Crossing the Line – Chapter 79

Visceral Attraction

As the banquet wound down, Lin Xuebo — happy past all measure tonight, and drunk past it too — declared she was sleepy and wanted to go home.

Qiao Jin murmured something in her ear. Lin Xuebo’s expression shifted, and she gave a soft “hmph.”

            

“About time.”

Qiao Jin helped her into the car, and was halfway in herself when she noticed Fan Qing hovering some ten paces off — heaven knew how long she’d been standing there.

She had things to say; her eyes had been trailing Qiao Jin all night.

            

She’d finally waited out the banquet’s end, and seeing Qiao Jin with Lin Xuebo, hadn’t dared come straight over — just waited obediently in the distance.

Qiao Jin had one foot in the car. She stepped back out and said, in Fan Qing’s direction:

“Come here.”

            

Fan Qing’s heart went hot; she closed the distance in a hurry.

It wasn’t a workday, so Fan Qing was dressed easy — a cropped white top baring her waist, shorts and short boots below.

Early October nights in J City already carried a chill. Fan Qing’s outfit was still living in summer, while Qiao Jin had a shawl wrapped around her shoulders.

            

The tall young woman standing across from her might as well have been standing in a different season.

A time lag, plain as day.

The autumn wind swept past. Qiao Jin pulled the shawl tighter, tilted her face up, and waited for Fan Qing to speak.

            

Seeing the woman before her looking faintly cold, Fan Qing wanted nothing more than to fold her straight into her arms.

“Not saying anything?” Qiao Jin cocked her head at her, a flicker of a smile in it. “Here to apologize again?”

Last time, at least, she hadn’t hurt Qiao Jin’s lips. It was just… it had felt too good, and she’d left a whole row of teeth marks on Qiao Jin’s shoulder. Waking the next morning and seeing them herself, Fan Qing had been appalled — as if Qiao Jin had been attacked by a wild animal in the night.

            

Qiao Jin, studying the marks in the mirror, had given the blanket-cocooned lump of Fan Qing on the bed a wordless look.

“Anyone would think an old enemy came looking for revenge — you unloaded your entire arsenal on me.”

Fan Qing: …

            

She pulled the blanket up over her face, leaving nothing visible but a pair of helpless eyes.

After that, Qiao Jin had been busy — her own company, an old friend’s affairs, the toxic messes inside her family.

Fan Qing hadn’t been idle either. The BOSS’s wedding plus a backlog of company business had her working past ten every night.

            

They had crossed paths a few times coordinating wedding details, but there were too many people and never enough time — all they could manage were stolen glances.

And Qiao Jin, maddeningly, had no attention to spare for her.

The rare glance she sent over was cool and brief.

            

Fan Qing couldn’t tell whether Qiao Jin despised her or not, and it left her nerves strung tight.

Tonight was the best chance she’d get. If she didn’t come show her face and cadge a little affection, Qiao Jin might go keep some other little pet.

Fan Qing turned it over forever — should she apologize? For what? What if Qiao Jin told her she’d apologized for the wrong thing again?

            

She was still assembling the sentence when Qiao Jin sighed first.

Fan Qing’s heart clenched. What did that sigh mean? Was she fed up with me?

Her thoughts were still congealing when Qiao Jin’s arm hooked around her neck, dragged her down, and a hot kiss sealed over her lips — skilled, unhurried, parting them.

            

In the car, Lin Xuebo went “oh-ho” inside, clapped a hand over her mouth, and sneakily took a photo.

Fan Qing’s eyes had gone hazy from the kiss; when she tried to chase it, Qiao Jin’s lips withdrew, terminating the sweet kiss with perfect cruelty.

“So clever everywhere else — how do you go stupid in front of me?”

            

Qiao Jin patted her cheek and settled into the car.

Even the electric door sliding shut couldn’t sever Fan Qing’s gaze, which stretched after her like a strand of melting cheese.

This is killing me…

            

So do I go find her tonight, or not?

Fan Qing’s heart burned like fire in the wind-torn autumn night. After pacing a while, she found a corner, pulled up the “99 Routines to Woo a Mature Jiejie” document again, and studied it, chewing over every line.

In the car, Qiao Jin said to Lin Xuebo: “Send it to me.”

            

Lin Xuebo sent her the best of the three photos she’d just taken — best angle, best light.

