A pretty antelope wind chime hung from the curtain, and the evening breeze stirred the gauze drapes. In that moment, the wind gained a voice, turning into a pleasant tinkling. The room was lit by a dim yellow lamp, and the decorative fireplace burned with a fire that gave no warmth.

The scene was perfect for a bout of mutually willing bedroom pleasure that began with a passionate kiss. Unfortunately, Song Nanyin had no time to appreciate the room’s atmosphere. All she could do was stare in panic at Liu Zhaoran pressing down on top of her.

She felt that if scheming had a shape and form, it would surely take Liu Zhaoran’s appearance. This damned Black-Hearted Lotus had tricked her into coming back here and handcuffed her on top of that. It was obvious nothing good could come of this.

Song Nanyin silently cursed that crazy woman Liu Zhaoran for being sick in the head, and was equally furious at her own stupidity for falling for the same trick again and again.

“Liu Zhaoran, you… what are you doing? Everyone knows I left with you. If I disappear, they’ll all know it was you.”

Song Nanyin struggled to stay calm, racking her brain for any way out of this predicament. Who would have guessed that Liu Zhaoran would simply smile at her words.

The wicked woman’s smile was beautiful and its sound lovely. Her jet-black hair was casually swept behind her head, her bangs parted down the middle, and her bathrobe hung half open, half closed. How to put it? Liu Zhaoran looked elegant and restrained, yet carried a flirtatious, seductive air.

Song Nanyin had to admit Liu Zhaoran looked quite attractive right now. It would have been even better if she weren’t handcuffed here with the woman on top of her.

“What are you saying, Team Leader Song? I’m not a pervert. Why would I make you disappear? It’s just that I’m a rather petty person. In your words, I suppose I’m a black-hearted lotus. You forced yourself on me, so surely there should be some reciprocity?”

“Forced myself on you? I… that day I was just… just smelling you. And you said yourself it was only attempted. I didn’t do anything at all.” Reminded by Liu Zhaoran’s words, Song Nanyin couldn’t help thinking back to that absurd day.

Humans are creatures prone to regret. In her twenty-eight years, Song Nanyin had accumulated countless regrets. At this moment, her greatest regret was “fighting back” against Liu Zhaoran that day. Or perhaps even earlier, the day Liu Zhaoran discovered her secret.

If she hadn’t forgotten to lock the bathroom door, how could that Black-Hearted Lotus have discovered her secret? So this was a tragedy triggered by not locking the door? Well, forget it. With an unlocked door as its starting point, it was equal parts sorrowful and ridiculous.

“So Team Leader Song’s idea of smelling me was biting and gnawing at my nape until it bled, until it turned purple and swollen? Thanks to you, I’ve had to wear a silk scarf to work all week, and I’ve had to think long and hard about what to wear with it every day.”

As she spoke, Liu Zhaoran twined her fingers through Song Nanyin’s golden hair, looping it around and around.

She wasn’t even looking at her, offering no hint or pressure through her gaze. But given Liu Zhaoran’s whole repertoire of tricks, Song Nanyin felt certain the woman still had more cards up her sleeve.

Whether it was the current situation or her own secret, every aspect of herself was firmly in Liu Zhaoran’s grip. Song Nanyin wanted to cry but had no tears. She felt like someone trapped in a maze, wrapped on all sides by the scheming Black-Hearted Lotus Liu Zhaoran.

It looked like an exit, but when she happily ran toward it, she found herself back at the starting point.

“Then… then what exactly do you want?” Song Nanyin surrendered, having no other choice. She felt ashamed of her timely capitulation, and her whole face flushed red. She knew Liu Zhaoran’s character well. With her level of scheming, if this matter weren’t settled today, the consequences would almost certainly be endless.

“Team Leader Song, from the very beginning I haven’t asked anything of you, nor have I tried to extort anything from you. I’m only asking for fairness. Whatever you did to me, I’ll take back from you.”

“Don’t worry. I absolutely won’t do anything beyond what’s necessary, just to settle our accounts. After all, Team Leader Song didn’t even wrap up an orgasm and give it to me as a gift. So I don’t have to give you one either.”

