Adultery HER SMILE WAS NEVER MINE

[insatiable_desire]

Chapter One — Ordinary

People always assume contentment is something you settle for. That it's the consolation prize for people who didn't have the nerve to want more. I never bought that. 

My name is Feng Wuji. I'm twenty-nine, and if you asked me to describe my life in one word, I'd say good — not exciting, not remarkable, just good, the way a well-made pair of shoes is good. Nobody writes songs about shoes like that. You just don't think about your feet all day, and that's the whole point.

At seven a.m., the alarm doesn't even startle me anymore. Shower, coffee — black, no sugar, my one aesthetic principle in an otherwise unprincipled kitchen — and out the door by eight. The elevator in our building takes its sweet time on every floor like it's savoring the trip. The hallway always smells like whatever detergent the cleaning crew used that week. 

Old Zhou, the security guard, lifts two fingers from the front desk when I pass, which is as close to a conversation as either of us wants before nine a.m. I like that about him. I like that about most of my life, honestly — the parts that don't ask anything of me I'm not already willing to give.

I coordinate projects at Hengyuan Tech—a mid-sized company with a decent reputation, the kind of place where ambition exists but hasn't curdled into anything ugly yet. Good air conditioning. Deadlines that are firm but not sadistic. Nine years in, promoted three times along the way, and I know which of my coworkers actually drink their coffee black and which ones are just performing it for the office. Nine years is long enough that the place stops feeling like somewhere you work and starts feeling like somewhere you are.

"You're early again. It's honestly embarrassing for the rest of us."
I didn't need to look up to know it was Chen Hao—nobody else announced their arrival by insulting you first. 
He let himself into my room, grabbed the chair from the next desk over, and spun it around to straddle it backward like he was fifteen.
"You're late again," I said. "As usual."


"Flexible hours, my friend."

"That phrase does not mean what you think it means."

"It means whatever the boss lets it mean, and the boss likes me." He grinned, unbothered, and stole a pen off my desk, which he had no intention of using. "Lunch. Same place?"

"Same place."

"You are the most predictable man alive, you know that? It's actually a little impressive."

"I prefer 'reliable.'"

"Sure. Reliable. That's what boring people call themselves." He said it without any real bite — Chen Hao had been saying some version of that sentence to me since the week we met, and by now it was less an insult than a kind of greeting.

"Morning, you two."

The voice was quieter, and the whole room seemed to dial itself down a notch when it came. Yue Mengli paused at the open doorway, a folder hugged to her chest, a loose strand of hair escaping this morning's braid. After a brief glance inside, she stepped into the room. 

"Morning," I said.

Yue Mengli had a quiet presence, the kind that didn't demand attention but somehow drew it anyway. People tended to lower their voices around her, as if loudness would break something delicate.

Chen Hao, of course, had no such restraint.
"Morning, Mengli! You're just in time. Tell Wuji he needs a personality transplant."

She laughed — a small, genuine sound — and for just a second her eyes found mine before she answered him. "I think there's nothing wrong with being steady."

"See, this is favoritism. I'm reporting this to HR."

"I'm not taking sides." She looked down at the folder, a faint color rising in her cheeks that she was clearly hoping neither of us would clock. "I just don't think everyone needs to be exciting to be worth something."

There was a half-beat after that sentence where she seemed to realize she'd said more than she meant to, and I did what I always did in those moments — I let it pass like I hadn't heard the second half of it.

"Anyway." She recovered quickly, settling back into her professional composure. "Wuji, the Q3 client report's ready for your review whenever."

"I'll take a look after lunch."

She nodded, gave me one more of those small smiles, and headed back toward her desk. I watched her go for exactly as long as was normal for a coworker to watch another coworker go, and not one second longer.

Chen Hao, damn him, was watching me watch her.

"You're a cruel, cruel man."

"I have no idea what you're implying."

"I'm not implying, I'm stating. That girl has had a thing for you since the Wang account, and you walk around pretending you haven't noticed like it's a moral achievement."

"I'm married, Hao."

