Chapter 25 – Are You Avoiding Me (3)
The washing process was very smooth because he was very cooperative. There was still water left, so Zhao Xi washed his hair and after dressing him, she put him to bed.
His shining eyes betrayed that his good mood. Zhao Xi knew he liked bathing but had no idea he liked it so much. She thought: if she ever made him angry later, she could make calm him down by offering him a bath.
The wooden bench was wet. It would take at least a day and a night to dry. The ground was wet too, she couldn’t make a bed on the floor nor could she sleep on the bench.
Zhao Xi only had two choices: the first one was that she goes down the mountains to find a place to sleep, after dinner. The second one was that she sleeps with the man in the same bed. She had always chosen the first one in the past. But she suddenly did not want to leave today.
After all, it came to her: this house was hers. Why should she discommode herself and walk down the hills to sleep when she was too tired to even take a step?
Zhao Xi moved the bench into the courtyard to dry in the sun and mopped the floor of the house. Because he was still weak, he never bathed outside; Zhao Xi let him wash inside the house, even though cleaning up afterwards was a lot of trouble and took no less than an hour.
She shifted him towards one side of the bed and lay on the other. The bed was barely big enough for two people and although they didn’t touch each other deliberately, they were still close enough for her to clearly catch the clean and pleasant complex aroma of bath beans, made from numerous herbs and oils through an extremely complicated process, and the original flavour of incense, emanating from him . She couldn’t describe exactly what kind of a smell it was, but it was really good.
Zhao Xi rarely slept well, but this time when she laid down for a short nap, hours seemed to have drifted past.
*
When she woke up, food was already steamed. She was in such a deep slumber, she didn’t want to get up. All of a sudden, she was dimly aware of someone shadowing over her, his cool fragrant hair sweeping her face, ultimately, rousing her up.
Zhao Xi opened her eyes to find Shen Fei propped against her body, trying to reach the iron clamp hanging on the drawer. He wanted to close the air outlet under the stove with the iron clamp so that the fire would die down and the coal would burn slowly, heating the food for long.
The man, who did not seem to want to disturb her sleep, reached out his white hand to reach the iron clamp laboriously, his fingertips barely touching it.
On reflex, Zhao Xi got up to help him and pulled his sleeve away, “Let me do it.”
Shen Fei was silent and only held his body away from her, then leaned back and relaxed against the bed.
She stretched and got up to resume the household chores. She closed the air outlet, brought the food out, cleaned up the pot, and began decocting herbs. Then, she set up the dishes and chopsticks, and called him for dinner.
They sat on both sides of the table and just ate in silence, lost in their own thoughts. Zhao Xi decided to initiate a conversation and was thinking of a suitable topic to talk about when he asked her.
“Recently…” he looked speculatively at Zhao Xi, “Have you been avoiding me intentionally?”
Did he realize that?
Zhao Xi did not admit it. “No, it’s almost winter and Ping An will hibernate. I need to turn him from 300 kg from 250 kg before it snows.”
“It’s unnecessary to avoid me,” he ignored her excuses. Shen Fei’s eyes black as ink, could, it seemed, penetrate her and reach her heart. “You don’t owe me. It’s fair deal that I want to save myself and you—”
He didn’t finish his sentence, but both of them understood what he meant. He wasn’t ignorant; he knew that Zhao Xi wanted to sleep with him and had deliberately dropped the hint. Similarly, he told Zhao Xi that it would be a deal between them; if she treated him, he would give his chastity to her. It was the reward that she deserved and one that Shen Fei needed to give as part of their bargain.
In other words, Shen Fei was telling her not to worry about it too much in the future.