pull them away from her face - Wanning's eyes are red and wet, still bleary with sleep, as though she's trying not to cry.
Taxian-jun isn't angry - more baffled than annoyed - but gives her a very firm stare, nonetheless. "Say that again," she orders.
She waits.
"I'm not... pretty. I can't be pretty," Wanning mumbles. Humiliated, she shuts her eyes; a pair of tears escape, running down her flushed cheeks. She does not say but I can be thin.
(Really? After almost a year of marriage, Taxian-jun thinks, torn between wanting to scold her and wanting to laugh - after almost a year - and they've had sex at least twice, every single day, and this bratty little calculator still thinks... )
"Wow. And you're usually so smart," Taxian-jun marvels, thumbing little circles over the delicate wrist bones. The other woman finally resumes eye contact, glaring up at her. "You could double in size and I'd still want to fuck you. Or triple, or quadruple. That's not a problem."
"Because you're a pervert," Wanning snaps, some of the tension leaving her shoulders.
"Because you're so pretty," Taxian-jun corrects her. "Anyone would want to."
Wanning's surprise is obvious - she seems almost offended. "That's... that's not funny," she stammers.
"I wasn't making a joke," Taxian-jun says, amused and irritated. The entire conversation has her feeling off-kilter - as though the world is off balance, skewed at an angle. There's something subtle wrong with the atmosphere that she can't place. "Why do you think I married you?"
(To finally have you. To own you. To keep you all to myself, never let anyone else have you, never let them look at you, never let anyone take you away from me. Mine forever. Even if you hate me, you're never getting away.)
Wanning swallows. Some thought shrouds her eyes with a layer of ice. "... Retribution," she answers.
Taxian-jun's jaw clenches. She feels her head throb, like the looming threat of a migraine.
Seven years ago, when Chu Wanning was still her high school teacher and personal tutor, chaperoning their class on a trip to the nation's capital, a student named Shi Mei vanished. Shi Mei, another girl whom Chu Wanning was personally counseling. Mo Ran's almost-sister, warm and beautiful and kind. Shi Mei had been snatched off the street and never seen again. And Chu Wanning hadn't seemed to care or even react at all in the aftermath, frigid and untouchable. Mo Ran had realized, then, that the teacher she worshipped like a living saint wouldn't even blink if Mo Ran died. Mo Ran had never forgiven her for it.
That was the year Taxian-jun began working with Hua Binan - began to hone her professional skill set. The disappearance of Shi Mei, like a line in the sand, marked the end of the brief, beautiful fantasy of Mo Ran starting over - shattering the illusion that had begun when the Xue family took her in. The rose-tinted dream of a fresh start had lasted for almost three years. A foolish dream, in the end. She'd never had any innocence to begin with.
"... That's not the only reason," Taxian-jun finally says, because she can't bring herself to say Wanning is wrong.
In the heavy silence that follows, she grabs the double-ended dildo from the bedside table and inserts the base, pelvic muscles contracting around it automatically as Wanning watches her. The girth feels familiar in her palm as she rubs the fat silicone head against Wanning's cunt, getting it wet with slick before pressing inside. Wanning's eyes remain frozen over, even as her mouth falls open and pleasure softens her features. Taxian-jun spends a few minutes rocking in and out of her a millimeter at a time, focused on opening her up. The sensory feedback is limited, but she can tell when Wanning is squeezing or twitching hard around it.
When she bottoms out, grinding their bodies together, coarse black hair rubbing against Wanning's bare skin, Wanning moans. Her hands, lying palms-up on either side of her head, clench into fists. "Mo Ran," she calls out.
Her wife is really unusually vocal today. Taxian-jun thumbs at her clit and watches the flush rise in her cheeks, the way her nipples stiffen into red peaks. "Hm? What is it?" she asks, rolling her hips, listening to the wet sucking sounds.
Wanning bites her lower lip, looking troubled and reluctant. "If... If Shi Mei were still alive," she begins, and trails off into timid silence.
Ah. How fucking bold of her to say that name out loud.
Taxian-jun's leashed aggression surges, a dog biting her heels, crackling electricity. She begins thrusting harder, making her kitten pant and struggle for the air being fucked out of her.
"I would still be doing this to you," Taxian-jun tells her, just to be cruel, watching her eyes widen. "I wanted to fuck you the minute I met you."
She's telling the truth. Her disobedient, adorable wife seems confused by the announcement nonetheless, struggling to cling to her train of thought as her master starts fucking her faster. The doubt and worry in her eyes are gradually erased by dumb animal arousal - ice melting, frigidity evaporating in the inferno. Losing her mind, her sense of self, in the steady rhythm of being fucked. Gasping for breath, unable to catch it.
Eyes fluttering shut, Wanning spreads her legs further apart, licking her lips, making quiet little cries, and Taxian-jun knows she's close. She bends over Wanning's body and breathes against her ear, hips maintaining the same relentless pace.
"I'd still own your pussy," she whispers. "I've owned your pussy since I was fifteen, laoshi. I was just waiting to take it."
It's not a surprise when Wanning slams down hard around the silicone cock and wails, clenching so tight that Taxian-jun has to struggle to keep thrusting. It isn't a surprise that her legs squeeze around her master's waist, in that brief unguarded moment when Wanning is overcome.
The surprising thing is that Wanning kisses her, clumsily pressing their mouths together, and wraps her arms around Taxian-jun's neck.
The action triggers a wave of heat that crashes around Taxian-jun, beginning in the root of her body and breaking somewhere over her head.
... Fuck.
She last kissed Wanning at their wedding, in public, when her unwilling bride had to behave for the crowd. It was like kissing a warm corpse. Afterwards Taxian-jun hadn't wanted to give her wife the opportunity to try to bite her tongue off, so she never...
