CHAPTER 419: CHAPTER 419; HONEYMOON PHASE 3 (E)

His manhood had been genuinely impressive, thick, prominently veined, substantially larger than she’d anticipated even accounting for his overall size.

It had delivered both exquisite pleasure and significant pain in nearly equal measure, stretching her beyond what she’d thought possible, filling her so completely that there had been multiple moments when she’d genuinely thought she couldn’t possibly take any more of him.

And yet somehow she had. Her body had accepted all of him, had responded to his dominance with an intensity that had genuinely surprised her, reaching heights of pleasure she hadn’t known existed.

But now, in the unforgiving clarity of morning light, she was definitely feeling the substantial consequences. The soreness was very real, very present. She mentally resolved not to deliberately tempt him quite so provocatively again, at least not until her thoroughly used body had adequate time to properly recover.

Then another thought struck her with sudden force, freezing her chopsticks halfway to her mouth in mid-motion.

They’d done it completely raw. Multiple times throughout the long night. With absolutely no protection of any kind.

Her hand moved unconsciously to her lower abdomen, pressing gently, massaging with slight circular motions. The possibilities suddenly flooded her mind in an overwhelming rush, pregnancy, carrying a baby, another child to raise alongside Minghao...

Huo Ting Cheng noticed the small, telling action immediately. His observant eyes tracked the movement of her hand on her stomach, and something complex flickered across his normally controlled face, too quick and subtle to properly identify.

"You can’t get pregnant," he stated abruptly, his voice carefully neutral in a way that immediately raised her suspicions. "It’s your safe ’days’ right now."

Tang Fei’s hand stilled completely against her abdomen. She looked up at him with a furrowed brow, her analytical mind immediately questioning. "How do you know with such certainty that it’s my safe ’days’?"

He took a deliberate sip of tea, his eyes not quite meeting hers directly. "I’ve seen your menstrual calendar. In the bathroom cabinet. I pay close attention to these particular details."

"But..." she began, her hand still resting protectively on her abdomen, "miracles can happen regardless of calendars. Safe days aren’t one hundred percent reliable, everyone knows that. What if despite the timing....."

"You won’t," he interrupted with unexpected firmness, his tone leaving no room for argument. "Trust me completely on this particular matter. It’s simply not possible right now."

There was something in his voice, a certainty that seemed to extend far beyond simple calendar calculations or cycle tracking. Something that spoke of knowledge he shouldn’t have or precautions she didn’t know about.

Tang Fei studied his face intently, searching for revealing clues in his expression, the set of his jaw, the way he held his shoulders.

"Even setting aside the timing," he continued after a measured pause, his voice softening slightly in an obvious attempt to redirect the conversation, "it’s genuinely not the right time for another child. Let the other children grow up first. Minghao, Tinghao, Zhihao, and Feihao need our focus. They all need our full attention right now. Another baby at this particular moment would create... complications we don’t need."

Tang Fei felt a distinct flicker of something complicated, was it disappointment? Suspicion? Some confusing mixture of both? She genuinely couldn’t quite identify the emotion. "You sound extremely certain about all of this. Unusually certain."

"I am certain," he replied, finally meeting her eyes directly with that intense gaze that always made her feel simultaneously seen and studied. "We have time, Fei’er. Plenty of time ahead of us. There’s absolutely no rush to expand our family right now."

But there was definitely something he wasn’t saying, something significant he was deliberately holding back. She could feel it clearly in the subtle way his jaw tightened almost imperceptibly, in how his eyes held hers just a fraction too long with too much intensity, in the carefully controlled modulation of his voice that suggested he was choosing each word with unusual care.

He was hiding something important. Something about why he was so absolutely certain she couldn’t get pregnant.

And Tang Fei, with all her training and experience reading people, knew with absolute certainty that he was lying, or at the very least, telling only a carefully edited version of the complete truth.

The question was: what exactly was he hiding, and why?

What Huo Ting Cheng didn’t say, what he couldn’t possibly say, was the devastating truth he’d been carrying like a crushing stone lodged in his chest since that terrible night six years ago, a weight that never lightened no matter how much time passed.

After the quadruplets’ birth, Tang Fei had nearly died. The memory still haunted his nightmares, and when it had happened, he was abroad but traveled back immediately.

Only to find her pale face, the blood, the frantic rush of medical personnel. The pregnancy had been difficult from the start, complications mounting with each passing month, but the delivery had been truly traumatic.

She had hemorrhaged badly on the operating table, the bleeding seemingly impossible to control, and had been in emergency surgery for hours that felt like years while he paced the sterile hospital corridors like a caged animal, terrified beyond reason that he would lose her, that she would slip away before he could tell her one more time how much she meant to him.

When she’d finally stabilized, though "stable" was a generous term for her critical condition, the doctor had pulled him aside into a small, private consultation room with grim news that would change everything.

The damage to her reproductive system had been catastrophically severe, the surgeon explained with professional compassion.

Another pregnancy would be extremely high-risk, potentially fatal to both mother and child.

"If she conceives again," the doctor had said quietly, his experienced eyes grave with the weight of delivering such news, "there’s a significant chance, higher than eighty percent, that she won’t survive the pregnancy or delivery. Her body simply can’t handle that level of stress and trauma again. The scarring is too extensive, the damage too severe. I’m sorry, Mr. Huo, but you need to understand the very real risks we’re discussing here."