He was still inside her when his weight shifted. His hand found her hip, and he pulled out slow — the drag of it made her breath catch, made her feel every inch of the leaving — and then his palm was flat on her waist, turning her, guiding her over onto her stomach before she could decide whether she wanted to be moved.

The sheets were cool where her cheek landed. Her hair fell across her face, sticking to her mouth, and she didn't bother to move it. Behind her, the mattress dipped. His knee pressed between hers, spreading her wider, and his hand slid down the curve of her back — palm warm, fingers spread, mapping her like he had all night and still hadn't finished.

"Stay just like that," he said.

She felt him before she felt him — the blunt press of his cock against her, sliding through the wet she'd already made, finding her entrance and pausing there. Not pushing. Just resting against her, letting her feel the shape of what was coming. Her fingers curled into the pillowcase. White cotton, cool against her knuckles.

Then he pushed in.

The angle was different. She understood it in the first inch — deeper than before, the stretch of it longer, the pressure landing somewhere new, somewhere that made her whole lower belly go tight. Her mouth opened against the pillow. No sound came out. He kept going, slow, steady, until his pelvis met her ass and there was nowhere left for him to go.

"There," he said, more to himself than to her.

He stayed there. Let her feel the full weight of him, the way her body had to make room. His hand came off her back and slid around to her front — flat across her lower belly, fingers spread wide, pressing down.

"Breathe," he said. "You're holding your breath."

She hadn't noticed. She let it out, shaky, and the exhale moved her around him, and he made a low sound behind her teeth.

"That's it."

He pulled back — slow, so slow she could feel the drag of every ridge of him leaving her — and pushed in again. Same pace. Same depth. His hand on her belly pressed harder, like he was holding her in place, or holding something in.

His other hand slid beneath her, cupping her breast, and he squeezed — a slow, deliberate kneading that made her breath hitch — before his thumb found her nipple and rolled it, then pinched, a sharp little tug that sent a jolt straight down through her belly.

"You feel that?" he said. His voice was low, close to her ear now. He'd leaned over her back, chest to her spine, his breath hot against her neck. "Right here."

He kept at it while he moved — palm massaging one breast, fingers plucking and pinching the nipple until it was stiff and aching, then switching to the other, giving it the same rough, patient attention. Her chest was pressed into his hand and into the mattress both, and she couldn't tell anymore which pressure was which.

His palm pressed flat and firm against her lower belly, and she felt it — the pressure of him from the inside and the pressure of his hand from the outside, meeting somewhere in the middle of her, and her eyes closed without her permission.

"I can feel myself in you," he said.

The words landed somewhere low in her, and her cunt clenched around him — tight, involuntary, a response she couldn't have stopped if she'd tried. He felt it. Of course he felt it. His breath went ragged against her shoulder, and his hips stuttered, just once, before he caught the rhythm again.

"You like that," he said. Not a question.

She shook her head against the pillow. It was the only answer she had left. Her voice was gone, buried somewhere under the weight of him and the slow, relentless drag of his cock in and out of her.

"Liar," he said, and she could hear the smile in it. He pulled out further this time — almost all the way, leaving her empty and aching — and then pushed back in hard enough that her whole body shifted up the bed.

The sound she made was not a word. It was barely a sound at all, but it was enough. His hand came off her belly and found her hip, fingers digging in, holding her still while he did it again. And again.

His hand left her hip and found her breast again, fingers closing over it, pinching the nipple hard enough to make her gasp into the pillow — and the gasp turned into a moan when he thrust in again, the two sensations braided together so tightly she couldn't separate them.

The rhythm changed. Still slow, but heavier now — each stroke landing with a purpose. He wasn't just moving inside her anymore. He was working her, deliberate, like he had a specific thing in mind and he knew exactly how to get it.

Her hands found the pillowcase and gripped. The cotton twisted in her fists, and she pressed her forehead into the mattress and tried to breathe through it, but her breath kept catching on the top of each stroke, breaking apart, and the sounds she was making were getting harder to swallow.

"Don't hide it," he said. "I want to hear you."

"Sang Yan—"

His name came out broken. She didn't know what she was asking for. More. Less. Something. His hand slid from her hip up her spine, slow, palm flat, and then back down to her waist, and then around to her front again — fingers finding her clit without hesitation, finding it slick and swollen, and pressing.

The sound she made was nothing like a word.

"There she is," he said.

His fingers moved in small, tight circles while his hips kept their slow, deep rhythm. The two things didn't match — the gentle, insistent pressure of his hand and the relentless fullness of him moving inside her — and her body didn't know which one to follow. She felt stretched between them, caught, and the second orgasm started building before the aftershocks of the first had finished.

His free hand was still on her breast, kneading, pinching, rolling her nipple between thumb and forefinger in time with the circles on her clit, and her body had given up trying to follow any single thing — it was all one current now, pulling her under.

She felt it coming. Not the way she had the first time, when it had caught her off guard and pulled her under. This time she felt every step of it — the heat gathering low, the tightness in her belly, the way her breath kept getting shorter and shallower no matter how hard she tried to slow it down.

"You're close," he said. His mouth was at her ear again, his voice low and rough and certain. "I can feel you getting tight. Don't hold back."

"I—"

"Don't hold back," he said again, and pressed down harder on her clit, and thrust in deeper — deeper than she thought she could take — and the edge she'd been teetering on for the last minute just disappeared.

