Family Stealing System: your wife, mother, sister, all mine now!
Chapter 20: Aftertaste

Chapter 20: Aftertaste

The light through the window had shifted from amber to a softer gold, and Jia stirred against his chest with a small, unhappy sound. She was wrapped in his arms, having napped for at least a few hours.

"How do you feel?" he asked.

Amazing.

Her whole body felt so light.

And there was an instinct that immediately made her want to kiss him. But she controlled herself.

"This is disgusting," she whispered, not meeting his eyes. "I need to wash."

Kian propped himself up on one elbow, looking down at her. Her short hair was a mess, sticking up in three different directions, and there was a faint smear of dried saliva at the corner of her mouth.

"We can just go take a bath together," he said.

She glared at him.

"I’ll help you clean up!"

"Sigh. But the bathhouse is in the back," she said. "Past the kitchen. Everyone in the living room is going to see me like this."

She gestured vaguely at her entire body—naked, marked, the insides of her thighs still carrying evidence of what they’d done.

"Mia will never let me live it down."

"So we sneak."

She blinked at him. "What?"

Kian was already moving, pulling his pants back on and tossing her the outer robe she’d been wearing earlier.

It was the old one, not the Moonpetal silk—that was still bundled somewhere in the main room—but it would cover enough.

"Window goes to the side garden. Garden connects to the back hallway. Hallway leads to the bath. Nobody will see us."

Jia stared at him for a long moment, then at the window, then back at him.

"I am a cultivator, I’ll have no trouble carrying you."

She took up on the offer reluctantly.

They grabbed fresh clothes from the room (since it was Kian’s room, they had to make do with his clothes) and left the room through a window.

The side garden was barely a garden—more of a narrow strip of moss and river stones between the house wall and the bamboo fence—but it was private.

He moved quickly, carrying her in his arms, and when he landed she grabbed his shoulder for balance. The robe hung loose on her, unbelted, and he caught a glimpse of her small breasts and the mole below her rib before she yanked it closed.

He smiled. Nothing he hadn’t seen, kissed, and enjoyed.

The back hallway was empty, the floorboards warm under their feet. They easily got in as the windows were unlocked.

From somewhere in the living room came the soft clink of a teacup—Mia, probably, still thinking—but the door was closed, and no one came out.

The bathhouse was a small stone room with a copper tub and a drain in the floor, and the moment Kian shut the door behind them Jia sagged against the wall in relief.

"I can’t believe we just did that."

Kian nodded. "Indeed, we have an Array Formation but it only protects us from people outside. People inside can enter easily."

"I did not mean it that way. You-"

She couldn’t even finish, just shook her head and started fumbling with the water pump.

Cold water gushed into the tub, and she yelped when it hit her fingers.

"Help me with this," she said, pouting. "You said you would."

"I am a man of my word."

Kian stepped behind her, reaching around to work the pump handle while she steadied the bucket.

His chest pressed against her back, and she went still for just a moment before relaxing into it. Her hair smelled like him and something floral—the oil she’d used that morning, maybe—and her ears were still pink at the tips.

He kissed one of them, and she shivered.

"Focus," she said, but she didn’t pull away. "We’re supposed to be cleaning up, not—not starting again."

***

They did not start again, though it was a near thing.

By the time they were both rinsed and dried and dressed—her in Kian’s oversized robe, pale blue, and him in the deep indigo martial robe from earlier—the sun outside had gone golden-orange and someone had lit the paper lanterns in the hallway.

Jia’s face was still flushed from the steam, or maybe from the way he’d insisted on scrubbing her back and had let his hands wander lower than strictly necessary, but she looked cleaner and calmer and only elbowed him twice on the walk back to the living room.

They settled onto the cushioned seats around the low table.

Across the table, Hua Mia sat with her chin propped on one hand, her tea already half-finished, her gaze tracking the two of them like a hawk watching a pair of mice who thought they were being subtle.

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. The slow, deliberate way she lifted her cup to her lips—eyes still fixed on the fresh marks visible at Jia’s collar, the way her sister couldn’t quite meet her gaze—was a judgment more damning than any lecture.

Shameless as ever, Kian called for Jiao Yin to bring tea, ignoring Mia’s sharp gaze.

Jiao Yin padded in from the kitchen with a clay pot and three cups, her eyes flicking from his face to Jia’s and back again with a knowing little twitch at the corner of her mouth.

Jia busied herself with her teacup, ears going red. Kian just smiled and reached for the pot.

"How was it?" Mia asked.

Jia choked on her tea, sputtering into the cup with a sound that was half cough and half dying animal.

"It was—we just took a bath. Why are you asking like that?"

"It was incredible," Kian said, at the exact same moment.

The two answers landed on top of each other and then just sat there, Jia glaring at him with murder in her eyes while Mia’s eyebrow climbed toward her hairline.

Jiao Yin, still holding the teapot, turned her face toward the wall in a way that suggested she was trying very hard not to laugh and failing by approximately the width of her trembling shoulders.

Kian poured himself tea with the serene calm of a man who had absolutely no shame and never intended to acquire any, then leaned back against the cushion.

"What?" he said, his smile innocent. "She asked."

Mia set her teacup down with a click that was just slightly too hard in Jia’s ears. "I could hear you from the living room, you know. Both of you. The walls in this house are decorative at best. It seems I don’t know my own sister well enough."

Jia buried her face in her hands and made a sound like a kettle reaching boil. Jiao Yin finally lost her battle with composure, a single snort escaping before she clapped a hand over her mouth.

Kian just drank his tea, watching the two sisters bicker with the easy satisfaction of a man who had made both of them his own. He set the cup down and just looked at Mia, noticing something.

Hahaha!

She is glad that her sister is embarrassed. Now she doesn’t have to be the only one embarrassed about the dressing room incident.

Mia, noticing that Kian had understood her thoughts, blushed herself and glared at him. "And you. You finally have what you wanted from the moment you met us. Are you happy now? Huh?!"

Kian just blew her a kiss, not saying anything as he just laid against the table.

The sisters both looked at each other.

Kian, on the other hand, turned to look at his system screen.

The translucent panel flickered open in his mind’s eye, and he navigated to the Body Gamble Shop without thinking about it—the motion had become almost automatic by now, like checking a pocket for spirit stones.

Two Body Boxes sat in the inventory: Jiao Yin’s, already spent and converted into Sucking Hero, and the fresh one labeled *Hua Jia* in characters that pulsed with a faint inner light.

Closing his eyes, he selected it, and the familiar sensation of a die rolling somewhere behind his navel made his stomach lurch.

What ability would he get this time?