Page 31 of The Scholar's Improper Wife

When he finally forced himself to break away, it was only to pull her tightly against him, as if she were the only piece of driftwood in a drowning sea. Their ragged breathing was the only sound in the hidden alcove.

He shouldn’t have done that.

Hewoulddo it again.

So he did.

The third kiss was soft, tender, lingering like a promise.

Yun-si’s fingers clutched the fabric of his robes, dizzy.

Do all kisses feel like this? Or only his?

“Have you—” The words tumbled out before sense caught up. “Have you ever kissed someone before?”

His eyes shifted. Not quite meeting hers. “Maybe.”

The single word gored her like a spear through her chest.Maybe.Which meantyes.Which meant there had beensomeone else—some girl whose name she didn’t know, some girl he’d kissed before this, some girl heliked—

Her head went blank. White noise and winter cold.

They stood there in the garden, shielded by the night. Yun-si’s lips still tingled from the kiss—soft, careful, achingly brief. Her first kiss. Their first kiss. Not his first kiss.

Research,she told herself firmly, even as her heart hammered.That was research.

Ting-zhi was watching her with an expression she couldn’t quite read.

She needed to say something. The silence was stretching too long, becoming weighted with things she didn’t know how to name. Her mind scrambled for words, any words, to fill the space.

“That was—” she started, then stopped. What was she supposed to say?Thank you for the kiss?“I mean, the research was very—it’s helpful. Very helpful.”

He tilted his head slightly, opening his mouth to say something, then stopped, not looking at her. Still silent.

The silence made her nervous. She kept talking.

“I don’t know what I would do without you, honestly. This whole... endeavor.” She gestured vaguely, as if ‘endeavor’ could encompass secret novel-writing and kissing in gardens. “It’s so—I’m so grateful to have someone I can trust with this. Someone who understands. Someone who...”

She was babbling now. She could hear herself babbling. But the words kept coming, tumbling over each other like stones down a hill.

“It’s like having a nicer brother,” she said, and even as the words left her mouth, some part of her knew they were wrong. But she couldn’t stop. “You know? Someone I can rely on completely. Someone who’s always looked out for me, ever since we were children. Someone safe. Someone who, who—”

She stopped.

The air had changed.

Ting-zhi’s expression hadn’t shifted. Not exactly. But something had gone very, very still behind his eyes. The kind of stillness that came before a storm, or after one. The kind that made the space between heartbeats feel endless.

“A nicer brother,” he repeated. His voice was perfectly even. Perfectly pleasant.

Perfectly wrong.

“I just mean—” She floundered, suddenly uncertain. “We’ve known each other so long, and you’ve always been so kind, and I trust you, and—”

“Of course.” He smiled. It was his public smile—the one he used with strangers and acquaintances and people who didn’t matter. She’d never seen him use it with her before. “I’m honored to be of service.”

Something in her chest twisted.

“Ting-zhi—”