She came. Hard. Harder than the first time, her whole body locking up around him, her cunt clenching in waves that kept rolling through her while he kept moving, kept fucking her through it, slow and steady and unrelenting. Her fingers twisted in the pillowcase until her knuckles went pale. Her mouth was open against the mattress and she couldn't remember how to close it.

He didn't stop. He didn't slow down. He kept the same rhythm — deep, deliberate, one stroke after another — and she understood, dimly, through the haze of it, that he wasn't going to stop until he was finished. That she was going to keep feeling this until he decided she was done.

"Sang Yan," she said again. It came out as a sob. Or a plea. She didn't know which.

"I know," he said. His hand left her clit and found her hip again, both hands now, holding her in place while he fucked her. "I know, baby. Just a little more."

His hands came back to her breasts, both of them now, cupping and squeezing as he fucked her, his fingers pinching her nipples in a rhythm that matched his hips — and she arched into his palms without meaning to, her body answering him before her mind could catch up.

His hips picked up speed. The slow, deliberate rhythm broke apart into something faster, harder, less controlled — his breath ragged against her back, his fingers digging into her hips hard enough to bruise, his whole body weight pressing her down into the mattress. The wet sound of them moving together filled the room, loud and unmistakable, and she felt a fresh flush of heat climb up her neck at the sound of it.

"Fuck," he said, low and rough, and it was the first time all night she'd heard him sound like he was losing the thread. "You feel—"

He didn't finish the sentence. His hips stuttered, then snapped forward hard, and he groaned — a sound pulled from somewhere deep in his chest — and she felt him come. Felt the heat of it spilling into her, pulse after pulse, while his hands held her hips pinned and his cock stayed buried deep inside her.

It went on for a long time. Longer than she expected. He kept moving through it — shallow, involuntary thrusts, like his body couldn't quite stop — and each one pushed more of him deeper into her, and she felt every bit of it.

When he finally stilled, he didn't pull out. He stayed there, draped over her back, his chest rising and falling against her spine, his breath hot and uneven against her shoulder blade. His hands stayed on her hips. His cock stayed inside her, softening slowly, and she could feel him — the weight of him, the wetness of him, the way her body was still holding him.

Neither of them said anything for a long moment. The ceiling fan turned overhead. Somewhere in the penthouse, the air conditioning hummed. Her cheek was pressed into the pillow and her hair was stuck to her face and she couldn't feel her legs.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

The question was so ordinary, so gentle, that it took her a second to understand it. She nodded against the pillow. Then, because that didn't feel like enough, she said, "Yes."

His hand came off her hip and slid up her back, slow, soothing, the way you'd touch someone who was shaking. She hadn't realized she was shaking. He pulled out of her carefully — slow enough that she felt every inch of the leaving — and she made a small sound at the emptiness, and he pressed his palm flat against her lower back in response, like an apology.

"Don't move," he said. "Give me a second."

The mattress shifted as he got up. She heard his footsteps cross the room, heard a drawer open, heard water running somewhere. She stayed where she was, face down in the pillow, because he'd told her to, and because her body didn't seem to want to move anyway. The sheets were damp beneath her. Her thighs were slick. She could feel him — his cum — starting to leak out of her, slow and warm, and she pressed her knees together without thinking about it.

He came back. The mattress dipped again, and then there was a warm, damp cloth against her thigh, gentle, wiping. She flinched at the first touch — she couldn't help it — and his hand stilled.

"It's just me," he said.

She nodded into the pillow. He finished cleaning her — careful, thorough, his touch so gentle it made her throat ache — and then he was lying down beside her, on his back, pulling her against his side. Her cheek found his chest. His arm came around her shoulders. His heartbeat was still fast under her ear, slowing by degrees.

"You did so well," he said.

She didn't know what to say to that. She didn't know what to say to any of it. So she stayed quiet, and let him hold her, and stared at the far wall — at the window, and the city lights beyond it, and the reflection of the two of them in the glass, tangled together in a bed that wasn't hers.

Her phone was still in her bag. By the door. Where she'd dropped it when he'd kissed her.

Sang Zhi thought she was getting a charger.

"What time is it?" she asked.

He shifted, reached for his phone on the nightstand, checked it. "Almost eleven."

She'd left the Sang family apartment at nine-thirty. Sang Zhi would have noticed by now. Maybe. Or maybe she was too busy chasing Jia Xu around the living room to notice anything at all.

"I should text her," Xiao Lie said.

"In the morning."

"She'll worry."

"She won't." His hand moved up and down her arm, slow, unhurried. "She thinks you're getting a charger. You'll tell her you fell asleep on my couch. It's fine."

The ease of it — the way the lie came out of him without hesitation, like he'd already worked it all out — made something cold settle in her stomach. She lifted her head and looked at him. He was staring at the ceiling, his face calm, his arm still around her.

"You planned this," she said.

He turned his head and looked at her. His eyes were dark, unreadable, and he didn't answer for a long moment.

"I planned for you to come here," he said finally. "Everything after that—" He shrugged, one shoulder moving against the mattress. "That was just us."

She didn't know whether to believe him. She didn't know if it mattered. She put her head back down on his chest and closed her eyes, and his arm tightened around her, and she let herself be held in a bed that wasn't hers, in a penthouse she'd never been to before tonight, by a man who had been her best friend's brother for six years and something else entirely for the last three hours.

Somewhere in the apartment, her phone buzzed in her bag. Once. Twice.

She didn't get up to check it.