Xiangshan Clubhouse covered a wide range of services. Food, drinks, entertainment—it had everything, naturally including hotel accommodations.

Although Yan Ruojun often came here for business dinners and social obligations, he had never once stayed overnight.

He thought it wasn’t clean enough, and he also felt it wasn’t safe enough.

Objectively speaking, Xiangshan Clubhouse’s service had always been attentive. Its high-end clientele ensured privacy, security, and cleanliness.

But after years of being tortured by his monthly heat cycles, Yan Ruojun had become vigilant toward outside environments to the extreme.

There were only three places where he could sleep overnight with peace of mind: the bachelor apartment he usually lived in, the Yan family estate where his relatives stayed, and the rest room inside the CEO office at Yan Group headquarters.

Apart from unavoidable overnight business trips, Yan Ruojun would never casually book a room outside. Since Xiangshan Clubhouse was located right in Beidu, every time a dinner ended, he would simply have his driver take him home.

This was the first time he had ever requested a room.

The manager who received the call answered with respectful professionalism, nodding unconsciously as he spoke.

“Of course, President Yan, please rest assured. I’ll have someone prepare it immediately…”

Yet even as he spoke, his expression turned rather subtle.

Working in the hotel-service industry meant seeing far too many private matters…

especially in a membership-based club like this, where every guest was someone important.

And this President Yan was important even among important guests.

His name wasn’t just famous in the business world—he was also extremely well-known elsewhere.

The manager still remembered last year, when President Yan had finished a business trip abroad and happened to cross paths with a celebrity at an overseas airport. Fans snapped photos and posted them online, causing quite a stir.

People who didn’t know who he was had left comments asking:

[Is he a model? Those legs aren’t legs, they’re spring water by the Seine~ His body proportions are insane!]

[Ahhh that subtle mixed-blood vibe, he looks so refined and noble. I’m losing it. I want his contact info in three seconds!]

[LOL… this person is no model or celebrity. Anyone interested should pay attention to the Yan and Lin companies in Beidu. His surname is Yan~]

[Dead. I’m shipping two CEOs as an office worker, but I have to admit, it’s so good!]

…

Thanks to that wave of traffic, and to Yan Ruojun fanning the flames a little afterward, the jointly invested project between the Yan and Lin families gained tremendous momentum and made a great deal of money.

An Omega like that—

good family background, good ability, good looks—

he was the textbook definition of a life winner.

No one could deny how outstanding he was.

Not to mention, he also had an equally outstanding and perfectly matched fiancé.

And that was exactly where the problem lay.

President Yan had a fiancé!

The eldest son of the Lin family was even a Xiangshan Clubhouse member himself, and it wasn’t as if he had never come here before together with President Yan…

But from the description the staff had just given, the Alpha with President Yan tonight sounded nothing like the Lin family’s eldest young master.

The manager thought all this awkwardly to himself.

After hanging up the phone, he still didn’t forget to instruct:

“Be careful to protect the guest’s privacy. Don’t talk too much, don’t look too much. Behave properly.”

The staff member he was addressing was the head waiter who had just dealt with the pheromone leak. The man also knew the seriousness of the matter and nodded again and again, his face full of meaningful restraint.

The two exchanged a glance, and the same sentence was written in both their eyes.

—Oh my god, we just stumbled onto huge gossip.

If this ever got out, wouldn’t it hit the trending topics in minutes?

—

Before leaving the restroom, Yan Ruojun gave Lin Zhu his collar and then sprayed more than half a bottle of cleansing spray all over him before finally suppressing the scent.

When the head waiter delivered the room keycard, Yan Ruojun didn’t ask for an escort. Instead, he directly led Lin Zhu toward the elevator.

The sky outside had grown much darker than when they arrived.

Yan Ruojun didn’t take him along the open-air bridge corridor. Instead, he led him down another enclosed passageway.

They didn’t run into anyone else the whole way.

The corridor was quiet, the wall lamps dim, carrying an intentionally cultivated atmosphere of ambiguity. Lin Zhu followed behind him, one in front and one behind, their shoes making no sound at all on the carpet.

