Cui Yunchu pursed her lips and nodded.
Shen Xiabai tilted his head up to examine the slight bump on her forehead, then suddenly raised a brow. “Did you get that just now?”
“Why does it look to me as though you got it from knocking your head on the floor at the South Wind Pavilion yesterday?”
Cui Yunchu immediately covered her head. “What South Wind Pavilion? I’m the daughter of the prime minister, a proper young lady. Do you think I’m that sort of person? Don’t go around slandering my reputation.”
Shen Xiabai gave a soft laugh. “Is that so?” His fingers brushed over the bump on her forehead, then he pressed down slightly.
Cui Yunchu let out an exaggerated yelp, covered her head, and lowered her gaze.
“Does it hurt?”
Her eyes brimmed with tears.
“Let this teach you a lesson,” Shen Xiabai said, before gently rubbing the spot again.
What a nasty man! Cui Yunchu pouted.
“Bai Ye wouldn’t treat me like this.”
No wonder so many people liked finding substitutes. A substitute was so much better than the real thing.
“Bai Ye?” Shen Xiabai pinched her chin, forcing her to raise her face and meet his eyes. “That pretty boy from the South Wind Pavilion?”
Cui Yunchu nodded with great conviction. “Yes. So what? He’s very gentle. He speaks so sweetly, and he tells me whatever I want to hear.”
“So when you wanted to knock your head on the floor, he let you do it,” Shen Xiabai cut in. Then he gripped her head and gave it a hard shake. “And after all that bowing, did you manage to shake the water out of your brain?”
“You’re the one with water in your brain.” Cui Yunchu used both hands to pry away his restraining hand.
“How many taels did he cost?” Shen Xiabai asked lazily.
“What do you mean, how many taels?”
“Bai Ye. How many taels did he charge you?”
Cui Yunchu scratched her head. She honestly could not remember.
Mainly because she had not been the one paying, so it had not hurt enough for her to remember. “Maybe... just a few taels?”
Shen Xiabai scoffed. “Then he really is cheap.”
Cui Yunchu curled her lip. “Still better than you, throwing yourself at me for free.”
A man who charged ten thousand taels for one kiss had the nerve to call someone else cheap.
Shen Xiabai’s smile turned dark. Pressing a hand against her waist, he pushed her back slightly, his refined face close to hers. “Say that again if you dare.”
“You’re not worth anything.”
Shen Xiabai opened his mouth and bit down on Cui Yunchu’s lower lip.
Under normal circumstances, this ought to have turned into an embrace and a dizzying kiss. But perhaps Shen Xiabai had used too much force, because Cui Yunchu let out a shriek like a mouse.
Like a cat or dog with its tail stepped on.
Unable to bear the assault on his eardrums, Shen Xiabai had no choice but to let her go. “Using my money to hire a male courtesan... A Chu, just how thick is your skin? Let me have a feel.”
Cui Yunchu was terrified.
Kissing was one thing, but feeling her up...
“It wasn’t your money. It was Prince An’s.”
Use Prince An’s money to redeem a male courtesan, sleep with his concubine, have a son, and let Prince An raise him.
Cui Yunchu burst out laughing.
What a pity. Such a grand undertaking had ultimately failed.
Shen Xiabai stroked her hair, his touch exceptionally gentle. “A Chu, do you remember yesterday, when you grabbed that male courtesan and wept your eyes out while calling my name?”
“????”
Cui Yunchu’s clear eyes widened, filled with innocent bewilderment.
“What nonsense are you talking about?”
“You’ve forgotten.” Shen Xiabai looked heartbroken. “You mistook him for me. You cried and told me not to marry the princess. You said you cared for me. Don’t you remember?”
Cui Yunchu felt as if thunder had struck above her head.
As though she had seen something horrifying, she shoved Shen Xiabai away and backed up. “I didn’t! Don’t you dare slander me!”
She had not been drunk enough to lose all sense of the world. How could she possibly have done something so ridiculous?
“I didn’t.”
“You did.”