Qiao Jin looked. Fan Qing, kissed, didn’t even know where to put her hands.

A smile crept onto her lips.

            

Cute.

---

Jiang Siyi and Lin Ji had changed out of the elaborate wedding gowns and came out through a door on the hotel’s other side with Jiang Siling and Glenda.

Siling had drunk a fair amount tonight too — the same puffy eyes and drunken sway as Lin Xuebo, same brand and all.

            

She’d spent the whole evening draped over her younger sister, loath to let go, as though after tonight she’d never see her again.

She told Lin Ji how good her younger sister had been growing up, how hard things had been for her, how outstanding she was — how she’d given up her own hobby of painting so Siling could study art properly.

“I’ve only got this one younger sister… You have to take good care of her, or — or — or I won’t spare you even as a ghost!”

            

She’d got as far as “or” three times over and produced a “warning” whose premise was her own death first.

Jiang Siyi wiped her tears, at a loss for words.

Apparently… her elder sister really had been watching some strange television dramas lately.

            

She’d been about to ask Lin Ji to talk her down, then saw Lin Ji open the notes app on her phone and enter every last detail of what Siling had just said.

“Jiejie, you mentioned someone passed Siyi love letters for a whole month in primary school. Do you remember their name?”

Jiang Siyi: .

            

Forget it — there was still Glenda.

Surely Glenda could stop a drunk elder sister from talking nonsense.

And Glenda herself hadn’t put her phone down all night; she was filming right now, saying in half-cooked Chinese:

            

“Baby so beautiful, crying also so beautiful. Tomorrow you will definitely love this video.”

Jiang Siyi: …

Was there a single normal person left around her?

            

And the most normal one of all, Fan Qing, was nowhere in sight.

Yan Yu had been a true friend tonight — she’d booked the entire Yunding Chinese restaurant, the garden, and Parking Zone A for Lin Ji.

The shuttle cars were all standing by in the lot.

            

Lin Ji flagged one of them to take Jiang Siling and Glenda back to the hotel.

Siling was already in the car, but she caught Lin Ji’s hand — nine parts drunk, ten parts earnest.

“Xiao You, I… I want to thank you. After Mama passed, I never saw her this happy. You look like a demon, fierce as all get-out — honestly, the reincarnation of Wang Ling, a refrigerator with long legs. But the truth is, you’ve done better by her than I have, her own biological elder sister — so much better…”

            

Lin Ji: …

Was that praise or an insult?

Also — “who’s Wang Ling?”

            

Jiang Siyi supplied the answer in a small voice: “My elder sister’s homeroom teacher in junior high.”

Lin Ji: .

Terrified her girlfriend would keep drunkenly producing something even more catastrophic, Glenda steered Siling’s head onto her own shoulder, tucked it in, waved a smiling goodbye to Siyi and Lin Ji, and made haste.

            

Side by side, Jiang Siyi and Lin Ji watched her elder sister and Glenda leave.

Sneaking a glance at the wife beside her, Jiang Siyi added under her breath:

“Teacher Wang was fierce, sure — but very beautiful.”

            

Lin Ji: “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Under the moonlight, Lin Ji with her hair pinned up was a different flavor from her usual cold-toned beauty.

Tonight’s makeup was rich and vivid — a beauty with real killing power, her mature elegance thrown into sharper relief.

            

She looked ice-cold and indifferent, but Jiang Siyi knew: no one alive loved better than she did.

She thought again of what Lin Ji had said — that their first kiss wasn’t the one she’d always believed it to be.

She’d just hooked her little finger to ask when a sports car rounded the corner at full aggression.

            

The car roared up to the two of them, door swinging up, and out stepped a cold-faced woman.

Jiang Siyi had seen this woman before.

CEO Wei — Zhou Ni’s current boss.

            

Though given the frequency of Zhou Ni’s “running away from home,” whether the two were still in an employment relationship was anyone’s guess.

Wei Zhaoxue climbed out, cape-style coat hanging open over a crimson dress, ink-black hair loose. When the wind lifted the strands, that exquisitely-boned face was undone by the oversized band-aid plastered across her forehead.

Her expression was sharp shot through with vexation, and beneath the vexation an anxiety she couldn’t hide — like a homeless female ghost.

            

She looked Lin Ji dead in the eye. “Have you seen Zhou Ni?”

It felt like this exact scene had played out not long ago.