This time it's different from that kiss at the wedding - needy, passionate and unrestrained. It does something explosive to Taxian-jun's brain, to her whole nervous system - a lit match landing on a puddle of gasoline. She can't fucking think. Her tongue bullies its way into Wanning's mouth, her hips piston angrily until Wanning is sobbing, still clinging to her, still prolonging the kiss. It feels good. It feels like the world is drenched in honey. Like that desert oasis, always hovering just out of reach, has suddenly flickered into existence around their tangled bodies.
Taxian-jun comes shuddering with a snarl, breaking away to bite Wanning's neck.
When she regains her scattered wits Taxian-jun can feel light, soft kisses being pressed to the side of her head, concealed against the wavy fall of her hair. Fuck. This needy slut - tempting her, enticing her -
Drawn by a magnetic pull, Taxian-jun sucks and bites her way back to her wife's mouth. The euphoria of orgasm lingers. The kissing itself isn't particularly arousing for her but the quiet wet noises, the way it arouses Wanning, the way Wanning seems desperate for it - these things send little bolts of lightning across her skin, up and down her spine. Wanning's arms stay wrapped around her torso, keeping their bodies pressed together. After a minute or two Taxian-jun begins to roll her hips again at a tenth of the earlier speed, hands caressing Wanning's jaw, her ears, the delicate curve of her neck while their tongues play. Compliant and open, Wanning moans directly into the kiss, all four limbs twitching around Taxian-jun's body.
"Shh, it's okay," Taxian-jun croons, cupping Wanning's breasts with her hands, gently rubbing her nipples until they pebble into hardness again. Her kisses fall on her wife's panting mouth like snowflakes that linger before melting. They will have to get up eventually - consistency is key, she can't allow Wanning to skip breakfast - but right now she feels too greedy to stop. "Jiejie is here. Good girl."
"Ah," Wanning gasps, arching her spine, pressing her meager tits into her master's hands. She's gazing up at Taxian-jun with an emotion that Taxian-jun can never identify but loves to witness. Like Taxian-jun owns her, every single bit of her, nothing left to take. Like her identity has vanished beneath the burning aegis of Taxian-jun's possession. "Ah - jiejie -"
"Jiejie can put you on birth control, if you want," Taxian-jun says, reassuring her with rare, indulgent warmth. "If you're so scared of bleeding. Maybe these will get bigger."
Wanning whimpers when Taxian-jun squeezes harder and pinches both nipples, her feet thrashing. Taxian-jun laughs, licks the whimpers out of her mouth.
(Maybe she won't give her real birth control, Taxian-jun thinks, fresh greed coiling in her belly. Maybe she'll say it's birth control and give Wanning pills to induce lactation instead. How long would they take to kick in? Would Wanning be able to tell the difference? Not right away. Taxian-jun could tell her that the lactation is a side effect... Raw, ugly desire surges up from the dark center of her mind. She could get a milking machine and strap Wanning into it like livestock, leave her hooked up to it for hours. How much could she make Wanning produce, over time, if she pumped her little wife dry two or three times a day? A liter? A gallon?)
Beneath her, under the relentless onslaught, Wanning shakes and falls apart, over and over. Taxian-jun is imagining Wanning with her hands tied behind her back, sobbing and begging jiejie to milk her poor, leaking tits (jiejie, please, too full, it hurts) when she finally climaxes again, half an hour later.
"... All right," she breathes, nuzzling her wife's sweaty neck, dripping all over with satisfaction. "Time for breakfast."
"... Shower," Wanning mumbles, weak and petulant, clinging to her after she pulls out. As though she's in any position to make demands.
"Oh? You want a shower first?" Taxian-jun drawls. She clenches around sudden emptiness, sets the sex toy back down on the nightstand, licking her thumb and fingers clean. The ache is pleasant. "What's the magic word?"
"... Please."
"Come on, then."
They don't normally fuck for so long right after waking up. Wanning's legs are too weak for her to stay standing on her own - after the first few abortive steps Taxian-jun scoops her up, enjoying the slight weight in her arms, the way her wife's body is still twitching. It always feels good to render her wife unable to walk - like a real accomplishment. Wanning does not protest being carried when she legitimately needs the assistance. Allows it without any fuss, lays her head on Taxian-jun's shoulder. Like tenderness - just as good as the real thing, Taxian-jun thinks.
She sets her cargo down on the plastic stool in the shower and adjusts her stance, caging the other woman between herself and the wall. For a moment, with her unsuspecting wife blinking up at her, Taxian-jun is tempted to give her another kind of shower. All over her face and tits. It would disgust her, it would make her so angry, it would be so funny to watch -
Wanning would lose that rare soft look in her eyes. It would be replaced by the familiar caged-animal wariness. Taxian-jun likes this expression more.
Some other time, then - there's always later. She smiles down at Wanning and puts her hair up for her, a loose bun held in place with a plastic hair stick, before she turns the showerhead on. She waits until the water is steaming hot before aiming it at her wife's body. (Even if Taxian-jun wanted to punish her she's learned she can't use cold water. Wanning becomes sick too easily, lips turning purple-blue with cold, unable to stop shivering - trying that once was enough.) Her wife has learned to let Taxian-jun bathe her and dry her off without any fuss. It's been a long time since they had to use the body brace, even in the bathtub.
Taxian-jun savors the strange mood between them, despite knowing it will evaporate. She feeds Wanning with her own hands, combs her hair, and keeps her wife sitting in her lap, reluctant to end the perpetual contact.
She must, eventually. Today she presses a strand of beads into Wanning's ass and an egg-shaped vibrator into her soft pink cunt before locking her into her belt and leaving.