Liu Zhaoran’s voice rose at the end of that sentence. Hearing it, Song Nanyin felt her tone was like someone teasing a lover. The thought flashed through her mind, and Song Nanyin wished she could crawl inside her own head and strangle it in its cradle.

Lover, her foot. Her and Liu Zhaoran would be lucky if they weren’t enemies. Besides, how could this woman talk about orgasms in every other sentence? Didn’t she feel any shame?

“Well, at least you should let my hands go. This thing is freezing cold and uncomfortable.” Song Nanyin wiggled her wrists. Having her freedom bound this way made her feel terribly insecure. She had already lost to Liu Zhaoran by a mile in wits; she couldn’t fall behind in external factors too, could she?

“Are you saying I should unlock the handcuffs, Team Leader Song? But then what if you change your mind? You’re so much stronger than me, it would be easy for you to overpower me. Or do you want to bully me like that day, rape me?”

Liu Zhaoran raised her head, her gaze meeting Song Nanyin’s. Her eyes held reluctance and helplessness, as if Song Nanyin really had brutally bullied her that day. Song Nanyin had nothing to say, unable even to find an excuse to argue back.

“Rest assured, Team Leader Song. I won’t do anything extra to you. As I said, I believe in equal exchange. Besides, I don’t want to force you. Unless you ask for it yourself.”

“Impossible. We’re both women, and straight women at that. What could possibly happen between us?”

Song Nanyin rushed to argue back, like the only schoolchild in class who knew the answer, desperately raising her hand to get ahead of everyone else.

Her words amused Liu Zhaoran enormously. Song Nanyin had already come twice at Liu Zhaoran’s hands, and she still believed nothing could happen between two women? Should she think Song Nanyin was foolish, or simply too naive?

Before Liu Zhaoran could settle on an answer, Song Nanyin spoke up again in a soft mumble, her voice as low as it could go.

“Anyway, whatever exchange nonsense you want, just get it over with. Once it’s done, we’ll be even. But you have to open the window. And… don’t… don’t touch me there. That thing you don’t have.”

Song Nanyin chose to compromise, but she still made a final struggle to save face. Seeing her turn her head away, her ears flushed red like sunset clouds, Liu Zhaoran understood. That thing probably meant the little part, right?

At last, Liu Zhaoran understood the source of Song Nanyin’s confidence that “nothing could happen between two women.” So the foolish lion thought her feelings were all because of the pheromones and that part?

What a foolish yet adorable little lion. Sex between women could be explosive too. A blaze sparked by a single touch could sometimes be far more thrilling than setting a fire.

“Fine. I’ll satisfy every one of Team Leader Song’s requests.” With that, Liu Zhaoran switched on the smart exhaust fan. Although Song Nanyin’s pheromones weren’t strong, and her pheromone rank wasn’t enough to disrupt Liu Zhaoran’s heat cycle, an Alpha’s pheromones would still affect her to some degree.

Liu Zhaoran was cautious and wouldn’t act rashly. She wanted to toy with a plaything. If she got caught up in it herself, there would be no fun in that.

With the exhaust fan on, the air instantly took on the outdoors as the breeze blew in. It carried the slight chill of air after snow, as if wrapped in the faint fragrance of the starwhisper flowers in the courtyard.

“Team Leader Song, shall we begin now?” Liu Zhaoran sat on Song Nanyin’s lower belly, asking earnestly as if about to commence some ritual. In truth, for certain special matters, asking made things more awkward than not asking at all.

Song Nanyin rolled her eyes internally, refusing to believe Liu Zhaoran didn’t understand. She was certain this Black-Hearted Lotus was asking on purpose, insisting that she answer.

“If you’re going to do it, hurry up and do it.” Song Nanyin glared at Liu Zhaoran with what she thought was a fierce, vicious look, then turned her head away. Seeing her abandon all pretense and resign herself to being at someone’s mercy, the smile at Liu Zhaoran’s lips rippled outward and never faded.

She suddenly felt she had wasted so much time. How had she never noticed before that Song Nanyin was such an interesting person? She had bullied this woman far too little.

As she thought about it, an extremely wicked idea even occurred to her. If only she could go back to when she first met Song Nanyin in college and start “bullying” her from that point on, that would be wonderful.