"I know that. She knows that. Doesn't stop the heart from being an idiot, does it." He shrugged, already losing interest, already reaching for something on his phone. "I'm just saying, most guys wouldn't be so disciplined about it."

I didn't answer that one, because there wasn't really an answer that didn't sound either arrogant or cruel. The truth was simpler than either: I noticed everything. I noticed the glances, the pauses, the way her sentences sometimes trailed off half a step before they were supposed to. I noticed, and then I filed it away someplace I didn't visit, because noticing wasn't the same as wanting, and I had a wife at home I loved without complication.

That's not a small thing, by the way. Loving someone without complication. Most people go their whole lives without it.

The day went the way most of my days went — a scattering of meetings, a spreadsheet that fought me for twenty minutes before surrendering, a coffee run with Chen Hao where he spent the whole walk narrating an argument he'd had with his landlord as if it were a heist movie. At lunch the three of us took our usual table by the window. Chen Hao held court. Mengli laughed at the right places and occasionally caught my eye across the table in a way that meant nothing and everything at once, depending on how much attention you wanted to pay it. I paid it just enough to be kind and not one degree more.

By six, the office had thinned out to the diehards and the people with nowhere better to be. I wasn't either of those.
I grabbed my jacket, switched off the lights in my office, and stepped out.

As I headed toward the elevators, Chen Hao looked up from his desk.
"Off to the wife," he called. It wasn't really a question.
"Off to the wife," I agreed, shrugging into my jacket.
"Living the dream, man." Something moved beneath the joke in his voice — I couldn't tell if it was envy or just exhaustion, and I didn't ask.
Yue Mengli glanced up from her desk. "See you tomorrow, Wuji," she said softly, her voice nearly lost beneath the scbang of Chen Hao's chair.
"See you tomorrow, Mengli," I replied with a small nod before heading for the elevators.


Outside, the city was doing its evening thing — horns, the smell of someone's street-cart dinner, the sun casting long orange stripes down between the buildings. I wondered what Bingqing had decided to make for dinner tonight. By now she was probably already in the kitchen.  

I checked my phone out of habit. No messages. There usually weren't any; we both knew roughly when I'd be back. 

I took the route I always took, stopped at the corner store for the milk we were out of, and let twenty minutes of driving do what it always did, which was nothing in particular except make the day feel finished. 

The evening traffic moved the way it always did—slow enough to be annoying if you fought it, predictable enough to stop mattering if you didn't. I waited through two red lights behind the same delivery van that seemed to haunt this route every Tuesday, let a motorcycle squeeze past, and watched office workers spill out of the subway station carrying takeaway bags for dinner.

I wasn't in a hurry. Home wasn't going anywhere.

Bingqing almost always had dinner started by the time I got back. She'd left her job half a year after we married, deciding she'd rather take care of our home than spend another decade climbing someone else's corporate ladder. I'd told her the decision was hers to make, and she'd never once given me a reason to think she regretted it. Truth be told, I think she hated office work.  

I'd offered more than once to hire someone to help with the housework. Bingqing always refused. She said taking care of our home was what she loved. 


I pulled into the apartment garage, eased the car into my usual parking space, and killed the engine. The familiar silence settled in as I grabbed the milk from the passenger seat, locked the car, and headed for the elevators.
The ride up was uneventful, just me and the soft hum of the cables. By now I could probably tell which floor we'd reached without looking at the display.


I stood outside our apartment door for a second before I put the key in. I always did that, actually, now that I think about it — one small pause, like I was giving myself a chance to appreciate what was on the other side before I opened the door and stopped noticing it again.

Inside, the apartment smelled like garlic and ginger, something in a pan, the television murmuring low in the other room. Ordinary sounds. The best sounds I knew.

I stepped inside. And in that moment, I felt completely content.

[Hotgiri]

Nice story, pls add hot gif in sex scene

[insatiable_desire]

Chapter 2: A Gentle Evening

The smell hit me before I even got the door fully open — ginger, garlic, something braising low and slow. I toed off my shoes in the entryway and there she was, standing at the dining table with her sleeves pushed up past her elbows, a strand of hair stuck to her cheek from the kitchen heat.

