Fanfiction: Mo Yuan and Shao Wan - Chapter 6 (Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms 三生三世十里桃花)
Chapter 6
written by kakashiEdited by JoAnne
His guilt was stronger than his reason. Mo Yuan settled back down, feeling slightly embarrassed. Being here, so close to Shao Wan felt unreal and more than a little discomforting.
Of course she knew about his current state. She had an uncanny ability to see through other people, to read their essence, without doing soul-searching magic. For hundreds of years she had tried to break through his defenses, in vain. She had only made him stronger and more determined.
Today was different. He had felt her probing gaze just now and he could not hide anything. Maybe it had been a mistake to come back, he thought, since he obviously came back for the wrong reason. Seventeenth did not want him and the world did not need him now that Ye Hua was born. His brother was still young, but it was already clear he was Mo Yuan’s equal in power and abilities. Yes, it was possible that Fate was furious that there were two brothers like them in the world now. Maybe this was a trial. Maybe Shao Wan had returned to end him.
Mo Yuan took a deep breath. He grabbed a second bottle of wine that had somehow miraculously appeared in front of him and continued drinking. They did not talk at all, he and Shao Wan, and he remembered that they never had, beyond the necessary. She called Dong Hua and Zhe Yan her friends and him, her enemy. Maybe this was something else to add to his list of regrets.
There was more wine on the table and it was suddenly impossible to resist it, even though he should have.
The God of War knew restraint better than any living creature in all the realms because he had practiced it his entire life, but tonight he didn’t seem to remember what the point of it was. He only knew he was immensely tired of resisting every natural instinct, of keeping back when others ran forward, of hiding his true feelings behind a stone-faced exterior.
“Damn you, Zhe Yan,” Mo Yuan said, but Zhe Yan wasn’t even there anymore... or was he? It was fully dark now.
After the third bottle, or was it the fourth? he finally felt at ease. It was the first time he'd reached a calm state of mind since he woke up in Yanhua Cave. Falling into an advanced breathing pattern, he settled down to meditate.
Only … he wasn’t at Kunlun and this was utterly wrong. Panic shot through him as he remembered where he was, why he had come, and whom he was with. Just in time.
“Fight me,” she whispered into his ear.
His whole body became alert at once and Mo Yuan jumped into the air, barely dodging Shao Wan's attack. He tried to adjust his night vision, but it was too dark. No moon had risen yet and Zhe Yan had not lit any lanterns anywhere. Of course he hadn’t.
Shao Wan attacked relentlessly. It was fists and feet only, which was a good thing. He would likely have been severely injured had weapons been involved. Her martial arts skills had always been superior to his though he had never admitted this to her, and the only reason she had never beaten him before was due to his natural ability to analyze the fighting style of his opponents and foresee their moves. Only he needed to actually see something for that to work, and quite clearly, he also needed to be sober.
The wedding gown restricted Mo Yuan's movements and he was trying to remove the outer garment, just as he received a bone-crushing blow into his solar plexus. The pain was excruciating, but it also cleared his head a little. This woman had never held back when fighting with him, not once. Shao Wan was the best sparring partner he had ever had and without her, he would never have become as skillful as he was today.
Truthfully, without the hours upon hours they spent fighting each other he would never have been able to kill her back then. What irony. He knew her too well.
With the outer garment finally off he could move much better, now and even though his head still spun and it was far too dark, he found his footing. She had never beaten him and today would not be an exception.
Shao Wan noticed the change in his stance and quickly withdrew to a safe distance - Mo Yuan was one of the best fighters ever born. She felt exhilarated. This was exactly the kind of welcome-back party she needed.
She saw that he had his eyes closed, most likely because he couldn’t adjust them to the dark as well as she could. “Pha!” she thought, “Celestials, growing up where it’s always bright! Useless creatures.”
He had lost his headpiece during one of her assaults and his long, dark hair had come loose. She smacked her lips at the sight. Finally. He was coming undone. She would crush him today. She would humiliate him so badly that he would crawl into a cave and not come back for hundreds of years. And once he was back and fully restored, she would kill him. She was back to thinking she would make it ultra painful.
She danced closer and decided to further discomfort him by ripping off the belt that held his robe and then scratching his chest. That wasn’t easy, though, because he was back to his old tricks of guessing her every move in advance. She tried to break pattern to fool him but he wasn’t fooled. Of course he wasn’t. No matter. She did manage to rip his sleeve up to his shoulder, so it was progress, right?
Their breathing grew heavier and she saw the first signs of exhaustion in him and in herself. Mo Yuan was a dull, infuriating perfectionist, but when he fought against her she felt happy. After they all left school, she had missed these fights the most of all. That’s why she had felt such a rush to see him appear on that battlefield 190'000 years ago. He had looked awe-inspiring in his full battle armor, brandishing his famous sword. The furious God of War was a sight to behold and one never to forget. He had come because of her, and for a brief moment she had felt honored. Damn bastard.
Maybe she really couldn’t beat him, she thought, after he dodged one of her particularly cunning moves with ease. He was weak and he was blind here, but still she could barely touch him. He fought with his head, which she had never done. She fought with her gut because her gut never failed her - but her head was fully functional too, when she bothered to use it.
Up to this point, she realized, Mo Yuan had only defended himself and had never attacked her. Maybe, she thought, his sentimentality prevents him from hurting me. That was ridiculous, but so like him and his honorable ways.
When Shao Wan attacked him next, full force, she deliberately let him hit her full force in return. She almost blacked out. Pain laced through her entire body as she spat a fountain of blood and was catapulted backwards, but she had been right. Mo Yuan lowered his guard briefly as he tried to catch her to soften the impact of landing. Quickly, she grabbed his head in a deadly headlock and wrapped her legs around his waist. They both fell. He struggled against her, still deliciously strong even as she squeezed his throat and his lungs, but he was not strong enough. She had him. She had beaten him. She could kill him if she wanted to.
She bit him on the cheek, deeply, just because she could. As soon as she tasted his blood, she knew she wanted to bed him. The sudden, intense lust made her growl. She was so ready. He was a High God, suitable to be her companion tonight. She felt his warm body against hers and deeply inhaled the scent of his skin as she grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked his head back. Teasingly, she licked his throat, his bloody cheek, his temple, his eyes. She wanted him, wanted to own him completely. Because she hated him, hurting him would only multiply her pleasure.
The God of War knew restraint better than any living creature in all the realms because he had practiced it his entire life, but tonight, in Shao Wan’s deadly embrace, with Zhe Yan's wine muddling his thoughts, he forgot about restraint entirely. As she squeezed the air out of him, as she bit him and drew blood, as she slowly, teasingly licked him, he began to feel alive. Her unrestrained demonic powers flowed around him and into him and unraveled the defenses that he had built, one by one.
Sitting up, he grabbed her head in both hands in a desperate attempt to keep her at bay and to catch his breath. She would not let him. She laced her fingers into his hair and pulled him close. Her lips met his with an ancient hunger, and her tongue, so often used to cruelly taunt him, sought to enter his mouth with fiery urgency. His whole body responded as if it had waited for her, her alone, all these years.
Chapter 7