"Remember to be good," she says. Wanning doesn't say anything in response. Already she seems distant, retreating somewhere within herself. The egg inside of her has a remote control function that Taxian-jun can operate with her phone - she won't really be out of reach. Even if Taxian-jun can't physically hold her at all times, she can put things inside Wanning that Wanning has no choice but to accept, to hold without the possibility of rejection.
Taxian-jun takes the keys and the kitchen timer and the used toys with her on her way out.
She leaves the timer in the antechamber, the room where she leaves her phone to charge, where she gets dressed and undressed, where various miscellanea are stored. It has a large sink - she washes the dildo in it and props it up to dry before putting her clothes on.
There are three heavy doors between the antechamber and her wife's chambers - two barred, one with a lock, none of them electronic because of the very slim possibility of a power failure locking her out and leaving Wanning stranded. Six meters of concrete lined with lead. A ventilation system with multiple redundancies, a heating system to control the temperature, two backup power sources to maintain that heating system in the event of an apocalptic infrastructure collapse, a water supply attached to an underground well. The only windows in her wife's chambers are built like mineshafts - rectangles of bulletproof glass cut into the ceiling, unreachable, offering a few stripes of sunlight that travel across the floor on sunny days. Wanning hasn't been outside for eleven months but exterior of her prison hasn't changed at all. Taxian-jun made sure the entire compound was fully operational months before bringing her in.
On average, when she leaves Wanning for the day, she doesn't actually go very far. Not more than a few dozen meters. Taxian-jun's research lab is built around her wife's chambers, and it houses the bulk of her work and her ongoing projects; there's also a fully-stocked kitchen, as well as a few other personal rooms set aside for storage. Today, however, Taxian-jun has to meet two people in person - so today she actually has to leave. She would never allow any of her various business partners to come to the compound. She rents space in the nearest city for that purpose.
The walls of the compound are topped with barbed wire. The perimeter of the grounds is bordered by an electric fence - in violation of the local bylaws, there are no warning signs. Apart from the sentinel drones her security system is pretty low-tech, to minimize risk, but the fence won't fuck anything up in the event of a power grid failure. It's just nice to have it. Reassuring - the idea of someone trying to access Wanning and frying themselves to death.
Before she gets in her car and drives to the office, she puts on her wedding ring.
It's a few minutes before noon when Taxian-jun arrives. Song Qiutong knows better than to expect her before ten AM at the earliest, but she clocks in at eight AM every weekday in a misguided attempt to curry favor. Taxian-jun can just barely tolerate her, which is why she's the intermediary between Taxian-jun and her wet market projects and why she handles various unpleasant aspects of Taxian-jun's schedule for her. Taxian-jun prefers not to have to tolerate anyone at all. That isn't feasible yet.
As soon as her desktop system boots up she logs into the compound's survelliance system and pulls up two feeds on her second and third monitors - one of the screens is dedicated to the external security cameras, the other to the cameras tracking Wanning. They're well-concealed - in the light fixtures, in the air vents. Taxian-jun is sure Wanning has figured out that the surveillance system exists, but it's out of her reach and beyond her power to tamper with.
Right now Wanning is back in bed, lying on top of the furs. The light from the windows splashes across her naked breasts, the beautiful ink spill of her hair. Taxian-jun feels vaguely jealous of the sun - of the light, for touching her - and swallows hard around the emotion.
" - later today," Song Qiutong is saying.
"Who?" Taxian-jun asks, making a random guess and glancing up at her assistant, eyes lingering for a moment on the low-cut blouse. Her assistant preens.
Taxian-jun is considering whether or not she should have Wanning get used to wearing clothing again before the stupid, inadvisable, unavoidable luncheon with Xue Meng. Which she agreed to attend in order to prove that she isn't "holding Chu-laoshi hostage", and which is going to go up in flames very quickly if her wife meets her favorite former student in person and immediately begs to be rescued. Taxian-jun is pretty sure - within reason - that the threat of killing Xue Meng and her whole family is enough leverage to persuade her captive to play along with the polite fiction of a consensual marriage, but the uncertainty gnaws on her nerves. It'll be a gamble. Taxian-jun doesn't like to play games she hasn't personally rigged.
"Xu Shuanglin at half past one, for the upgrade, and Gu Yue Ye at four for your personal project. Not Hua Binan," Song Qiutong emphasizes with a conspiratorial look, "the other Gu Yue Ye contact." She bends forward while she's speaking, careful to keep her spine bent in an arc that exhibits her substantial breasts at their best angle, once again attracting her employer's gaze for a moment too long.
"Mn," Taxian-jun says out loud, leaning back in her chair. "What's lined up for tomorrow?" Song Qiutong flushes a little, looking pleased with herself, and opens her mouth again to speak. Almost immediately the god-trampling lord tunes her high-pitched voice out.
... Wanning would be suspicious of the pills if she started to lactate, and then it would be an ordeal to persuade her to keep taking them. It would be better, Taxian-jun decides, in the interest of her long term gratification, if she keeps her word about the birth control. Taxian-jun takes an injection every three months, and that would be the simplest solution, but the risk of permanent infertility is a little high with that method and she hasn't entirely abandoned the idea of getting her wife pregnant, despite the practical hurdles... now that she's thinking about it, breastfeeding would permanently change the structure of Wanning's breasts. If they had to stop for some reason it would be painful and then they'd deflate - and Wanning already thinks she's ugly, even though it's physically impossible for anything about her to be ugly - ultimately, it would be better to see if Wanning can be talked into the idea. It isn't urgent, anyway. Wanning hasn't even gained enough weight to menstruate yet.
"- by next Thursday? Boss?" Song Qiutong prompts her, dragging her attention back to the present.
"Yeah... I think I'll be taking tomorrow off," Taxian-jun tells her.