Li Bingqing.

I stopped in the doorway and let myself look.
I don't think I'll ever get used to how she looks in ordinary moments like this. Not dressed up, not posed for anyone — just standing over a pot with a wooden spoon in her hand, the lamp above the table throwing a warm line down one side of her face. Her skin has always had that pale, almost translucent look to it, like she spends her whole life indoors, though I know that's not true. Her hair was pulled back loosely, a few pieces falling free around her jaw, and for a second I just stood in the doorway watching her the way you'd watch something you were afraid to interrupt.

Bingqing.
Her name meant as pure as ice. Her parents named her well. Calm on the surface, unreadable underneath, the kind of person who could walk through a burning building and somehow keep her voice level.
And to me, she had always been exactly that. Pure. Calm. Untouched by anything ugly. She was beautiful, quiet and refined.

"You're home," she said, glancing up, and her mouth curved into that same soft smile she always greeted me with.

"Yeah." I hung my jacket on the hook by the door. "Smells amazing in here."

"I made your favorite." She turned back to the stove, stirring something that didn't really need stirring.

"Must be a special occasion, then."

She laughed at that — a short, quiet sound — but it didn't quite land the way it usually does. It caught somewhere before it reached her eyes, like a radio signal losing strength halfway through a sentence.

I noticed it.

I had learned to read her over three years of marriage. The slight tightening at the corner of her mouth when something bothered her. The way her fingers found each other when she was nervous, interlacing and untwining in a slow, unconscious rhythm. The way she held her breath before answering a question she had not prepared for. 

I let it go for the moment. Crossed the room, and out of habit more than thought, put my hand on her shoulder as I passed toward the sink to wash up. It's a gesture I've made a thousand times — barely a gesture at all, really, more like breathing. She didn't flinch away from it. But there was a beat, a half-second delay, before her shoulder softened under my palm, like her body needed an extra moment to remember what to do with the touch. 

"Long day?" she asked, not turning around. 

I set my bag down and rolled my shoulders. "The usual. Meetings, reports. Hao being annoying."

That earned a more genuine smile. "That sounds about right."

"And you? How was the day here?" 

"Quiet." She plated the food, setting it down with more care than usual, lining up the chopsticks just so. "Ran a few errands. Nothing worth talking about." 

We sat down to eat and fell into the rhythm we always fall into — the comfortable kind of quiet that doesn't need filling, the kind two people build after years of sharing a table. I told her about the report Hao botched, about the new noodle place that opened up near the office that everyone keeps talking about. She nodded along, asked the right questions in the right places, laughed when she was supposed to laugh. She reached across the table without thinking and picked the ginger slices out of my bowl because she knew I hated them. 

But something in her was off that night. I couldn't put a name to it, not right away. She ate slower than usual, her chopsticks pausing mid-air more than once. A few times I caught her looking at me — not the quick, casual glances people give each other across a table, but something longer, something that lingered a beat too long before she caught herself and looked back down at her bowl. Her lips would part, like she was about to say something, and then they'd press shut again, and she'd go back to picking at her rice.

"Something on your mind?" I finally asked, setting my chopsticks down.

She looked up fast — too fast — and shook her head. "No. It's nothing, really."

The answer came out before I'd even finished the question, which told me more than the words themselves did. I watched her for a second, waiting to see if she'd change her mind and say whatever it was she was chewing on. She didn't. 

"You barely touched your food," I said.

She looked down at her bowl as if surprised to find it still half-full. "I had a late lunch."

It was a reasonable excuse. She lowered her eyes to her bowl and kept eating, a little too focused on it now, like the rice had suddenly become the most interesting thing in the room.

I thought about pushing. If it had been anyone else — a coworker, a friend, even my own sister — I probably would have kept at it until they cracked. But this was Bingqing. In all the years I'd known her, she had never once been the type to hide things out of spite or fear. If she was holding something back, it was because she wasn't ready to let it go yet, and pulling at threads before someone's ready to unravel them rarely does any good. 

So I let the silence sit there between us, unbothered, then I picked up my chopsticks again. "Alright."