Only the two sounds of breathing intertwined in the stillness.

Lin Zhu’s breathing was deep and hurried, while Yan Ruojun’s was slow and shallow, even carrying a trace of calm leisure.

It took quite a while before they finally reached the elevator. Lin Zhu couldn’t help letting out a long breath and raised a hand to tug at the black collar around his neck.

From the restroom to the elevator, he had already tugged at it several times. The expression on his face was sullen, foul, and somewhat fierce.

Yan Ruojun held the keycard in one hand and pressed the up button with practiced ease. In a light tone, he asked,

“Is it really that uncomfortable?”

Lin Zhu was still hot. He pressed his back to the cold metal panel inside the elevator, trying hard to increase the distance between himself and Yan Ruojun, and gave a low hum of agreement.

He had never worn anything like this before. All he felt was that it was constricting, almost making it hard to breathe. It was unbearably uncomfortable.

What was more…

this collar had only just been taken off Yan Ruojun’s own neck. When Lin Zhu put it on, it still retained the man’s body heat, which only stirred up another wave of feverish agitation in him.

The elevator rose, bringing with it a faint feeling of weightlessness.

It wasn’t until the “ding—” sounded by his ear that Lin Zhu realized he had been staring at Yan Ruojun’s neck the entire time.

Although the man was nearing thirty, his skin was exceptionally pale and fine. After removing the blocker collar, a faint red ring had been left behind on his neck.

The lighting in the elevator was dim too. The red marks were only half visible, and the less clearly Lin Zhu could see them, the more he wanted to.

Until he found himself staring blankly, lost in thought.

Seeing that he hadn’t moved for quite some time, Yan Ruojun pressed and held the door-open button and asked impatiently,

“Have you looked enough?”

Lin Zhu came back to himself with a start and hurriedly followed him out.

Outside the elevator was yet another long enclosed hallway, with closed doors lining both sides, each door marked with a numbered plaque.

Yan Ruojun suddenly stopped in front of Room A3012.

Caught off guard, Lin Zhu accidentally bumped into Yan Ruojun’s back and instinctively steadied him with one hand, which landed right at the man’s narrow waist.

He snatched his hand back almost at once and touched his nose awkwardly.

“…Sorry.”

Yan Ruojun only glanced at him once without speaking. Then he swiped the keycard over the lock.

A second later, the door responded with a soft beep.

Click—

The lock popped open automatically, pushing the door outward into a thin crack. Inside, it was completely silent and entirely dark.

Yan Ruojun stepped in first and inserted the keycard into the wall slot.

The next instant, the lights came on, illuminating the entire suite.

Lin Zhu followed him in.

He couldn’t quite describe what he was feeling.

The two of them had walked all the way here in near-total silence, exchanging barely any words, looking exactly like strangers who merely happened to be walking the same road.

And in truth, they were hardly better than strangers.

Tonight was their first meeting.

—and yet they’d already booked a room together.

This was the first time in Lin Zhu’s life he had ever booked a room, and also the first time he had booked a room with someone else.

And that someone was Yan Ruojun, his theoretical future… well, future wife.

The reason it was only “theoretical” was because Lin Zhu didn’t actually know whether Yan Ruojun would agree, as he did in the original novel, to a marriage alliance with him and sustain it for nearly a year.

“Close the door.”

Yan Ruojun turned to glance at the dazed golden-haired boy and unconsciously clicked his tongue in annoyance as he urged him.

Lin Zhu was like a robot with a rusty brain: one instruction from Yan Ruojun, one movement from him.

He shut the door.

Yan Ruojun turned and walked toward the living room. Lin Zhu followed behind him, and when he saw the man sit down on the sofa and look over his shoulder at him, he instinctively asked,

“What is it?”

Yan Ruojun didn’t answer.

He simply lowered his eyes and slowly removed the leather gloves from his hands. His palms were slightly damp with sweat, making the gloves a little difficult to pull off.