Cui Yunchu choked with anger. “Stop spouting nonsense. I only... I was only drunk and dragged him along to bow and called him ‘Prince Consort.’ Nothing else happened. I didn’t do it, and I won’t admit to it.”
Shen Xiabai’s eyes were full of amusement. “Only that? But I distinctly heard you say you couldn’t live without me.”
“...”
Cui Yunchu laughed angrily several times.
But the man before her suddenly leaned closer. Shen Xiabai gazed at her face, his voice soft and haunting. “A Chu, try to remember a little harder.”
“No need. Absolutely impossible.”
One hand at her waist, Shen Xiabai lowered his head and kissed the still-swollen spot on her forehead. “But you did say it. You said you liked me.”
“But I never grabbed a male courtesan and told him I couldn’t live without you,” Cui Yunchu retorted.
The moment the words left her mouth, Shen Xiabai’s low laugh sounded by her ear. Cui Yunchu abruptly fell silent, her throat catching.
It was as if hundreds of schemes had just flown right past her...
“You tricked me?”
Shen Xiabai’s eyes seemed strewn with tiny stars, reflecting Cui Yunchu’s lovely face. “A Chu, say it to me one more time, will you?”
Something seemed to clutch hard at Cui Yunchu’s heart, and then it began racing.
They stared at each other in silence, so close that not even the wind could slip between them.
Just as Shen Xiabai, overcome by heated impulse, bent toward her to kiss her, a fragrant breeze accompanied Cui Yunchu’s little palm as it swept over and smacked him squarely on the head without mercy.
Caught off guard, Shen Xiabai’s head tilted to one side from the blow.
“Say it to your head! You rotten man with eight hundred schemes. Let go of me. I want to go home and find Grandmother. Everyone outside is a bad person.”
Even Shen Xiabai’s hair crown had been knocked crooked.
His expression remained calm. After all, when he was with Cui Yunchu, such sudden mood-ruining incidents were nothing out of the ordinary.
His gaze settled on her smooth, beautiful face. Then he suddenly seized the back of her neck with one hand, gripped her waist with the other, and forcefully pressed his lips to hers.
His kiss was forceful and commanding, and the hand at her waist was equally firm, as though he wanted to draw her into his very bones and blood.
The wind was fierce, but Cui Yunchu could not feel even the slightest trace of it. Shen Xiabai blocked it all for her.
Cui Yunchu was quickly overwhelmed, lightly wrapping her arms around the man’s lean waist.
“A Chu, you care for me too, don’t you?”
Cui Yunchu bit her lip. No matter how he coaxed or threatened her, she refused to say it again. Shen Xiabai said, “If you won’t admit it, I’ll go to Prime Minister Cui and have him bear witness for me.”
His forehead rested against hers, his voice low. “One cannot toy with another’s feelings and then abandon them. Think about the Shen family’s storerooms—and over two hundred servants. They’ll all be yours when the time comes.”
Cui Yunchu’s eyes lit up. “Then can I have all that without taking you?”
Shen Xiabai lowered his head and kissed her again.
As the two embraced and kissed as though no one else existed, Shen Zilan, who happened to be passing by as he escorted Chen Miaohe away, suffered a severe blow.
He immediately covered Chen Miaohe’s eyes and swiftly dragged her away. But Chen Miaohe wriggled out from under Shen Zilan’s hand like a monkey, hopping and craning her neck for a look toward the stone table.
“Shen Zilan, I think Shen Xiabai and Sister Cui are the better match. Why don’t you just give up?”
Shen Zilan drooped his head and said nothing.
Cui Yunchu felt as though her lips hurt from all the kissing.
Then the hand resting at her waist suddenly slid lower. Shen Xiabai supported her bottom and lifted her onto the stone table.
Her face instantly flushed bright red. “Y-you... you, you, you—what are you doing?”
Shen Xiabai gave a wicked smile, wrapped an arm around her waist, and pinned her against his chest. Then he gave her slightly raised backside a light, teasing smack as her body bobbed with the movement.
“I’ll give you one more chance. Do you want me or not?”
“...”
Cui Yunchu’s body bounced slightly from the smack, following the motion of his hand.
