After hearing the answer, Ying Qiuman let out a soft breath. If it was a pheromone-related issue, then he was relievedat least it wasn’t an emotional problem he didn’t know how to handle.
Still, after being brought to an unfamiliar place, Ying Qiuman inevitably grew tense again.
Xu Shuyuan led him familiarly through a park and into an apartment building marked “Building 6.” The elevator stopped on the 16th floor, and he was taken into a high-end apartment.
“The subway downstairs takes half an hour to your school,” Xu Shuyuan said while changing his shoes at the entrance, then added, “Two hours to Lanxi.”
Ying Qiuman looked at the slippers Xu Shuyuan handed him and hesitated before asking, “What about your work?”
He had assumed that after being refused last time, Xu Shuyuan wouldn’t bring up buying a house again, but to his surprise, here they were, able to move straight in with their luggage.
“I drive to work. It doesn’t even take half an hour.” Xu Shuyuan glanced at him and pinched his gradually fuller cheek. “Did you really not even check where the Xu Corporation headquarters is?”
Speechless. He didn’t need to go to the headquarters anyway, so why would he check that?
Ying Qiuman pushed his hand away and looked inside. He felt this place couldn’t have been prepared in just a week. Even if it had been delivered fully finished, a unit this large would take a lot of cleaning, never mind being ready to live in.
“Bought it over summer break. Didn’t you sign for it yourself?” Xu Shuyuan always managed to read Ying Qiuman’s confusion accurately, yet he also never cared about his wishes when doing the things that made him uncomfortable.
Ying Qiuman had no memory of this. They had gotten their marriage certificate over the summer, and marrying someone like Xu Shuyuan involved signing many documents for confirmation. He couldn’t remember which contract this apartment belonged to.
“Was it bought for me?”
Even though Ying Qiuman had lived a wealthy life for a few years after coming into this world, the Li family had always treated him as an outsider. He had never seen anything on this scale.
But Xu Shuyuan couldn’t help laughing when he heard that. “It’s our shared property.”
Right, then. He had read too much into it.
Ying Qiuman didn’t feel disappointed, just embarrassed for overthinking. Before he could even let it show, Xu Shuyuan casually added, “Didn’t I want to buy one for you before? And weren’t you the one who told me not to waste the money?”
“Did I really put it like that?”
Ying Qiuman was in no mood to argue with him and turned his gaze toward the interior instead.
The overall design was blue and white. The dining area was open-plan, connected directly to the living room. On one side of the floor-to-ceiling window stood a small greenhouse, and on the other side, fitness equipment. In the middle was an open space with a table and chairs, where one could sit and enjoy the river view outside.
He walked toward the window, just about to exclaim in admiration, when Xu Shuyuan suddenly scooped him up and carried him toward the master bedroom instead.
“Why not look at the bedroom first?”
The two of them clearly judged things by completely different standards. Ying Qiuman cared more about the environment and scenery of a house, the sleeping area didn’t matter much to him. As a child, his bedroom had been filled with DVDs his grandmother couldn’t sell.
But Xu Shuyuan seemed to place special importance on sleep quality. The bedroom was full of novel smart devices.
Ying Qiuman watched as Xu Shuyuan demonstrated the bedside cabinet. While he was impressed by the advanced technology, the contents inside made his expression change. Thinking of Xu Shuyuan’s strange behavior earlier in the day, he felt he had to clear things up at once.
“Did something happen to you today?”
Clearly everything had been fine after the apology last night. Could it be Li Tian’s phone call? But he hadn’t even said anything.
Xu Shuyuan didn’t answer. Instead, he demonstrated how to open the cabinet. He tapped the surface once, and a thin white line of light ran along the edge of the drawer. Then the drawer ejected its contents.
It was like a receipt printer, except what came out wasn’t a receipt.
“I… what exactly did I do wrong?”
Hot water washed over Ying Qiuman’s back, snapping him back to clarity.
After being tormented to the point of fainting earlier, he would usually wake and pretend to sleep in Xu Shuyuan’s arms to spare himself the embarrassment.
