Chapter Fourteen: Duel in the Desert (1)
Nan Bei laughed, the kind of laugh that was helpless, yet at the same time enjoying it.
The Cheng Muyang she knew was just like this. He had a heart that wanted to turn toward Buddha, yet he also enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh with her. He took off all her clothes, but Nan Bei caught his hand and glanced toward the bathroom.
She needed a shower. She had already worked up quite a sweat.
“Let’s make this clear first. No doing it in the bathroom. Let me take a proper shower.” Nan Bei shut him outside the glass enclosure.
The transparent glass walls soon fogged over with a layer of steam.
He stood there shirtless in a pair of trousers, obediently leaning against the bathroom doorframe as he watched her. Translucent streams of water kept cascading from her hair, running down her chest, lower abdomen, and thighs, all the way to the milky-white ceramic floor. Ever since seeing those photographs, he had imagined countless times how she had gone from a swelling belly to giving birth to their daughter.
Lost and found again.
This woman, he had lost and found again too many times.
Cheng Muyang placed his hand against the glass, curled his index finger, and gently tapped on it. Nan Bei pulled open the glass door. “What is it?” He smiled without saying a word, took her chin between his fingers, and slowly kissed and sucked at her lips.
Unlike his dominance and impatience just moments ago, his tongue was unbearably gentle in her mouth. He did not tangle with her, simply savoring it. Nan Bei smiled as she kissed him. After a while, he let her go. “Hurry and wash.”
The desire in his eyes left Nan Bei dizzy. Flustered and distracted, she closed the glass door and rinsed the foam from her body.
She came out naked, pulled down the bath towel hanging in front of the mirror, and dried her hair. Cheng Muyang finally began taking off his trousers. As she hung the towel back up, he embraced her directly from behind, staring without blinking at her reflection in the mirror. His fingers repeatedly caressed her lips with something close to infatuation, then slipped inside, lightly touching the tip of her tongue.
“I’ve prepared the ring.”
“Red?”
He smiled and pressed one of her hands against the mirror. “Red.”
Their bodies, untouched for so long, pressed together, making every erotic image instantly vivid.
Cheng Muyang’s hand slid down and gripped one of her legs, forcing her to spread them toward him. Her breathing grew ragged. His hand felt as though it were remembering something, repeatedly moving from her chest to her thighs before slowly probing into her body.
When he took hold of himself and thrust hard into her from behind, Nan Bei finally could not hold back a soft moan.
His movements were not fast, but they were deep. Her hand slowly slid down from the mirror, only for him to catch it again and press it against the glass, supporting the weight of their bodies. Sometimes Cheng Muyang looked at her through the mirror, and sometimes he lowered his head to watch where their bodies joined.
The bathroom was very hot, and through the mirror she could clearly see the sweat running down his body.
“When you gave birth to Baobao, did it hurt?” He bit the base of her ear from behind.
Nan Bei gave a quiet “Mm.” “It hurt more than being shot.”
The broken, delirious sounds were coming from him too.
His body rubbed against her back, their sweat mingling together. Their bodies were equally naked, yet his was far hotter than hers. She lost all awareness of herself, only clenching her hand into a fist amid his repeated movements, her unfocused eyes fixed on Cheng Muyang in the mirror. Just when she thought everything was about to end, he stopped and pulled down the bath towel hanging in front of the mirror, spreading it on the floor.
He lowered Nan Bei onto the towel, pressed her beneath him, and entered her again.
There was no longer any need for the mirror.
She could clearly see his chin, the bridge of his nose, and his eyes. “Cheng Muyang.” She called his name, and he answered. She called him again, and he patiently answered her again, only his movements growing more and more intense, tearing apart the sound of her calling his name and her moans. He grew slower and slower. Every thrust made her think he was going to leave, only to be followed by an even more complete penetration.
After so many times with Cheng Muyang, never once had she reached the end so overwhelmed that she wanted to cry.
In the end, had she cried or not?
She did not remember.
