His eyes were like stars, close enough to touch — Zhou Jin found she couldn’t look away.

Jiang Hansheng took off his shirt.

He appeared refined and scholarly on the surface, his build lean and slender, yet the waist and abdomen he revealed were powerfully built.

Zhou Jin couldn’t help but reach out and touch him — the feel of him was solid and hard. She suddenly thought of how Jiang Hansheng had subdued Lai San’er; that kind of grappling technique could only have come from professional training.

Jiang Hansheng savored Zhou Jin’s “inspection” of his body and asked with perfect seriousness, “Satisfied?”

Zhou Jin snatched her hand back. His question left her both a little embarrassed and a little amused.

Her eyes curved as she smiled, like crescent moons.

Seeing her smile, Jiang Hansheng felt something stir in his chest. He reached up and brushed aside the strands of hair plastered to her cheek with sweat.

The earlobe it revealed was flushed a faint pink — all the more alluring for it.

Jiang Hansheng dipped his head and gently bit her ear.

“Zhou Jin.”

The low, wet sound of his voice and the soft warmth of his breath made Zhou Jin instinctively draw her neck in.

She slipped her arms beneath his and held him, her fingers pressing into the skin and muscle of his back.

Jiang Hansheng’s waist was lean and strong, the lines of his back clean and fluid. The room’s soft light fell across his skin, giving it the quality of white porcelain.

His body was elegant, unspoiled. Zhou Jin breathed in a cool, sharp scent from him — something like mint — and she couldn’t think of anyone whose smell she had ever preferred.

He kissed her deeply, and she forced herself not to think about how many eyes had ever coveted this beautiful body of his.

At the Phoenix Fire Bar, dark waves of people had come and gone, brushing past Zhou Jin in an endless stream. Jiang Hansheng had watched from the shadows, and sometimes he despised his own sharpness — because he could effortlessly read exactly what filthy, revolting thoughts the men who drifted near her were entertaining.

Jealousy could plunge a person into a madness they couldn’t crawl out of. He knew he had no right. And yet he couldn’t stop thinking it —

Zhou Jin could only belong to him.

Zhou Jin’s breath came in short gasps.

Jiang Hansheng was clumsy enough, inexperienced enough — and yet she still felt her heart racing under his touch, sinking deeper and deeper.

Her gaze grew hazy and scattered. Then his arms swept around her, gathering her against him, his damp body pressing to hers.

The muscles of his arms tensed, slow and deliberate.

A moment later, Zhou Jin heard a sound roll from deep in Jiang Hansheng’s throat — intensely pleasured, yet suppressed, a low and muffled groan.

He breathed through it for a long moment before the tension finally left his body, and he settled gently against her.

She lay there feeling his warm chest rise and fall, and a flicker of surprise passed through her. She asked, “This wasn’t your first time, was it?”

Jiang Hansheng’s face colored slightly. “…It was.”

“…”

Guilt crept through Zhou Jin. She truly didn’t know him at all.

He carried himself with such cool, composed elegance, and it was clear he’d never been particularly interested in romantic entanglements — but his looks were so effortlessly assured, so knowing, that she had assumed otherwise.

Zhou Jin had thought that, at the very least, he’d had a girlfriend before.

Not wanting to wound his pride as a man, she drew her arms lightly around him and said, “Don’t worry. I’ll take responsibility for you.”

Jiang Hansheng was ordinarily calm and self-possessed, and he had accepted the changes in his own body with perfect equanimity — but her teasing sent a rare flush of awkwardness across his face.

“…Zhou Jin.”

Upswept eyes. Thin lips. Zhou Jin looked at the slight dishevelment on his face, smiled, and gave his chest a gentle push. “I’m going to wash up.”

Steam filled the bathroom. Zhou Jin faced the wall as hot water streamed down over her skin.

She struggled to quiet her mind enough to think of anything else — every time she closed her eyes, all she found was Jiang Hansheng’s ragged breathing.

She patted her own cheeks and told herself to get a grip.

The door eased open.

Zhou Jin startled and turned to see Jiang Hansheng stepping in.

The bandages wrapped around his arm were now completely soaked through, water trickling down the length of his spine.

Beneath his polished, mild exterior lived muscle that was full of quiet power — just enough, nothing monstrous or exaggerated.

Jiang Hansheng stood behind her, one hand curling around her waist, the other pressing her arm against the tiled wall, their fingers interlacing.

Zhou Jin thought: men and women are fundamentally different creatures. She was tall, resilient, sharper in the field than most men — but when Jiang Hansheng pressed up behind her, enclosing her completely, she understood for the first time the weight of a male body’s dominance. It felt like something primal, something he’d been born with.

“Zhou Jin.” His eyes had gone dark red. He turned his head and bit her ear like an animal. “I want more.”

His black hair was soaked through, droplets trickling down from the tips. He pleaded, “Give me.”

Zhou Jin exhaled softly a few times and closed her eyes, feeling the trembling Jiang Hansheng was barely keeping in check.

She admitted it to herself: she couldn’t resist wanting to give him that tenderness.

She lost count of how many times — from the bathroom, to his desk, to the bed, everything in disarray. Zhou Jin could hardly remember the last time she had abandoned herself so completely, so recklessly.

In the heat of it, Jiang Hansheng was nothing like his usual composed, restrained self. He was like a beast that had never tasted blood before — abandoned, fervent, without any polished technique, only all the desire he had suppressed and endured for so long, released freely and fully onto her.

In the final moment, Zhou Jin had nothing left. Half-conscious, drifting between sleep and waking, she heard Jiang Hansheng’s voice at her ear, repeating the same words over and over.

“I’m sorry. Zhou Jin, I’m sorry.”

His lips — scalding — pressed reverent kisses to her shoulder, her spine, all the way down to the small of her back.

Before she lost consciousness entirely, Zhou Jin asked him in a hoarse whisper, “Why are you apologizing?”

But she never heard the answer.