Chapter 6: The Virtuous Husband

In the early hours, Typhoon Signal Number 3 passed quietly. Heavy blackout curtains wrapped the mansion into an airtight cocoon, the perfect environment for breeding nightmares that could not see the light of day.

Shen Yanzhou lay sunken in soft bedding, sleeping extremely fitfully. His slender neck strained backward in discomfort, cold sweat already soaking his forehead hair, his pale lips unconsciously parted slightly.

He was dreaming.

In the dream there was no light, only overwhelming, thick pheromones that made breathing impossible, primitive and savage scents, forcefully burrowing into his nasal cavity, paralyzing his nerves, scorching his reason.

He could not move.

A powerful body held him tightly in its embrace. The heart-stopping difference in size and weight made even breathing grow difficult.

The collar of his silk nightgown loosened slightly from his struggles. A pair of rough large hands covered his cheeks. Those palms were too coarse, the lines in them scraping like sandpaper against tender skin.

Then, that person’s scorching, heavy breath sprayed against the side of his neck. A rough tongue scraped across his vulnerable Adam’s apple. The breathing sounds were infinitely magnified in the silence of the dream. A wet, hot tongue stopped at the most sensitive gland behind his ear. A low sound, sharp canine teeth pressed against the delicate skin of his nape, grinding lightly, not heavy, not light.

Shen Yanzhou wanted to make a sound, but was forced to raise his head, bearing the man’s deep kiss.

That person’s lips were scorching hot and dry, forcefully sealing all his breath, prying his teeth apart, frantically stirring inside his mouth. He was robbed of air. The suffocation left his mind blank. His entire body went limp, suppressed by high-level pheromones until he had no strength to resist. Under the dual torment of high fever and oxygen deprivation, he uncontrollably opened his lips, nails digging deeply into that person’s burning back muscles, scratching out streaks of red marks…

When he woke from this absurd and enchanting dream, the wall clock had just passed eight o’clock.

That carnal intensity in the dream that wanted to tear him apart bone by bone and swallow him whole had dispersed completely, leaving only a room of dead silence.

Shen Yanzhou was covered in sweat. That absurdly expensive silk pajama set was ruined, wet and clinging to his body, outlining the overly slender butterfly bones along his spine.

He raised his hand, his thumb rubbing hard across his lips. The skin was not bitten through, but the sensation in the dream of having his teeth forced open and something pushing inside was too real. His gaze moved downward. The wound on his ankle had healed at an absurdly fast speed.

“Madness.” Shen Yanzhou frowned, a gloomy darkness in his eyes. It must have been too long since he had relieved himself, plus that S+ class Alpha downstairs in his rut cycle, his pheromones seeping through the door panel, that was why he had such an absurd dream.

With a gloomy face, he threw off the covers and stepped barefoot into the bathroom.

The mirror reflected a cold, beautiful face. High brow bones, deep eye sockets, still that habitual look of looking down on everyone from above. The only eyesore was the red at the corners of his eyes, forced out by arousal, looking glaring, making him irritable.

He turned the faucet to maximum, cupped ice water, and splashed it fiercely across his face, trying to force down the lingering sticky heat from the dream. After washing up, he changed into neat loungewear, pulled open the door, and went down the stairs expressionlessly.

In the living room, the chaos from last night’s typhoon rampage had completely vanished. The rain-washed floor-to-ceiling windows were dazzlingly bright. The air held not the damp smell of mildew, but rather floated an extremely faint lemon fragrance, not sweet, but pleasant.

Shen Yanzhou’s gaze landed on the open-plan kitchen. That person who last night was still full of hostility, who had been in the black market cage, now stood with his back to him at the kitchen counter.

The man had clearly showered. His slightly curly black hair was slicked back wet, revealing a full, smooth forehead and sharply defined profile.

He was wearing Shen Yanzhou’s white shirt that had been tossed in the discard hamper. He had somehow fished it out and put it on, quite self-aware. But this bespoke shirt, which on Shen Yanzhou’s body conveyed loose, lazy nobility, on this nearly two-meter tall man with knotted muscles all over, was an atrocity.

