Chapter 354: Enjoy Myself
"I can undress myself," I said, because some habits deserved a funeral but apparently refused to die.
Yuche looked at me like I had said something mildly interesting and completely irrelevant. His hands were already at my shirt, working through blood-stiff fabric with the same calm precision he used on locks, weapons, and every bad decision that had ever had the misfortune of standing in his way.
"I know," he replied.
That was it.
No argument. No soothing nonsense. No lecture about how exhausted I was or how I needed to let someone take care of me before I collapsed from stubbornness.
Just that. ’I know.’
Then he slid the ruined shirt off my shoulders like the fact that I could do it myself had never been the point.
Annoying man.
Worse, a very familiar man.
Yuche did not touch me like this was new. He did not move like someone testing the edge of permission for the first time.
He already knew where my patience ended, where my skin reacted, where my pride sharpened, and exactly how little innocence either of us had left after those two days in my bed. His fingers brushed my collarbone, paused at a streak of dried black blood, and continued lower with the quiet confidence of a man who remembered far too much and intended to use every bit of it.
Lingyun noticed.
Of course he did.
He stood close enough that heat rolled off him through the steam, his eyes following Yuche’s hands before lifting to my face. The usual grin was there, but it had gone thinner around the edges. Hungrier. Less like a joke and more like he was watching a door open and trying very hard not to lunge through it.
I let him look.
Actually, I enjoyed it.
Terrible taste in men, clearly, but excellent instincts. Both of them were dangerous, possessive, useful, loyal in ways that had nothing to do with pretty promises, and currently looking at me like the rest of the apocalypse could rot outside the bathroom door.
I had no complaints.
"Are you just going to stand there and stare?" I asked Lingyun as Yuche pushed the ruined shirt down my arms. "Or did you come here to be decorative?"
Lingyun’s smile snapped fully into place, bright and shameless and far too pleased with the invitation he knew he had just been handed. "Pretty princess, I can be decorative and useful. I contain multitudes."
"You contain brain damage," I hissed at him, but there was no heat behind it.
"And devotion," he reminded me like he had to force home his point.
He didn’t, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. "Tragic," I deadpanned.
"Deeply," he agreed, stepping closer as Yuche tossed my shirt aside. Lingyun’s hand came to my waist, warm even through the damp mess of blood and water, but he did not pull me toward him. Not yet. He waited with his fingers spread against my skin and his eyes locked on mine.
That was smarter than I expected.
Or maybe not. Lingyun only acted like an idiot because people kept mistaking noise for stupidity. Yuche would not have kept him as his right hand if there was nothing under all that grinning chaos except fire and terrible flirting.
I covered Lingyun’s hand with mine and pressed it more firmly against my waist.
His breath caught.
Yuche’s gaze dropped to the movement, then returned to my face. The corner of his mouth barely shifted, but I saw it. Satisfaction. Possession. Approval.
I narrowed my eyes at him. "Don’t look so proud of yourself."
"I am not the one who invited him closer."
"No," I said, letting Lingyun feel the weight of my hand over his before I released him. "You’re just enjoying it."
Yuche did not deny it.
That was probably wise.
I stepped out of my pants and let them guide me toward the tub, not because I needed help, I was a big girl. But I loved the feeling of Yuche’s hand on the small of my back like it belonged there. I also loved the feeling of Lingyun’s fingers flexing against my waist like he was still half-afraid this was a hallucination that he was going to wake up from and be crushed.
The water was perfect when I sank into it. Hot enough to pull a slow breath from me, hot enough to probably cook a lobster, but that was my perfect temperature.
Steam rose around my shoulders, and I tipped my head back against the rim of the tub, happy and relaxed, while Yuche knelt behind me.
"We need to wash your hair first," he said, already gathering the blood-stiffened mess down my back.
"You sound far too comfortable giving orders in my bathroom," I smiled up at him lazily, my eyes fighting to stay open and watch every expression that flittered over his face.
His fingers slid into my hair, careful as they separated strands that had dried together in disgusting clumps. "You like my orders when they are useful."
Lingyun made a sound that was almost a laugh and almost a choking hazard.
I opened one eye, not sure when it had closed. "Something to add, portable water heater?"
"Not a thing," he said quickly, then ruined it by smiling. "I’m just learning."
Yuche’s fingers paused for half a second in my hair.
I smiled before I could stop myself.
That was the difference. That was the part making the air thick even before Lingyun warmed the bathwater with a lazy curl of heat over his fingers. Yuche already knew. Lingyun was learning. And I liked watching him realize that the thing between Yuche and me was not a locked door.
It was a warning sign.
Enter carefully. Bite risk high.
Lingyun knelt beside the tub with a washcloth in his hand and the expression of a man who had been handed a sacred mission by a god with deeply questionable judgment. "Arms up, princess."
"Call me princess again and I’ll make you heat the bathwater from the bottom of the tub."
His grin widened. "You say the sweetest things."
"I’m threatening murder."
"And yet, all I heard was romantic flirting."
Yuche rinsed the first wave of blackened water from my hair, and Lingyun drew the cloth along my arm, slower than necessary, watching the gore disappear from my skin. He did not treat me like glass. Neither of them did. Yuche handled my hair with patience because he liked having his hands on me. Lingyun washed blood from my skin like every inch revealed was something he had been waiting to see.
For a moment, I wondered if they were the dream, or if I had died and gone to heaven.
But either way, I was going to enjoy myself.