A few dim yellow lights glowed from above and to the side, their light shifting across the man’s refined face. Xu Si’s heartbeat gradually quickened.
In the hazy light and shadows, she saw helpless sadness in his ash-gray eyes. Then, the scene before her slowly blurred, obscured by a watery haze, the only clear detail the faint red mole on the bridge of his nose.
Xu Si simply let him kiss her and closed her eyes.
This was the second time he had told her he loved her.
Yet Xu Si couldn’t respond with the same firm conviction she had with Jarvis: "See me clearly first, then tell me you love me."
She wanted to get closer too, didn’t she? She must have.
Pushing aside the slight awkwardness in her heart, Xu Si extended her slender arms, slowly wrapping them around his neck, and began to return his kiss, a hint of intoxication in her movements.
A feeling of breathlessness followed.
She had no intention of pushing him away.
Instead, she waited for the tears welling in her eyes to spill from the corners and fall onto the leather sofa.
It was a sound so faint an ordinary person would never have heard it.
Half a minute felt as long as half a century.
At some point, Pei Zhen had lifted his lips from hers. He gazed at her single tear.
"You’re crying? Are you that sad?"
Xu Si opened her reddened eyes, touched their cool corners, and frowned in resignation.
She’d actually been kissed to tears...
She wasn’t used to feeling so embarrassingly vulnerable.
She instinctively dabbed the corners of her eyes with his sleeve.
Then, as if acting on their own true desires, her hands once again encircled his neck.
"Pei Zhen," she said suddenly, her voice soft, "I’m really not sure if I love you."
The moment Pei Zhen heard this, his brow furrowed.
Xu Si smiled, a somewhat unrestrained and mischievous smile.
"But let’s give it a try. Be my boyfriend. If I find I love you, we’ll get married."
Pei Zhen said nothing.
In the dim light of the night, Xu Si saw him slowly close his eyes. His god-like features softened considerably, and even the tips of his ears began to turn red.
Having been in darkness for so long, such beauty was almost blinding.
"Don’t lie to me anymore." He slowly lowered his head, burying his sharply defined features in her thick hair, revealing the dense array of ghost-face tattoos on his back. His usually ethereal voice trembled. "I’ll be in pain."
Xu Si lifted her gaze and gently turned her face.
For the first time, she initiated a kiss, pressing her lips to his red mole.
"This time, I won’t lie."
Night deepened. The elusive yet pleasant fragrance from outside seemed to once again slip in through some forgotten crevice.
Xu Si turned her face forward again, gently stroking his hair. A complicated mix of emotions stirred within her. Before meeting Pei Zhen, she had planned to stay single until thirty, then enter a marriage of convenience for business, or perhaps recruit a man to marry into the family and help expand and strengthen the Xu family enterprise. Yet, after a kiss that had moved her to tears, she had somehow, bewilderingly, fallen in love.
And with a man she had supported for several years.
This turn of events left her somewhat bewildered.
She gazed at the blurry ceiling above, suddenly feeling something cool and smooth slide onto her finger.
She glanced down. It was one of Pei Zhen’s rings—now on her finger.
The one from his pinky finger fit her middle finger perfectly, with no gap.
Xu Si’s eyelashes fluttered. "What’s this?"
Without allowing her to refuse, Pei Zhen took her other hand and slipped another ring onto it. This one’s band was larger, big enough to be worn as a thumb ring.
His silver hair fanned out beside Xu Si’s ear, appearing to merge with her own ink-black strands, yet the contrast between the black and white remained stark and almost unsettling.
After a long moment, he leaned against Xu Si’s shoulder, his voice devoid of inflection,
"I want to bind you to me."