The next moment, the dangerous air around him vanished. He smiled gently. “No need.”
Try bothering my wife and I’ll kill you.
Chen Feng: “…”
*
“Mr. Xu.”
Xu Jingzhuo walked into the courtyard with the dog on its leash. The butler and an assistant came forward to greet him.
The butler took the leash to get the dog cleaned up. The assistant presented the open box they were holding. A pair of silver-rimmed glasses rested quietly on the black velvet lining.
The glasses had plain lenses. Their owner wasn’t nearsighted.
He hooked a finger under the nose pad and flicked the frames open, putting them on as he headed inside.
At the sound of the door opening, the girl curled up in a corner of the sofa with a tablet, drawing, paused briefly. Then she resumed her usual expression, finished the line she was working on, and put her stylus down. Leaning over the back of the sofa, she called toward the door, “You’re back?”
A head poked over the back of the deep-gray sofa, peeking around the edge.
She’d already showered. To make drawing easier, she’d tucked the hair on her left side behind her ear and clipped it back with the orange bird hairpin.
She didn’t go out, so she wore whatever was comfortable. Half her closet was filled with loungewear.
Today she had on a pale-orange nightdress, with short puff sleeves that reached her elbows, a little lace-trimmed V-neck, and a hem that fell to her knees.
The only color in a sea of black, white, and gray.
Including the two fresh pinkish kiss marks on the side of her neck.
“Yeah.”
It was a cool autumn night outside, but the house was kept at a constant temperature. The moment he stepped inside, he felt warm.
The man changed his shoes, took off his tracksuit jacket, and hung it up. Wearing only the black T-shirt underneath, he walked past the sofa without looking her way and headed to the small bar nearby, where he poured himself a full glass of ice water.
Xue Ling looked at him.
Broad shoulders, a narrow, strong waist, full, handsome arm muscles, and long legs that drew the eye beneath his black pants.
He’d showered and dried his hair before taking the dog out. Maybe the wind outside, or running around with the dog, had left his black hair slightly mussed. His high, straight nose fit the glasses perfectly, and a few loose strands fell across his forehead, adding a touch of ease to his handsome face.
There was plenty of room on the sofa, but he didn’t come sit beside her. He just leaned against the bar and drank, keeping his distance while still managing to tempt her.
Xue Ling’s gaze traveled over every inch of his exposed skin. Her eyesight was excellent, and the house was bright, so she could even see the unhealed piercing in his bare earlobe.
Like his earlobe, his collarbones and wrists were bare too, as if those glasses, with their restrained, studious look, had stripped away every flashy, rebellious accessory he’d once worn.
In her memories, in the erotic dreams and drawings from her student days, he’d worn all sorts of gaudy accessories. Some were his own, and some were things Xue Ling had designed for him on scrap paper. Whenever she drew him, she’d put them on him.
Xue Ling’s fingers rubbed the back of the tablet resting on her lap.
Even in the unfinished picture she was working on now, a pornographic drawing of a man pinning a woman to the sofa, rough and forceful, teasing her without restraint, she’d given him a necklace.
She never drew faces in her pornographic art, focusing on the body instead, maybe up to the jaw and mouth at most.
She’d drawn the cold pendant pushed into the woman’s mouth, teasing her soft tongue along with the fingers thrust between her lips. She’d been refining the intimate tangle of tongue, pendant, and fingers when he came back.
Since he wasn’t coming over anyway, Xue Ling turned the screen back on, picked up her stylus, and continued drawing.
Xu Jingzhuo drank half the glass of ice water, cooling the fire that had flared up in him when he saw her. His gaze beneath the lenses moved from the little bird hairpin at the side of her head to her face, then settled on her calves, held together beneath the hem of her dress.
“Are you feeling all right?” he asked, concerned about how their lovemaking had gone.
Xue Ling refined the tongue on the screen, which long, slender fingers were mercilessly teasing. She looked up and met his eyes, smiling gently. “I’m fine.”
She’d never heard of a normal man asking his wife whether she wanted to go out and walk the dog right after they’d had sex, at the very moment she was feeling it most and they should have kept going while things were still heated.
It was hard not to think the worst.
“Woof!”
The border collie had been bathed and dried. Its fluffy coat shaking, it came bounding over, smelling sweet, and leapt onto the sofa to burrow into Xue Ling’s arms. Its bright little eyes fixed on the screen.
Xue Ling put an arm around it, rubbing her cheek against its fluffy head. She picked a hawthorn strip from the resealable bag beside her, ate one herself, then fed one to the dog.
The two of them got along well. Xu Jingzhuo smiled and said, “You should really work in your study, with proper ergonomic equipment. This setup isn’t good for your hands or your spine.”
Xue Ling replied, “I do all my work on a drawing tablet and computer. It’s only occasionally…”
Only occasionally, when she drew porn right in front of him, did she need the tablet.
That was a thrill all its own.
Her professional work was for comic platforms and clients, and needed to be published.
