The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis-Chapter 383: The Hidden Door

The youngest squealed and swung the stick like it was a sword.

Yizhen ran in a goofy circle, hands up in surrender as she continued to toddle around, trying to land a hit.

The other three children split into teams around the koi pond.

Lin Wei hopped the low rail and scooped the smallest boy up before he toppled in.

Mingyu and Deming stood with their heads bowed together, speaking low.

Longzi leaned against a pillar in the shade, his eyes keeping track of everything.

Satisfied that the children were in good hands, Yaozu caught Xinying’s wrist and pulled her away from the happy chaos that was their family.

She let him, because he never asked when he knew what she wanted before she did. His grip was firm but easy, the kind of hold that said we aren’t stealing anything; this is ours.

"Where are we going?" she asked, her voice coming out soft and breathlessly.

He glanced at the children—three boys and a girl—and drew her past the curtains and into the cool of the side hall.

The palace swallowed the courtyard noise by degrees.

He moved like he always did when it was for her: not fast, not slow, but inevitable.

They passed the lacquer screen with the cranes; he slid a hand behind it and found the tiny catch she could never find.

The panel loosened under his fingers. He pushed, and the seam of the wall opened into shadow.

"In you go, My Majesty," he purred. Each word he spoke made a dark promise that turned Xinying inside out, and he hadn’t even started yet.

She stepped through first.

The hidden corridor took the light off her shoulders. The stone held a day’s worth of warmth along its spine; the air lay still.

He closed the panel behind them, and the world went quiet enough that she could hear the children’s laughter like a memory rather than a sound.

"Thief," she chuckled, shaking her head like she was disappointed in him.

But how could she be? She loved surprises like this.

"Borrower," he corrected, and pressed her back to the wall as if the stone had been cut for her spine. "I’ll return you to the family after we’re done."

She smiled, already breathless without reason. "Now?"

"Now," he said, and kissed her.

He always kissed like this when he stole her in daylight—hard at first, then deep, then slow.

His hands caged her ribs and slid up until his thumbs found the line under her breasts.

He didn’t chase control with her; he didn’t need to. He took her mouth; she gave it. It felt less like heat and more like relief, like shutting a door against weather and finding a room already warm.

He broke the kiss with his forehead leaning against hers, breath steady. "Mine," he said, not a claim, not a threat. A habit.

"Yours," she agreed.

"Ours," he grunted. He slid his palms down, gathering her robes. "Arms up."

She lifted them.

He freed the sash with a simple tug that said he had done it a thousand times, here, in other rooms, in other years.

The knot slipped. Silk fell.

He pressed his mouth to her collarbone like he was thanking it for being there and then let his teeth mark the place, light, nothing that would show under court silk, everything he would feel later when he thought of it.

"You have five minutes," she said, teasing the way a wife teases a man who would burn the world for another five.

"I have as long as I want," he said, even, and slid one hand between her thighs as if to argue his case.

She opened for him without thinking, a knee bending, her heel scraping stone.

He touched her like a man who knew the map and still liked the road—no guesswork, no testing what he already knew.

Two fingers, steady, sure, the angle he always chose when there wasn’t time to be nice about it and every reason to be careful anyway.

She gasped.

He liked that one most and chased it again, not faster, not rough, just exact.

"You like the dark," she said into his mouth.

"I like you," he said into hers. "And you are nothing but pure light."

He kissed her again to catch another small sound he knew he’d earn.

He moved his hand and let her ride the pressure there, back easing off the stone and pressing into it in a pattern that never got old. He watched her face while he worked. He did not smile much when they were like this.

He looked intent, like a craftsman watching his hands.

Somewhere beyond the wall, a child shrieked with laughter.

Yaozu’s head tilted the smallest degree. He listened long enough to count. Four little voices. Lin Wei’s older one. Yizhen’s fake wail. Mingyu’s low murmur. Deming’s dry answer. Longzi’s silence.

All were where they should be. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

"Here," he said, returning his attention to the place in his hand that had nothing to do with the palace. "Stay here."

"Bossy," she whispered, and shivered when he drove his fingers just right.

He undid his belt without letting go of her.

She heard the leather slide and felt the brush of his robe, the rub of rougher fabric against silk. He made that simple work sound indecent.

He liked when she heard him wanting her; he liked that she would never make him be quiet when he didn’t want to be.

"Inside," she demanded, because pretending she might let him do this with his hand and nothing else would have been a lie.

He breathed out once, low and pleased, and pushed his trousers down far enough. He didn’t need more.

He bracketed her hips with his palms, lifted her with a single clean motion, and she wrapped her legs around his waist.

His cock found her in that same practiced way—guided but never forced, careful to the inch—and he slid into her on one slow thrust that stopped just shy of too much and waited for her nod.

She nodded. He gave her the rest.

The breath left her on a sound that would have made Yizhen grin and Deming cough. Here, it went into Yaozu’s mouth and stayed, like everything else she gave him.

He held her there, deep, not moving, until her fingers loosened on his shoulders and her eyes went soft with the change from hurry to heat.

"Look at me," she said.

He did. He always did.

He rocked into her, measured, a pace that was his even when she set the rest. She breathed with it.

Her thighs tightened at his hips; her heels dragged up his back. He liked the scrape.

He let the weight of her pull him closer, deeper, and heard the quiet sound she only made in hidden places—the one that meant the world had fallen away enough that she could stop being anything except a woman who wanted.

"Harder," she whispered.

He gave her harder, the kind that came from the legs, not the back, from a body trained to be accurate, not showy.

Stone took the soft thud of his hips and kept it. She tilted her pelvis and he shifted his angle to meet it. The move was so small it was almost nothing. The effect was a gasp.

"Just like that," she said, her eyes closing for just a second before opening again like she didn’t want to miss his face.

He held that line and worked it, steady, relentless, the way he would work a stuck latch or a man who needed to stop breathing.

Except this was gentler. Except this was for her. He felt her start the climb and didn’t speed up; he pressed in a fraction deeper and kept the same pace so she would have somewhere to land.

She landed hard.

She bit his shoulder, and the little shock of teeth made him laugh once into her hair, then groan and follow her with a thrust that pushed them tight against the wall.

He buried his face in her neck. He didn’t hide the sound that came out of him; he never had with her. He rocked through the last pulses, slow now, wanting to give her the softness on the other side.

She sagged in his arms. He liked her heavy. He liked that she trusted him to hold.

"Again," she said, already smiling, breath still uneven.