“Team Leader Song is so eager. But hold on.” Liu Zhaoran smiled radiantly, knowing that Song Nanyin was too busy being shy to have any spare energy to argue back.

From her commanding position above, she took in the entire view. Though Song Nanyin was often slow on the uptake, one had to admit she had a sharp, exquisite face and an enticing, flawless figure.

Her features were deep-set, classic mixed-race looks. Her profile was sharply defined, her nose small and high-bridged, and her nearly white golden hair was always dazzling and brilliant whenever she stood in the sunlight.

Song Nanyin was a deeply deceptive person. With her extreme beauty and hot, sexy figure, she looked like the kind of woman who really “knew how to play.” Liu Zhaoran had once thought so too. Now she realized how utterly wrong that assumption was.

The little lion was gorgeous to a flamboyant degree, but in certain respects, she was unexpectedly innocent.

“What are you looking at?” Perhaps Liu Zhaoran’s gaze was too intense, making Song Nanyin fidget all over. She wanted to squirm. Squirm where exactly? Her body and waist, of course.

She felt like prey pinned to a cutting board by Liu Zhaoran. The woman could simply eat her up, yet she chose to undress her with her eyes instead. Even though a bath towel still wrapped her body, Song Nanyin felt there was no difference in Liu Zhaoran’s eyes between that and being completely naked.

Oh, right. The only difference was probably that the other woman assumed she was wearing underwear, when in fact she really hadn’t had time to put on any bra or panties underneath…

At that moment, this damned woman would surely put on that shocked, astonished expression and affectedly ask whether she had deliberately gone without underwear, waiting with premeditation for her reciprocity.

Imagining how Liu Zhaoran would mock her in a moment, Song Nanyin’s eyes flushed red with shame. She made up her mind. When the time came, she would shout it loudly. So what if she wasn’t wearing anything? None of her business!

But though her lines were prepared and her expression prepared, what came was not Liu Zhaoran pulling off the towel. Instead, the other woman cupped her face and pressed a fiery kiss to her lips.

Indeed, a woman’s lips were very soft, with no stubble around them, and the sensation was wonderfully subtle. It was like sucking on a jelly, or like stripping a tree of its bark to kiss the tender sprout hidden beneath the rough surface.

The kiss came so unexpectedly that Song Nanyin’s brain capacity couldn’t produce a rationally considered response. Without realizing it, she closed her eyes, perhaps to escape the shame.

Once vision dissolved into nothingness, her senses expanded without limit. She felt Liu Zhaoran’s soft, wet tongue slip into her mouth. Like a conqueror, the woman ran rampant through her territory with the softest yet hardest weapon.

Just how wanton was it? That nimble tongue scraped against her palate, swept across her lips and teeth, and then hooked her tongue, circling around it. Tongue against tongue, both were rough, neither finer than the other. Thus every friction felt vividly distinct.

Her lower lip fell too, held and sipped by Liu Zhaoran, and then their tongues entwined once more. Joyfully, as if holding each other and dancing.

Somehow, while kissing Liu Zhaoran, Song Nanyin inexplicably recalled a certain marriage match. Yes, exactly. She had not agreed to that match. But now, could this be counted as a dissenter stealing the bride?

Indeed, in those TV dramas, the people who raise objections to so-and-so marrying so-and-so exist precisely so they can steal the bride. But after successfully stealing the bride, what was she supposed to do with Liu Zhaoran?

Reciprocity? Bullying each other?

No. They… were tongue-kissing.

Having little kissing experience, Song Nanyin couldn’t rate Liu Zhaoran’s kiss. But at least, judging by the level of delight, she was quite comfortable right now.

Liu Zhaoran’s mouth carried the lingering scent of mint toothpaste, mixed with the faint grass note unique to her breath. It was strange. She had already asked her to open the window, so why did this woman’s scent still fill the air, so rich and so pleasant?

Was the window… fake? It looked open, but was it actually not open at all?

In a break in the tongue-kiss, Song Nanyin glanced at the open window.

The wind came in from outside and stirred the curtains. Their floating arc seemed to mock her for overthinking.

Song Nanyin arched her feet in unbearable need, her toes curling tightly together, yet she couldn’t overcome her body’s most honest desire.

Liu Zhaoran’s kiss felt so good. Her scent, so sweet.