Lin Ji had known Wei Zhaoxue for many years. The woman was undefeated in the boardroom, a master player of hearts; Lin Ji had never once seen her trailing after anyone, frantic, hunting for a person.

            

A glance at her forehead. “What, blacklisted again?”

Wei Zhaoxue: …

Nothing infuriated her like Lin Ji’s mouth — one sentence, straight to the jugular.

            

Ordinarily she’d trade a few rounds of snide remarks with her, but right now she was hunting a person and in no mood.

Also — Zhou Ni, honestly.

She’d assumed it was a little tantrum. Instead the cold war had run half a month and counting.

            

Unable to stand it any longer, Wei Zhaoxue had made the first, probing move.

One probe, and — wonderful — the woman had blacklisted her who knows how long ago.

Smashed her head and vanished. Bravo. Not treating her remotely like the patron she owed a debt to.

            

Wei Zhaoxue didn’t spar with Lin Ji further. She knew Zhou Ni had nowhere to stay but Lin Ji’s.

And judging by Lin Ji’s manner, she could confirm the woman had run here again.

She felt a sting of jealousy too — why Lin Ji, of all people? Why did she burrow toward Lin Ji again and again?

            

Once the jealousy passed, though, she was almost reassured.

With anyone else, that naive child Zhou Ni would long since have been eaten to the bone by someone with designs on her — just like her last employer.

Only Lin Ji kept herself clean, eyes for no one but her own wife.

            

“Zhou Ni, if you’re here…”

Wei Zhaoxue paused. The rest wouldn’t come out. All she managed was:

“Anyway — crawl back whenever you want.”

            

With that, the baleful air went out of the “female ghost,” and she slumped back into the car, a little deflated.

As she was about to leave, Lin Ji said: “CEO Wei.”

Wei Zhaoxue turned to look at her.

            

Lin Ji smiled. “Learning to express yourself correctly is the first step out of singlehood.”

A faint crease crossed Wei Zhaoxue’s brow; a hundred feelings moved through her heart, and not a flicker of them reached her face.

But departing, she did say one human sentence.

            

“Congratulations on the wedding.”

Wei Zhaoxue drove off. Lin Ji turned and addressed the dark space beyond the streetlamp:

“No one goes around hunting for a person who doesn’t matter to them.”

            

Jiang Siyi knew Lin Ji was speaking to Zhou Ni, and added:

“‘Come back whenever you want’ probably means ‘I’ll be waiting the whole time.'”

After several seconds of silence from the darkness, Zhou Ni’s voice drifted out, faint.

            

“Thank you. Don’t worry about it.”

Siyi didn’t know the details between Zhou Ni and CEO Wei, so she kept her well-wishing to a light touch.

Everyone had their own fate and their own road ahead.

            

Since Zhou Ni had said so, she and Lin Ji pressed no further.

Zhou Ni said: “Fan Qing’s been drinking. I’ll drive you two home tonight.”

Lin Ji: “Good. Thank you.”

            

Just as Lin Xuebo had said — this wedding banquet truly hadn’t been exhausting.

It had been a party with a very large guest list: everyone chatted happily, took photos, and it was over before you knew it.

Siyi hadn’t brought any fatigue home — only a head full of questions.

            

When on earth was the first kiss?

Zhou Ni drove up front; too embarrassed to ask aloud, Jiang Siyi just kept shooting Lin Ji meaningful looks.

And Lin Ji’s keen “Jiang Siyi-dedicated radar” chose this moment of all moments to go down again.

            

But Siyi, who knew her better by the day, had figured it out: she was blocking the signal on purpose.

This person…

Bad. As consistently as ever.

            

The moment they got home and the door shut behind them, Siyi thought: no escape now.

She was about to ask when Xueqiu rose up on its hind legs and scratched at the air. Lin Ji scooped it up and gave the chubby, fluffy little dog a shake.

“Come on. Out for a walk.”

            

Jiang Siyi trailed behind Lin Ji and Xueqiu, circling from her left to her right and from her right to her left, conducting a trial of conscience with her eyes alone.

Lin Ji had apparently abandoned her conscience on a temporary basis — every stare was ignored wholesale — keeping to her own rhythm, holding forth on how outrageous the congratulatory gifts from family and friends had been, how the arms race had rolled from the shopping mall all the way to the banquet hall.

Jiang Siyi’s head popped out from behind her shoulder, meeting her eyes head-on.