Her leisure drawing was only for herself. Just like the piles of paper that had filled half her room in college, she drew Xu Jingzhuo every day, using him to practice anatomy. She’d kept up the habit even after graduation.
She had been drawing that sexy, powerful body from the time she was nineteen until she was twenty-six.
“Occasionally what?” he asked.
She answered seriously, “Occasionally I’m too lazy to sit at the computer, so I just want to hold the dog like this and doodle.”
This wasn’t the first time the border collie had seen her draw something like this. It was Xu Jingzhuo’s dog, and whenever it watched her, Xue Ling had the curious feeling that Xu Jingzhuo was watching too.
It gave her a strange thrill.
＊
Xue Ling wasn’t used to wearing the huge diamond ring from the wedding. It made her hand feel heavy, so on the morning after the wedding, she asked Xu Jingzhuo’s permission to take it off and put it away.
That day, Xu Jingzhuo gave her another ring, a simple band that was light and understated.
Now she was curled up in the corner of the sofa, legs bent, tablet on her knees. She drew with her right hand, her left arm around the dog. The silver band gleamed against its black-and-white fur.
Xu Jingzhuo finished the remaining half glass of ice water. A work call came in, and he answered as he headed for the stairs, then went up to his study on the second floor.
After refining the last stroke, Xue Ling zoomed the image on her screen back to its normal size and admired the sultry scene filling the display.
Xue Ling looked sweet and well-behaved, but her art was anything but.
She was good at drawing the human body, her strokes bold and her colors rich.
At the center of the image was a man’s broad, muscular back. A woman lay beneath him on the sofa, letting him press down over her. Every detail was there.
She spent a while lost in admiring it, then picked up her stylus again and added little dialogue bubbles beside the figures, her expression perfectly composed as she filled them with dirty talk.
The more she added, the hotter her face grew. The scene suited so many lines, and she couldn’t bear to leave out a single one. By the time she realized what she was doing, she’d filled the screen with dialogue, almost completely covering the figures.
The border collie had been watching her screen the whole time.
Xue Ling took a deep breath and deleted everything with a single tap. The image was clean again.
She buried her face in the dog’s sweet-smelling fur and nuzzled into it. “Paopao, your mom is such a pervert…”
“Woof, woof~”
They might not understand each other, but the dog always had a reply.
Xue Ling kept her face buried in the dog’s fur for a long time, cooling herself down. Then she suddenly felt the sofa dip. Instinctively, she stretched out her legs, and the soles of her feet came to rest against the fabric at the side of a man’s leg.
“Finished working?”
As she asked, she lifted her face from the dog’s fur. The tablet on her lap tilted with her outstretched legs, revealing the screen. Luckily, it had gone dark during her long bout of embarrassment and self-reproach. Otherwise, Xu Jingzhuo would have seen exactly what she’d been drawing.
“Mm.”
Xu Jingzhuo glanced at the foot she’d stretched toward him, then quietly looked away.
The soles of her feet were sensitive. Xue Ling knew she was only touching the fabric of his trousers, not actually resting her feet on his leg. She really wanted to drape her legs and feet across his lap, like a little request for affection.
But…
While they spent time together as a married couple, Xu Jingzhuo sat reading a book, a thick French original, and looked completely absorbed.
Xue Ling glanced again and again at his calm profile, his hands and posture so proper, but couldn’t bring herself to say a word. All she could do was quietly open the snack bag and take out a hawthorn strip.
Her mouth was sweet and sour. Her heart was bitter.
Her husband treated her with such polite restraint. He was being so proper. How could she possibly flirt with him? How was she supposed to flirt with him?
It wasn’t as if she could kick that obviously expensive, highbrow book out of his hands and brazenly announce, “Stop reading and come play with my feet!”
What made her think her feet were more enticing than a book?
Xue Ling munched glumly. There weren’t many hawthorn strips left, and she gave one to the dog for every one she ate. Soon, the bag was empty.
She’d just taken out the last one and bitten into it when the man, who’d been quietly reading all along, suddenly asked, “Is it good?”
She paused. “What?”
Through the fabric, the sole of her foot pressed against something warm, the flesh at the side of his leg. Xu Jingzhuo moved closer and leaned toward her, his eyes gentle and calm behind his glasses. He repeated, “Is it good?”
No one asked if your snack was good for no reason. If they asked, it meant they wanted some.
Xue Ling looked down at the empty snack bag in her hand and said a little sheepishly, “It is, but there’s none left…”
The man lowered his eyes to the half-eaten hawthorn strip in her hand.
He was so close that his warm breath brushed her fingers. Without thinking, Xue Ling held the strip out toward him.
But he didn’t open his mouth.
Xue Ling’s lashes fluttered. Her fingertips grew hot with embarrassment. She regretted it immediately. She’d already bitten it. How was he supposed to eat that?
Once she’d finished embarrassing herself, she pulled her hand back. Xu Jingzhuo had enjoyed watching her blush, and now he opened his mouth.
Just then, the border collie stuck its snout in and gobbled up the half-strip faster than either of them could react.
“…”
“…”
“U^ᴥ^U”