But Xu Shuyuan was acting very strange today. Ying Qiuman felt sure he must have done something wrong, so he propped himself up and asked.
“You didn’t,” Xu Shuyuan replied in a tone that sounded cold, and Ying Qiuman immediately felt even more stifled.
“But… you’re punishing me, aren’t you?”
He was even less restrained than during a susceptibility period.
Ying Qiuman bit his lip as he spoke. He believed that when there was a problem, it should be said out loud and resolved, but the moment he asked so directly, the answer he got was a finger suddenly pushing deeper as it cleaned him.
The two legs hooked around the man’s waist tightened at the stimulation. He knew Xu Shuyuan wasn’t using protection.
For now, the smart cabinet seemed to have only that one function. Xu Shuyuan had bought it specially yet wasn’t using it, which Ying Qiuman found hard to understand.
He was willing to accept punishment, but he needed to know why he was being punished.
“No.” Xu Shuyuan withdrew his hand, and hot water splashed between them. The rising steam made it impossible for Ying Qiuman to see Xu Shuyuan’s expression clearly.
If it wasn’t punishment, then what was it? Xu Shuyuan wasn’t anywhere near his susceptibility period. Could it be that he’d been affected by some other alpha again and was now acting out?
He tried to see through the mist to read Xu Shuyuan’s face, drawing on his limited experience to analyze his expression, trying to work something out.
But before he could see clearly, Xu Shuyuan’s face broke through the steam and drew close, completely filling his vision and his breath.
“I’m jealous.”
Amid the sound of running water, Ying Qiuman caught Xu Shuyuan’s words.
Jealous? Jealous of what?
While fending off Xu Shuyuan’s advances, Ying Qiuman tried to think through this completely unfounded explanation.
After careful thought, there seemed to be only one suspicious moment in the entire day.
When he was on the phone with Qiu Yuan that morning, there had been some movement outside the door. He had assumed it was just the wind making the door rattle, but now it seemed Xu Shuyuan might have been out there at the time.
But why would he be jealous of that?
Now why would he be jealous at all?
“I was just talking to a friend on the phone,” he said in a slightly resentful tone, testing the waters, not sure if he had it right.
His whole body was flushed pink, his lips bitten a vivid red, yet he felt utterly drained, as if he were about to faint from low blood sugar.
“A friend?”
He caught a hint of disdainful amusement in Xu Shuyuan’s tone. The next moment, the shower was turned off, and everything around them fell silent, with only the sound of their heartbeats echoing in his ears.
“How do you know that’s what I meant?”
Xu Shuyuan draped a towel over his head and tilted his own to stare at him.
“Guilty conscience?”
“It’s not that!”
Ying Qiuman didn’t know why he had suddenly become so eager to explain himself. But when he looked up and caught Xu Shuyuan’s sly smile, he realized he had walked right into a trap. The breath he had gathered to defend himself got swallowed back down, and he wrapped himself in the bath towel and walked toward the door on his own.
But halfway there, his feet suddenly left the ground. A burning chest pressed against his back, and sharp canine teeth nipped at the tip of his ear. He was still like a cooked shrimp, completely unable to withstand being teased like this.
He turned his head away from the teeth behind him, pushing back against the arms that held him in a sulky, silent protest. Even though the difference in strength was like an ant trying to shake a tree, he still stubbornly made his resistance known.
Xu Shuyuan didn’t keep pressing him. He carried him back to the bed, tied his robe properly, and even tucked the blanket over him.
At taking care of him like this, Xu Shuyuan was growing more and more skilled. Ying Qiuman had gradually come to accept it, and even begun to enjoy it. The wariness in his heart kept retreating, only when he looked back did he realize he hadn’t startled awake in Xu Shuyuan’s bed in a long time.
The anger in Xu Shuyuan had already vanished the moment Ying Qiuman tried to explain. Getting Ying Qiuman to explain anything at allthis unspoken contest had already been his victory.