She exhaled — so softly I almost missed it — and returned to her meal.

---

After we cleared the table — she washed, I dried, another one of our small unspoken routines — we ended up on the couch like we do most nights. I flipped the TV to some drama neither of us was actually watching, more background noise than entertainment, something to fill the space while we sat there existing in the same room. The overhead light stayed off. Just the blue flicker of the screen and the lamp in the corner, casting everything in that soft, low light that makes a room feel smaller and warmer than it really is.

She sat closer than usual tonight.
At first, I did not think much of it. I rested my arm along the back of the sofa, and she leaned into me, her shoulder fitting against my chest like a key into its lock. It was natural. Familiar. Comforting.

But then I felt it.

Her fingers brushed against mine, light as a breath. Then pulled back. Then brushed again, lingering longer this time. Her hand hovered over mine, palm open, as though waiting for permission.

"Bingqing?" I murmured.

She did not answer.

Instead, she turned toward me slowly. The television light caught the side of her face, illuminating the soft curve of her jaw, the slight tremor in her lower lip. Her eyes were darker than usual, and there was something in them I could not name — a mixture of tenderness and distance, like she was looking at me from the other end of a very long corridor.

"Wuji," she said quietly.

"Yes?"

She looked at me then — really looked, the kind of look that searches your face for something specific, like she was trying to memorize it, or find something in it she was afraid wasn't there anymore. It wasn't the way she usually looked at me. It felt heavier than that. Like she was looking at me the way you look at something before you say goodbye to it.

But she didn't say anything else. Instead, she leaned in, closing the small distance that had been sitting between us all evening, and this time when her hand found mine, she didn't pull it back. Her fingers laced through mine and held on. Her head rested against my shoulder, her breath slow and even against my collarbone.

It was a simple gesture. One we had shared countless nights.

But tonight, it carried a weight I could not explain.

I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her closer. She melted into me, her body soft and yielding, her hand tightening around mine. The television flickered on, cycling through scenes I did not register. The minutes passed in a warm, unhurried rhythm.

For a moment, everything felt normal.

Almost.

I rested my cheek against her hair and breathed in the scent of her shampoo — something floral, something I had bought for her last spring. Her body rose and fell against mine with each breath. Her fingers were still intertwined with my own.
But as I sat there, holding the woman I had loved for nearly a decade, I could not shake the feeling that something had begun to shift beneath us. Something I could not see or name, but could feel — like the first tremor before a building falls.

I looked down at her. Her eyes were closed. Her lips were parted slightly. She looked peaceful. Vulnerable. Beautiful in a way that made my chest ache.

And yet.

I could not understand why I was having this feeling.

Why my stomach had tightened into a knot I could not loosen.

Why her quiet tonight felt louder than any words she could have spoken.

I held her tighter and said nothing.

The television played on.

And somewhere in the silence between two heartbeats, the evening settled around us like a held breath — waiting, without my permission, for something to break.

[Hotgiri]

Pls add gif to this story

[insatiable_desire]

Chapter 3: The Male Best Friend

There are moments in life that feel ordinary while you're living them. Quiet. Warm. Familiar. And yet, later, they become the moments you replay the most — the ones you dig up at three in the morning when sleep won't come, turning them over like stones, looking for the crack you missed.

That night was one of them.


Bingqing leaned closer, her fingers still laced through mine as the television flickered in the dark. The glow moved across her face in slow pulses — blue, then amber, then blue again. Her body was warm against mine, her weight familiar, the way she settled into my side as natural as breathing.

"Wuji," she whispered.
Her voice was softer now. Almost hesitant.

I turned my head. "Hmm?"

She didn't answer right away. Instead she shifted, her hand sliding up my arm, coming to rest on my shoulder. Her touch lingered there — more deliberate than before. There was intention behind it. Not rushed. Not forced. Just decided.

I studied her face. "What is it?"

She shook her head lightly, a faint smile forming. "Nothing. I just—"
Her voice trailed off.