The fabric was precariously stretched across his broad back muscles. With the motion of chopping vegetables, the inverted triangle muscle lines flickered in and out of view. Beyond that, he had even tied on the apron left behind by the former housekeeper, the straps knotted in a dead knot behind him, biting fiercely into his ready-to-launch stud waist.

As if sensing the gaze behind him, the man stopped his movements and turned his head.

Clearly born with a handsome, wild face, an extremely sexually charged physique, yet when he smiled he looked honest and foolish.

However you looked at it, it was incongruous.

“Master? You’re awake.” The man set down the soup ladle in his hand, casually wiped his hands on the apron. His deep eyes instantly lit up, exactly like a large dog wagging its tail and begging for praise, waiting for commendation. “I saw it was about time. The congee just finished boiling. Last night the wind was strong and the dampness heavy. Drink something hot to warm your stomach.”

Shen Yanzhou walked to the dining table and sat down, his gaze scraping once around the man’s large hands covered in calluses and scars.

“I thought someone like you, raised in a black market cage, would only know boxing and biting through other people’s throats.” His voice was very light. “I didn’t expect you could also do this kind of delicate work.”

The man scratched his head embarrassedly, revealing an honest yet slightly rascally smile: “Before I went to fight in the black market, I worked two years as a kitchen hand at a dai pai dong in Yau Ma Tei. Back then life was cheap. If you didn’t learn a couple of special skills to please the head chef and the customers, you couldn’t even get hot leftovers.”

The reason was very realistic, very bitter. Inside and out, it carried the street-smart air of someone who had clawed their way up from the bottom.

Shen Yanzhou withdrew his gaze and asked no more.

A bowl of steaming hot congee was presented with both hands.

It was an extremely authentic Lai Wan boat congee.

The congee base was soft as fat, rice grains blooming but not mushy, inside packed full of ingredients: tender fish fillets, deep-fried golden crispy pork skin, squid cut in wheat-ear flower patterns, and bouncy minced beef.

He picked up the porcelain spoon, preparing to bring it to his mouth, but his movement suddenly halted mid-air. His gaze went straight to the man before him.

“Thirty Million, who taught you to make it this way?”

The bowl was too “clean.” Not a single thread of ginger, not a single scallion, not even the white pepper powder normally used for final seasoning. Instead, it had been replaced with a few drops of lemon juice for removing fishiness.

This was an extremely secret, even somewhat eccentric personal preference of Shen Yanzhou’s. Even the housekeeper who had been with him for many years would occasionally forget. How could this man who had been here less than a day make it so precisely?

The man asked helplessly: “What’s wrong? Is it not to your taste?”

“I don’t eat ginger or scallions, and I don’t eat pepper.” Shen Yanzhou stared at him. “How did you know?”

“I… I guessed.” The man said softly, his fingers nervously gripping the edge of the apron.

“Guessed?” Shen Yanzhou laughed coldly. “The lemon too, that was a guess?”

“Yes.” The man pointed at the double-door refrigerator not far away, his face earnest and innocent. “Just now when I was looking for ingredients, I saw a piece of ginger in the corner of the refrigerator, all dried out, and no one had touched it. I thought, Master is such a refined, noble person, you probably wouldn’t like that kind of pungent, nose-stinging flavor.”

“As for scallions…” He smiled somewhat embarrassedly, revealing two sharp canine teeth. “I see Master always smells so fragrant, so you probably also don’t like to eat things with heavy flavors.”

“And the lemon juice… I saw half a cut lemon on the kitchen counter, so I boldly added a little, wanting to remove the fishiness for Master. Plus when I learned to make boat congee, that was how my master taught me.”

The reasons were terribly flimsy, full of holes, full of coincidences. But paired with the man’s cautious, fearful-of-making-mistakes expression, afraid of being kicked out with one wrong move, this broken reason somehow seemed damnably reasonable.

Shen Yanzhou lazily withdrew his gaze, the probing in his eyes fading. The man’s eyes were too bright, too direct. Apart from craving for meat and bone and fawning on his master, there was no sign of scheming whatsoever.

Indeed, a big fool who had starved for four days and could be knocked out with a club and sold into a black market cage, what deep cunning could he have? Probably he had just lain in the gutter too long, and to mix a mouthful of food, had trained observation of facial expressions and tones into an instinct for survival.

