Qi Jiahe picked up Jiang Yue, carried him into his own bedroom, and laid him on the bed. He gently tousled Jiang Yue’s hair, stood up, and turned to walk out.
As he walked out of the bedroom, he couldn’t help letting out a yawn. Remembering the phone call he hadn’t made yet, he took out his phone, headed down to the first floor, and fetched a carton of milk from the kitchen refrigerator.
His slender fingers tapped on the phone’s keypad as he dialed the number.
He opened the milk carton and poured the milk into a glass. Just as he was about to make the call, he heard footsteps coming from upstairs, causing him to pause with a puzzled look and raise his head.
Jiang Yue’s hand rested on the banister as he walked down from upstairs.
Qi Jiahe sharply sucked in a breath. A rich, heavy scent of milk drifted over, but as he frowned and sharply raised his head to look at Jiang Yue, he realized something.
It wasn’t the smell of milk at all—it was Jiang Yue’s pheromones.
“Jiang Yue?” he asked tentatively.
Jiang Yue felt intensely uncomfortable all over, his breathing heavy. Subconsciously, he realized he had gone into heat, yet his body uncontrollably wanted to draw closer to Qi Jiahe.
Hearing Qi Jiahe’s voice, Jiang Yue quickened his pace. He subconsciously gave a soft response, walked into the kitchen, and pressed close to Qi Jiahe.
Feeling the body heat radiating from him, Qi Jiahe took a deep breath. “Didn’t you take your suppressants?”
Jiang Yue let out a ragged breath, raised his hand to touch Qi Jiahe’s clothes, stood on tiptoe to hug him, buried his face into Qi Jiahe’s chest, and breathed heavily through his nose.
“I ran out.”
Catching sight of the sweat droplets sliding down Jiang Yue’s forehead, Qi Jiahe’s Adam’s apple bobbed. His breathing turned heavy upon hearing those three words.
He had run out of suppressants, and under these circumstances, going out to buy more was entirely out of the question.
Lowering his head, Qi Jiahe hugged Jiang Yue back. He stroked Jiang Yue’s back with his palm and released his own pheromones to comfort him. “I’ll carry you upstairs.”
Keeping his eyes fixed directly on Jiang Yue’s scent gland, Qi Jiahe picked him up and headed toward the second floor.
“I… I feel awful.” The teary-eyed Jiang Yue in his arms had slightly reddened eye tails, and sweat continuously secreted from his forehead.
Qi Jiahe quickened his pace and carried him into his own bedroom.
The room was filled with the scent of mint. Feeling slightly better than before, Jiang Yue took deep, greedy breaths.
Placing Jiang Yue on the bed, Qi Jiahe tucked the blanket over him, wiped the sweat from his forehead, lowered his head, and said softly, “Can I bite your gland and give you a temporary mark?”
Warm breath drifted across Jiang Yue’s face. His eyelashes trembled as he let out a shuddering breath. He raised his hand to hook his finger around the bridge of Qi Jiahe’s nose, abruptly sat upright, and murmured softly beside Qi Jiahe’s ear, “Yes.”
Feeling a tickling sensation by his ear, Qi Jiahe clenched his jaw, pulled Jiang Yue closer, and settled him onto his lap.
Looking at Jiang Yue’s fair skin, Qi Jiahe swallowed hard and leaned his face close to his gland. The tense, quiet atmosphere filled Jiang Yue’s heart with a trace of fear.
As he felt a sharp pain radiating from his gland, a strange sensation immediately followed, and the mint-scented alpha pheromones were injected inside.
The moisture in Jiang Yue’s eyes welled up and spilled over in an instant, warm tears rolling down the corners of his eyes to land, droplet by droplet, onto Qi Jiahe’s hand.
“It hurts!” He raised a hand to give Qi Jiahe a shove from behind, his voice hoarse as he cried out with all his might.
Taken by surprise, Qi Jiahe was shoved backward, a surge of irritation flashing in his mind. In retaliation, he applied a bit more force with his teeth before pulling back quickly. He licked his lips as he looked at the gland, now marked with a reddened set of teeth impressions.
Catching the scent of mint, Jiang Yue’s eyelids grew heavy and drooped shut. Completely exhausted, he collapsed powerlessly into Qi Jiahe’s arms, panting weakly.