The smile on her assistant's face only falters for a fraction of a second before she rallies, back to being delighted to please. "In that case, I can reschedule the meeting with Taobao for next week and adjust your work schedule. The deadline for the -"
... Why did Wanning take the initiative to kiss her this morning? They've fucked in that position plenty of times before and she's always kept her hands to herself. She was so chatty, too.
Is it because Taxian-jun is going to allow her to see Xue Meng?
Taxian-jun notices that her assistant has abruptly fallen silent. She reschools her facial expression, conceals the burgeoning homicidal intent. "Sorry, I was thinking about the project," she says, and glances at the live camera feed on the second monitor. Wanning has curled up in a ball on the bed. It looks as though she's fallen asleep. "Just let me know when Xu Shuanglin gets here and bring us drinks and then you can break for lunch." The man always arrives too early. Taxian-jun is expecting him to show up ten minutes past the hour, if not on the hour.
"Thanks, boss," Song Qiutong breathes, tucking her hair behind her ear, practically glistening with the intent to seduce. "Can I get you anything in the meantime? Coffee?" She mimes sipping an invisible cup with her pinky out.
"Yeah, coffee," Taxian-jun repeats, nodding, eyes glued to the slow rise and fall of Wanning's ribcage on the screen.
... If it's really just her fondess for Xue Meng, then why did Wanning say that? 'I can't be pretty.' She was close to weeping when she said it. That's been bothering Taxian-jun this whole time, like a thorn stuck under her skin. Intellectually and physically Taxian-jun is all brute force. She won't flatter herself by claiming to have a high emotional IQ or whatever the fuck they call it. But there was something about that part of the conversation that seemed odd, something suggestive of the existence of another layer behind the words, and Taxian-jun wants to know why.
The coffee, bitter and black, finally sharpens the edge of her mind enough to slice through the haze of confusion. Doubt falls away, leaving only the pure line of thought. It was perplexing because the sentence implies that Wanning wants Taxian-jun to think she's pretty. She doesn't think she's attractive but she wants to be - she wants Taxian-jun to be attracted to her?
Song Qiutong wants Taxian-jun to be attracted to her, too, so why does that feel completely different? Setting aside, for the moment, the fact that one of them is her gold-digging employee and the other her unwilling wife. Logically both women should be trying to leverage Taxian-jun's attraction to them for power. It's just that ... it seems like Wanning isn't trying to leverage it for anything. Like she's sad about it for purely selfish reasons.
Wouldn't it be incredible, Taxian-jun thinks, smiling at the computer monitor and at her own thoughts, if Wanning really...
Her heart twinges unpleasantly in her chest. She cannot complete the thought; she knows better than to hope for something forever, always, perpetually out of her reach. At least she has the satisfaction of knowing she's the one who put it there, dictating the terms of their relationship. Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven - something like that. Better to have Wanning's hatred than endure her apathy. Always better to write the rules of the game.
All mine, she thinks, staring at the camera feed, and uses her phone to turn on the vibrator.
What Xu Shuanglin is here for, when he arrives at one o'clock on the dot, is an operating system upgrade.
Chu Wanning was once a robotics researcher devoted to studying the problems associated with artificial limbs. She developed the standard nonsurgical device for linking control over an artificial limb with the human nervous system - she named it Guardian.
Taxian-jun simply took her teacher's work and applied it to drone piloting. On its own this would not have been a particularly giant leap forward. What made her project unique was the fact that Taxian-jun invented a way to use the Guardian technology to control multiple drones at the same time. On top of that, she developed a kind of exponential pyramid command structure. She built a drone that could control four drones simultaneously, and built an apparatus for controlling four of those commander drones simultaneously - the system could stack that process up to four times. A pyramid with four layers, a fleet of up to 256 drones, altogether, with the user standing at the peak, commanding them all at once. It was her first serious project. She used some extremely shitty, extremely cheap drones to test a scaled-down prototype - with only three layers - because she couldn't afford more than twenty-seven actual drones for the demo.
At that point in time Chu Wanning hadn't minded what Taxian-jun was doing with Guardian. Her teacher had believed that Mo Ran was using the drone project to study assembly code, experiment with compilers and programming languages. She had believed that Mo Ran's ultimate goal was a sort of carrier pigeon renaissance, some utopian vision of decentralized civilian drone fleets, presumably for some corny shit like delivering the mail or airlifting medical supplies.
In reality Taxian-jun was building drones that could hunt and destroy other aircraft, destroy missiles in mid-flight, drop bombs on targeted individuals. She practiced with birds when she was refining their flight algorithms. Eventually the birds available - feral pigeons and seagulls - were too slow. After that the drones had to hunt each other. Taxian-jun still has one of the first twenty-seven, on display in her lab - the rest were sacrificed to the combat drills.
The potential applications for espionage and warfare are, naturally, very broad. Taxian-jun isn't stupid. When the first demo system was complete Taxian-jun had already gotten rid of a few people for Hua Binan. After grudgingly explaining the concept she was able to use her patron's identity to secure enough capital to build the 4^4 fleet, which attracted a few serious investors. She used it to stage and record a four-way aerial battle, demonstrating the deadliness and efficacy of the command structure. After that she didn't need to advertise herself.
A single step up the pyramid, the 5^5 system, can command 3,125 drones - the difference between a small militia and an army. She was able to deliver the 5^5 system for a private mercenary group, fully functional, within a year. Last she checked they were responsible for a military coup that has destabilized the entire region - they've continued to pay her, so she's continued to offer them upgrades at a loyalty discount. Mostly they use their drones for bombing, simple brute force, but they've been useful for attacking and destroying enemy drones from other countries, as well.