Then, without finishing the sentence, she leaned in.
The kiss was soft. Familiar. The kind that didn't need passion to feel meaningful — it carried years inside it. Shared mornings. Quiet nights. The unspoken shorthand of two people who had learned each other's rhythms so completely they no longer had to ask.

I responded instinctively, my hand moving to her waist, pulling her just a little closer.
For a while, nothing else existed. No thoughts. No questions. Just the quiet rhythm of something that had always been there.

By the time we finally pulled apart, we had drifted into the bedroom, our clothes long since discarded.

We lay side by side, satisfied, the silence between us calm and unbroken.
Her head rested lightly against my chest, her breathing slow and steady.

I stared at the ceiling.
There was a strange peace in moments like this. The kind that makes you believe everything is exactly where it should be. That nothing could go wrong.
That nothing had ever been wrong.

Then she spoke again, and something in her voice had changed.
"Wuji."

It wasn't the soft, sleepy voice from before. It was careful now. Deliberate.

"Hmm?" I murmured, absentmindedly running my fingers through her hair.

"I want to talk about something."

So there really had been something bothering her all evening. 

My hand stilled for the briefest moment before I forced it to keep moving.
"Okay."


She shifted, lifting her head from my chest to look at me. There was hesitation in her eyes. Not fear. But something close to it.

"It's about… us," she said.

I tried for a small smile. "That sounds serious."

"I am serious."

That killed the smile pretty quickly. I turned to face her fully. "Alright. What about us?"

She didn't answer right away. Her eyes searched mine again, just like earlier on the couch. As if measuring something. Or preparing herself.

Then she took a small breath.
"Don't you think things have become a little…" she paused, choosing her words carefully, "too routine?"


I frowned. "Routine?"

"Our life. Our marriage." She kept her voice soft, almost apologetic. "It's stable. Predictable."

There wasn't any accusation in how she said it — that's what I noticed most. It sounded like an observation, not a complaint, which somehow made it land harder.


I let out a quiet breath. "Is that a bad thing?"

"I didn't say it was bad," she replied quickly. "It's just—"

Her fingers tightened against the bed sheet.
"It feels like something is missing."

The words hung in the air between us. Something is missing. I repeated them silently in my mind, turning them over, trying to find the shape of what she meant.

"I thought you liked this," I said. "This kind of life."

"I do," she said immediately. Too soon.
"But," she added, her voice lowering, "sometimes I wonder if we've stopped growing. If we'd settled into something so comfortable it had started to calcify."

I didn't respond. Not because I had nothing to say. But because I didn't know which answer she wanted. Or which answer was the right one.

"We still talk," she went on. "We still spend time together. But it feels like we're just following a pattern now. Like we already know everything there is to know about each other."

"That's what happens when you're married," I said quietly. 

She gave me a small smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Is it, though?"

There was a challenge folded into that question, subtle but unmistakable, and it unsettled me more than I wanted to admit. Before I could figure out how to respond, she moved on.

"There's something else I wanted to bring up."

I felt my chest tighten slightly. "What is it?"

She hesitated again, and then she said it — just a name, quiet and almost careful, like she was setting something fragile down on a table between us.

"Sun Junfeng."

It didn't sound like much on its own. But the effect it had was immediate, a kind of stillness settling over me while my mind scrambled to catch up.

Sun Junfeng.

Her childhood friend, though that word never quite covered what they'd actually been to each other. They'd grown up two doors down from each other, gone to the same colleges from elementary all the way through high college, sat in the same classrooms year after year until people just assumed they were a package deal. Childhood sweethearts, some of her relatives used to call them, half-joking, even though the two of them had never technically dated.

I'd heard the stories plenty of times over the years — how they used to study together, eat lunch together, walk home together every single day, they were practically inseparable. How half the neighborhood had quietly expected them to end up married eventually.
But they didn't. Because life doesn't always follow expectations. He left. Moved to America for his education.
And somewhere in the space he left behind, I'd shown up. At the time it had felt uncomplicated. Like I'd simply stepped into a spot that was already open, and I hadn't thought much harder about it than that. Maybe I should have.

"He's been back for a while now," Bingqing said.

