Page 17 of The Scholar's Improper Wife

“That’s not the branch,” he said. The words came out grim. Agonized.

Her brain caught up approximately three heartbeats later.

The hard thing pressing against her inner thigh. That wasn’t wooden. That was—

“That’s your—” She couldn’t say it. “Your. Err. Dragon rod?”

The callback to their mortifying medical text conversation somehow made it infinitely worse.

“Yes.” The word sounded like it cost him his soul.

She scrambled down so fast she nearly fell. Landed on her feet, stumbled backward, arms crossed over her chest.

They stared at each other in absolute horror.

His face had achieved a color she’d never seen on a human being. Dark red bordering on purple.

Her own face felt like it was on fire.

“I’m going to—” She pointed at the basket.

“Yes. Good. You should—” He turned away so fast he nearly dropped the actual branch. “I’ll just. Go there. Very far there.”

He fled.

Yun-si grabbed the dry robes with shaking hands and pulled them on so fast she nearly put them on backward.

She’d felt his dragon rod.

She’d FELT it. Pressed against her. While wrapped around him. And she’d ASKED HIM about it.

She pressed her burning face into her hands and made a sound like a dying animal.

This was worse than the courtesan house.

This was worse than the dragon rod incident.

This was worse than EVERYTHING IN HER ENTIRE LIFE.

And she’d asked him not to poke her with his branch.

ASKED.

OUT LOUD.

She was never leaving her room again. Ever. She’d become a nun. She’d write under a pen name forever and never show her face in society.

Actually, she was already writing under a pen name. Good. She’d just. Never see Gu Ting-zhi again.

Chapter 7

The days following the “second dragon-rod incident” passed in a blur of self-imposed exile. Before she knew it, the beginning of winter had approached. Yun-si hadn’t left her Peach Blossom Courtyard except to greet her mother in the mornings. She tried to hide in the comfort writing usually provided, but the strewn manuscripts mocked her from every surface—proof that even her usual refuge had failed.

“It was just a natural reaction,” she whispered to herself, pacing the polished wooden floors. “Men’s bodies just... do that sometimes.” The medical texts had explained as much, though they certainly hadn’t prepared her for the reality of feeling Ting-zhi’s... reaction... pressed against her thigh.

She collapsed onto her bed, burying her face in the silk coverlet. “He must be more mortified than I am,” she reasoned. “After all, I’m practically his sister.”

But was she? The thought struck with surprising force. Childhood friends, certainly. Fellow scholars and confidants, yes. But sister?