            

“Ms. Lin, are you avoiding me? You still haven’t said it.”

“Hm? Said what?”

“The great genius who can draft eight hundred schemes to snare someone — how does she suddenly have amnesia?”

            

“Near vermilion one turns red; near Siyi one turns amnesiac¹. Perfectly normal.”

“…”

Both of Jiang Siyi’s hands pounced on Lin Ji’s arm at once.

            

Lin Ji was startled into a snort of laughter.

“When a herbivore bares its claws, it really is…”

“Really is terrifying!”

            

“Really is not terrifying at all.”

Jiang Siyi: .

“In fact, it makes one want to keep bullying her a little, to see if she can be provoked into another pounce.”

            

Jiang Siyi strode off ahead, the very picture of a woman abandoning wife and child.

Lin Ji watched her flare up only to deflate, counting down on her behalf.

Ten, nine, eight… three, two, one.

            

Why isn’t she calling me back?

Jiang Siyi stopped, wheeled around, and came storming back, desperate.

“When, exactly!”

            

This time Lin Ji laughed out loud.

Afraid she’d bolt, she took Xueqiu in one hand and her wife in the other.

“I’ll be shy saying it out here. I’ll tell you at home.”

            

“Do you actually get shy?”

Jiang Siyi had her doubts.

“It’s not me who’ll be shy. It’s you.”

            

Jiang Siyi: ??

Xueqiu eyed the two of them sideways the whole way.

It had the feeling that certain poop scoopers were giving off an aura reserved exclusively for spouses.

            

Back home, they wiped Xueqiu’s paws, gave its soft fur a smoothing stroke, and let it go amuse itself.

Lin Ji extended a sincere invitation to Jiang Siyi to bathe together.

At first Siyi resisted her wiles with iron resolve — and was reeled in by a single kiss.

            

Who could resist a face as beautiful as Lin Ji’s, attached to a mouth this skilled at kissing?

Jiang Siyi certainly couldn’t.

Reeled into the bathroom, pinned against the wall and kissed.

            

Kissed until that refined, classical face of Jiang Siyi’s surfaced a flush of desire that had no business belonging to it.

Her body had grown ever more sensitive to Lin Ji’s kisses.

From lips to chin to throat — gentle bites at her throat, over and over.

            

It tipped Siyi’s head back; she felt like a beast was worrying the kill-spot at her neck, shivers of a strange pleasure crawling up her spine one degree at a time.

Bitten until her legs trembled and her waist went soft.

And her lips and tongue were still being played with by Lin Ji’s fingers.

            

The fingertips of a woman’s hand — jade-smooth, perfectly jointed — rested on her lips, parting the soft petals with ease.

Knuckles ground against the scalding, slick inner flesh, grazed the small bead of her lip, came back, kneaded gently.

Jiang Siyi’s lashes flickered, beyond her control.

            

Just this, and her body was already in ruins.

The one-time ascetic now found a single touch from Lin Ji overwhelmingly intense.

Those fingers pressed her teeth open and went seeking her small tongue, pink and wet.

            

Jiang Siyi wanted to ask about the first kiss — she couldn’t open her mouth at all.

Her lips had been worked until they wouldn’t close.

All her throat could produce was a faint swallowing sound; the corners of her eyes held physiological tears.

            

Lin Ji kissed her hotly with her fingers, and after a long while, withdrew.

Bringing out a single silver thread.

Dizzy and hollow, Jiang Siyi still chased her hand, kissing the red mole on her wrist.

            

Lin Ji’s eyes were steeped in mist, her breath scalding enough to burn.

Maybe it was the wedding in the air, maybe the alcohol — tonight Lin Ji was not quite her usual self.

Her possessiveness had always run strong; tonight those burning palms kneaded from Siyi’s waist down to her legs, flesh squeezed to the point of aching.

            

And in the seams of the ache, precisely measured stimulation.

Piling up a dizziness-deep trembling in Jiang Siyi.

She was all but lifted off her feet.

            

Back against the bathroom wall, toes barely grazing the floor.

Unbearable past imagining.

Against that cool, fair skin, her blood-red ears stood like beads of congealed blood — already past all endurance — and still Lin Ji kissed them and sucked them.

            

Wherever she could bear it least, that was where Lin Ji kept serving.

Fingertips and palm together, again.