Right now Xu Shuanglin is here to pick up the 6^6 system, on behalf of some kind of shadow-governmental type organization, which is capable of commanding up to 46,656 drones at once. It may sound like a lot but it's only 648 for each of the seventy-two cities under his group's control, when you break things down. Basically a little robotic police surveillance department. Xu Shuanglin was introduced to her by Hua Binan. Taxian-jun really doesn't plan on doing Hua Binan any more favors, but she hasn't had the opportunity to stab her in the back yet. She's waiting for the right moment. She accepted this deal because the Rufeng organization is going to build a lot of charging platforms for the drones in various convenient locations, which she'll be able to exploit later.
She smiles at Xu Shuanglin and makes meaningless small talk from behind her desk, keeping track of the live feed in her peripheral vision. Her little wife is writhing, scratching between her thighs, humping against the air. It's useless to claw at the chastity belt for relief - there's an inch of air between the metal shield and her pussy. The action is reflexive, animalistic, not goal-oriented... Taxian-jun can see her little pink mouth fall open. Abruptly she grabs her phone and shuts the vibrator off. If she can't listen to the screaming then there's really no point.
"Something important?" Xu Shuanglin asks, glancing at the phone in her hand.
"Forgot I set a reminder you were coming," Taxian-jun tells him, smiling. It's still five minutes before he was supposed to arrive. He smiles back. Obnoxious bastard.
Neither Xu Shuanglin nor Hua Binan are aware that Taxian-jun is negotiating with two nuclear powers for the future sale of the 7^7 system, which can effectively control over eight hundred thousand. As far as anyone other than Taxian-jun knows, the 7^7 is still a work in progress and won't be completed for another two years. The rumor that it's in development has gotten out and the bidding is already insane. So are the security threats, but that's what Taxian-jun's personal fleet is for. Unlike human personnel they never sleep and they never stop. They are adequate for now.
No one knows what she's actually capable of. The power of the 7^7 is laughable compared to the 9^9, which she finished last year despite the inability to implement it, and which can control a little under four hundred million. It's like comparing the population of a rural village to a major metropolis. Right now Taxian-jun is actually working on the 10^10 - not here, she would never bring something that valuable to the office, but at her actual lab.
As far as Taxian-jun knows, Hua Binan still believes the 6^6 is the latest complete version. The real work in progress is a system that will allow Taxian-jun (and only Taxian-jun) to control a nice, even ten billion drones. A number significantly larger than the total human population. Right now the biggest problem is having the drones manufactured, but numerous smaller clients have begun to do that for her. She will take back the forces she's sold to various military powers around the globe when the time is right - when, like a cancer, she has eaten them hollow from within. The world will kneel at her feet and beg for mercy, and she will laugh.
"It's interesting that neurological compatibility with your system seems to depend on a genetic predisposition for psychosis," Xu Shuanglin says with no preamble, sipping his tea. Taxian-jun sips her second cup of black coffee and doesn't dignify the statement with a response. He's got it backwards. The Guardian system works for more or less anyone, but functions optimally when paired with a few very rare blood types - it's a quirk of the woman who invented it. The fact that those rare blood types are also correlated with higher incidence rates of mental illness is simply mankind's history of cruelty, woven into the genome. The nail that sticks out will be hammered down. Any rare and unusual minority will be hunted and burned at the stake. It's the persecution that creates the paranoia, the hypervigilance, the lifetime of elevated cortisol slowly killing them...
The older man continues: "Evolutionary fitness is really dependent on the environment. If a volcano explodes, if the baseline conditions change, then yesterday's winners can become losers overnight. It all depends on having the right adaptation at the right time, under the right conditions."
"Mister Xu, are you calling my work a volcanic eruption?" Taxian-jun asks, annoyed beneath the fixed polite smile.
"In a way, yes," he says, thumbing at the rim of the teacup. "I just think it's interesting, how a fatal flaw can become a winning trait overnight. You can't imagine what that means to someone like me."
"I do not understand the mindset of losers," Taxian-jun tells him, still smiling. "Forgive me."
"Naturally, I don't expect Taxian-jun to share this old man's feelings," he says. Bitterness seeps out of him like ink spreading in water. "Rufeng is grateful for your benevolence."
She imagines picking up the paperweight on her desk and beating his nose into his skull with it, imagines teaching him real gratitude for her temporary benevolence.
He manages to get out the door before she actually does it.
On the monitor Wanning is reading something, draped across the bed like a cat. Taxian-jun considers turning the vibrator on again - feels the familiar petty desire to be the only thing Wanning ever pays attention to. She abstains, but it whittles away at her already miniscule patience.
It was a concession to pragmatism and an act of benevolence to give her wife books. Mostly classic texts, dry dead bloodless things with all the life sucked out of them - there are a few that Wanning reads over and over, rotating between them. Taxian-jun knows what boredom can do to a mind in solitary confinement. A mind like Wanning's needs something to occupy the hours of the day or it will devour itself. It wouldn't be a problem if Taxian-jun could be beside her at all times, keep her on a short leash, swallow her up in the bottomless maw of Taxian-jun's presence. That isn't possible yet. It might be possible later, after Taxian-jun has well and truly trampled the world beneath her heel. Later.
The idea - like most of the ideas she has about Wanning - sends ripples of anger and hunger through her mind. Hunger because she's always, always hungry to own, to possess, to control; anger because she can't satisfy the hunger.
She can always take the books away if Wanning provokes her. Or for no reason at all, out of sheer arbitrary cruelty. It's not like her wife has a real say in the decision making process. Wanning can only beg, and she rarely condescends to do it, clings to her scraps of dignity until Taxian-jun rips them away by force. Would she beg to have the books back? If her master took them away for no reason at all?
'I'll be good, Mo Ran...'
Taxian-jun crumples up her second empty coffee cup, tosses it into the wastebasket across the room, and pulls up the dummy project she's been playing around with as a smokescreen. The "other" Gu Yue Ye contact won't be here for another two hours, minimum - Jiang Xi is always running late. That's enough time to get another little chunk of this written and checked for errors.