Cheng Muyang scooped her up in his arms and walked out of the bathroom barefoot. Before they could even get onto the bed, the two of them stumbled over the sofa, rolling onto the carpet tangled together, and did it once. By the end, Nan Bei felt as though her body no longer belonged to her. In her sleep, Cheng Muyang turned her over from behind and pulled her into his arms against his chest. The two of them tugged the white quilt over themselves and curled up on the sofa, sleeping for two hours.
Several times Nan Bei tried to turn over and nearly fell off the sofa, mumbling that she wanted to go sleep on the bed.
Cheng Muyang rejected every request. This masochist discovered that sleeping on the sofa was many times better than sleeping on the bed. Only in this cramped space would Nan Bei tightly hold onto him in her sleep, afraid of falling.
Daylight came quickly.
When she woke, her lower back felt so sore it seemed ready to break. She quietly pulled her arm out from around him, wanting to go sleep comfortably on the bed for a while. Cheng Muyang seemed to be sleeping deeply. Indeed, excessive indulgence was extremely draining. She crawled out from under the quilt, took a spare one from the wardrobe, and threw her whole body onto the bed.
She even buried her head under the quilt, blocking out the light.
Just as she was drifting off, about to meet Duke Zhou in her dreams, Nan Bei felt a cool sensation. It began at the top of her foot and slowly moved upward. She was both amused and exasperated, lazily humming twice. “You little rascal, let me sleep for a while.” Cheng Muyang slowly kissed her feet and legs, gradually moving upward until he found her lips. The two of them kissed each other again in the darkness, legs pressed against legs, bodies pressed against bodies, entwined together.
Cheng Muyang pinned both her hands above her head. Just as he was about to have her again, the phone suddenly rang. They both froze for a moment. Nan Bei quickly reacted, pushing him to one side and picking up the phone.
Soon, Baobao’s voice came from the other end. “Good morning, Mommy.”
“Good morning, Baobao.” Nan Bei was breathing lightly, doing her best to keep her voice normal.
“Baobao ate pear and strawberries, milk and bread.”
“Good girl, baby. Did you finish your milk?”
Cheng Muyang finally realized who she was talking to. He wrapped his arms around Nan Bei from behind and pulled her whole body into his embrace, mouthing, I want to talk to our daughter. Nan Bei glanced at him. Seeing that she made no move, he had no choice but to lean close to her ear and listen.
“Finished it,” Baobao said proudly, not forgetting to tattle as well. “But Daddy didn’t finish his.”
Nan Bei could not help laughing. “Mm, Daddy was a bad boy.”
Cheng Muyang looked at Nan Bei in surprise.
She covered the phone and shushed him.
After Baobao obediently finished reporting on breakfast and even asked after her “little daddy’s” health, she finally hung up reluctantly. Nan Bei had not yet had time to explain when Cheng Muyang leaned closer and narrowed his eyes, studying her carefully. “The Daddy Baobao was talking about, is that your older brother?”
“Yes.” Nan Bei was surprised instead. “How did you know?”
“Besides Nan Huai, I can’t think of any other possibility.” Cheng Muyang did not know whether to laugh or cry. “So that ‘little daddy’ means me?”
She gave a quiet “Mm,” pulled the quilt over them, and rested her head on his arm.
He let out a soft breath. “I took one younger sister away from him, and he took one daughter away from me. I suppose that makes it fair.” He lowered his head and pressed his cheek against hers.
“You don’t like Baobao?” Nan Bei reached out and touched his face.
Cheng Muyang cooperatively closed his eyes, feeling her fingers against him. “I do. The way she talks is very much like you.”
Nan Bei gave a soft “Mm,” her heart going soft. “She’s very well-behaved.”
“Still, there’s only one younger sister. Looks like Nan Huai is the more unfortunate one.”
She laughed.
6:30 AM.
From this angle, they could see the morning light beginning to whiten, as well as the natural mudstone in the distance, weathered by the wind into all kinds of shapes. So this was the pagoda she had seen last night. Exposed to daylight, they actually had all kinds of forms, and from a distance looked like faces standing upright. “Last night, the shadows of these mudstones all looked like pagodas,” she said.
