The Hot-tempered Young Master and His Village Flower Child Bride - Chapter 17
Chapter 17: Like
Chu Zhi Lu still couldn’t come to her senses, and this unexpected development made her feel like she was stepping on a cloud.
A feeling of sudden elevation.
The long and boring Thai drama continued to play on the television. Chu Zhi Lu’s expression was normal, but her mind was elsewhere. She thought a lot and finally asked, “Do you like me?”
“Of course I like you. I’m a person of integrity and morality. If I didn’t like you, how could I have wronged myself to be with you just because you kissed me? I’d rather sue you for s*xual harassment.”
Chu Zhi Lu was curious. She didn’t think he could hide his feelings so well. “When did you start to like me?”
“Last night?” He denied again, “No. It was last night that I confirmed that I liked you. I didn’t think about it much before, I just thought you were cute. After you kissed me last night, I felt a little emotional and excited, and I knew that I liked you. Ah. And when I saw you the first day I arrived, I thought you were very pretty and was a little embarrassed to talk to you.”
He even blushed a little as he said this.
He absolutely couldn’t mention that she had turned him on.
“…” Okay, she was thinking about how to boil the frog in warm water, but she didn’t expect to hit it by accident.
“By the way, why did you say that I owed you a kiss last night?”
Chu Zhi Lu confessed, “When you were sleeping in the orchard that day, I wondered if I could kiss you in exchange for eating two bunches of green lychee.”
Zhao Xunyu felt a sweet warmth, but feigned indifference. “So you’ve had bad intentions towards me for a long time. I thought you were heartless and unloving.”
His eyes were bright, and the corners of his mouth couldn’t be contained, revealing little dimples. They were like clear, sparkling ripples in the sunlight, seemingly harmless, but actually a deep, seductive vortex that pulled you down endlessly.
It was so tempting to explore, to see if this vortex could be tamed and claimed, to mark it as one’s own. Chu Zhi Lu pressed her lips to his.
It lasted only two or three seconds.
After she pulled away, she continued to stare at him intently, as if hoping for some reaction.
Zhao Xunyu blushed, wondering how she could be so calm after doing something so bold. She looked so matter-of-fact.
Mm… okay, he was her ambiguous partner, so it was natural for her to be ambiguous with him.
But neither of them had been in a relationship before. Her calm and experienced demeanor made him feel inexperienced.
“Chu Zhi Lu, am I the first boy you liked?”
Chu Zhi Lu nodded gently.
“Did you also give me your first kiss?”
“Mm.“
Zhao Xunyu’s tail wagged furiously.
Although it was her first love, due to her personality, Chu Zhi Lu couldn’t be as shy and excited as a young girl in love with endless fantasies. Nor could she stick close to her boyfriend and ask him about his past in detail.
In contrast, Zhao Xunyu’s emotions were much more passionate and outwardly expressed.
Chu Zhi Lu’s attention had returned to the TV drama. She was unusually trying to understand the female lead’s perseverance in the face of immense suffering.
Zhao Xunyu sat at her right side, palm up, four fingers together, holding her cool, slender hand. With his thumb, he gently pressed the joints of each finger and the metacarpophalangeal joints one after the other.
From the thumb to the little finger, and then from the little finger back to the thumb, the initial throbbing when the two hands touched had long since disappeared, and Chu Zhi Lu let him play with her hand with a calm heart.
After he squeezed it for the fourth time, Chu Zhi Lu couldn’t help but ask, “Have you learned some kind of massage technique?”
Zhao Xunyu stopped, his fingers slipping into hers, their hands intertwined. “No. I just thought that we were going to have a lot of physical contact in the future, so I want to get familiar with it first.”
Zhao Xunyu found that he especially enjoyed this skin-to-skin contact.
Chu Zhi Lu’s hand looked even whiter and more delicate against his larger hand. The two hands were intertwined, looking infinitely intimate. Zhao Xunyu’s heart warmed when he saw this, and he brought her hand to his lips and kissed it.
“How come even your hands are so beautiful? I’m dying from your beauty.”