"It's been a while," Jiang Xi says, delicately adjusting her emerald necklace, when she waltzes into Taxian-jun's office almost a full hour late. Pristine, glacial, untouchably beautiful - with the makeup on, anyway. "You look like shit."
"So sorry you have to look at me," Taxian-jun drawls. "You could have sent someone else to pick up the order."
Jiang Xi examines her own immaculate jade-green nail polish for a moment, picks away an invisible bit of skin. Pretty, perfect nails that say I don't work with my hands. Taxian-jun has always found manicures a little repulsive for that reason. "I'm not letting some pharma student with free time drive a truck with nine hundred million dollars worth of medical equipment in it," she says. "Young people drive like lunatics. No offense," she adds.
"None taken. You drive like a geriatric patient," Taxian-jun says. "Do you need me to help you load the pallets?" They aren't heavy, but those fingernails...
"No, I brought one of the interns, I left him in the truck." She pauses at Taxian-jun's raised eyebrow - it's the middle of summer. "I left the window down, he'll be fine. Listen, I heard something from Xue Meng." Her expression grows several degrees bitchier. Jiang Xi hates asking for favors. "Are you really bringing your wife out to have lunch with Meng-er next month?"
"Well. Even the lofty immortal has to descend from her peak every once in a while," Taxian-jun parries. Fucking hell. How many people did Xue Meng blab to? She'll have to double the security she was planning to arrange.
"Let me attend. There are a few projects for the hospital that I want Chu-laoshi's advice on."
"I don't know, it's supposed to be a nice family lunch. You should ask Xue Meng," Taxian-jun lies through her teeth. "You can be her plus-one. If she wants you there." Unlikely.
"Fine," Jiang Xi snaps, bristling and harsh and beautiful. All made up, draped in azure silk and satin, she is colorful the way certain animals are colorful - to warn predators that they're venomous. "I will. So generous of you to finally allow the rest of us mere mortals to see her again."
"Oh? You'd better not have any designs on my wife," Taxian-jun says, warm and playful, like her homicidal jealousy over Wanning and anything and everything to do with Wanning is a funny inside joke.
"I just want fifteen minutes of her time," Jiang Xi says, coolly, holding up her hands in a placating gesture. "You know I don't swing that way. She's all yours."
"Maybe I'll see you there, then," Taxian-jun says. She lets Song Qiutong take over with a wave of her hand and doesn't bother to walk Jiang Xi out.
The first batch of nanomachines worked out very well at Jiang Xi's teaching hospital, and it's through Jiang Xi that Gu Yue Ye has acquired ninety more sets of them. They aren't smart enough to do anything too complex but they can neutralize some poisons and provide valuable diagnostic information without interfering with the functioning of the human body, which is what Jiang Xi asked for. They degrade into harmless waste products forty-eight hours after being injected. Developing the ability for drones to cooperate in a functional hivemind was laterally helpful when designing nanobots designed to travel through human blood and lymph and interstitial fluid, like a school of microscopic fish. Taobao manufactured them and took a substantial cut of the nine hundred million. Taxian-jun doesn't mind. She accepted the work because it was an interesting project and because Jiang Xi is too wealthy to risk offending, not because she needs money.
From a financial perspective, Taxian-jun could walk away now and never work another day in her life and still keep Wanning in secure comfort for another three hundred years.
She knows better than to think the world would allow it. It might have been possible if Chu Wanning had never been a public figure, if she had only ever published her work anonymously, but the Xue family convinced her not to - so Taxian-jun had no choice but to eclipse her, command the public's attention by redirecting it to herself. The world will leave neither of them alone unless Taxian-jun forces it to heel. Her wife has always loved the greater good, far more than she's ever loved any individual person; the world loves idealists, loves to break and bleed them dry, grind them up into dust, eat them whole. Taxian-jun will eliminate the threat of other, lesser loves by subjugating them both, Wanning and the world. She will allow only her own to flourish.
An ugly tension burns and builds within, like a spreading fire, all day long. Even with the cameras keeping a constant vigil the knowledge that Wanning is several kilometers away is like a knife, like ants crawling all over her skin, like a dozen things drinking her blood. It's not always this bad. Today is one of the worse days.
Taxian-jun sends Song Qiutong home at six. Before leaving for the night she turns the vibrator back on. It's only fair - she's been crawling out of her own skin for the last two hours, her wife should be just as miserable.
Wanning is desperate, writhing on top of the bed and making little ah, ah, ah noises under her breath, when Taxian-jun comes back in with their dinner, having stripped back down to total nudity in the antechamber.
Instead of rousing any pity the display just turns her on, something dark and dreadful and sweet shuddering with interest. Sour mood dissolving, Taxian-jun puts the food down in their dining area and picks out something to flog her with, thumb through the keyring to her chastity belt.
"Get on your back," Taxian-jun says, cracking the paddle against her own palm to test the sting.
Her wife is draped face down over the bed and panting, almost delirious. Wanning blinks at her in obvious confusion - catches sight of the implement in Taxian-jun's hand and moans with wordless apprehension, low and terrible. Her hips are twitching in the air - her pale pink toes are curling.
"Get on your fucking back and spread your legs," Taxian-jun spits at her, excitement surging.
The little half-sob Wanning makes is nectar and ambrosia, sustenance that Taxian-jun wants to eat and eat and never stop eating. Unsteady, the vibrator inside her still buzzing, Wanning lies flat on her back and spreads her legs for her master. Her reluctant obedience is just as appetizing as the soft helpless noises she makes.