Jiang Siyi’s thoughts were ground loose, scattering one wave at a time.

            

The sounds of water merged into one — impossible to tell the overhead spray from what was dripping off Lin Ji’s wrist.

From the wall she was gathered into the tub, embraced from behind, long arms winding around her slender waist.

Kneading with one hand while her mouth traveled from her ear down to the little wing, then up to nip her thin shoulder.

            

Jiang Siyi was held whole in Lin Ji’s arms and loved.

At one moment her entire body seized, her waist bowing clean over.

Whether from too much pleasure or past all bearing, the tail of it carried a broken, crying lilt.

            

Peach-pink rose up through the skin of her arching back.

Lin Ji held her tight, soothed her, eased her down slowly.

Wrapped in a bath towel, dizzy, she was carried back to the bed.

            

Pressed whole into the mattress — and within a few moves the feeling was kissed awake again.

Lin Ji had developed in her this visceral, bodily liking; there was no resisting it.

Lin Ji was like the ruler of her body’s world: one flick of a fingertip and the whole world turned over.

            

Lin Ji’s possessiveness came in waves, breaking endlessly against Jiang Siyi’s body.

She called out in fragments — “Xiao You, Xiao You… stop, stop—”

The Lin Ji of before would have gentled her. Tonight she only pressed harder.

            

“Begging won’t stop me. I like you, meimei — I don’t want to stop.”

Her lashes low, thick feeling pooled at the corners of her eyes, adoration on the edge of losing itself.

Hearing that confession — the address changed without warning — Jiang Siyi’s heart slammed.

            

She said nothing at all — and Lin Ji’s palm read exactly how strong the feeling in her ran.

…

The next morning, Lin Ji woke to find Jiang Siyi already awake.

            

Sprawled beside her, chin propped on the back of her hand, gazing at her with wounded reproach.

Lin Ji leaned up and pecked her on the lips.

“How are you still bribing me with kisses.” Jiang Siyi tapped her chin. “You. Are. Going. To. Tell. Me.”

            

She’d been loved into unconsciousness again last night; to this hour, Jiang Siyi still didn’t know the truth of the first kiss.

“I just told you.”

“You did not.”

            

“That bribe just now. Our first kiss — that’s exactly how you ambushed me.”

“…No way.”

“Oh, yes.”

            

Jiang Siyi propped up her racing brain and racked it for all it was worth.

Genuinely no memory of it whatsoever — but Lin Ji would never lie to her.

Then when…

            

“It wasn’t the year of the island engagement, was it?”

Think as she might, that was the only possibility.

“Mm. Also possible.”

            

Lin Ji gathered her into her arms and kissed the top of her head.

Taking in her daily ration of Jiang Siyi.

“‘Also possible’? So that’s a no, then?”

            

Jiang Siyi was genuinely dizzy now.

Unable to keep teasing her, Lin Ji told her: the first time she’d stayed over at Siyi’s rental apartment, the next morning, a still-sleeping Siyi had mistaken her for Xueqiu and kissed her — caught her completely off guard.

“Oh… but we barely knew each other at all back then.”

            

The words were out before she regretted them.

Would Lin Ji dislike hearing “we barely knew each other”?

She lifted her head, worried, and kissed Lin Ji’s lips of her own accord.

            

“Hm? Afraid I’d be unhappy?” Lin Ji held her tighter. “Never. I couldn’t bear to.”

Jiang Siyi discovered that every one of her little tempers and little moods, Lin Ji accepted in full — never once picked a fight over any of them.

How could such a person exist…

            

Her heart overflowed.

And once again she forgot who it was who’d teased her all night long, and who it was who’d bullied her till dawn.

Talking of that day reminded her of something.

            

“So — that day, when you were running a fever, I came in to check on you and heard you murmuring in your sleep. It sounded… like my name.”

“Did it.”

“So — was it really my name?”

            

Lin Ji kissed her soft ear.

“I wasn’t awake; I don’t remember. But if not you — who else?”

The tickle of it and Lin Ji’s answer together made Jiang Siyi curl her shoulders and laugh.

            

The softness, the nostalgia, the sorrow she hadn’t been able to name — all of it was known to her now.

Jiang Siyi.

Back then, in her sleep, she truly had been calling that name — those three syllables.

            

---

The author has something to say:

Lin Ji: Wife-pampering, step thirty-eight. Those who know know — 6… no, 7.0.

---