He wanted to find a poem to express his feelings with deep affection, but after racking his brain, he could only remember the line ‘fingers like chopped scallions’.
It was better not to say anything!
A smile touched the corners of Chu Zhi Lu’s eyes and lips. It brought a bright spring warmth after the ice and snow had melted.
“Is this how ambiguous partners behave?”
Zhao Xunyu’s fingertip circled her middle joint.
“Yes. It’s all ambiguous actions and words.”
As he said this, he rested his head on her shoulder, and after a while, he rubbed it against her shoulder blade.
Chu Zhi Lu squeezed his hand, signaling for him to calm down a bit.
Zhao Xunyu complied.
New love was full of novelties. Zhao Xunyu held his ambiguous partner’s hand for two hours and still wasn’t satisfied.
Grandma Chu called while their hands were still intertwined.
Grandma Chu said that this time it was quite serious. Song Zhi Yuan found out that his mother was pregnant with a second child and went crazy, saying that he didn’t want another brother or sister. His mother tried to calm him down by saying that she would go to the hospital to get rid of the baby. But then Song Zhi Yuan’s father said no and scolded Song Zhi Yuan for being selfish and not considering his parents’ feelings.
Song Zhi Yuan almost died of anger when he heard about his mother’s pregnancy. He was then scolded by his father, which made him even more angry and heartbroken. He ran away from home.
It was the third day and he hadn’t gone to school. His close friends said they hadn’t seen him either. The whole family was worried. Grandma Chu had to take care of Song Zhi Yuan’s mother and couldn’t come back.
Zhao Xunyu chuckled beside her as Chu Zhi Lu hung up.
“That was satisfying.”
“It’s not too hard to see why.”
“It was originally Uncle’s fault. It’s only right to make him suffer a bit. Besides, Grandma isn’t home. It’s our chance to be alone.”
All day long, Zhao Xunyu clung to her. When someone asked him to play basketball, he refused. When Chu Zhi Lu cooked, he helped. When Chu Zhi Lu read, he would hold her hand, tirelessly studying the texture of her skin; occasionally he would lean his head against her shoulder and ask her to tell him about the book.
Seeing how bored he was, Chu Zhi Lu gave him her mobile phone to play with. He took it, his face beaming, and said, “Aren’t you afraid I’ll snoop?”
Chu Zhi Lu turned another page, unconcerned.
“There’s nothing to hide.”
“Then I’ll take a good look, shall I?”
“Mm.“
Zhao Xunyu wasn’t being polite. He really started looking. He opened WeChat and checked her Moments. It was empty.
She had over a hundred WeChat contacts, mostly classmates, with notes like ‘Zhang Xiaoli, Class 422, High School’.
A girl with a strong sense of distance.
Zhao Xunyu didn’t open her chats with others. He closed WeChat and didn’t check anything else.
His bones seemed to melt as he leaned against Chu Zhi Lu. His left hand held her left hand, while his right hand gently played with her hair, tender and loving.
Chu Zhi Lu didn’t protest. On the contrary, she enjoyed it. She liked it when Zhao Xunyu clung to her.
Zhao Xunyu’s gaze fell on her slender waist. He felt restless. He said in a low, soft voice, “May I hug you?”
Chu Zhi Lu felt soft-hearted after hearing this. She tilted her head and kissed the small red mole behind his ear, then lovingly touched his ear.
“Okay.”
This made Zhao Xunyu’s heart flutter. His ears quickly turned red, and he lifted his head slightly away from her shoulder.
“Chu Zhilu, you are really good at this.”
Chu Zhi Lu stroked his earlobe.
“You have a small red mole behind your ear. It’s cute.”
With her teasing him like this, how could Zhao Xunyu resist? He gave in, burying his head in the nape of her neck, wrapping his right arm around her waist, and hooking his left hand around the back of her neck.
He was completely smitten, rubbing against her fragrant neck, holding her tightly, wanting to merge with her, whimpering, “Ahhh, you did this on purpose, right? Teasing me like this! Do you know that I have a weak heart?”
Chu Zhi Lu hugged him back, her heart filled with joy.