Lin Zhu just stood there, two or three meters away, watching him remove the gloves.

It was obviously such a simple action. It wasn’t stripping or anything explicitly suggestive.

And yet, the longer Lin Zhu watched, the more he found himself instinctively shifting his gaze away a little, as though he were seeing something he shouldn’t.

Yan Ruojun lightly tossed the gloves onto the low table.

At this moment, there was no blocker equipment left on his body. The cleansing spray had also been almost completely used up by Lin Zhu…

Never before had Yan Ruojun faced an adult Alpha in such a setting with no barrier at all between them.

And yet tonight, that was exactly what he had done.

The living room was brightly lit, but the curtains were drawn tightly shut. It was an enclosed, independent, brightly illuminated private space.

Yan Ruojun imitated the posture Lin Zhu had used earlier, lowering his head slightly and brushing the hair away from the back of his neck to expose the gland area.

Then he said with simple directness,

“Go ahead.”

Lin Zhu obeyed and stepped forward. But just as he came to stand behind the man, he heard Yan Ruojun say:

“…Don’t stand behind me.”

At once, Lin Zhu remembered a detail from the novel:

Yan Ruojun had never liked people standing behind him since he was young. It gave him a strong sense of insecurity.

Lin Zhu gave a clumsy “Oh,” then tried to move around the front, only to have the sofas on both sides block his way, so he asked again,

“Then should I stand in front of you?”

Yan Ruojun didn’t lift his head. “You can.”

Lin Zhu quickly moved around to the front of the sofa and stood before him.

But then another problem arose—

Yan Ruojun’s legs were especially long, stretched out between them, making Lin Zhu completely unsure how he was supposed to lean in close enough.

“Um…” Lin Zhu adjusted his stance and distance, then after thinking about it, still asked, “Could you spread your legs a little?”

The moment the words left his mouth, it was like an entire fleet of trucks from the original novel roared through his mind. He immediately tried to explain:

“Ah…! That’s not what I meant. I just mean if you open your legs a little, I can stand in there. I can’t reach right now…”

The more he talked, the more expressionless his face became, and the more completely dead his heart felt.

It would have been better not to explain at all!

“Ai…” The system, silent for a long while, finally sighed in disappointment. “Host, you’re playing a flirtatious, loose-tongued scumbag ex-husband! Why do you sound like some virgin who’s never even seen an Omega before!”

Lin Zhu replied silently in his heart, utterly speechless:

“…Sorry, but I am a virgin who’s never seen an Omega before! I’ve never even held anyone’s hand in my life.”

The system pulled up the novel screen and shoved the highlighted passages right in front of Lin Zhu’s eyes.

“Don’t panic. Let’s just follow the original script!”

“First grab the protagonist by the neck, bite him, then lick it afterward. Then look at his flushed face, smile, and say the key line: ‘Does it feel good? Only I can give you this.’ Then it’ll be done!”

Lin Zhu: “…If you’ve got the guts, you do it yourself.”

The system shut up instantly and hurriedly changed the subject.

“Oh, earlier when Host restored the protagonist’s key line, it was judged successful. So maybe you don’t have to say this key line, or maybe the protagonist has to say it…”

Lin Zhu ignored it.

As for Yan Ruojun, he merely lifted his eyes and gave Lin Zhu one glance.

Then, astonishingly enough, he really did spread his legs apart, leaving an open space for someone to stand between them.

“Is that enough?” he asked.

“Mm…” Lin Zhu stepped forward two paces.

The distance between the two of them had already gone far beyond the normal social range. The heat radiating from Lin Zhu’s body seemed almost to become a gust of wind, blowing directly onto the man’s face.

Yan Ruojun involuntarily turned his face slightly aside, looking down at the pattern of the carpet beneath them, while saying in the same calm tone:

“Don’t start bleeding from the nose again.”

Lin Zhu: “…………”

But when he bent down and brought his mouth close to the side of the man’s neck, he caught sight of one ear peeking out from beneath Yan Ruojun’s hair—

and it was already bright red.