Fresh Embers of Love

Chapter 28

Nuwa sat at her desk in Xichen Hall, surrounded by her younger cousins, each at their own individual desks. The Supreme Lord Lao had assigned this advanced course on the Mortal Realm, taught by one of the foremost authorities on that subject, a teacher who had been born and raised there.

Nuwa didn't need to take another class about the mortals, having completed her Mortal Trial, but she took it anyway, at Lord Lao's request. Her brother and QingWa Sheng needed help focusing, and Lao had asked her to supervise them. She had convinced herself that this had nothing to do with a desire to see the teacher.

Cousin Tangyue stood at the front of the room, leaning back against his desk.

"All in all, you have done really well with this assignment" he told his class. "You seem to grasp the technological advances that the mortals have made within the last few hundred years."

He handed several scrolls back to his students, but the last one he held on to.

"Nuwa, will you stay behind please?" Tangyue asked her. "There was something in your paper that I want to discuss."

Everyone around Nuwa stood up to leave, and immediately the air was filled with the sounds of chairs scraping the floor and the rustling of paper. Kun Ji threw a sideways glance in her direction, oozing disdain, then followed after her brothers, the twin Ferret Spirits Kamai and Tachi, who knocked over a chair in their haste to leave the room.

Kun Ji had not been impressed by Nuwa taking these classes. She had made no secret of that. Nuwa knew how Kun Ji felt about Tangyue, and theorized that her animosity probably stemmed from there.

Honestly though, she had not gotten any special attention from Tangyue during this class. They had met everyday for the past week, and Tangyue had barely even looked at her. Until now. Now he needed to talk to her about her paper. Nuwa frowned, feeling anxious.

Nuwa's brother, Fucang, passed by her and flashed her a sympathetic look, before following their cousin QingWa Sheng out the door. He was the last to leave.

"Come up here to sit, Nuwa" Tangyue directed her, pointing at his own chair at the front of the room. He walked to the door, closing it. Nuwa heard a click from the lock. Tangyue made his way back to his desk slowly, gazing at Nuwa with an intense expression. He moved to stand right behind her.

Nuwa looked down nervously at her paper on Tangyue's desk. She couldn't see anything wrong with it. She frowned, puzzled. She felt Tangyue's hands drop gently onto her shoulders.

"What do you see there?" Tangyue asked her in a low voice, next to her ear.

Nuwa shook her head. "I can't find what's wrong with it" she admitted in a distressed tone of voice.

Tangyue's hands kneaded her shoulders.

"Relax" he coached her. "Look again. Why did I keep you behind?" he whispered in her ear.

Nuwa struggled to concentrate, but Tangyue's hands massaging her shoulders was very distracting. This was the first time that he had touched her since they had returned from the Flower Realm. This whole time he had acted like what they had done there had never happened, leaving her feeling confused and lost.

His strong fingers moved up to the back of her neck, and then followed the spine down, massaging between her shoulder blades. She bit her bottom lip, trying not to moan.

"Well?" Tangyue's voice prompted her.

"I should have written this character with a stronger curve?" she guessed wildly, pointing to one of the words she had written.

"No, that's not why" Tangyue replied in an amused voice. His hands traveled further down her back, massaging her waist with his fingers, her spine with his thumbs.