"Good girl," Taxian-jun says, and unlocks the chastity belt. There are two locks - one for the waistband, one for the band that goes between her legs - and when they're both open it's easy to pull the whole thing off and away. The metal clatters when she drops it on the floor, shoving it out of the way with her foot. The smell is fucking amazing - concentrated musk, honey and wine and salt. Wanning's lower body is glistening with sweat - her pussy is dripping, throbbing. The base of the anal beads lies flush against her ass, her body sucking them in.
"Mo Ran," her wife sobs. "Please -"
The first blow of the leather strap, directly to her cunt, makes her shriek. Her body writhes - in a dangerous moment, she almost closes her legs. She knows better, though. She grabs her own thighs and clings to them, instead, holding herself open for Taxian-jun. For her master. Trying so hard to be good.
"You little slut," Taxian-jun says, and hits her three more times, relishing the crisp smacking noise, the way she reacts to it in a full-body flinch - there's nowhere for her to run, nowhere she can go to escape this. "Did you cum? Even though I locked you up?"
"No," Wanning moans, tears and snot streaming down her face. "No, I didn't -"
"Look how wet you are," Taxian-jun scolds her, rubbing the handle of the paddle through her slick folds and showing her how it glistens. "Nasty little girl, leaking everywhere. You really didn't cum?"
"I didn't," Wanning insists, hiccuping on her own tears, frustrated, powerless. Her hips jerk against the air - the noise of the vibrator intensifies, as though she's straining her muscles against it. Taxian-jun realizes she's been smiling for the past few minutes.
"Push it out," she says, cocking her hips and staring between her wife's legs. "Go ahead and lay that egg for me."
The look of absolute humiliation on that pretty face - Wanning is so appealing, so pretty like this. It's a difficult position for what her master has asked from her. She winds up curling her torso forward and arching her back a few times, straining and struggling in a rocking motion to force the vibrator out of her body. While the belt was on there wasn't enough room to allow it - Taxian-jun wonders if Wanning tried to do this earlier and failed. When her pet finally succeeds - the egg crowning and then slipping out all at once - Taxian-jun yanks out the anal beads, too, and the way Wanning screams is perfect. Pure, anguished overload.
"Breathe," Taxian-jun orders. She picks up the egg and twists it to shut it off, places it next to the beads on the floor.
As soon as Wanning manages to obey, Taxian-jun starts to beat her pussy in earnest. Slow, methodical and firm, one blow every five seconds for about three minutes, until the outer lips are as red as the inner ones, the whole flesh of Wanning's sex an angry, throbbing dark pink. Puffy and tender and inflamed. At first her pet muffles her noises, grits her teeth and tries not to scream. By the end of it Wanning is bawling uncontrollably, crying no, I hate you through a waterfall of tears. Broken and open and beaten raw. Still so fucking wet. Still clinging, desperately, to her own thighs to stop them from closing. Beautiful. Perfectly beautiful.
"Good," Taxian-jun moans, letting the paddle drop to the floor, kneeling next to the bed. "Keep your legs open."
She does, even though she flinches when she feels her master's warm breath on her abused cunt. When she feels the gentle tongue running over her swollen inner lips Wanning starts to sob again, a low, needy begging noise - desperate for the relief but still too sensitive to endure it. Her belly clenches, her limbs shake. When Taxian-jun's lips wrap around her clit and suck, two fingers pressing inside her throbbing center, she screams, her entire body convulsing in one of the most intense orgasms Taxian-jun has ever wrung out of her. For almost a full minute her body continues to vibrate, conquered by the pleasure/pain.
Taxian-jun pets her through the aftermath, something bright and bubbly and close to laughter rising in her chest as Wanning pulses and twitches. "Still hate me?" she asks, only a little mocking, when her wife seems coherent enough to speak again. She slowly pulls her fingers out of the wet warmth - they taste like accomplishment, a brief but potent satisfaction.
Struggling back to her senses, Wanning finally lets go of her own thighs, limp and dazed. "... No," she mumbles, blinking up at the ceiling. It's kind of cute, how fast the fight goes out of her. Kind of pathetic, too. Wanning is such a strange, stubborn creature. Always picking the wrong hill to die on. Endearing and exasperating - so smart and so stupid.
"Why not? If anyone did to me what I do to you every day, I'd kill them," Taxian-jun informs her, matter-of-fact, voice rich with amusement.
Wanning does not seem to be capable of processing that sentence - Taxian-jun's smile stretches wider. "Actually, I already have," she confesses, relaxing into the atmosphere. Will her wife scold her? Try to give a lecture, like she's still a teacher and Taxian-jun is still her student Mo Ran? She wants Wanning to snap at her, wants to let her pull herself together so Taxian-jun can take her apart all over again.
There is no attempt to lecture. Wanning develops a glassy, confused look. "But..." she begins, trailing off.
"But what?" Taxian-jun prompts, still smiling down at her. "Killing people is bad?"
Wanning's lower lip wobbles - her eyes are wet again. She looks a bit heartbroken.
"... But we're married," she whispers.
Tears well up, spilling out of her eyes in a silent ode to grief.
Something brittle snaps in Taxian-jun's chest. For a moment she is too stupefied to react.
"... Of course we're married," she blurts out, leaning over her wife's body and thumbing the tears off her flushed cheeks, trying to soothe her. What the hell? "Wanning, of course we're married. Don't cry... what's the matter? Shh, it's all right, don't cry -"
Just like the strange scene from that morning, Wanning's arms fly up and wrap around Taxian-jun's shoulders - asking to be held. Will kissing help calm her down? It's worth an attempt, Taxian-jun decides. Her wife doesn't resist their mouths being slotted together, or the firm tongue that pushes its way in. She only shuts her eyes and clings while Taxian-jun kisses her. She doesn't bite or claw or struggle. She attaches herself to Taxian-jun like a limpet.
It's bewildering, how Wanning can grab her own torturer like this for comfort.
Like Wanning doesn't hate her at all.