Moreover, this man was merely someone he bought to borrow seed from. After some time when he got pregnant, he would kick him out to roll away. There was no need to understand this person’s past.

He lowered his head and stirred the porcelain spoon. The raw fish congee was cooked with excellent heat control. Rice grains bloomed, dense and gelatinous. The tenderness of the fish fillets and the lemon fused perfectly. The scalding heat slid down his throat into his stomach, soon filling the emptiness there.

Damnably delicious.

However, this rare comfort lasted only half a bowl of congee before a phone call came.

Shen Yanzhou glanced at the screen showing “Shen Xici,” answered the call, “What’s wrong?”

“Brother, something went wrong at berth four in Kwai Chung.” In the receiver, Shen Xici’s voice was very agitated. “Customs just detained our shipment bound for Port Klang, won’t release it.”

“Incomplete paperwork?”

“The paperwork was watertight, but they’re insisting it’s ‘random inspection control,’ pulling the original five percent inspection rate straight up to one hundred percent, demanding open-box rummaging, item by item through the machine.” Shen Xici cursed softly in a low voice. “Brother, this is clearly someone making trouble. If we can’t make the customs cutoff and board the ship by six tomorrow evening, paying the penalty for breach of contract is a small matter. The outside betting markets will probably spread that ‘the Shen family can’t control the docks anymore.'”

“Understood. I’ll be at the docks in an hour.” Shen Yanzhou cut the call, stood up, and quickly walked toward the second-floor walk-in closet.

In a short while, he came down changed into a suit.

He walked to the entryway, just bending down to change shoes when a tall shadow enveloped him.

That man had somehow followed over, walking to his side. Before Shen Yanzhou could react, the man had already extremely naturally dropped to one knee before him.

The man’s hands were truly too large. The tiger’s mouth stuck the heel, and when his fingers closed, he easily encircled Shen Yanzhou’s slender ankle completely in his palm. Under that thin layer of black silk stockings, Shen Yanzhou could even clearly feel the temperature of the man’s palm penetrating through the silky fabric, extremely slowly, inch by inch grinding against his protruding ankle bone.

This kind of force, this rough texture, and this scorching, unbelievable body temperature, made him recall this morning’s dream again. In that dim nightmare, it was also this kind of hand with thin calluses, forcefully seizing his ankle…

His body reacted with stress faster than his brain.

But the moment his instep tensed, wanting to pull out from his grip, the man’s hand sensed it, and instead gripped his ankle tighter.

“I’ll do it myself.”

“Master, don’t move.” The man didn’t raise his head, his thumb grinding very lightly against his ankle bone. “New shoes have hard leather. Your hands are precious. Don’t strain them.”

He lowered his head, his fingers weaving through the narrow shoelaces, his movements unhurried, carrying an indescribable patience. After tying the last one, he also properly patted the trouser cuffs, then straightened up.

When he spoke again, that broken Mandarin was gone. In its place was an extremely authentic old-school Cantonese:

“Zou di faan lei, ngo dang nei… faan uk kei.” (Come back early, I’ll wait for you… to come home.)

Shen Yanzhou’s entire person froze in place.

This sentence in Cantonese, it was so familiar.

Yet no one had spoken it to him in a very long time.

“You…” He opened his mouth, wanting to ask, yet not knowing where to begin.

“What’s wrong, Master?” The man tilted his head, his eyes full of clear innocence.

Shen Yanzhou looked at him, suppressing the indescribable feeling in his heart. Perhaps it really was just an illusion.

“Leaving.” He coldly tossed down two words, avoided those eyes, and pushed out the door.

…

With his departure, the mansion returned to dead silence.

The man slowly turned, strode over to the dining table. He picked up that still-warm porcelain bowl, directly took into his mouth the soup spoon Shen Yanzhou had just used, his tongue rolling over the residual temperature on the handle, his Adam’s apple rolling violently.

Then, he ate the remaining long-cold congee, spoonful by spoonful, with this same spoon, with incomparable cherishing.

Like an indirect kiss.

He narrowed his eyes, enjoying this secret and perverse intimacy, the corner of his mouth curving into a satisfied smile.