His mood improved a great deal. When they slept, he stayed very closeso close that Ying Qiuman got so hot he had to wake in the middle of the night to push his arm away. But this time, when Ying Qiuman crawled out of his arms, he didn’t leave, instead he turned toward him and fell back asleep, his fingers resting lightly in Xu Shuyuan’s palm.
Ying Qiuman didn’t know that Xu Shuyuan was already awake. Through all the movements he thought had been so quiet, Xu Shuyuan had watched him in the darkness for a long time.
When he woke in the morning, he tried to stretch, only to find himself once again curled up in Xu Shuyuan’s armsand Xu Shuyuan was already awake, holding him in place.
“What are you doing?” Ying Qiuman had already accepted that this man needed release even outside his susceptibility periods. But right now, not only was his body weak and exhausted, his brain hadn’t fully woken up either.
Xu Shuyuan held his phone screen up in front of him. Li Tian’s message was the very first one.
He hadn’t turned on the hidden-chat feature, so the full content was displayed clearly.
【boohoo】
It looked like a sticker. After a moment of processing, he heard Xu Shuyuan say, “I didn’t mean to look. You hadn’t hidden it.”
Ying Qiuman frowned in confusion, then raised his hand to enter the password. He didn’t avoid Xu Shuyuan, he openly used his hand to open the chat window while Xu Shuyuan held the phone.
He was completely innocent!
“How come there isn’t even a ‘happy birthday,’ Brother?”
“Did President Yuan’s susceptibility period come early?”
【boohoo.JPG】
Ying Qiuman glanced at Xu Shuyuan, who still showed no reaction and still didn’t take the phone back. He summoned the keyboard with his fingertips and replied: 【Happy birthday.】
【He isn’t in a susceptibility period.】
“Anything else you want to say?” Ying Qiuman asked.
Xu Shuyuan’s mood at that moment was hard to describe. He had originally meant to question Li Tian about what that brat was implying, but Ying Qiuman’s reply instantly shut him down he couldn’t get a single word out.
“Nothing.” Xu Shuyuan still didn’t move, but he kept holding the phone. “Can I say something?”
Ying Qiuman spread his hands in a “go ahead” gesture.
Granted permission, Xu Shuyuan typed a line one-handed: 【Happy birthday. Even when I’m not in a susceptibility period, I can still be with Manman.】
“Is this okay?” Xu Shuyuan asked first, before sending it.
Ying Qiuman looked at that line. He felt like stopping him, then glanced at Xu Shuyuan and hesitated again.
“He knows we… aren’t that kind of relationship.”
You don’t need to pretend in front of him either…
“What kind of relationship?” Xu Shuyuan leaned closer, his voice dropping lower.
Ying Qiuman avoided his gaze, trying to clear up all the recent irregularities in one go, but when the words reached his lips, they came out differently: “You used to not even let me hug you. I thought we…”
Before he could finish, Xu Shuyuan cut him off with a long, lingering kiss. Only after a while did he let go, his tone carrying a hint of threat: “So what are we now?”
Ying Qiuman found it hard to answer. Hadn’t it been stated plainly from the start? So what was he pretending to be confused about now?
“You were the one who said we should keep our distance. After every susceptibility period… you even paid me.”
He didn’t think the money was too little, but he was afraid Xu Shuyuan might misunderstand and think he was being greedy, never satisfied.
He had a very clear sense of his own position. He had also read quite a lot of melodramatic novels and dramas.
“That’s enough. You don’t need to make any declarations to them. They already know.”
He had never felt any need to hide this fake marriage. He needed money, and Xu Shuyuan probably also urgently needed to get marriedafter all, the very first time they met, he had already produced that agreement.
He looked at Xu Shuyuan’s increasingly cold eyes and didn’t know where he had gone wrong. A sense of unease rose in him. After thinking it over carefully, perhaps this wasn’t the right moment to bring such things up? Maybe he should learn to be a little more affectionate and save remarks like this for another time?
Ying Qiuman could only watch, never learn. But Xu Shuyuan’s gaze had turned frighteningly cold, so he could only quietly lean closer and ask in a small voice, “Are you angry?”
“Very angry.”