Qi Jiahe’s fingers massaged Jiang Yue’s gland, pulled him close into an embrace, and lay down on the bed with him.
Outside the window, the sun slowly rose from the east. Little birds perched on the tree branches by the second-floor window, chirping away, while the morning sun pierced through layers of clouds to cast its light into the bedroom.
Specks of dappled light were faintly visible on the bedroom walls.
Jiang Yue fluttered his eyelids open, and Qi Jiahe’s handsome face greeted his vision. He glared at him for two seconds before swiftly darting his gaze away.
He tried to climb out of bed, but Qi Jiahe’s arm pinned him firmly in place. After struggling twice, he gave up.
Lifting his head to look at Qi Jiahe, he blew a puff of air at Qi Jiahe’s eyelashes. Suddenly feeling a sharp sting in his gland, Jiang Yue raised a hand to touch it.
It is swollen?!
Jiang Yue let out a sharp gasp and lashed out with a kick right at Qi Jiahe’s groin.
In his sleep, Qi Jiahe felt a sharp jolt of pain in his nether regions. He snapped his eyes open, hurriedly reached down to pat the area with both hands, and stared at Jiang Yue with eyes wide as copper bells.
“Why the hell did you kick me?!” Qi Jiahe gritted his teeth, enduring the pain. “Besides, this thing is going to belong to you in the future!”
The moment Jiang Yue opened his eyes, he was hit by the pungent smell of mint. He had originally thought it was just Qi Jiahe’s natural scent, but now he realized it came from the mark.
With Qi Jiahe’s nonsense ringing in his ears and the sharp smell of mint lingering right under his nose, Jiang Yue let out a cold laugh.
“Did you bite my gland?!” Jiang Yue reached out, grabbed Qi Jiahe’s arm, and pinched him fiercely.
Qi Jiahe smacked his lips and rolled across the bed. “I certainly didn’t do it willingly. It was you who clung to me and insisted I bite you.”
Impossible!
Jiang Yue stared right into his eyes, trying to catch a trace of an act in his gaze.
“An award-winning actor is truly an actor. You’re so good at making things up.”
Hearing this, Qi Jiahe chuckled softly. “You still don’t believe me? I watched you get drunk and carried you to your bedroom, but you ended up following me out and hooking your arms around my neck.”
His warm breath drifted onto Jiang Yue’s face. Jiang Yue bolted upright from the bed in a start and stared right at him. “Impossible! Impossible!”
Saying “impossible” twice still wasn’t enough to vent his frustration. Jiang Yue slipped on his shoes, quickly flung open the bedroom door, bolted out with lightning speed, and strode into his own room.
Sitting on the edge of his bed with his heart pounding wildly and irregularly, Jiang Yue let out a long, shuddering sigh of relief.
He began to recall the events of last night.
Picturing himself from a third-person perspective sitting on Qi Jiahe’s lap with flushed cheeks, he couldn’t help feeling a sudden wave of a headache.
Qi Jiahe sat on the bed, leaning his back against the headboard as he stared at the opposite wall, a smile gradually spreading across his face.
Back in Jiang Yue’s room just a wall away, he wondered what state Jiang Yue was in right now. His face was probably blushing crimson again.
Qi Jiahe’s gaze instinctively drifted toward the opposite wall. He picked up his phone from the side, brought it in front of his face, and fell into deep thought as he looked at the call he still hadn’t made last night.
After a moment of hesitation, he opened WeChat and replied with a single sentence to the last five unread messages:
【Guange has major moves planned recently. Don’t let them find out; quietly collect evidence.】
Since Guange was Jiang Yue’s agency and had leaked the artist’s gossip behind the scenes, there had to be a conspiracy at play.
He had originally thought the marriage leak only came from his own subordinates, but hadn’t expected Guange to be unmasked behind the scenes. The smile on Qi Jiahe’s face faded.
He lowered his head and typed another line into the phone’s keypad: 【Any upcoming gossip or smear campaigns regarding Jiang Yue must be completely blocked from spreading within six hours.】
Since Guange’s tactics were unpredictable, this was the only way to play it safe.
Qi Jiahe sighed.
This Jiang Yue, I bust my back doing all this work for him, and after giving him a temporary mark, he actually kicks me right where it hurts.