"Six months," I answered, and the number was out of my mouth before I'd consciously decided to say it.

She looked a little surprised. "You've been keeping track?"

I shrugged, trying to sound more casual than I felt. "Hard not to notice."

That part was true, even though I'd never brought it up before that night. It had just been sitting there in the background of our marriage for half a year, unspoken but present, the way a low hum becomes part of a room until you can't remember what silence sounded like.

"He's still adjusting," she said. "Things didn't go the way he hoped over there."

I nodded slowly. Sun Junfeng had always been like that. Talented. Capable. But somehow, always caught in problems of his own making. And somehow, Bingqing was always the one who helped him out of them, the one who ended up untangling the messes he created.

"He's been reaching out more," she continued.

"I know."
Again, the honesty came out faster than I meant it to, and she studied my face for a second like she was recalibrating something.

"You don't like it," she said. Not a question.

I let out a breath. "It's not about liking or not liking it."

"Then what is it?"

I hesitated. Because the truth wasn't simple. Because the truth sounded ugly when spoken out loud.
"It's just," I paused, choosing my words carefully, "a little uncomfortable."

"Uncomfortable how?"

"He depends on you a lot."

"He's going through a rough time," she said, a slight edge creeping into her defense of him. "Some relationship in the States fell apart. That's all this is."

I nodded slowly. A breakup. That made more sense.
"And you're the one helping him through it."

"That's what friends do."

I didn't argue with that. Because she wasn't wrong. That's what friends do. Still, I heard myself ask, "Does it have to be you, every single time?"

She went quiet. For a few seconds neither of us said anything, and then she looked away from me. "He doesn't have a lot of people here anymore. Most of his old friends drifted."

"And you didn't."

Her eyes came back to mine sharply, like she'd caught something in my tone I hadn't quite intended to let slip.

"I didn't abandon him," she said softly. 

"That's not what I meant," I said, though if I was being honest with myself, some small part of me might have meant exactly that.

The silence that followed felt heavier than the ones before it. I stared up at the ceiling again, my thoughts picking up speed. Because of course I'd noticed things — the messages that came in late, the calls she'd step into another room to take, the way her attention would shift the instant his name lit up her phone screen. Nothing dramatic. Nothing I could point to and call a betrayal. But it was there, all the same. A quiet presence that had wedged itself into something that used to feel like it belonged only to us.

And the worst part? I couldn't say anything. Because from the outside, it looked harmless. Because questioning it would make me look insecure. Jealous. Petty.

"I just think," Bingqing said slowly, pulling me back from my thoughts, "maybe we've been too closed off." 

"What do you mean?"

"Our whole life revolves around the same things. The same people." Her voice dropped even further. "Maybe that's part of why it feels so stagnant."

I didn't say anything back. I was starting to see the shape of where this conversation was heading, and I didn't like it, but I didn't stop her either. I just lay there and let her keep going, watching the pieces settle into place one by one — Sun Junfeng, the word routine, the phrase something's missing — all of it circling in my head and connecting in ways I wasn't ready to look at directly.

But deep down, I already knew. 

Beside me, Bingqing took a slow breath. As if gathering the courage for something.
Her fingers lightly brushed against mine again. This time, they didn't hesitate. They held on. Tightly. As if she was afraid of letting go. Or afraid of what would happen once she did.

"Wuji," she whispered.

I didn't look at her. "Yeah?"

There was a pause. A long one. The kind that stretches just enough to make your chest tighten.
And in that silence, I could feel it. The shift. The moment where everything was about to change.

But the words didn't come. Not yet.

And so I lay there, staring into the dim light of the room, my mind filled with thoughts I couldn't quite organize. Memories. Doubts. Fragments of things I had chosen not to question before. All of it flashing through my mind in the span of seconds.
Sun Junfeng. Her voice. Her hesitation. That feeling I couldn't ignore anymore.

Something was wrong. Something had been wrong for a while.
And I had only just begun to see it.

Beside me, Bingqing remained silent. Her hand still holding mine. Her decision not yet spoken.
But I knew.

Whatever came next, nothing would stay the same.