“When I first arrived here, I had the same feeling.” Cheng Muyang turned her body over, kissing from her shoulder down along the curve of her spine. “And then I thought of you.”
He tickled her so much that she could neither move away nor escape. “Why?”
He smiled silently for a while before saying, “Because with you, I can’t believe in Buddha.”
Nan Bei buried her head in the pillow, laughing aloud. “That’s so cheesy. If it weren’t for me, would you have already shaved your head and become a monk?”
“More or less. I told you, I have a strong affinity with Buddhism.” Cheng Muyang wrapped an arm around her waist and leaned over her. The most sensitive centers of their bodies rubbed against each other, yet he never went deeper.
Nan Bei shifted her waist, feeling so sore it seemed ready to break. “Cheng Muyang, show some restraint...”
His hand slid from her lower abdomen to her chest, gently taking hold, and he said in a low voice, “I’ll try.”
Cheng Muyang really did as he said. This time, he was so gentle that he hardly seemed like himself, more like an extremely restrained ascetic. He simply proceeded quietly. When they were finally done, he called for breakfast and would not let Nan Bei lift a finger. He brought everything to her lips himself, and even insisted on dressing her, putting her clothes on her one piece at a time.
Having her lost and found again had only made his inner demon deeper.
Nothing was more important than Nan Bei.
She watched as he fastened her buttons one by one.
“How did you know my itinerary? How did you know I arrived here yesterday? And how did you even know which hotel I was staying at?”
“Back in the Philippines, you told me the name you usually use on your passport,” he said. “When you arrived at the airport yesterday, you took out your passport, and the police officer checking your passport was one of my people. He had your entire itinerary in his hands, so I came over immediately.”
An unexpected answer.
But there was only this way. To make it easier to arrange the ‘business delegation’s’ travel, Bodongha had replaced the passports of Xiao Feng and several others. If he wanted to know immediately, unless he himself was at the airport, trying to find them among that huge daily flow of passengers would be no different from searching for a needle in a haystack.
“So you were afraid it was a trap, so you called me first?”
Cheng Muyang neither confirmed nor denied it.
“Why did you play the Heart Sutra for me?”
“I guessed you would understand it.”
“What if I didn’t?” Nan Bei asked, then noticed another question. “You had a safer way. For example, you could have contacted Xiao Feng first, confirmed my whereabouts, and then come to find me.”
“Not a good method.”
“Why?”
“Isn’t this better? No one knew, and I found you.”
She could not help laughing. “You still haven’t told me what you came to Saudi Arabia for.”
“There are rumors that a country here in the Middle East is building a nuclear facility. The CIA has been investigating it and has made some progress. They successfully turned three scientists.” Cheng Muyang fastened the last button of her shirt, picked up the milk, and fed it to her. “Two of them are in my hands. The most important one was taken away by them last October, and they still haven’t gotten him out of Saudi Arabia.”
Nan Bei tried to take the cup from him, but he would not let go, so she could only lean over and let him feed her one mouthful at a time. “You want to snatch that person from them?” Cheng Muyang said calmly, “That’s right. They want to transport him out of Saudi Arabia, and I want to take him for myself.”
“Why?”
“If what they did to turn the nuclear scientist is exposed, it will become an international crisis.” Cheng Muyang gestured for her to take another sip. Nan Bei obediently drank another mouthful. He finally put down the cup and said, “So as long as I have that person in my hands, I hold the initiative. The goal is very simple. Since they forced Cheng Muyang to his death, then let солнце become a public philanthropist.”
“A philanthropist?” Nan Bei looked him up and down.
“Yes. I’m an internationally wanted criminal now, so it will always be inconvenient for me to act,” Cheng Muyang said. “After this is over, the Cheng family will be handed over to Cheng Muyun. From then on, he’ll be an arms dealer, while I’ll be a philanthropist.”
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