Wanning hisses through her teeth when Taxian-jun lowers their bodies into the steaming hot bath, but she doesn't try to escape Taxian-jun's arms. After being dried off and carried to the table, she eats her entire dinner without any complaints. Even the vegetables. There's no okra in it this time, but neither of them comment on it. Her wife is obedient and silent, and does not make eye contact - Taxian-jun cannot tell if she's embarrassed or if she's simply avoiding her, to the extent that Taxian-jun can be avoided.
(I'll be good, Mo Ran.)
Later that night, Taxian-jun gives her one of the soothing enemas, chamomile tea slightly warmer than Wanning's body temperature. It's supposed to feel good - pleasant and calming. It seems to, from what Taxian-jun can observe as she holds it in - the way her muscles are relaxed, the way she doesn't tremble as much, the way her face changes into that soft, near-but-distant expression that means Wanning is drifting somewhere beyond discomfort, serene and peaceful. She nuzzles her face against Taxian-jun's inner arm and breathes steadily, in and out.
It's supposed to feel good for a few days, afterwards. It's almost an apology.
"Does it hurt?" Taxian-jun asks, fingertips tracing her wife's nipples.
"No," Wanning says. She sounds drowsy. "Just full."
"... What kind of birth control do you want?"
"I'm not scared of bleeding," Wanning says. It takes a moment before Taxian-jun realizes that her wife is responding to something Taxian-jun said - it was while they were fucking this morning, Taxian-jun was distracted. "It's just gross."
More gross than what Taxian-jun does to her every day? Taxian-jun considers various types of drugs she could soak tampons with before putting them inside Wanning, for a moment - thinks about drinking her blood, or fingerpainting her body with it and writing nasty words. Keeping her locked in her belt would be difficult if she was bleeding, maybe she'd have Wanning wear something absorbent underneath it.
"I've been on the shot since I was fourteen," Taxian-jun says, as though she's pushing a plate of food across a table, offering up the sentence to see what her wife does with it. "You only need it four times a year."
Wanning hums. "I didn't want to rely on anything that could be taken away," she says eventually.
Ah. That makes sense. Taxian-jun can appreciate the depth of her paranoia, her desire for control over her own body - Taxian-jun's desire for control of that same body is just as fanatic, if not moreso. At least they have something in common.
"Well, you have me, now," she says. "And I won't take it away. So you have to keep eating."
A little huff of annoyance. A shift in the position of her hips. Hand over her stomach.
They don't really talk after that. After letting her release the chamomile tea and giving her a quick rinse with water Taxian-jun takes her to bed and eats her ass from behind, fingers gently stroking her in front, slipping inside her every now and then to give her something to clench down on. She's wetter than usual and seems easier to coax into orgasm. The taste and smell of the tea lingers, fragrant like sweet grass.
Eventually Wanning's legs collapse. Taxian-jun turns her over and keeps licking between her legs, tongue soothing the hurt she inflicted earlier, until Wanning is crying and shuddering at every touch, and then continues a little longer after that.
She falls asleep holding the smaller body in her arms, drifting off into an endless field of white like a blizzard - a devouring nothingness, the absence of anything at all.
She does not recall any dreams interrupting the void but startles awake at a strange hour, anyway. The slices of visible sky in the windows are pitch-black and glowing with white stars, like lapis lazuli cabochons in concrete frames, and for a moment the difference between ground and foreground in her visual field is reversed. Three in the morning? Four?
"How am I going to get you out of this?" she hears a familiar voice murmur from behind her - feels a hand caressing her hair, skin tugging at the strands.
It appears to be Wanning's voice, Wanning touching her, only Wanning is saying something that makes no sense at all.
There's been a lot of that, lately.
Perhaps Taxian-jun is still dreaming.
"Get me out of what, laoshi?" she asks, into the hazy unreality.
The other woman goes rigid.
Ah. Not a dream, then.
Taxian-jun rolls over to blink at her wife's tired, startled face, at the raised hand that was stroking her hair while she slept.
"... I don't like your job," Wanning mumurs. Contrite and subdued.
That's kind of funny. Her wife doesn't actually know very much about what Taxian-jun does for a living. "Which one?" she asks.
"With Hua Binan," Wanning clarifies.
Hua Binan is the one who gave Taxian-jun a list of people to kill after Shi Mei disappeared - provided resources, contacts, compensation. "I don't like her either," Taxian-jun says, consolingly. She doesn't. The alliance was a means to an end for both of them - enacting retribution for Shi Mei's death. It has outlived its utility. She suspects the other woman is already sabotaging her behind the scenes, but can't prove anything yet.
"I don't want you to work with her anymore," Wanning insists. She seems urgent, almost as though she's frightened of something.
It would be so heartwarming, Taxian-jun thinks, if Wanning actually cared. She swallows her bitterness. "Don't worry about it," she says, rubbing a knuckle up and down the arch of her wife's nose.
"Mo Ran," her wife murmurs - a sad little protest.
"Go back to sleep," she insists, yawning. "We can talk about it in the morning."
"We won't," Wanning whispers, shutting her eyes in defeat. "You'll forget."
She seems so sure of it.
"No, I won't," Taxian-jun objects. The arc of the sky is spinning like a roulette wheel above their heads. "We haven't talked about this before, have we?"
Wanning's eyes stay shut, but her brows crease, and her lips pinch together in a line. "Go back to sleep, Mo Ran," she says.
"Fine," Taxian-jun concedes, too tired to keep arguing, already falling back into the endless drifting field of snow.
Later she dreams of her own body rotting and being devoured by hundreds and hundreds of cockroaches, of continuously vomiting until her body turns inside out and then back again, of choking on smoke. Contrary to Wanning's expectations, however, she does not forget the conversation. It lodges in her mind like a splinter.